Monthly Archives: May 2010

When ex-President Bush was elected in 2000, he brought with him former Houston Superintendent of Education Rod Paige to be Secretary of Education. He also brought the “Texas miracle”-supposedly increased test scores attributed to Texas’ strict accountability system. All eyes smiled on Texas as those measures quickly became part of No Child Left Behind, passed into law in 2001 by both political parties. Before the end of Bush’s first term, Paige would leave in disgrace, thanks to revelations of cooked scores, forced-out students, and other barely legal means of inflating test results.

With the appointment by Barack Obama of Arne Duncan-a noneducator from the business sector who was Chicago’s “chief executive officer”-as U.S. Secretary of Education, this phenomenon may repeat itself. For the past several years, Chicago’s model of school closings and education privatization has received national attention as another beacon of urban education reform. This may have special relevance as the number of schools “identified for improvement” by NCLB criteria grows, numbering 11,547 nationally in the 2007-08 school year. Other school districts across the U.S. have already undertaken programs similar to Chicago’s-New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina, has had a massive privatization of schools (see the special report on New Orleans in Rethinking Schools Vol. 21, No. 1), New York City has proposed closing and phasing out schools using criteria similar to Chicago’s (e.g., test scores), and Philadelphia has followed suit as well, with a number of new charter schools. As Chicago Mayor Daley said in a 2006 press conference, “Together, in 12 years we have taken the Chicago Public School system from the worst in the nation to the national model for urban school reform.” The Chicago Commercial Club’s Renaissance Schools Fund Symposium, “Free to Choose, Free to Succeed: The New Market in Public Education,” in May 2008, was attended by school officials from 15 states. The headline for a Dec. 30 article in the Washington Post claimed, “Chicago School Reform Could Be a U.S. Model.” And outgoing Secretary Margaret Spellings praised Duncan as a national leader for his teacher incentive pay program.

However, Chicago school policy has not really been set by Duncan-Chicago’s education agenda is bigger than him and is about more than schools. Of course, he brought to the job his own strengths and weaknesses, and undoubtedly his own perspectives. We do not argue with those who claim that there have been some constructive steps while Duncan was CEO of Chicago’s schools. We recognize that his administration has responded to some initiatives that have emerged from the community and been organized by grassroots organizations. These include, for example, support for the state-funded Grow Your Own Teachers program, designed to recruit community members to be credentialed in order to teach in local schools and a program to help 8th graders make a smoother transition to high school. However, the larger agenda has been corporate and privatizing.

But Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policies are not really about Duncan or his successor. The biggest threat to finally achieving equitable and quality education in Chicago’s low-income African American and Latino/a schools is not the individual who carries out the policy but a system of mayoral control and corporate power that locks out democracy. The impact of those policies includes thousands of children displaced by school closings, spiked violence as they transferred to other schools, and the deterioration of public education in many neighborhoods into a crisis situation.

So it is important to describe the agenda in which Duncan is complicit. Two powerful, interconnected forces drive education policy in the city: 1) Mayor Daley, who was given official authority over CPS by the Illinois State Legislature in 1995 and who appoints the CEO and the Board of Education, and 2) powerful financial and corporate interests, particularly the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago whose reports and direct intervention shape current policy. As Pauline documented in her book, High Stakes Education, the mayor and Civic Committee are operating from a larger blueprint to make Chicago a “world-class city” of global finance and business services, real estate development, and tourism, and education is part of this plan. Quality schools (and attractive housing) are essential to draw high-paid, creative workers for business and finance. Schools are also anchors in gentrifying communities and signals to investors of the market potential of new development sites. For Chicago’s working-class and low-income communities, particularly those of color, this has meant gentrification and displacement, including of thousands of public housing residents. As in other U.S. cities, Chicago has also handed over public services (public housing, schools, public infrastructure) to the market and privatized them, and public education has been in the forefront. Although not the architect, Duncan has shown himself to be the central messenger, manager, and staunch defender of corporate involvement in, and privatization of, public schools, closing schools in low-income neighborhoods of color with little community input, limiting local democratic control, undermining the teachers union, and promoting competitive merit pay for teachers.

On the Ground in Chicago

CPS is the nation’s third largest public school system, behind New York and Los Angeles. According to the CPS website, the slightly over 400,000 students attend around 655 schools (including 56 charter campuses), and are 46.5 percent African American, 39.1 percent Latino/a, 8.0 percent white, 3.5 percent Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American, and 2.9 percent multiracial. The student body is 85 percent low-income. Chicago’s principals are majority African American (54.1 percent), and 13.2 percent Latino/a, and 31.3 percent white. The almost 25,000 teachers are 35.8 percent African American, 13.2 percent Latino/a, 47.3 percent white, and 3.7 percent Asian/Pacific Islander/Native American. And Chicago is well-known for having one of the most segregated school systems (and housing patterns) in the nation; literally hundreds of schools are 90 percent or more African American or Latino/a (e.g., 216 are 99 percent or more black!).

Let’s separate myth from reality. The myth is that Chicago has created a new, innovative way to improve education-Renaissance 2010. The heroes in this myth are Mayor Daley, who introduced Renaissance 2010 in June 2004 at a Commercial Club event, and Arne Duncan, who oversaw its implementation and was its chief spokesperson. Renaissance 2010 was touted as the future of education in Chicago, with a plan to close 60 schools and open 100 new, state-of-the-art, 21st-century schools. These schools would be either small, charter, or contract schools. Renaissance 2010 was (and is) marketed as an opportunity to bring in new partners with creative approaches to education. That’s the myth.

There is a completely different reality on the ground. For affected communities who have longed for change, Renaissance 2010 has been traumatic, largely ineffective, and destabilizing to communities owed a significant “education debt” (to quote Gloria Ladson-Billings) due to decades of being underserved.

The first phase of Renaissance 2010 was called the Mid-South Plan, announced in 2004. The Mid-South is a historic, primarily African American community on the South Side. It is also important to know that the Mid-South Plan ran parallel to the Chicago Housing Authority Plan for Transformation-the dismantling of public housing, a large concentration of which was in the Mid-South and on the African American West Side.

Collateral Damage

The Mid-South Plan was designed to close 20 of its 22 schools, almost entirely African American, over a four-year period, replacing them with Renaissance 2010 schools. Parents received notice from the Board the final day of school in 2004 that their children’s schools were closing. Children have been treated as cattle, shuffled around from school to school. One Mid-South school, Doolittle East, received over 500 students from June to September 2005 without additional resources to facilitate this change. This resulted in spiked violence. On the west side, the closing of Austin High School (another African American school) resulted in over 100 students who used to walk to school having to leave their community to go to Roberto Clemente High School, a primarily Latino school over five miles away. The results were spiked violence. When Englewood High School closed in 2006, hundreds of students were parceled out to Robeson, Dyett, Hyde Park, and Hirsch High Schools-all are African American. The community warned CPS that these moves would result in increased violence and put children’s lives at risk due to crossing neighborhood and gang boundaries. As usual, Duncan and CPS ignored community wisdom, and the results at all of these schools were destabilizing spikes in student violence.

Arne Duncan has overseen the beginning destruction of neighborhood schools with neighborhood students. Schools are no longer community pillars because many students no longer live in the area. When CPS closes schools and reopens them as Renaissance 2010 charter or contract schools, there is no guarantee or requirement that students who attended the old schools will go to the new ones-and many don’t. For example, not all new schools are the same grade level as the old schools. There are complicated applications and deadlines, limits on enrollment, requirements of families, and informal selection processes that may disadvantage some students.

Families with multiple children who used to attend one school have had to scramble as schools close and their children are split up. Young children who walked to their neighborhood school have had to leave their community and cross heavily trafficked streets. Schools that are “turned around” terminate all adults in the building, including security, custodial, clerical, paraprofessional, and kitchen staff (as if they contributed to students’ poor performance), causing severe dislocation and job loss in the community. Tenured teachers who are released are reassigned for 10 months as negotiated in the union contract. During this time, they receive their salary and benefits, sub some days of the week, and look for a position on other days. At the end of the 10 months if they have not found a position, they can be “honorably terminated.” As one parent of a child in a closing school said, “when you close a school, you kill the heart of the community.”

Dumping Democracy

In a democratic society, instruments of engagement allow citizen voice in decision-making processes. In Chicago education, that instrument is Local School Councils (LSCs). The most powerful parent, community, and teacher, local-school, decision-making structures in the country, LSCs’ responsibilities include hiring principals, monitoring budgets, and developing school improvement plans. With support, LSCs have demonstrated that they are effective models of local school decision-making. A 2005 Designs for Change study of 144 of the most successful neighborhood schools in Chicago serving primarily low-income students listed effective LSCs as a key reason for success. Despite this and other evidence documenting LSC effectiveness, CPS, under Duncan, has worked tirelessly to weaken LSCs by whittling away at their authority.

The LSCs came out of the grassroots movement to elect Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, in 1983. Parents and community members across the city made alliances and worked with school reformers to fight for local school councils, which the state legislature created when they passed the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Chicago’s LSCs are probably the most radical school reform in the country and are the largest body of elected, low-income people of color (especially women) in the United States.

In implementing Renaissance 2010, CPS ignored LSCs in the decision-making process. In many instances, the LSC at a school targeted for closure played a major role in the resistance to the school being closed. Why is CPS working to eliminate LSCs? Consider this: Chicago has almost 7,000 LSC members. If they were organized, they would be a major force in the struggle for equity in education. In fact, CPS has worked extremely hard to underserve LSCs. When LSCs started in 1988, CPS provided all the training to LSC members. However, over the years, literally thousands of LSC members have complained about that training. CPS provides no information on the general history of Chicago school reform, nor specifically how LSCs came into being as we explain above. CPS also does not provide any specific training to students on LSCs (each high school has one student member). In response, a number of community organizations have done their own, independent LSC training for years.

Duncan publicly stated in April 2007 that he wanted to break the “monopoly” of the LSCs, and in October 2007, Board of Education president Rufus Williams, in a speech to the City Club of Chicago-a major grouping of business people-likened LSCs running schools to having a chain of hotels being run by “those who sleep in the hotels.” Nor is this attitude merely rhetorical. Until 2007, when public scrutiny exposed them, Duncan’s office overseeing LSCs had a staff of 7 facilitators to train and develop LSCs at nearly 600 schools. This leaves LSCs operating at a structural deficit-set up to fail.

In a democracy there must be opportunities to impact decision-making. CPS has refined sham hearings to a twisted art form. When schools are slated to close, CPS is supposed to hold public hearings (which Duncan never attended) so that a hearing officer and board members (who almost never attend) can engage the school community and listen to their rationale as to why the school should not be closed, or other alternatives should be explored. In virtually every case, parents, students, teachers, and community pour out their hearts. In many cases, they document how their school has been drastically underserved by CPS or that their school has consistently improved. Tears are shed out of fear for their children’s safety or the destruction of a family atmosphere in a school building; yet the CPS Board-on Duncan’s recommendation-consistently votes unanimously to close the school. This has prompted a revitalized effort by community members and organizations to remove the mayor’s authority to appoint the CEO and the school board and move towards an elected school board.

Militarizing Public Education

To justify Renaissance 2010, Duncan has been a strong proponent of school choice-including military schools. He was quoted in the Nov. 2, 2007, issue of USA Today saying: “These are positive learning environments. I love the sense of leadership. I love the sense of discipline.”

According to the CPS website, Chicago has “the largest JROTC program in the country in number of cadets and total programs.” CPS has five military high schools, more than any city in the nation, and 21 “middle school cadet corps” programs. The military high schools teach military history and have military-style discipline. Students wear military uniforms, do military drills, and participate in summer boot camps. The hierarchical authority structure mirrors the Army, Navy, and Marines, with new students (“cadets”) under the command of senior students who work their way up and require obedience from those in “lower ranks.” Like in the military itself, questioning, let alone challenging, authority is not looked upon kindly. In a city where barely 50 percent of entering high school students graduate (Swanson, 2008), and in a country involved in two wars, the option of military service tempts many, especially in a period of economic crisis. All but one of the military high schools are in African American communities, and all the middle school cadet programs are in overwhelmingly black or Latina/o schools. The rapid increase in these programs has occurred largely under Duncan’s watch, and CPS plans additional ones in the future.

Narrowing the Curriculum

Although gutting bilingual education, curtailing culturally relevant and critical pedagogies, and teaching to the test were byproducts of Chicago’s high-stakes accountability policies before Duncan, since he took over, accountability has increased. Before Duncan, schools could be put on probation and have external partners forced upon them, but now schools are phased out, closed, or “turned around” by private contractors (some funded by the Gates Foundation). In the turn-around model, everyone is removed from their position, from principal to custodial workers. Accountability measures drastically increase pressure to do well on standardized tests. “Extracurriculars” rapidly disappear, like art, physical education, and recess, as reported in an Aug. 25, 2008, Chicago Sun Times article.

Attacking the CTU

Two thirds of the 76 Renaissance 2010 schools are charter or contract schools. Not only do charter schools (since 2003) need only 50 percent certified teachers, but their teachers cannot be part of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) bargaining unit of 32,000 members. As one might expect, the union opposes Renaissance 2010. Contract school teachers can join the CTU-but only if their administration permits it. Chicago is losing its certified, union teachers as schools are closed or “turned around,” and displaced teachers with long-time seniority are becoming common. At a January 10, 2009, public forum on school closings attended by 500 people, veteran and award-winning teachers testified that they had lost their jobs through school closings and had not been rehired. As it is, charter schools pay thousands of dollars less, on average, for teachers with equal longevity, and many new schools substitute younger, less-expensive teachers for veteran, experienced union members.

Chicago’s policies have no doubt influenced Obama’s recommendations to double charter-school funding, institute merit pay for teachers, and emphasize standards and accountability. With Duncan as Secretary of Education, Chicago’s so-called successes and model of privatization, disinvestment, corporate/charter schools, and neighborhood school closings linked to displacement will garner attention and likely shape the discourse, policy, and practices of the Department of Education for the nation’s schools. Since Duncan was an eloquent proponent of all these in Chicago, we should assume that he would continue to be so-unless other voices make themselves heard.

Lessons from Chicago

Every time CPS proposes closing a neighborhood school, Chicago parents, teachers, and students organize, resist, and fight hard. Across the city, for the past several years, at every so-called hearing CPS has organized, the community turns out to fight-not for school choice and Renaissance 2010 schools, but for quality schools with qualified, conscious, caring teachers and adequate resources, in the existing school buildings in their neighborhood. Chicago’s experiences demonstrate that when people organize around their needs, victories can be won. Community organizations and residents, joined by progressive teacher and school reform groups, fought back and derailed most of the plan to close 20 of the 22 schools in the Mid-South (see “We’re Not Blind. Just Follow the Dollar Sign,” Rethinking Schools, Vol. 19, No. 4). But we have also seen the school closings shift to other parts of the city, some of which are less organized.

This speaks to how we understand our current tasks. We know that we have to continue to be involved in local educational issues while demanding that our communities be paid the education debt they are owed. And with the Obama administration, we should open the window of opportunity to demand that education be a top-tier issue in the U.S.

But we also understand two other key points. First, while we fight hard against educational privatization as well as displacement, we have to collectively develop a positive alternative, a strong and unifying vision of what education should be and a program that makes it real. We have to work for, and rally people around, what they themselves have repeatedly expressed-quality schools in every neighborhood that any resident can attend, adequate and equitable funding, qualified and caring teachers, genuine opportunity for parent input and decision-making, smaller class sizes, multiple and authentic assessments, and socially just and culturally relevant curriculum that prepares students to take their rightful place as makers of history and actors in the world. A critical means to this end is a community-based, democratic process of school improvement.

Second, it will take a social movement to push this agenda, no matter who is in the White House and Office of Secretary of Education. Our experiences and observations tell us that genuine partnerships between educators and engaged communities, and links between community wisdom and academic knowledge, can contribute to this social movement. We cannot build toward education for social justice without real partnerships in which teachers understand that their interests and those of their students’ neighborhoods are fundamentally aligned and that they need to express real solidarity with the ongoing struggles of those communities. This is needed not only to defend but also to transform public education in the real interests of all students, families, and their communities.

References

Designs for Change (2005). The big picture: School-initiated reforms, centrally initiated reforms, and elementary school achievement in Chicago (1990 to 2005). Chicago: Author.

Swanson, C. B. (2008). Cities in crisis: A special analytic report on high school graduation. Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects in Education, Inc.

From the Authors

Jitu, Rico, and Pauline are all involved in studying education in Chicago and in grassroots education struggles with youth, families, community members, teachers, and administrators. The analysis that we develop in this article is based on our shared knowledge and experiences. Our collaboration over the past five years, based on mutual respect and learning, solidarity, and shared political understandings, redefines traditional relationships between academics and community organizers. We believe that these kinds of principled relationships across boundaries are part of what is needed to win the fight for education justice.

Eric (Rico) Gutstein (gutsteinrico@earthlink.net) and Pauline Lipman (plipman@uic.edu) are activist-scholars in Chicago. Rico also teaches high school math. Jitu Brown is a community organizer with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.

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Posted in Arne Duncan : Secretary of Education

Tagged Arne Duncan : Secretary of Education, Race to the Top

No-confidence motion: “Whereas Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, is an ineffective leader”

Posted on May 30, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | 2 Comments

I am going to show this per the statement issued to SEA by the staff at Ballard High School on May 26, 2010:

No-confidence motion

Whereas Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, is an ineffective leader in the following ways:

Her conflict of interest in selling the school district an unproven standardized student assessment plan sold by a private corporation on whose board she sits, and her failure to disclose this conflict of interest to the School Board at the time of the sale.

http://www.publicola.net/2010/02/12/seattle-schools-superintendent-on-board-of-nonprofit-that-got-370000-contract-with-seattle-public-schools/

b) Her mismanagement of human resources in last year’s RIF included unnecessary layoffs, a mock “firing” of all members of our collective bargaining unit, and a retraction by certified mail that cost the school district $18,000.

c) Her contemptuous attitude toward public and staff. For example, at the March meeting of the School Board, she entered the meeting only after public testimony was concluded. For the May meeting to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, she paraphrased a heartwarming but fictitious story about a fictitious teacher and fictitious student. Using this story was at best intellectually dishonest and suggests she knows no stories about Seattle’s teachers.

d) Sneaky accounting practices and diversion of resources to fund pet programs (Appendix 3)

e) Effective resegregation of SPS through redistricting and eliminating busing programs

f) Ineffective management of grants important for sustaining minority programs, particularly Native American programs (Appendix 1)

g) Widespread and growing public dissatisfaction with Seattle Public Schools leadership

http://www.cppsofseattle.org/News/May10/supt-surveyMay2010.pdf

h) Attempting to charge PTSAs for donating money (a way to divert donated money to pet projects)

i) Using outside consulting firms (at what cost?) to hire principals. By the way, this fancy firm advertises on Craigslist. http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/edu/1737149149.html

j) Non-transparent links and finances with Broad Foundation. See this link http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/search/label/Broad%20Foundation

Vis-à-vis Broad Foundation consultants working in-district.

k) Ineffective communications and an inability to develop consensus among stakeholders led to public relations debacle and messy withdrawal of the initiative to lower graduation GPA requirements

l) Failure of “Southeast Initiative” (Appendix 2)

m) Confused initiative to close schools led to extra expenses to reopen 5

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-10-21/news/seattle-schools-closing-one-day-opening-another/

n) An accounting system that can’t provide answers: “About $100,000 in equipment and electronics and as much as $500,000 worth of copper wiring and other assets are missing or were stolen from area schools, according to the State Auditor’s Office. Though district officials dispute the numbers, they’re unable to determine exactly what’s gone or put a precise value on the loss. A year after the copper wiring was stolen, the district says the cost is still “unknown.”

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-08-19/news/500k-in-stolen-school-supplies-and-no-report/

We, the teachers of Ballard High School, move to express our lack of confidence in her ability to move our school district, our teachers, parents, and students forward in a positive and equitable way.

Appendix 1

http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/search?q=native+american

I attended an Audit and Finance Committee meeting where it had come out that the program manager of the Native American program had overcounted the number of students by a wide margin. (This is for a federal grant which requires a certain form be filled out by each student’s parent or guardian. The district knows – mostly – who is Native American in our district but cannot claim them on the grant without the form being filled out.) This gross error caused the district to have to go back and repay the money to the feds (although I still don’t know how much and if there was any penalty for it).

So what now comes out is that even though the original program manager who made this mistake is gone, the new program manager compounded the error by getting the grant in late. He was trying to send it to the feds….15 minutes before the due date and he had a “computer” problem. So the grant was, of course, denied.

So now the Native American program grant is in the second tier of funding which means if there is any money left over. Think that will happen? I doubt it. The district is kicking in money for the program but only a third of what was funded. So they are getting rid of the two teachers who were helping the students academically.

Now, at the time of the Committee meeting, Michael DeBell seemed very upset and he asked who was accountable. What he was told was that the program manager was gone. HOWEVER, the district didn’t mention at the meeting that there was a new person in place nor was that person in the room. Now why wouldn’t the district bring in the person who is in charge of the program? Probably because it turns out that person had committed the gross error of not getting the grant off in time and district staff KNEW it at the time of the meeting.

There have been a few meetings with parents/community and the district. Apparently at one meeting, there was some tense dialog between one parent and the head of the program, Arlie Neskahi, over whether he had responded to e-mails. The Superintendent was there and yet again, brushed it off as a personality conflict. (See the pattern? She likes to dismiss, on any grounds, parent/community input as too subjective, too personal and basically, not worthy of her time.)

So this past Board meeting, several Native American parents and students came forward to let the Board how upset and concerned that they are. Then, the Superintendent, during her updates, had Dr. Enfield and the head of the program, Arlie N. get up and explain. Did they mention the overcount? No. Did they brush over the late grant? Yup. Did the Board let them off scot-free without even so much as “this is deeply disappointing”? Sure.

Here’s what was said:

Dr. Enfield claimed that the staff shares the “urgency” that the community does. She says the program needs a more comprehensive program for both academics and support. She claims they are now in compliance with the grant requirements. (And note, the grant specifies a parent advisory committee which they hadn’t done for years.) She says they will do a better job getting Native American parents to fill out the form needed for the grant. She talked about the district “improving our internal systems and processes” and that Arlie “has taken the lead on this”. What?!? The same guy who couldn’t do the most important task at his job, namely, getting a grant off on time? This is the guy you trust?
Then Dr. Enfield said something that should give us all a good laugh. “How do we put into place opportunities for community conversations in an ongoing basis so we are engaging in collective problem solving?” That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t Dr. Enfield? Go ask your boss, I’m sure that would get filed right in the circular file next to her desk.

Then she said the most damning thing of all, “I think we want to get to a place where we are not reacting to things that crop up as perhaps a ‘pseudo-crisis’”. More on that in a minute.

Arlie gave some stats on Native American students in our district. There are 850 above the ship canal, 150 located in Central, 1,000 in the SE and 375 in the SW. They have a goal of getting 700 of the needed 506 forms.

When asked about what academic supports will be there for these students now that their teachers are gone, Arlie danced around the question with a lame mumble about tutoring after-school sometimes. Dr. Enfield said that the district has challenging budgets and limited resources. Really? And how is that a comfort to these parents?

I have been communicating with Native American parent and activist, Sarah Sense-Wilson. She and other parents are deeply dismayed with all of this. They have tried to work with the program manager(s) and have largely been held at arm’s length. For example, they tried to set up a presentation by the NW Justice Project for parents and students on their legal rights regarding expulsions and suspensions. That got blocked by the district. But then, at the Board meeting, Arlie named that very group as one to work with. According to Sarah, the district has tried to exclude or block community engagement.
Appendix 2

The results of the Southeast Initiative came up in the recent Board discussion of the Cleveland STEM proposal. Director DeBell said that the Southeast Initiative results were disappointing and reflected failure. Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson responded both that the Southeast Initiative was, in fact, successful and that three years is far too short a time frame for measuring results.

Both of her statements were false.

Let’s take the second one first, the idea that three years is just too short of a period to look for improvement. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was superintendent when the Southeast Initiative was debated and adopted. She was superintendent when the three-year time frame was set. She was superintendent when the accountability benchmarks were set. In fact, she set them. She has been superintendent for the entire life of the project. Every decision about the Southeast Initiative has been made with her implicit approval if not her explicit approval. She has reported to the Board any number of times on the initiative’s progress, usually with enthusiasm and optimism. Not once in all of this time did Dr. Goodloe-Johnson ever suggested, or even intimated – let alone outright stated – that three years is too short a time period to expect positive results. Only now, as the three year period for the effort comes to a close does she give this disclaimer.

If three years is too short a time for change, then why weren’t the benchmarks simply less ambitious? If three years is too short a time for change, then why wasn’t the project made longer? If three years is too short a time for change, then why didn’t she provide that disclaimer at the beginning and all along? If three years is too short a time for change, then why did she express such optimism in her updates? This excuse simply does not stand up.

Next comes the suggestion that the Southeast Education Initiative was any kind of success.

Let’s remember the purpose of the effort. It was to make Aki Kurose, Rainier Beach, and Cleveland into “schools of choice” for families in the neighborhood. Lately, I have seen some revisionist history at work. Every so often it is suggested that the purpose of the Southeast Initiative is to raise student academic achievement through a combination of strengthened academic offerings and signature programs. That’s simply not true.

Here is the direct quote from the document that gives the Southeast Initiative its charter, the Framework for Revised Student Assignment Plan, approved by the Board on June 20, 2007:

The vision of the initiative is to:
• Ensure that local secondary schools are the “schools of choice” for residents of southeast Seattle by providing targeted and sustained resources that will enable each school to develop and implement a comprehensive plan for school transformation.
• Schools will include Aki Kurose Middle School, Cleveland High School, and Rainier Beach High School.
Improving the academic outcomes for students at the schools is only part of the means to that end. The accountability measures were to be:
• Enrollment Growth
• % of First Choice
• Increased Academic Achievement
• Student and Teacher Climate Survey Results
• Attendance

The Board’s Audit and Finance Committee got an update on the Southeast Education Initiative at their meeting on December 10, 2009. I don’t have the documents that were presented to them then, but I do have access to relevent data.

Enrollment (as of the October 1 count) at the three schools in the years 2007, 2008, and 2009:

Aki Kurose: 465, 434, 561
This represents a significant improvement, but the school is still woefully under-enrolled. Also, further analysis (below) shows that the increased enrollment was not due to choice.

Rainier Beach: 361, 453, 500
This represents a significant improvement, but the school is still woefully under-enrolled. Also, further analysis (below) shows that the increased enrollment was not due to choice.

Cleveland: 676, 706, 695
This does not represent any improvement at all.

% of First Choice:

Aki Kurose: 33.3%, 26.1%, 19.4%
This represents significant decline. We now see that the source of the improved enrollment increase was not at all attributable to first choice assignments. Only 39 students selected Aki Kurose as their school of first choice in 2009.

Rainier Beach: 17.3%, 13.3%, 12.8%
This represents significant decline. We now see that the source of the improved enrollment increase was not at all attributable to first choice assignments. Only 15 students selected Rainier Beach as their school of first choice in 2009.

Cleveland: 28.6%, 25.8%, 18.0%
This represents significant decline. Only 44 students selected Cleveland as their school of first choice in 2009.

Attendance:

Aki Kurose: 86.3%, 87.1%, 86.8% No improvement.
Rainier Beach: 78.1%, 76.4%, 77.5% No improvement.
Cleveland: 75.3%, 74.0%, 75.5% No improvement.

Academic Achievement (as measured by 7th and 10th grade WASL pass rates):

Aki Kurose math: 21.8%, 21.9%, 22.5% No improvement.
Aki Kurose reading: 54.9%, 44.7%, 45.8% Decline.
Rainier Beach math: 37.4%, 28.6%, 17.6% Decline.
Rainier Beach reading: 70.0%, 67.9%, 61.5% Decline.
Cleveland math: 17.9%, 12.0%, 21.2% No improvement.
Cleveland reading 62.7%, 61.4%, 64.4% No improvement.

There is simply no objective measure by which the Southeast Initiative can be said to be a success. Any claims of success are patently false.

Appendix 3

The Washington State Auditor’s office released a report yesterday on the district’s compliance with federal grant funding. What pops into my head constantly when this kind of thing appears is “We’re in 2010 and we still have these issues.” We have Moss-Adams report, the CAICEE report and now the State Auditor’s report (again) and yet, it still happens. That it happens this regularly makes you wonder. From the audit:

In our 2004 and 2007 audits, we notified District management of these requirements, and in our audit of fiscal year 2008 we reported noncompliance with federal procurement requirements. These conditions have not been resolved.

These are grants for Special Education, Native American programs, and others. Some of the issue is that the district is not going out and getting bids or proposals from multiple vendors as is required and don’t have records to support claims of doing so. From the audit:

Special Education: We examined eight personal service contracts totaling $1,172,328 charged to Special Education grants. The District could not provide documentation to show these contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.

Indian Education: We examined two personal service contracts totaling $14,603 charged to the Indian Education grant. The District could not provide documentation to show the contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.

Head Start: We examined four personal service contracts totaling $217,982 charged to the Head Start grant. The District could not provide documentation to show these contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.

Title I: We examined six personal service contracts totaling $175,998 charged to the Title I grant for private tutoring services. The District could not provide documentation showing these contracts were competitively procured. District staff stated they considered the contracts sole source, but did not have documentation to show how the District reached that conclusion.

Cause of Condition

District staff was unaware of federal requirements related to procurement. The District also did not follow previous audit recommendations.

Effect of Condition

By not complying with federal procurement requirements, the District cannot ensure contracts paid with federal funds are awarded to the lowest responsible bidder. By not retaining appropriate supporting documentation, the District cannot demonstrate other providers were unable to supply the necessary personal services before it selected vendors. Therefore, it is possible other providers were not provided an opportunity to compete for these contracts, which can affect contract price and quality of service.

But again, how many years before the district has a streamlined and efficient method of operating? It almost seems like they got frozen in time at some point and are continually struggling to keep up.

Brief Overview of each Finding

Indian Education Grant – The District claimed 1,123 in its 2008-2009 grant application and received $233,792. In 2007, the U.S. Department of ed found that the district’s number of eligibility forms on file did not match the number of students counted. The district provided 927 eligibility forms but only 377 were valid. There was also a finding that they did not create the parent committee required by the grant, a finding initially discovered in 2007.

Special Education (IDEA)

This is for a Safety Net award. The district received about $460K in 2008-2009 but there were two students who left the district but the district kept the money. The district claimed it thought that OSPI automatically changed the grant amount if a student withdrew from the district.

Title 1
The district had one paraprofessional who did not meet the highly qualified requirement. The district did report this to OSPI. (The employee had earned $31,455 during 2008-2009.) The district said it wasn’t aware of the requirement and thought this employee was providing services not related to Title 1. An additional finding was that the district had 73 teachers who did not meeting the highly qualified teacher requirements (but none of them taught Title 1 classes). This one seems like a genuine human error on the district’s part and not a big deal. The odd thing is that the reason it occurred is that a teacher resigned and they put in an IA instead of a teacher.

Education State Grants

These are grants to boost funding from K- college. The district had received a one-time sum of $19.8M in 2009. Of that, $12.5M was spent on salaries and $4.1M on benefits. The district had put in a new payroll system in 2008. Apparently this new system can’t detect overpayments to employees funded by these grants. Because of this, the Auditor was unable to determine how many employees were overpaid so how much was lost here is unknown. They were only able to identify one employee who was overpaid by $40K (and the charge to the grant was $8k). A Special Report will be issued later this year on district’s salary overpayments. (The cause here of the overpayments?

When it switched to the new system, District staff members manually entered employee pay codes into the new system. No one did a review to ensure they were correct. Therefore, the District’s controls were insufficient to detect and correct errors in a timely manner.

Internal Controls in Accounting

This one is pretty troubling.

District staff members did not have adequate knowledge of and experience with prescribed financial reporting requirements. Staff did not use the Accounting Manual for Public School Districts in the State of Washington for guidance and information related to capital asset transactions, and recorded them incorrectly.

In fiscal year 2009, the District processed more than $330 million in payroll. We noted that when District changed its payroll system in 2008, it did not update its internal controls to address the increased risks of error or inappropriate entries related to manual data entry. Therefore, the District’s controls over this payroll

Financial statement preparation

District management is responsible for ensuring annual financial reports are accurate, complete, and comply with reporting requirements. However, the District relies on our audit to identify errors in the financial statements and notes, rather than dedicating the necessary staff time, training and other resources to ensure annual financial reports are accurate and complete.

Payroll Processing

During the payroll system conversion, District staff members manually entered employee pay codes into the new system. No one reviewed these to ensure individual pay rates were the rates shown in the signed employee contracts.

The effects of this lack of oversight are that buildings were reported as “equipment”. Salaries and benefits for General Fund were reported int he Capital Projects Funds. Capital accounts payable of $1.6M were in the General Fund. The district also overstated its total unreserved,undesignated fund balance. For Payroll,

At least 150 employees were paid at a higher placement on the pay scale than their contracts supported. Thus far, a total of $335,000 has been identified as overpaid. This is the result of a systemic issue.

The district admits fault in every case but this isn’t the first time for many of these issues that they have been told that they are not in compliance. That the Auditor’s office thinks the district is relying on the state audits to find their mistakes rather than doing it themselves is troubling.

And

So I had followed up on Dr. Enfield’s e-mail to Charlie and me about the NTN contract. She did answer several questions (but ignored some others). Hence, the follow-up. Now here was my most burning question:

“So there is a signed “agreement” between SPS and NTN but not a contract. This seems quite odd. The Board voted on NTN two Board meetings ago; was that to agree to NTN being the provider of these services but not what specific services? So then the big question: When will there be a signed contract?”

And here is her answer given today:

“Thank you for your comments/questions related to Seattle Public Schools’ contract with NTN. A lawsuit has been filed related to this contract. Given that litigation is pending, we are not able to answer specific questions.
Dr. Susan Enfield”

I doubt that she will be able to stave off anyone seeing the final contract when it is signed. So I’ll let the Board know that. You can’t hide behind a lawsuit in order to not answer questions especially the most basic one: when can we see the signed contract?

See, it goes both ways. If I can’t see the signed contract because of the lawsuit, they don’t get to open the STEM program because their contract is in dispute because of the lawsuit. Posted by Melissa Westbrook at 7:41 PM 13 comments

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

NTN Contract Update

So, just to be clear, we have an answer from the District staff about the differences between the requirements of the NTN Contract and the story that the staff has been telling the Board and the public about STEM.

The differences are real.

The contract requires the District to create two completely separate schools each with their own individual identity, identification code with the state, facility, staff, principal, and IT administrator. We have been told that the two STEM academies will share an identity, identification code with the state, facility, staff, principal and IT administrator.

The contract strictly limits enrollment of each school to 450 for a total maximum of 900. We have been told that the capacity of STEM is 1,000 students.

The contract requires that all core classes be taught on campus. We have been told that the students can leave the campus for Running Start classes.

When asked about these discrepancies, it took the staff several days to respond. The eventual explanation was that these differences were discussed with NTN, and NTN agreed, in those discussions, to accept the District’s intended performance in deviation from the contract language. This explanation fails to satisfy. It fails for three reasons. First, if there were negotiations and agreements that differ from the language of the contract, then those terms should have been the ones codified in the contract rather than the ones that were codified. That is, after all, the purpose of a written contract – to codify the results of a negotiation and agreement – not to codify anything else. Second, any such oral agreements outside of the contract would not be enforceable if they contradicted the written agreement. Third, the contract has a clause which specifically says that any discussions or agreements outside of the written language of the contract are void.

Just to be clear and fair. The contract does not require perfect performance from the District. The District is required to make their “best effort”, but Exhibit C provides a better measure of what is acceptable and what is not. Exhibit C provides descriptions of three levels of District achievement: At Risk, Emerging, and Advanced. The District is required – by the contract – to reach at least the Emerging status on all measures. NTN could find the District in breach of contract if it fails. District commits to use its best efforts to attain in all categories at least the status of “emerging” (and with the goal of attaining in all categories the status of “advanced”) in accordance with the School Success Rubric standards attached hereto as Exhibit C.
For one of the measures of school culture and autonomy, the Emerging level is “School has a unique identity.” The At Risk version of that effort is “School has failed to develop an identity separate from other institutions.” If STEM continues to be one school, then the District will have failed to achieve Emerging status on this measure. That failure will put the District in breach of contract and would make the contract voidable by NTN. The contract could be terminated: At the non-breaching party’s option, effective immediately, if a party materially breaches, violates or otherwise fails to comply with any of the terms contained in this Agreement and fails to cure such breach within sixty (60) days of receiving written notice of such breach from the non-breaching party:
Would a family with a student at STEM have standing in a Court to appeal the Board’s decision to violate the terms of the contract? The law on the appeals is that anyone who is aggrieved by a decision (or non-decision) of the Board can appeal. Is having only a 1/1000 share of the principal’s attention instead of a 1/450 share sufficient cause? Is putting the NTN contract at risk sufficient grounds for an appeal?

Should it even come down to a legal appeal in Superior Court? Shouldn’t it be enough that we, as citizens, expect our government bodies to fulfill the letter and spirit of the contracts they sign? Isn’t it enough that we demand they have the legal acumen not to enter into contracts that they – erroneously – believe are modified by ancillary oral agreements? More than anything, isn’t it enough that not a single member of the Board ever asked a single question about any of these differences between the contract language and the public information about STEM?

In the end, this isn’t about whether or not the District will fulfill the terms of the contract or if NTN will terminate the agreement due to the District failure to fulfill those terms. The critical issue here isn’t the contract at all – it is the obvious failure of the Board to conduct the minimal due diligence of reading the contract they were approving.

You read it here first.

Dora

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Posted in Dr. Goodloe-Johnson: Poster Child for the Broad, Seattle

Tagged Dr. Goodloe-Johnson: Poster Child for the Broad, Seattle Public Schools

The KOS Kids Are Alright: Visionary Bronx teacher and “at-risk” kids show what they are made of through art

Posted on May 28, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | Leave a comment

Don’t miss a terrific exhibit at the Frye Art Museum here in Seattle that shows what a dedicated teacher inspired by art can do when he taps the creativity of “at-risk” kids. “Tim Rollins and KOS (Kids of Survival)” closes this Monday, May 31.

For over 25 years, Tim Rollins has been working with emotionally or academically challenged teenage students in the South Bronx, synthesizing literary texts with painting and sculpture. And they have been creating amazing things.

From the Frye’s Web notes:

In August 1981, Tim Rollins, then twenty-six years old, was recruited by George Gallego, principal of Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx, to develop a curriculum that incorporated art-making with reading and writing lessons for students classified as academically or emotionally “at risk.” Rollins told his students on that first day, “Today we are going to make art, but we are also going to make history.” Asked what he meant by “making history,” Rollins said:

“To dare to make history when you are young, when you are a minority, when you are working, or non working class, when you are voiceless in society, takes courage. Where we came from, just surviving is ‘making history.’ So many others, in the same situations, have not survived, physically, psychologically, spiritually, or socially. We were making our own history. We weren’t going to accept history as something given to us.”

Together, Rollins and his students developed a collaborative strategy that combined lessons in reading and writing with the production of works of art. In a process they call “jammin’,” Rollins or one of the students read aloud from the selected text while the other members drew, relating the stories to their own experiences. Their signature style was born as Rollins and K.O.S.—Kids of Survival—began producing works of art directly on the pages of these books, cut out and laid in a grid on canvas.

What I like about this story is how it runs absolutely counter to the recipe the ed reformites and pro-charter types concoct for how to reach struggling kids (often poor kids of color). Far too often the recipe is grill, drill, and test. Longer school days, uniforms and uniformity, discipline, sometimes no recess, all math and writing and little else. Arts, music, languages, P.E. – out the window.

Tim Rollins and KOS offer a great example of how the arts can reach and teach kids in a way that hyper-disciplinary methods cannot.

And the art these kids have created under Rollins’ guidance is profound, provocative, sophisticated and real. They delve into literary texts like “The Invisible Man,” “The Scarlet Letter,” and “Animal Farm,” cutting pages from books and laying them out across the canvas then covering them in a wash or painting directly on them. In one they make a comment on the opacity of Melville’s “Moby Dick,” in another they find a personal connection to Malcolm’s X’s life story. They explore literature, race, self-worth, hypocrisy. This is intelligent, insightful work. Not surprisingly, some has been bought by collectors.

Their work has been included in two of the Whitney Museum’s Biennials and in museums and galleries around the world. This is the group’s first “comprehensive survey” says the notes.

This is what our kids are capable of: Visions, expression, synthesis, transcendence.

It’s so much more than what the standardized classroom offers or what ed reformers are pushing. In fact, the notes on the Frye’s site indicate that this kind of curriculum-busting creativity could not be contained within the confines of the public classroom:

The collaboration between Rollins and his students soon outgrew the classroom. Frustrated with the strictures of the public school system, Rollins opened the Art and Knowledge Workshop, an after-school program in a community center five blocks from I.S. 52. After teaching, Rollins would meet K.O.S. members at the workshop; homework would be done and art would be made. (Frye Museum notes)

We need to kindle the spirit of kids to inflame their creativity and empower their self-expression and confidence. This is being done in some schools in the Seattle School District. The kids of Nova and Salmon Bay and the APP program, to name just a few, are encouraged to think outside the box, stretch their imaginations, explore beyond the confines of curricular mandates. All kids should be encouraged and allowed to do this.

And we need art, which, like music offers kids a medium to express themselves when sometimes there are no words, or the emotions run too deep.

And yet test scores are the one thing ed reformers cite again and again as their measure of “success.” There is never any talk of who these test-taking kids really are, if they think for themselves, if they value themselves.

So what if you can train kids to answer questions on a mass-produced standardized test created by some commercial test-making vendor? What are you really teaching them? What do these scores really tell us about the child? Very little, if anything.

We need to ask of all kids: “What is your potential? Where might it lead? What visions do you have? Try to realize them. Let’s explore them. Who are you? What do you think? What do you see? Show me.”

Instead of telling them: “This is what you must know, how you must know it, and there is only one right answer and way to get there; fill out the bubble on this Scantron sheet and shut up.”

“Tim Rollins and KOS” runs through May 31 at the Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, Seattle, 98104. Tues, Weds, Fri, Sat 10 -5; Thurs 10-8, Sun 12-5, closed Mon. Free. http://fryemuseum.org/exhibition/3315/ Don’t miss it!

–sp.

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Posted in Teachers and Teaching

Tagged Frye Art Museum, Kids of Survival, KOS, Tim Rollins

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and the School Closure Debacle

Posted on May 23, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | Leave a comment

This was posted last year on our original blog. With the Superintendent’s review coming up, it seemed appropriate to run it again.

All of the schools and programs that will be shown on this page were closed or split in 2009 for an alleged total savings of $3M for the year. A drop in the bucket considering the $34M budget shortfall claimed by School Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson. Was it worth it? Let us know what you think. Enrollment for the fall of 2009 is 1,200 students more than the district anticipated. With schools closed based on capacity and financial management issues per our superintendent’s statements, where will these students be seated?

Meg Diaz, a parent, did a brilliant presentation to the school board in January regarding the school closures, the demographics of Seattle and why it didn’t make sense to close the schools.
See: http://sites.google.com/site/seattleschoolsgroup/meg-diaz-analysis

Unfortunately, the school board paid no attention to Ms. Diaz or their own reports and instead chose to believe the numbers presented by the superintendent’s CFO, Don Kennedy, who previously worked with our superintendent in Charleston.

Two schools were closed that, per their own report, would see an increase in school aged children of anywhere between 31%-100% between 2008 and 2012. See page 11 of the DeJong report titled “Seattle Public Schools: Enrollment Projections Report”. Those two schools were TT Minor Elementary School and Meany Middle School.

After the closures, Ms. Diaz decided to investigate the administrative cost within the Stanford Center and came up with surprising results. While the superintendet was rifing teaches and staff and closing schools, staff was growing within the Stanford Center and particularly in our superintendent’s office where yet another Broad graduate was hired as one of the superintendent’s administrative assistants.

Posted on October 6, 2009: The new assignment plan just came out and the proposal is to re-open five school buildings. Between closing five school buildings, shuffling students to different schools and now proposing the re-opening of five buildings within a year’s time speaks volumes about the lack of competency of our superintendent and her chosen staff.

We have now wasted money closing five schools, moving students, equipment and materials around just to re-open five school buildings.

The cost of re-opening five of these buildings is as follows:

Sand Point: $7M
Viewlands: $11M
Old Hay: $7.5M
Mc Donald$: $14.9M
Rainier View: $7.4M
Total so far: $47.8

The superintendent, along with the school board, plan to take the next capital levy money, BEX III, to be voted on in 2010 that was to go to the maintenance and seismic upgrades of our school buildings, which would make them safer, and instead use the money to re-open these previously closed buildings.

The decision to close schools last year and close or relocate programs came down from our superintendent’s office quickly and there was little time for debate or understanding of what the ramifications would be. It is my opinion that again, we need to have time to evaluate what cost can wait and how these cost can be phased so that we can not only make our existing buildings safer but also provide adequate space for all of our students.

There is also stimulus money that other school districts have been able to acquire to upgrade their school buildings through FEMA grants. These grants, part of a Disaster Mitigation Fund, are being used to make school buildings safer. I had presented this information to the school board and superintendent but no action was taken at the time.

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Posted in Dr. Goodloe-Johnson: Poster Child for the Broad, Seattle

Tagged Dr. Goodloe-Johnson: Poster Child for the Broad, Seattle Public Schools

Seattle Public Schools Performance Management Policy

Posted on May 22, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | Leave a comment

Recently the Performance Management Policy was approved by our school board. The one school district that was chosen by SPS staff to look at as a model was the Oakland Public School district.

One would ask why Oakland? There are fifty states worth of school districts to look at as a source of information.

Well, let’s take a look.

A parent spoke in front of the school board about the Oakland school district when the board was deciding whether to approve the Performance Management policy. She spoke ardently about how that school district had failed under their policy.

In a post that I had come across last year, I heard the same from Craig Gordon, a teacher in the Oakland public school system:

“I teach in Oakland, CA, a “Broad District” big time. We were taken over by the state in 2003, ostensibly due to fiscal mismanagement and the need for a state line of credit to bail the district out. Since then a string of three state administrators have been sent in, all three graduates of the Broad Center for Management of School Systems. In addition to more than doubling the district’s debt to well over $100 million, the Broadies have aggressively cut site budgets, attacked district unions, multiplied the number of charters, and instituted a market-based model to make each school site run like a private business.

Far from improving the quality of education here, the state administration has played the game of closing “underperforming” schools, opening new ones (often charters) with inadequate resources. Teacher turnover is at an all time high. While Oakland is likely to get local control back in a few months, most of the school board has become thoroughly indoctrinated in the Broad ideology of privatizing public schools.”

Craig Gordon
High school social studies teacher
Oakland, CA

And from a newly elected school board member after this series of fiasco’s, Oakland Takes Back Its’ Schools

“The Oakland School Board has regained control of its schools for the first time in six years. What will the changeover of power mean for the young people who attend Oakland public schools?

On a basic civics lesson level, you are looking at a citizenry that elected representatives, and for six years those representatives weren’t able to set policy or govern. There are a lot of aspiring politicians and activists who looked at this position and said, what’s the point of being a school board member? You can advise and be influential in some ways, but you don’t have real power. Now that we have local control, I feel I can really affect change. I can go in and investigate schools and examine reforms in a new way.”

“How did the state takeover of the school board impact the local community in Oakland?

All these education reforms were happening, like small schools and charter schools, and yet the elected officials couldn’t respond to their constituency in any way. It was a complete outsider making decisions for our community.”

So what are we doing looking at a failed policy to base our Performance Management policy on?

Would it have anything to do with the fact that our superintendent is a Broad graduate? That the Broad has their finger in just about every pie here in Seattle at this time?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Dora

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Posted in Broad Foundation: The "Underground Department of Education"

Tagged Broad Foundation, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson: Poster Child for the Broad, Seattle Public Schools

Race to the Top: More of the Same But Worse

Posted on May 21, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | 1 Comment

It Started With a Question

I participated in the PERY Conference last weekend at Nova which included a showing of The War on Kids. After lunch we broke into smaller discussion groups to discuss the rights and roles of youth and the direction that we should take in terms of education and schools. I chose to sit in on the discussion regarding the future of our schools.

I decided on this subject because that is the question that’s been on my mind since last year when a parent, after reading our blog, stated that we were critical of the ed reform movement but had nothing to put in its’ place.

At the time I responded with the piece entitled “Where Do We Go From Here?” and stated basically that first schools need to be adequately funded and secondly that we could look towards alternative education schools in Seattle and the successful programs that have developed within those laboratories of education as a starting point.

So, I went into this group hoping to find more answers to that question.

I sat and listened while students, parents and teachers were talking. I let my mind wander and started to consider the question of what kind of world are these students stepping into? It certainly would be far different from the one that I had entered as a high school graduate on the road to college and a career as, I thought at the time, a psychologist.

I started to think about the differences in those two worlds, my world as a high school graduate in 1970 and the one that our high school students are in today.

Even though we traveled a lot as a family when I was growing up, my world for the most part included my school and neighborhood and even though we lived in Los Angeles, my social and physical spheres were small. We had television and radio but there was no CNN or internet. We had the LA Times, Look and Life magazines to keep us “up to date” on what was going on. The term “diversity” was not in our vocabulary or words like “environmental” or “cutting edge”. Relative to now, our knowledge of the world was limited and yet my daughter goes to school in the same type of school system as I did forty years ago. As the world has changed, we still think that the model that was developed to answer the needs of educating the youth of the industrial age somehow sufficiently responds to the demands and expectations that will be placed on our children, as if time has stood still.

Well, time has not stood still but our educational system has. And ed reform as we know it now is just more of the same old approach but worse. Now instead of educational factories, we have more efficient, state of the art educational factories thanks to computers. There is enough data now on each student thanks to tests such as the MAP test that teachers can receive up to 90 pages of information on each student in terms of their knowledge, skill sets and where they should go from that point in time providing the teacher with predetermined lesson plans all with the click of a mouse.

Like I said, more of the same, but worse.

Now, let’s take a look at the world that our students will be stepping into in 2010.

Our world today is global. We can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world at any time. There are no longer any boundaries. My daughter is just as likely to work in another country as she is to work in the United States. Our world is far more fluid and connected than the one that I grew up in. Information flows from one subject to another and from one person to another. We have to almost instantaneously connect the dots to stay on top of information as it comes to us and then synthesize it so that we can then communicate to others.

This is not a world where you just fill in the dots in response to a one sentence question. This is a world with layers of information that need to be sifted through quickly, synthesized and then responded to intelligently.

So what tools do students need to face this new world? Because they will be crossing borders on many different levels they will need to have flexibility and the tools in place to receive information, synthesize it, make determinations and then decisions.

They will need to be creative with their solutions and they will have to be able to think on their feet. No one will be there to tell them what to say or do. There will be more than one answer to a question and 50 different solutions to a problem. They will need to be able to sift through those possible solutions to figure out the best one for that particular situation and all this will need to be done quickly.

They will also need to have the confidence to know that there are different answers to a question and that, because they have done it many times before, will be able to devise the correct response to that particular challenge or situation.

Now, how exactly does the educational system that we have in place today prepare our children in public school to meet these demands? By teaching them that there is only one answer to any particular question? By implying that questioning that answer is not part of the lesson plan for that day? By only looking at the provided material without making connections to other life experiences or areas of knowledge? By not having any time to explore options and areas of interest that might spark a child’s imagination? By not allowing a child to think for themselves or go at their own pace?

We have put a very inflexible system into place with RTTT. Four exams a year here in Seattle, a curriculum that is the same in all classes in all schools, “Coaches” to ensure that all teachers teach the same material from the same books and the threat of firing a teacher if they do not have all of their students “performing” at a certain level based on test scores. (1984 anyone?)

But our world, the one outside of this alternate reality that we call public education, is completely different and we as adults know that..

We know that we are all constantly challenged everyday with information coming at us at a fast pace and we are expected to respond on our own. There is no one there to tell us the “right” answer. There are jobs that do not demand the intellectual challenge that I have described but those are not the jobs that will be available. Factories are closing and there are only so many service jobs available. This is our brave new world and our children are ill-equipped to face it if we follow the model of more of the same but worse.

Creative thinking, synthesis of information, flexibility, being able to adjust to different cultures and ways of thinking, these are the skills that our students will need to succeed.

Based on my own experience I can say that my education in architecture prepared me for the real world in the sense where you learn how to think, how to synthesize and come up with a conclusion or solution. Other areas are the same, scientific research, engineering, mathematics, medical diagnosis, product design, to name a few. You learn the process of evaluation, bringing in other knowledge, synthesizing what you have, communicating with others your thoughts and ideas and then providing solutions.

And during my education in architecture, there were no multiple choice tests. Even the solutions in my math and science laden course of structures could come from many different directions. There was more than one way to solve a problem in structures.

We need the sort of courses that encourage and provoke thought and challenge students to solve problems from many different directions with a wide range of knowledge. Being successful with this, our children will go out into the world with confidence that they need to face any challenge and succeed.

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Posted in High Stakes Testing, Race to the Top

Tagged public education, Race to the Top

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s Evaluation, The People Have Spoken

Posted on May 18, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | 1 Comment

…and it’s not pretty.

A local parent group put together a survey and just sent the results to our school board members. It was enlightening and seems to reflect what I and others have been feeling and expressing.

My favorite part were the comments. There were many so I am just going to select about one quarter of them to post.

Here you go:

Does not reflect the values of our community. Makes no attempt to understand our individual communities. Regularly undermines the strong parts of our system to help mask the weaker components. That might almost make sense if it truly helped the kids who struggle, but in practice it has
only allowed her to decrease the resources that are devoted to our most vulnerable kids.

X for All (Our supe’s motto, “Excellence for All”) is applied to mean whatever is convenient. Imposes ‘data based’ decision making on schools when they have little meaningful data to work w\ (WASL not designed to be used that way, sample sizes for subgrps too small)not at District level where much data is possible. Audits are cherry picked,results applied to suit her goals, not to follow best practices.

As a teacher, I’ve been distressed every time I see her talk — she seems to have no clue as to what is going on in the schools.

Dr GJ is dismissive & contemptuous of parents’ & community input. Her vision for SPS is piecemeal and unclear. Her execution has been extremely incompetent, as evident by the closing of 5 schools in one year and reopening 5 schools the very next year at great expense; her office seems incapable of getting information to the Board timely enough for informed votes. Her quote that a competent teacher can differentiate math instructions to 28-32 students shows that she has no experience in teaching.

She seems to dwell in the shadows, hear very little from her, she rarely speaks to parents at meetings, and everything seems carefully orchestrated.

As a new parent to Seattle schools, I am less than impressed. She doesn’t reach out to parents.

My child, a special ed student, is not being educated to his highest potential, nor is he having his many needs met, under the current superintendent’s reign. The superintendent should be deeply ashamed about how special education students are being “handled” in this district. The superintendent is a disgrace to our children, and to Seattle.

Dr. Goodloe-Johnson seems more intent on forcing high-stakes testing and merit pay than on finding what really improves student learning.

When Dr. Goodloe-Johnson arrived, district administration was not in good shape, but many schools were functioning quite well under benign neglect. If she had decided to not mess with success and put her attention on specific schools and areas that were hurting, I’d have been happy. Her actions seem a
Machiavellian power grab, mucking with successful schools (e.g. a hurried attempt to move Thornton Creek) and speaking all the right buzzwords and platitudes. She’s smart, but I don’t trust her.

When her contract ends, send her packing. She has been an unmitigated disaster.

She disregards community input and professional studies. She wastes resources of the district. She is repeatedly dishonest and unapologetic. She doesn’t appear to care about kids. Not SpEd, Bilingual, highly capable, low SES or even typical children.

She is re-segregating the district.

Teachers fear personal retaliation for speaking up for students’ needs. She has no commitment to Seattle. This job appears to be a professional stepping stone, yet her actions here will have lasting repercussions.

At a community meeting I attended she dismissed parent input (about discovery math) and immediately afterward fawned over a student comment on the same topic. I am especially concerned that school-specific
programs will not be continued in future.

Supt. Goodloe-Johnson is autocratic, condescending, and dismissive of parent and community input into SPS decision-making. Decisions get handed down in a summary fashion, often without notice that decisions are going to be made — and then opposition from the public is dismissed with contemptuous comments, without any recognition of the stake we all have in our public schools. It is time for her to go.

She fails on all of the criteria central to her evaluation by the Board.

Terrible at communication, especially with parents. Goals are not well-defined.

She lied to parents at TT Minor about not closing the school.

In focusing mainly on bringing up the lower-performing schools and students, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson is going to succeed in equalizing the system by bringing down the higher-performing schools and students. She seems to have a hidden agenda of dismantling the alternative schools but is not putting this out as a goal for the public to see and fight against.
1) The lack of a real transition plan has been immensely frustrating. Siblings should have been guaranteed a spot at the school the older sibling attended. 2) She closed schools then opened schools. Should have been open with the public to begin w/ that they just wanted to close bad schools. That I
could swallow but opening schools with FEW students in a bldg when we have a budget crisis=bad idea!
3) she needs to do a better job proactively communicating w/ families.
Dump her and anybody with her mindset. The sooner the better.
I don’t get the impression at all that families are heard by the district. Between math issues, the new SAP, and the general attitude toward any sort of program that even remotely falls outside a standardized test norm, engagement seems poor. I’m not also not thrilled with how they want to evaluate teachers.

How about equip teachers with the tools they need (smaller classes, more help IN THE SCHOOLS with REAL professionals targeting struggling kids, not “teaching coaches” in central office.)

Supt. G-J has been a disaster for Seattle. She has made very ethically and fiscally questionable decisions, many by fiat. She clearly has nothing but disdain for parents & teachers of SPS, & she spends money erratically. Why does she find $4.3M for burdensome MAP tests, but no $ to pay for elem. counselors or librarians? How can she work for SPS AND remain on the boards of the co. (NWEA) that sells MAP to SPS, & L.A. billionaire Eli Broad’s pro-charter foundation? Who is she really working for?

Strategy? I don’t see any strategy, just reaction. Ignores community input completely. No evidence schools have improved. Staff hates her, principal churn is unacceptable.

#5. No way. Fire her.

I believe her principal concern is to close schools and implement the School Assignment Plan. Her priorities should have been to (A) inspire confidence to draw parents back into the system (B) to achieve better socioeconomic integration within schools (C) to close schools fairly, avoiding disproportionate impacts on the south end.

This is just a sampling. Looking back on the time that I have been in Seattle and gotten to know our supe, I would say that she came here with an agenda that had nothing to do with our city or our communities. It was not an agenda developed from listening to families in different neighborhoods and learning about our town. It all had to do with doing the bidding of the Broad Foundation and the Gates’ Foundation. That has become painfully obvious not only to me but to many others.

She really does need to go. She has been of no value to our children or our community. In fact, she has done more harm than good.

Dora

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An Epiphany From A Fellow Advocate

Posted on May 18, 2010 by seattleducation2011 | 1 Comment

This is a portion of an e-mail that I just received that describes better than I could why the charter school market is so hot right now.

“…This situation reads like Grisham’s “The Firm”….I didn’t really realize what was actually happening until I read Barbara Miner’s “Looking past the spin: Teach for America”, “Big Banks Making a Bundle on New Construction as Schools bear the cost”, and “Charter Schools Cheerleaders: Financiers”. READ THEM ON SUSAN’S site, I implore everyone. The pattern will become clear. This entire thing is not just about making money from testing. Hah! That’s a side job benefit. This is about New Market tax credits being used to create interest from free money from the government for creating a “project” in an area of poverty. If you look up the actual law, 45D the government started giving out these credits in 2000, but then INCREASED the amount every year through 2007 and beyond. It looks like this:

There is a new markets tax credit limitation for each calendar year. Such limitation is – (A) $1,000,000,000 for 2001, (B) $1,500,000,000 for 2002 and 2003, (C) $2,000,000,000 for 2004 and 2005, and (D) $3,500,000,000 for 2006 and 2007 The number of charter schools in 2000 was 1297. Guess what? Now it is over 5000! As the government increased their tax credit limitation, the number of charters increased. These people are making BILLIONS in rent off of the properties, along with the interest on the loans—ALL FOR FREE. If you look at the school boards: hardly any public people, almost all bank execs. Why? They want to control the cash. They don’t want some silly citizen screwing things up. That’s why they push for mayoral control. The mayors can then put their good bank buddies on the charter boards without accountability. Voila! No one to screw up the gravy train. They control their student populations with harsh contracts. Voila! No low scoring students to screw up their image. They control the cost of teachers by getting rid of higher paid union teachers and replacing them with Teach for America graduates. The salaries are controlled because those folks are only in it for 2 years. Voila! No need to worry about excess cost there; those people will be out and RUNNING FOR OFFICE AFTER THEIR TWO YEAR STINT. Why? To keep this catastrophe going by making more laws allowing it to happen. Teach for America is a cover for creating more law makers that go out and vote for corporate control. Period. That is their objective. This ALL ties together in a web. Now, last thing. Why do you think that NEA, AFT, and CTA are not fighting this stuff vehemently. I mean, hell, the attacks are vicious yet almost no national response. I strongly suspect something is going on behind the scenes with these tax credits and the unions. I can feel it. Since 2000, more rhetoric has been seen in CTA and NEA magazines open to these charters. There just needs to be the evidence showing what is going on with their money.”

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