Seattle Schools Community Forum

It's the end of spring so, I'm spring cleaning.  That means going thru my vast SPS files and throwing out/reordering. Naturally, I found some interesting stuff (but threw out two bags of paper).  Among the things I found: - Did you know I was an education activist in high school?  Me, neither but apparently I wrote, for the school newspaper, an op-ed in support of a bond measure to building onto our school.  I mention that our high school was built for less than 1,000 students and we had over 1500.   We had 30-year old stadium lights that leaned like the tower in Pisa.  We needed science labs and a new auto shop. It was for $3M but I don't know if it passed.  - Did you know the Alliance for Education - at least in 2011 - actually included Spectrum in the feedback they received from folks attending their State of the District luncheon.  " Increase access to Spectrum and ensure consistency across the district."   - Did you k...

Popped into the City Club's One-Stop Ballot Stop this evening.  Not so many people but the mayoral debate was interesting.  One quick-fire question: " Do you think the Seattle School Board is doing a good job?"   Murray - yellow (waffle), McGinn (refused to answer - "I think they are doing the best they can at a hard job.  I don't want to put them down." , crowd (mostly yellows with a smattering of green - yes and red-no).  I had forgotten but City Club puts all the candidates for each type of election together so there was this uneasy line of Dale Estey, Peters, Blanford and Green.  Blanford and Green appeared to completely ignore each other (as did Dale Estey and Peters) while Dale Estey and Blanford appear to be pretty good buddies (so I guess that CASE - the Chamber of Commerce PAC - isn't wrong in calling them "a slate.") The Supreme Court has taken on case on affirmative action which involves a Michigan case using race for college ...

From the Stranger Slog : The Mercer Island School District will kick off its "One to One" iPad initiative next month by distributing free iPads to all 10th and 11th graders. The iPads will be used by students for the remainder of the year, returned for the summer, and then redistributed in September. Say what you want about the economic disparity that allows districts like Mercer Island to hand out iPads while other districts struggle to pay for more basic needs, but I'm guessing that this technology will be the norm in schools, not the exception, by the end of the decade. The advantages over traditional textbooks are too obvious and numerous to list. This is the future. But there's one huge advantage that might not be so obvious about this inevitable shift away from print and toward digital: It breaks the power of the Texas Board of Education to dictate what is and is not in our nation's textbooks. Because Texas is one of the largest buyers of...

So the latest state to distort history (after the fine job Texas is doing) is Virginia. They had a person (I hesitate to say writer) who is not a historian write their Virginia history book. She said she found information about black Confederate soldiers on the Internet. Seriously. From the Washington Post Answer Sheet blog: What she found was the work of members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That’s a group of male descendants of Confederate soldiers, based in Tennessee, that has long claimed that big numbers of black soldiers fought for the South. Professional historians of the era say this is nonsense. The author, Joy Masoff, has penned other works including " Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty " and " Oh Yikes! History’s Grossest Moments ." She also disputes that slavery was the underlying issue that caused the Civil War. The Masoff textbook was ruled "accurate and unbiased" by a Virginia committee of content specialists a...

Seattle Public Schools has committed to a seven-year cycle for instructional materials adoptions. The District wants to review and update all textbook decisions every seven years. The work is divided across the seven-year period so all of the adoptions don't occur at once. This year, the District is looking to adopt materials for these courses: Middle School Language Arts High School Science High School Social Studies K-5 Music French Japanese Each of these adoptions will follow the process set by Policy C21.00 . Part of that process calls for one standing Instructional Materials Committee for all adoptions and a separate Adoption Committee for each adoption. The District is now seeking volunteers to serve on the various Adoption Committees to recommend specific texts for the classes. If you would like to serve on one or more of these committees, you should submit your application without delay. Follow the links or visit the Curriculum Alignment page of the District web si...

There sure are a lot of words used at Seattle Public Schools that have a special or specific meaning within the context of public K-12 education. The jargon of education. The professionals often use this jargon among themselves to speak precisely. At Seattle Public Schools the professionals often use this jargon to confuse or intimidate the public. The staff of Seattle Public Schools particularly like to MIS-use this jargon to confuse the public, or to tempt the public into mis-using the jargon to make them appear ignorant. Of late, this trick has been practiced more by Dr. Cathy Thompson and Kathleen Vasquez than any other member of the staff. Consider this example: Middle School Language Arts Curriculum Adoption . The District is not really adopting a curriculum; the District is adopting instructional materials. But it serves the interests of the District staff to confuse the public (and the Board, who are merely glorified members of the public) about the definitions of the words...

A Student Family Representative is needed for the Instructional Materials Committee. Seattle Public Schools is looking for a student family member volunteer to serve on the Instructional Materials Committee. This committee oversees the process of textbook adoption. It doesn't pick the books; rather, it approves a timeline for adoption, membership of the adoption committee and selection criteria. Policy info The committee has two student family representatives, and one is stepping down. Terms are generally for two years. If texts are to be adopted, the committee would meet 4-5 times a year. (Any duties this year would depend on passage of the levy.) Interested? Please send your contact information and qualifications/reason for interest to: Shawn Sipe, Instructional Materials Specialist, slsipe@seattleschools.org or call 206-252-0227

Did anyone attend DeBell's or Sundquist's community meeting yesterday? I attended Harium's. I was quite surprised that it turned out to be just 3 parents. One was an Eastlake parent and one was a Hale parent. I would have thought from posts here that more parents had issues and questions especially about the NSAP. I first brought Harium up-to-date on the issue of me being able to ask questions at the press conference. (I had received an odd e-mail from Communications that was written for the press.) I asked Harium if the Board had a policy on media access. He said no and he didn't think they needed one but the district should have a procedure. I agreed. It seems apparent that the district has no policy and was flying by the seat of their pants with me and just made it up as they went along. I don't want to drag this out but I do want to make clear: The press conference started late even though all the speakers were there. I was told, five minutes befor...

A few comments on the agenda for this week's school board meeting. 1. University of Washington Excellence in Educational Leadership Award – Princess Shareef, Cleveland High School I happen to respect Ms Shareef, but I don't really see how anyone can give an award for excellence in educational leadership to the principal of a school that is getting transformed due to persistent low performance. It sends a strange message. I thought the idea was to hold the education professionals responsible for student achievement and for their evaluation to be based, in part, on student achievement. The low performance by Cleveland High School students would seem to disqualify Ms Shareef from any sort of award, regardless of her indisputable talents. 2. "Curriculum" Adoption action items All of the action items for materials adoptions are mislabeled "Curriculum Adoption". This misuse of terms contributes to the confusion of these terms. They should correct the titles of th...

We've been focused on SPS issues and many have posted about other national stories so let's take a look at what has happened over the last couple of weeks. all the teachers, administrators and other personnel at one Rhode Island high school were fired (the focus seems to be on the teachers but news reports say the entire staff will be let go). That's a big wow all the way around. Central Falls High is one of the lowest-performing schools in R.I. and is in a low-income area. From CNN: Of the 800 students, 65 percent are Hispanic and for most of them, English is a second language. Half the students are failing every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent proficient in math, officials said. They also have one of highest transient populations in R.I. The superintendent, under federal guidelines, had asked teachers to work a longer day than 7 hours and tutor students weekly for one hour outside of school time. There would also be 2 weeks of paid profes...

Danny Westneat wrote a column about the appeal of the high school math textbook adoption now in King County Superior Court. He is dismissive of it. The comments following the story are more thoughtful than we usually see in the Times.

A brief was filed Monday, Nov. 23, in King County Superior Court appealing a May 6, 2009 Seattle School Board vote to adopt the Discovering Mathematics high school textbook series. The brief contends that the school district acted arbitrarily and capriciously in voting 4 to 3 to adopt a type of textbook associated with a widening achievement gap between minority students and white students, and between low-income students and other students. Seeking to prevent the school district from adopting this series are plaintiffs DaZanne Porter, an African American and mother of a 9th-grade student in Seattle Public Schools; Martha McLaren, retired Seattle math teacher and grandparent of a Seattle Public Schools fourth grader; and Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington. According to the brief filed Monday, Seattle Public Schools began eliminating "traditional" math texts in the 1990s, moving toward an approach called "reform," "disco...