Seattle Schools Community Forum

From Superintendent Banda via SPS Communications (red highlight mine): In February we formed a Task Force on Assessments and Measuring Progress to review our testing policies and explore concerns about the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment. This group, comprised of principal, teacher, student, family and community representatives, met eight times and developed a list of recommendations for the 2013-14 school year. I want to thank this group for their time and efforts. This proved to be an effective and productive opportunity to work together to develop constructive solutions that put students first while addressing the concerns raised by some of our staff. I look forward to ongoing discussions about the use of assessments to support teaching and learning in our district. Based on this Task Force’s feedback, I am making the following decisions regarding the MAP assessment for the 2013-14 school year: ·        ...

You'd think after all the years that I've complained about parents being not included in district initiatives that I might have welcomed the planning for the new Strategic Plan. Nope. My first inkling of "Danger, Will Robinson" was this what? 50,60,70-person Strategic Plan Taskforce.  I knew I wouldn't be applying for that one because I can only imagine a meeting with that many people. Second, isn't this the Board and the Superintendent's job?  I mean, draw up a plan, get input/feedback and roll it out.  Third, I attend the first community meeting for the planning at Eckstein last week.  I've been to many of these dog-and-pony shows and frankly, I wasn't impressed.  There were maybe 50 people including Directors Peaslee, Carr and Martin-Morris and Superintendent Banda.  So I'll say upfront - I'd skip these meetings and take the survey .   The survey closes on Monday, April 15th.  Or send an e-mail to the Board with your suggest...

There has been many, many news stories out this last month that all lead me to believe that ed reform is starting to collapse.  Is it anywhere near full-collapse?  Nope and that's because there is a lot of money to be made so it will not go without a fight.  But the signs are all there.  Let's start with assessments and the posterchild that is Atlanta .  (But close on its heels is Rhee's D.C., Texas and Florida.)  What is this all about?  It's about a superintendent who wanted to make money for herself and for the administrators and teachers in her district, make a "name" for herself and the kids be damned. Today the first suspects in the Atlanta cheating scandal turned themselves in.  There are 35 educators who were indicted in a 65-count indictment last week including former superintendent Beverly Hall.  The indictments claim there was a pattern among the educators to cheat or conceal cheating or retaliate against any whistleblowers i...

I mentioned previously that I had attended the Assessment Taskforce meeting on Feb. 21st.  I wanted to make note of several things I noticed: - Organized - very much appreciated - Good facilitator who kept things on track - The group is going to be able to look at the MAP test.  I think this is great because as members of this Taskforce, they need what they are talking about when it comes to this discussion. - Two principals - from Mercer and Denny - came in to talk about what was happening at their schools.  A little bit of cheerleading there for MAP but I think the Taskforce took it with a grain of salt.  The only odd thing was the Denny principal saying they had a data wall with kids' scores on it.  I hope not.  - As in any group, there are a few people who speak often and the rest listen.  I hope that the listeners don't allow the discussion to always follow what the speakers want it to be.  That's a facilitator's job. - The head of C...

Psychology Today put forth this article by researcher Susan Engel, "What Test Scores Don't Tell Us: The Naked Emperor."  Ms Engel reviewed over 200(!) studies of K-12 standardized tests. What I have discovered is startling- most tests used to evaluate students, teachers, and school districts predict almost nothing except similar scores on subsequent tests. I have found virtually no research demonstrating a relationship between those tests and measures of thinking on the one hand, or life outcomes on the other. To grasp what we do and do not (yet) know about standardized tests, it’s worth considering a few essential puzzles: why we find individual differences in test scores (why one child does better or worse than others), what makes a child’s test scores go up, and what such improvement could possibly indicate.

  Update:   I reviewed my notes and realized, based on questions about opting out, that I had missed one answer. I had asked the Superintendent about what would happen to the teachers who boycotted MAP and what would they do with students who opt out (given, for example, that word is that at least 50 Orca students had opted out). He deflected the teacher question with the "working on solutions" answer but with the students just said that students are able to opt out.  He would not say what any given school would be doing.  Clearly, he does not want students to opt out or for parents to know they can.  The district probably has given directives to principals in how to handle opt-outs but my experience is that teachers and principals tend to be a little more pragmatic and don't make it in a big deal.  End of update. It was interesting to be sure.  The Superintendent was accompanied by Michael Tolley, Interim Assistant Superintendent for Teachin...

This thread is for any and all thoughts, concerns, gripes about Advanced Learning.  I'm doing this in hopes that people at both ends of the "spectrum" will QUIT highjacking other threads with their opinions/gripes about Advanced Learning.  And FYI, Advanced Learning is NOT the major issue in our capacity management problems.  You are welcome to ask anyone at district headquarters working on capacity management that question.  (I will also ask that unless you have definite proof - an e-mail from Bob Vaughan or  other district official saying that most of the kids in APP got there through private testing, then ONLY state that as your opinion.  That claim is often made here and yet, where's the proof?  If you don't have it, then don't say it. ) I am not personally interested in the discussion over whether some people don't like that some kids are in separate classrooms/schools.   It's not that I don't believe you are entitled to y...

We are just coming off a presidential election where, to some degree, race mattered.  Governor Romney lost because the GOP seems to be tone-deaf to the fact that what they allowed various GOP officials, including Romney, to say about Hispanics and women really DID matter.  The GOP can continue this at their own risk but the numbers are against them (and so is history and common decency). The NY Times had two articles about students and race and its impacts that I thought worthy of posting.  Both are about Asian-Americans. One article is about Asian-Americans in college.  This is a large and diverse group of students with varying outcomes.  By the numbers, Chinese, Japanese and Korean-American students tend to do fairly well in school.  Pacific Islanders, Samoans, Vietnamese-Americans tend to do less well.   Add into those groups Pakistani, Indian, Filipinos, and Cambodians and you get a lot of people under one umbrella who are wildly diff...

South Shore PreK-8 came up as a topic during a discussion over conversion charters .  I, like many, believe it would be a target (a willing one) for a conversion takeover.  I suspect you could get the parents or teachers to agree and I'm sure LEV, who now directs the foundation money that South Shore gets, would also be agreeable.  That leaves the community and the district that may not like the idea of losing a $73M building to a charter entity. One thing to keep in mind - ALL charters are their own districts .  If they take over a district building, they can decide the parameters - within the law - of public use just as SPS does.  If you use a school building for your local community meetings or Boy Scouts, you might have to find someplace else to go.  I also don't know what it would mean for the joint-use agreement that SPS has with Parks for SPS playfields.  I would assume if a charter group takes over the building and its grounds and is its ...

Interesting (and lengthly) essay from a student teacher that carefully outlines her concerns with TFA .  The ones about the link between TFA and charter schools is especially timely for Washington State.  (Also a good story here on that link from the National Journal.) From Education Week, a very good comparison of what Romney and Obama have in mind for public education. From Education Week, a review of a new book about the most selective public high schools in the country. For each of the 11 schools that Finn or Hockett personally visited, the book describes the climate for learning. Here's how they summed it up: By and large, all the schools we visited were serious, purposeful places: competitive but supportive, energized yet calm. Behavior problems (save for cheating and plagiarism) were minimal, and students attended regularly. The kids wanted to be there, and were motivated to succeed. Most classrooms they observed were "alive, engaged places,...