Seattle Schools Community Forum

Oh look, the average tenure of urban superintendents has gone down to 3.2 years.  FYI, Mayor Murray and Seattle Times. Council of Great City Schools

Two things: A reporter for the Nathan Hale Sentinel, Ryan Lenea, wrote to me asking for help on an article he is writing about MAP.  He is looking for the following info: I am currently writing about the MAP testing administered in Seattle Public Schools; what it is, why we do it, how much it costs etc.  Also, could you please refer me to anyone else you think is knowledgeable on this topic, or who has a strong opinion on it? I am not a deep-dive on MAP so I asked him if I could ask my readers and he said yes.  If you are knowledgeable about MAP (uses, costs, etc), could you drop him a line today ?  Also, if you have strong feelings, yay or nay, could you do that?  He is on a deadline.  He's at ryanlenea@gmail.com .   Thanks. Also, Sunday the 11th is the last day to take the Board's survey .   It may not be a focused and/or well-written survey but it's all we have.  If you or your spouse/partner have not taken it, I urge y...

A group of parents calling themselves the Seattle Shadow School Board and representing many interest groups within Seattle Public Schools, wants to present the School Board with evidence of the public's dissatisfaction with the Superintendent's performance on June 16th (or at least before their July 7 action on her evaluation/contract renewal). They have created a petition online very similar format to the No Confidence documents used by the schools who have taken those votes. The petition is available here : http://www.petitiononline.com/S3B62010/petition.html

Nina Shapiro over at Seattle Weekly has a piece about the Superintendent's review. It has a few illuminating statements that bear updating you on. From the article: Both board president Michael DeBell and district spokesperson Patti Spencer-Watkins dismiss the surveys as "unscientific," as did a Friday Seattle Times editorial that leapt to the superintendent's defense. Spencer-Watkins points to a different survey, released by the non-profit Alliance for Education last month, one she portrays as more credible because it was done by a marketing firm. What I would say to that statement is that the Alliance's survey did have a credible number of respondents from various groups in multiple parts of the city (although the CPPS survey had more respondents overall). The questions for the phone survey were a far cry from the earlier on-line attempt but, to my eyes, somewhat tailored for the answers the Alliance wanted. The main point is that the two surveys were...

Below is information about the results of the Superintendent Survey from last week (after the CPPS survey). There ended up being about 180 people surveyed which is far less than the CPPS survey. However, this survey was only published here and in a shorter timeframe. Again, not scientifically valid but a bookend to the CPPS results. Here is a link to the survey with comments. This Superintendent Performance Survey was produced by a group of Seattle community members who regularly interface with SPS District staff individually, through school groups and in business. Because of the sensitivity of their position in relation to positive or negative criticism for the superintendent, they chose to circulate the survey anonymously, with the hope of adding an additional discussion point during the current superintendent evaluation. Some hard copy surveys circulated through the community. The same version of the survey was posted, again by anonymous request, via one location only: ...

Stephanie Jones, the head of Communities and Parents for Public Schools (CPPS), released the results of the recent survey on the performance of our superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson. From their results: In just over a week, they received 662 responses. More than half included optional written comments 273 (41%) included an email address (this is a great sign of standing up and being counted) Submissions came from 37 different zip codes, covering all regions of the city As you would expect, the anonymous responses were more negative but the non-anonymous ones were still "solidly" negative. One absolutely great thing that the folks at CPPS did was to include every single comment. There are pages of them so it takes awhile to read. But it is valuable reading because you start seeing a theme to them even as each one differs somewhat in its issue. What did people say? If I had to sum it up, it would be two things. One, there is almost zero feeling that Dr. Goodloe-Jo...

This Saturday finds 3 directors having community meetings. Sherry Carr - 8:30-10 am, Greenwood Neighborhood Service Center, 8515 Greenwood Ave N. Harium Martin-Morris - 9:30-11:30 am, Diva Espresso, 8014 Lake City Way NE Peter Maier - 10:30 - noon, Bethany Community Church, 1156 N. 80th, Auditorium Any burning questions to ask them? Also a reminder that the longer Superintendent survey is still live. ( Please note - if you have already taken the survey, the link won't work again. It is live for those who haven't. I did recheck it.) It is a great companion survey to the fine one done by CPPS (results from that one soon). The Board really needs to hear from parents and community about how they are feeling about Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson and her efforts in our district. Please pass the word along; there have been about 140 taken so far.