Seattle Schools Community Forum

I previously posted the long memo called Real Choice vs. False Choice: The Repercussions of Privatization Programs for Students, Parents, and Public Schools that Senator Patty Murray sent to her colleagues in late March about the privatization of public schools. She does credit in laying out real world examples of how privatization has not worked in the U.S. Her most basic point? Privatization efforts provide a false sense  of choice for many students and families.  From the Network for Public Education comes the NPE Toolkit: School Privatization Explained on Privatization .  There are a variety of topics covered about charter schools as well as tax credit and voucher programs.  They give Washington State a "C" for school privatization.  Here's some of what Senator Murray's memo says:

Ms. DeVos' prepared remarks .  They include: “Parents no longer believe that a one-size-fits-all model of learning meets the needs of every child, and they know other options exist, whether magnet, virtual, charter, home, religious, or any combination thereof.” Of course not but I'm not sure most parents want to pay for someone's child to get religious training. Our nation's schools are filled with talented, devoted professionals, who successfully meet the needs of many, many children. Remember that one when Trump, et al go after teachers unions.  Teachers are the union. For me, it's simple; I trust parents, and I believe in our children. I'm not sure if that's simple or simplistic.

You'll notice I didn't say "looking forward" because honestly, I don't see much hope for public education for all students in this country, state and city.  Let's start with nationally. Trump won the Electoral College and is therefore elected president.  However, that win is clearly not a mandate when you consider that he received nearly 63 million votes to Hillary Clinton's nearly 66 million votes.  Add into her votes the ballots cast for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and others and you get to about 74 million people who voted against Trump. He has not even been sworn in and already there are many warning signs.  His background and actions tell us three important things.

Update from Politico: Billionaire Betsy DeVos has been unabashed about using her wealth to advance her own agenda. “ We expect a return on our investment,” she once wrote about her family’s massive political contributions. After giving millions of dollars to politicians over the past two decades, she now heads into her Senate confirmation hearing for education secretary with a clear advantage: DeVos and her husband, Dick, have donated to the campaigns of 17 senators who will consider her nomination — four of whom sit on the Senate education committee that oversees the process. end of update Billionaire Betsy DeVos has been unabashed about using her wealth to advance her own agenda. “We expect a return on our investment,” she once wrote about her family’s massive political contributions. After giving millions of dollars to politicians over the past two decades, she now heads into her Senate confirmation hearing for ...

Trump has selected Betsy DeVos of Michigan as his pick for the next Secretary of Education.  Who is she?  Well, for one, not an educator. 

From KPLU: How The Language Of Special Education Is Evolving

Washington's Paramount Duty has a new website and is still working hard to see McCleary fully enacted. Here's how their home page reads: The shameful, endless STATUS QUO Parents and their children live and breathe it every day: overcrowded classrooms ... lack of basic textbooks and supplies ... disappearing arts and sports programs ... unsafe buildings ... overwhelmed teachers ... Pretty much says it all. Now for something pretty funny - former Governor Christine Gregoire is now the CEO of a group - Challenge Seattle - to work on "transportation and education issues."  From Geek Wire:  The new organization officially came out of stealth mode earlier this month, announcing plans  to solve the region’s pressing transportation and education problems with the help of government, the University of Washington, and 17 leaders from some of the largest and most successful local companies. I'll be honest; when I see more business types than any other in a g...

Where are we with the Washington State charter law? As usual, waiting on the Supreme Court.  The last action that I see is that four former state attorneys general — Slade Gorton, Ken Eikenberry, Chris Gregoire and Rob McKenna - filed a friend of the court document, asking the Court to reconsider. This was filed right at the end of October which may have been on purpose - the Court does have to read and consider everything filed. I think the Court will politely tell all these people - thanks for the input but we got it right the first time.  They will say thanks for the input but outcomes from the ruling ("this will hurt other education initiatives the Legislature funds") fall on the Legislature to solve.  But the ruling on charters is separate from those. I think the one bone the Court will throw out is asking the Legislature to fund the existing charters thru the end of the school year.  Given how late the Court ruled on the challenge and now, the lateness o...

Clarification: the forum on the school to prison pipeline (this Wednesday, the 29th at the New Holly Hall at 6pm) is NOT sponsored by either the King County Council or City Council.  It was organized by a few members from each group.  They have invited members of the Seattle School Board but it is unclear who may be going from that group.  The featured speaker is Professor Wayne Au from UW Bothell. This is a good opportunity to point out how valuable that Middle College is to preventing more kids from entering the pipeline.  (I also suspect a fair number of candidates from City Council races as well as School Board races will be in attendance.)

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.

 UPDATE: in a quick 3 minutes , here's why this is a bad, bad idea.  If you want public money going to private schools - that have NO accountability to anyone and can pick and choose who gets in (and who gets kicked out), then you'll like SB 6079.  A big no from me. end of update Wait for it. A late dropping bill that missed my notice is SB 6079 by Senator Michael Baumgartner (R-Spokane).  It would allow families to choice to get $5K of the average $7400 in state dollars per student.  Then you could use the money for "educational services" at public or private schools. This bill is listed as first coming into the Senate on March 9th and, as of today, was referred to the Early Learning &E-12 Education Committee.   Apparently, there it sits. This voucher nonsense is happening in a number of states mostly around special ed or ELL students.  Naturally the hope is to expand this crazy quilt idea for all K-12 children.  You could either ...

Surprise from a reader (and I agree) - a figure from a Danny Westneat column. Did this surprise anyone else? 2370 kids, about 5% of all of the students in Seattle Public Schools, are homeless ? I had no idea it was that many. From the Week in Geek :  The physics of the Winter Olympics.  Good piece to show to the kids as you watch some amazing athletes in action.   (Those kids on the snowboards give me a heart attack.)   Heads up on a coming trend in politics - more "school choice" meaning more charters and now the push for vouchers.  This from Non-Profit Quarterly . Most candidates for major local or state positions, particularly governor, scurry to charter schools to be seen as supportive of these vanguards of the school choice movement. Among Republican candidates for office, the message of charter school advocacy seems to be designed to resonate with voters frustrated with the purported inadequate performance of traditional public schools, even ...

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.)

Here are some stories from around the country that will have more and more bearing on what we are doing in Washington State. From Ed Week, a top 12 list of stories from the past year.  The majority of them are about Common Core as the fight goes on.  Linked to Common Core (and you see this in story after story elsewhere) is student data privacy.  I also note the presence of a story on grading schools A-F which I predict will show up in this session of the Legislature. Here's one from Bill Moyers about the "Snowden Effect" or we could just call it the canary in the coal mine.  For some reason the media chooses to listen to established (or paid for by, establishment) groups.  There are a lot of people out there, including this blog, going into the dark corners looking around.  That we only have a flashlight and not a spotlight doesn't mean we are wrong.   These days, the establishment media all too often adopts an indifferent attitude tow...

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:

Many conservatives have spent this week celebrating the birthday of Milton Friedman (which was July 31).  He was economic adviser to Reagan and couldn't say enough about a free market economic system.   His contribution to public education (from Wikipedia): (bold mine) In his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education" Friedman proposed supplementing publicly operated schools with privately run but publicly funded schools through a system of school vouchers . [ 48 ] Reforms similar to those proposed in the article were implemented in, for example, Chile in 1981 and Sweden in 1992. [ 49 ] In 1996, Friedman, together with his wife, founded The Foundation for Educational Choice to advocate school choice and vouchers. The Texas Observer tells the story : By repeating the arguments Friedman made 50 years ago , for starters, and decking them out in red, white and blue. As Donna Campbell reminded the room at the TPPF event: ”Folks, we’re in Texas. ...

You may well have heard or seen Michelle Rhee on tv in the last week.  She has a new book, Radical, that's she pushing.   I have read a few excerpts and they don't fail to startle.  As I had previously mentioned, the PBS series, Frontline , had Ms. Rhee as a focus of one show.  It was quite the show as this was during the time period when she was DC Chancellor of schools.  The reporter did a brilliant job of just letting her talk and allowing her actions and her words to speak for themselves. Highlights from the Frontline show:

Boy, is there a lot out there. First up, great news for the students receiving Washington Opportunity Scholarships - their check goes up from $1,000 to $5,000.  From the Times report: The scholarship is for Washington residents studying at in-state institutions who are majoring in science, technology, engineering, math — often called STEM — and health-care fields, and who meet an income threshold that's considered low- to middle-income — up to $102,200 for a family of four. Its aim is to encourage more students to go into those high-paying, high-demand fields. It may be especially important to middle-income families, who often don't qualify for financial-aid programs and must rely instead on loans, especially as tuition has risen so dramatically. Freshmen and sophomore scholarship winners will receive the smaller $1,000 award. Because it's renewable, and can be used for up to five years of college, the value of the scholarship could be as much as $17,000 ...

I'm sure most of you have heard of the right-wing think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute.  Their director of educational-policy studies is Frederick M Hess who, back in Fall 2011, wrote a lengthy essay, Does School Choice "Work ".  I would grab a cup of coffee if you intend to read the whole thing but honestly, it's quite illuminating to hear from someone who I might think I wouldn't normally read for information on educational policy.  To whit: A few years ago, the Manhattan Institute's Sol Stern — author of Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice — caused a stir when he backed away from his once-ardent support. Howard Fuller, an architect of Milwaukee's school-voucher plan and the godfather of the school-choice movement, has wryly observed, "I think that any honest assessment would have to say that there hasn't been the deep, wholesale improvement in [Milwaukee Public Schools] that we would h...

You have to shake your head.  What's up with the Times? I'm pretty sure this guy isn't about throwing off the chains of public school education but more about vouchers.  That he cloaks his rhetoric in the "it's for the kids" school of thought doesn't make it any better.  (Note: like charters, we did vote on vouchers previously and again, the answer was no.) So here’s a crazy idea that just might set the stage for real innovation to happen — a deep change to unleash the creative flow of new thinking and practices. What if we abolished our compulsory school attendance laws, let public schools partner with families and communities to define their own educational programs, and allowed families to choose the kind of education that best fit the needs of their child? What would education without compulsory attendance look like? I can imagine a plethora of innovative programs: part-time schools; programs focused on specific skills, interests and the...