Seattle Schools Community Forum

Update : District Communications says "there are no negotiations today (Thursday), the union suspended them.  We are willing to meeting with them anytime." End of update.

The Yes votes still trail as the gap goes from between .90% to .75%.  It's that close. Snohomish county had been barely Yes and now is barely No. Here's where we stand: - there are just over 501K ballots left to count - the three biggest counties have these number of ballots left: King, 130,742; Snohomish 99,000; Spokane 42,000 - Snohomish and Spokane have been extremely close in the votes with the No vote just edging Yes.  In King County, there has been a comfortable 53% lead. So certainly, it is possible 1351 could pull it out. But the trending, like in the charter school vote, is not going towards Yes so I suspect it may be just a very close No. This is another WEA loss (despite those poll numbers just weeks ago).  I was asked about why I thought this measure is as close as it is with those poll numbers showing a comfortable lead.  I didn't see how the questions were phrased in the poll but I suspect that people "like" the idea of lower class size...

There's almost something humorous about charter stories today.  They come faster and faster; stars who start charters that fail, financial scandals, and promises made and then broken. What's the funny part?  Well, the supporters of 1240 said "we have a lot to learn from charters."   I would agree and in more ways than one.   We should be the state to be uber-careful about who comes through that charter door.  No backdoors for anyone.  No one who has been indicted in another state.   y Here's the examples of what NOT to do: - In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the FBI, not just the state auditor, have moved in on a charter group. From AP :

 From the Rachel Maddow blog. 

From the New York Review of Books comes a comparison review of Diane Ravitch's new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools and Michelle Rhee's book, Radical: Fighting to Put Students First .  (Ravitch's book just came out and is now #1 in sales at Amazon.  Ravitch will be speaking this week, Thursday the 26th, at UW's Kane Hall  from 7-8:30 p.m.)                             What is striking about this review comes almost at the end when the reviewer, Andrew Delbanco, gives them each a fair pro/con assessment. You would think it possible to take ideas from both sides and put them to work together. In order to agree that America’s schools ought to be better (Ravitch), we don’t have to believe that they are worse than ever (Rhee). We don’t have to think, as Rhee does, that “great” teaching is a magic bullet in ...

First off - read Anthony Cody's column from his Living in Dialogue slot at Education Week.  READ IT in its entirety.   Why?  Because it gives quite the total picture of Common Core and why so many - yes, including Tea Party folks - are against it.  Worried about it.  And will fight it.  You should be, too, if only to protect your child's privacy. Here's the basics from his column but again, READ IT: "1. Sharing of student and teacher data with third party developers of all sorts, with no guarantees of privacy.  As noted in this post, there are plans in place in some states such as Illinois and New York, and others as well, to collect massive amounts of data, which will be housed in a cloud based databank maintained by inBloom, a non-profit created by the Gates Foundation for this purpose."

Update:  Yesterday, I said this about the "study"  Despite my suspicions about how this study came about, there is some solid information here and is worth a read.  As you can see, I changed my mind.   Why don't I believe this is a serious study? I am unsure who Ms. Liu  talked to and when and what data she looked at to conduct and then write the report on the study.  There is a lot of vagueness in the report on this point.  She mentions talking to staff in Teaching and Learning, HR, and Business and Finance.  She says she spoke to:  Senior-level professionals in Central Office at SPS and assistance from many more. So who did she talk to and when and for how long?  Who authorized her to talk to all these people and why?   But the real question for me is why the district decided to open the door to an non-educational outside entity line OSC who used just one researcher.  Because I can think of many other grou...

Man, did they ever.  From the LA Times : The clash over education had been building throughout the three-day convention, underscoring a larger debate taking place in education circles.  California Democrats on Sunday condemned efforts led by members of their own party to overhaul the nation's schools, arguing that groups such as StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform are fronts for Republicans and corporate interests. Before delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution excoriating the groups on the final day of the party's annual convention here, speakers urged them to focus on protecting students and teachers. "People can call themselves Democrats for Education Reform — it's a free country — but if your agenda is to shut teachers and school employees out of the political process and not lift a finger to prevent cuts in education, in my book you're not a reformer, you're not helping education, and you're sure not much of a Dem...

 Update:  City Hall will be open to the public tomorrow from 10 am to 2 pm.  They will have performances (acrobats, dance crew) as well as food trucks and adoptable dogs/cats.  You can tour the Mayor's office as well as the City Council offices.  It's a fun activity for kids and you get a little face time with the Mayor and City Council members. The Times has a couple of interesting headlines.  One is a feature story about Governor Inslee stating that while he likes the concept of "grading" schools, he thinks it needs further study.  Apparently the Republicans had been counting on his early comments of support for the concept as support for their bill.  I talked to the Governor's office weeks ago and they very clearly told me he did NOT support Senate Bill 5328 and, in fact, were not happy that some media outlets were linking that support to the bill. I am pretty happy at his up-front stance because I don't believe a one-letter grade represen...

  UPDATES:   The Superintendent's Special Education Advisory and Advocacy Committee has also released a statement (in the comments section) that they support the MAP boycott.  From their statement : Evidence of the lack of care and thought in MAP testing is that our children are REGULARLY denied their accommodations for the MAP. How does MAP testing somehow take precedence over the necessary accommodations on the IEP? In addition, the Superintendent will be holding a media briefing right before the School Board meeting on Wednesday about MAP testing.  Rally for teachers/parents/students against MAP tomorrow, Wednesday, the 23rd, at 4 pm (just before the School Board meeting).  It's billed as "Scrap the MAP; Students are not Test Scores." Also of note, there was another press conference yesterday at Garfield with some updates from teachers. - Noted national educators added their support; Diane Ravitch, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis,...

Grab a soothing drink (or set that VCR or DVR) because this is going to be good - Frontline is showing a special on Michelle Rhee.  It will be on KCTS 9 at 10 pm Tuesday night.  Rhee, the poster girl for all that is wrong in public education reform today, has had this discussion long coming.  Given Frontline's hard-hitting reporting, I'm sure they will be thorough and frank.  Coincidentally, Rhee just released a report card of sorts, through her "group" StudentsFirst on how states are doing.  Diane Ravitch calls her out on it here . This comes on the heels of a number of staffers at StudentsFirst, all Democrats, who abruptly left the organization recently.  From the Huffington Post: "There were known to be some significant differences on political strategy and policy matters, especially in StudentsFirst's approach toward unions and partisanship," said a source close to the education reform community who declined to be named in order to pre...

There has been a lot of name-calling and demonizing of teachers over the last few years.  The teachers and those who represent them in the workplace - the teachers' union.  The teachers (and staff) at Sandy Hook saved lives.  Gave their own lives - standing between the shooter and the children - and died for those children.  Young teachers, new teachers - all of them, right down the custodian.   The Stranger Slog has this devastating interview with a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary from ABC news.  This teacher saved her students' lives and gave them love in what she thought might be their last minutes.   Attached they have a column from the Daily Kos that lays bear all the terrible things said about teachers by elected officials and others.  It is an angry column but worth reading.  Michelle Malkin When they weren't ditching their students, radical teachers steeped in the social justice ethos of National Education A...

As you may recall, on the same day as the Creative Approach MOU was remanded back to the Board by a Superior Court judge, there was an interview in the Seattle Times with Jonathan Knapp, the new head of the SEA.  It was quite a nice profile and had some telling bits.   Here's Knapp on change in relationships: "Simply saying 'no' is no longer an option," said Jonathan Knapp, a shop teacher who crafted the approach as union vice president. "The climate has changed, and we have to be advocates for public education in a way that 20 years ago we didn't," Knapp said. "And the way that we do that is building relationships, not by confronting people and saying it's our way or the highway." I agree.  Being adversarial is not the way to build relationships and work for better academic outcomes for children.   However teacher Robert Murphy fires back: We've already compromised too much," said Robert Murphy, a Franklin High ma...

In something of a shocker, the Stranger Slog is reporting the following: The union representing 26,000 "educational support professionals" in the public school system says today that Republican Rob McKenna can do in the governor's mansion what Democrat Jay Inslee can't. He can restore funding for K-12 education (even though he's never convincingly explained how he can do this without crushing employee unions). Meanwhile, Inslee is "too committed to preserving the status quo."  The union is Public School Employees of Washington/SEIU 1948.   The WEA, Washington Education Association, is endorsing Inslee. One issue that has split the education workers' unions is health care benefits. From a Q&A on this issue:   Won’t Rob McKenna take away our collective bargaining rights?  We are a union and we strongly support collective bargaining. Rob McKenna has...