Seattle Schools Community Forum

Two Seattle education stories from the Times appeared over the last couple of days. One is about the number of Washington state school districts that are going to take advantage of the lifting of the levy lid by the Legislature . Some levies will be in August and some in November. Everett, Edmonds, Northshore and Marysville will each have one in August. Bellevue and Tacoma say they aren't because they aren't sure how voters will respond. SPS says it has "no choice" because the state isn't supporting education the way it should. (On that point I have heard legislators say, for many, many years, that they did not want to give more money to Seattle schools because of what they hear about the district. Michael DeBell acknowledged this as a problem several years back. When the Legislature doesn't feel the oversight/management is there and there are results to point to that trend upward, it does make a lot of people unwilling to listen. This is a key poi...

In the latest Accountability Audit Report from the State Auditor, we find that yet AGAIN the district AND the Board are out of compliance. (I know some of you might think that could be the case with many districts but my understanding is that the district is far and away the number one district with these issues.) I didn't do a count but there were many instances where the audit states "in 2006", "2008", etc. that the district was told of compliance issues. So when and where does this big deal accountability come in for our district? Here is the opening of the audit which is sobering: Overarching Conclusion Our audit found the School Board and executive management must improve oversight of District operations. We noted several instances in which public assets were misappropriated or susceptible to misappropriation due to lack of effective policies, management’s failure to enforce existing policies and/or inadequately trained staff. The Board and District m...

In a recent Seattle Times interview , Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson said: "We don't have charter schools. So let's put that over there, and let's talk about something else. How about kids being successful, how about kids being challenged? How about providing interventions to close the achievement gap?" Okay. Let's talk about those things. How about kids being successful and challenged? Under Dr. Goodloe-Johnson's administration, what changes have we seen? On the good side we have seen more AP classes in the high schools that didn't have many before. We have certainly seen more students taking AP classes. That's in the high schools. What have we seen in K-8? More schools have been designated as ALOs, but there is no quality assurance so we don't know if there is anything there beyond the official designation. That's particularly true with Spectrum programs. Is there really a Spectrum program at Aki Kurose? In 2008-2009 there were two Spectrum st...

The Seattle Times published another story praising the Superintendent . Yawn. This one appears in the news section of the paper instead of the op-ed page. It explains that all of the work that she has done over the past three years has just been a preparation for the work that is to come. That's why we haven't seen any results yet - she's just been laying the groundwork. The big thing coming will be the school scorecard and the resulting support that will go to struggling schools (the year after that). So really, we're still two years away from any change that she's created and three years away from the time when it would be fair to start measuring it. She says that it will take another eight to ten years. So definitely she wants to be held accountable, but not until 2018 or 2020. The superintendent says that the changes she is implementing are "It's proven, it's best practice, the research is out there." The people who did the research, however, s...

From the PI online, a story of a study out of Rhode Island boarding school that shows that teens do better going to school later (and they're talking just 30 minutes later). Anyone who has a teen surprised? I didn't think so. The results were in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (which, unfortunately, you can only access with a subscription. From the article: Giving teens 30 extra minutes to start their school day leads to more alertness in class, better moods, less tardiness, and even healthier breakfasts, a small study found. "The results were stunning. There's no other word to use," said Patricia Moss, academic dean at the Rhode Island boarding school where the study was done. "We didn't think we'd get that much bang for the buck." Researchers say there's a reason why even 30 minutes can make a big difference. Teens tend to be in their deepest sleep around dawn - when they typically need to arise for school. ...

Could folks please offer status reports on the various current legal processes involving the District? Please include links to other blogs or web pages with updates.

There is a blog commentor who thinks that it is a waste of time to discuss curricular alignment or standardization. This thread is to give that anonymous commentor the space to tell us why we should all just stop talking about it.