Seattle Schools Community Forum

From the Washington Post's The Answer Sheet via Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy group.

From Diane Ravitch, news that the Senate has passed their long-awaited revision to No Child Left Behind, the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). The underlying legislation is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, whose purpose was to authorize federal aid to education targeted to schools that enrolled significant numbers of children living in poverty. The original bill was about equity, not testing and accountability. And we can all see how that turned out. The Senate bill retains annual testing, but r emoves federal sanctions attached to test results. Any rewards or sanctions attached to test scores will be left to states.

Honestly, I think sometimes the Times does not think much of its readers.  For many of their education stories, they always manage to leave out very basic information.  Almost as if they wanted to slant a story. The latest laugher comes via Washington Stand for Children and their " petition" to the Legislature over voting to link test scores to teacher evaluations.  The House will have a public hearing on their bill on Monday. Along with supporting this bill, Stand for Children, one branch of a national advocacy group, has also lobbied for stricter teacher evaluations and more school choice. The group collected the 20,658 signatures mostly online over the past year, said spokeswoman Jeanette Lewis. It vetted the signatures by deleting those with duplicate or invalid email addresses. What's missing - from a reporting standpoint - is not truly explaining who Stand is and who funds them (Gates).  I note the Times uses the cagey "nation advocacy group" and N...

First up, from The Columbian (via Associated Press) which is reporting that the lead attorney for the McCleary case , Thomas Ahearne, told the Washington State Supreme Court that they should hold the Legislature in contempt for not complying with their orders. “We’re asking the court to at least hold the Legislature in contempt, to prohibit any more unfunded or underfunded mandates on our schools, and to impose even more serious sanctions if the Legislature does not reconvene and obey the court’s orders by Dec. 31 of this year,” Ahearne wrote. In his written response to the Legislature’s report to the Supreme Court, Ahearne said lawmakers do not seem to understand that the Supreme Court was issuing an order, not making a suggestion.  “The State did what it had been ordered to not do. It offered promises about trying to submit a plan and take significant action next year — along with excuses for why the State’s ongoing violation of kids’ constitutional rights and c...

After Inslee caved to Duncan's demand that Washington State law reflect a "must" use test scores for teacher evaluation, rather than "can" as it currently does, the Legislature is moving a bill around. I'm going on the record - I don't have a problem with using test scores for teacher evaluation (even though there is virtually no proof they really show anything about how well a teacher teaches) but I know there is no way that their use will be reasonable.  The powers that be want them at 50% or more and that is unacceptable to me.  I also note that hey! guess what's embedded in the House bill - that the use of "student input may also be used."  Well now, that's interesting.  SPS is "piloting" a student survey that is being pushed by Teachers United and student input just happens to show up in the bill.  Go figure. I urge you to weigh in on this issue to your legislator (see bill numbers below). Here's what the WEA...

 Update:  I have received some new info - via the City - and either we have a case of Who's on First or SPS is not being forthcoming with all it knows about this student survey of teachers.  I have word that one school has been working on this - with Teachers United and possibly school staff as well as the Seattle Youth Commission - for almost two years.  I'll let you know all the details when I get them sorted out but I have to wonder whose survey it truly is going to be. End of update. I had a long conversation with Dr. Eric Anderson, head of Research, Evaluation and Assessment, who is in charge of the initiative for a separate student survey of teachers.  So let's get some basics out of the way: The survey has not been written but they will likely pivot off other student surveys out there (more on this below) Who will be part of this "work group" that will decide on the survey, which schools will pilot it and which students (grade level) will ta...

In a classic "aw shucks, we tried and keep in mind, education, if run like a business would do a lot better" interview, Bill Gates spoke with the Wall Street Journal .  He somewhat humbly says, "It's been about a decade of learning."  Kind of true but it's also been a decade of experimenting with other people's children.  (But I think Bill, like a writer at Forbes who had written about yet-another Gates ed initiative said, he wouldn't want it for his own child but sure, why not try it somewhere.)

Also next week on Tuesday, October 29th  at Kane Hall on the UW campus at 7:00 pm- 9 pm Accountability at a Crossroads: Using Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teacher Effectiveness A panel of leading educators at the forefront of testing and teacher evaluation will share their differing perspectives on the questions: Is this a sound/effective policy?  What is to be achieved, if anything, in holding teachers accountable for their students’ test scores?  What tests should be used?  What’s ultimately at risk for the students, the teachers, the community? PANELISTS DR. JOE WILLHOFT – Executive Director, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium* JUSTIN FOX-BAILEY – Teacher, Snohomish School District; Member, WEA Executive Committee CHRIS KORSMO – Executive Director, League of Education Voters MICHAELA MILLER – Director, State Policy and Outreach, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Moderator - Brian Jeffries, State Assessment Program Directo...

I did link the latest Gallup poll on what Americans think about public education but it deserves an updated reprint. First, from Gallup itself, the highlights:

Publicola talked with Clover Codd and is reporting that the district has backed off on the issue of eliminating the weekly paid hour of collaborative planning for teachers.  Codd told PubliCola this morning: "We actually withdrew that proposal. The hour of collaboration time pay. We’re leaving that in the contract. And they still get the 2.6 percent compensation for that." Re: teacher pay, She added: "One thing I think is really important for the public to know is we’re actually offering a 4 percent increase in compensation over two years. It keeps getting published as 2 percent. Well it’s 2 percent in one year, and then an additional 2 percent the next year, for a total of 4 percent. In addition to the restoration of the furloughs, which is 1.3 percent. When you add all that up, it’s actually a 5.3 percent increase over two years." The union is staying mum until negotiations are done but there is an SEA press conference this afternoon.  SEA President...

A couple of NW education stories of interest. First up, look who is leaving after one whole year as head of Oregon's public education system - Rudy Crew.  No real surprise there.  From Ed Week : So, how have things turned out? There are a few answers to that, and good variety among them. First, there's Rudy Crew. He's no longer on the job, having resigned July 1 to take over as president of Medgar Evers College in New York City. One of his biggest legacies seems to be a sour one : the expenses he racked up while serving as the state's K-12 czar, including a $1,118 taxpayer-funded trip to California to honor a former colleague, and a four-hour course he taught at the University of Southern California that resulted in a $552 bill to the Oregon public. On the policy front, Crew sought $150 million for four key initiatives, including preschool reading and regional centers for teacher professional development, Betsy Hammond at The Oregonian notes, but lawma...

The fight is still on in many states over Common Core.  New wrinkles have emerged like all kinds of products "aligned" to Common Core and being pushed to states. First (and thanks to Dan Dempsy) is a YouTube video from Ben Swann on the issues around Common Core.   This is the best, most distilled down information on CC I have ever heard.  Recommended. Think CC isn't linked to DOE money?  I'll let Diane Ravitch tell you what happened to Georgia: A few days ago, Georgia announced that it was dropping out of PARCC, the Common Core testing consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Education. State officials said the state could not afford the technology or the cost. The U.S. Department of Education was swift to respond. It wrote Georgia to warn that it is withholding $10 million from the state’s Race to the Top funding . Maybe the timing was a coincidence. Maybe not.  The state says it needs more time to fix its educator evaluation system befo...

I actually have a backlog of education news stories but these two from today rose to the top.  One story is about teacher evaluations and the other is about a high-profit "education summit" going on this week in Arizona. From Ed Week : The NEA has filed a lawsuit on behalf of several teachers in Florida against that state's education department, saying that the teacher evaluation formula being used violates their constitutional rights.  They seek an injunction against the state law for teacher evalutions and three districts' policies.  “ The state approved formula for measuring student growth on [the state standardized tests] is being stretched far beyond the limited purposes for which it was designed,” the suit argues. The law requires all teachers to be judged in part on the progress of their students. This growth formula was developed for teachers in those subjects in which the state administers standardized tests: grades 4-8 in math and 4-10 in reading. But b...

Ann Dornfeld of KUOW reports on Seattle teacher evaluations based, in part, on student test scores.

Liv Finne of the Washington Policy Center wrote an article for Crosscut, A failing grade for the state's new teacher-evaluation bill . Ms Finne writes "The federal government has no business telling us how to evaluate our teachers,". I suspect the same could be said of the state legislature. What other state employees have their evaluations dictated by statute? What do state legislators know about evaluating teachers? Whether you agree or disagree with Ms Finne or the Washington Policy Center, they are thoughtful and provide rationale for their conclusions. I find nothing more illuminating to read than a well-written and thoughtful article by someone who disagrees with me. I like to be challenged in my thinking.

Over at Publicola, they report that WEA president, Mary Lindquist, wrote an open letter based on what Nick Hanauer had to say about public education in the state of Washington. You can read the whole thing there but she says several things I find I can agree with her on: And yet, in a single email, he has managed to align himself with a politician who is antithetical to all of those progressive values. First, it must be clearly understood that it is the voters of Washington – not the WEA – that have rejected charter schools on three separate occasions in recent years.  Voters know that for charter schools to be imposed, advocates like Hanauer would need to poach funding from local neighborhood schools and districts. In the 2010 legislative session, WEA pushed the adoption of SB 6696. Now we are engaged in a collaborative process with districts across the state to pilot new evaluation systems. We see signs this system will make a real difference for students. We look f...

Are you slammed with things to do? Me, too.   But meanwhile, lots of things are happening.  So a quick round-up of thoughts that settle in my brain as I try to go to sleep (if only there was an on/off switch for our brain at bedtime). 1) Just attended a land use committee meeting. They voted 5-3 to allow 6-story buildings across from Roosevelt High School .  The final vote will come on January 17th.  I'll write further about this but there was some crowing about all the new kids to the neighborhood who will be able to walk to Roosevelt.  Do we need a new high school?  Yup. 2) On capacity management, I am really, really worried.  There is so many moving targets and so much that could go wrong with the wrong choices.  I hope FACMA, if in their guts they feel it, will put up a fight against any position the staff has that they worry about seeing go through. We CANNOT make any more facilities mistakes. Those capital dollars have got to be st...

 Update:  this just in - UW is restoring the 150 slots for in-state students that had been cut.  Also, they changed the application deadline for this fall's freshman class to December 1 (for the main campus).  Heads up to all you parents of seniors considering UW. The district is still working on their website to make it more user-friendly.  There is this useful " Whom to Contact for What " page for parents with links to the appropriate page.  It's all in one place and I think this may be a help for parents.  Trouble on the Eastside ?  According to the Times , Bellevue teachers just voted "no confidence" in their superintendent, Amalia Cudeiro, by 97% over her management style.  This is her third year on the job. Bellevue has a superintendent with a teaching/administration background but most recently came from a leadership consulting firm she founded with her husband.  She says she's doing this gig one time and then will go ba...