So Much for Fair and Balanced With the Washington State PTA

As noted in an earlier post titled Whoa! Where did that come from Washington State PTA?! Charter schools?!, the state PTA has proposed a plank in this year’s platform that would be used to convince our state legislators in the next session that all parents want charter schools in our state. That’s what happened last year with merit pay when Ramona Hattendorf, Government Relations Coordinator for the Washington State PTA, provided testimony in sessions considering such bills. The implication being that because Ms. Hattendorf represented the PTA she therefore represented the majority of if not all parents in our state. Ramona was also busy meeting with our legislators trying to convince them of that as well.

Many of us countered with phone calls, e-mails and visits to our representatives in Olympia explaining to them what was important to us and how we believed that merit pay would only harm our children due to tests becoming over-emphasized and learning only becoming an act of rote memorization. See House Bill 2111:Legislative Action Alert. Legislative Bill 1443 passed the House last year with plenty of support by our state PTA mainly through the efforts of Ms. Hattendorf but didn’t get through the Senate because of push back from parents, teachers and concerned community members like you and me.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of making your voices heard in the state of Washington regarding this and any other issue that you might have concerns with particularly if the PTA is not representing your priorities. Let your PTA and state legislative representatives know what is important to you and what isn’t.

The proposal that each PTA member is to receive and review regarding charter schools only has a pro side. No opinions are offered providing another viewpoint. Apparently this is how they roll in the state of Washington and I can attest to that during my time as a PTA Legislative Chair. At the PTA legislative session last year where the guest speaker was Bill Gates, Sr., there was an ed reform proposal for merit pay and the only voice in the wilderness at the time against this plank was mine. There was no one there to officially provide a “con” to every “pro” that was proposed. So much for fair and balanced.

Then I found out this morning who the guest speakers were to be for the PTA legislative session and who should be on it? None other that George Scarola, Legislative Director with the “facts don’t matter” League of Education Voters (LEV), a Gates backed organization that has beat the drum for charter schools since last year when they started a speakers series on the subject. The speakers included the ed reform all-star list of Richard Barth, President and CEO of the KIPP charter franchise, his wife Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, Inc., Steve Barr, founder of the Green Dot charter franchise, Ben Austin of the failed Parent Revolution, Tom Vander Ark former Executive Director of Education for the Gates Foundation and now failed charter school entrepreneur, John Danner, who assisted in the creation of a charter school law in Tennessee and subsequently founded 12 charter schools in that state and then to top it off,  Kevin Johnson who spoke to an almost all African-American audience at Mt. Zion Baptist Church talking about his charter school St. Hope Academy. And now LEV’s lobbyist will be speaking to the PTA legislative session about all things ed reform including charter schools and their next big push, online learning.

There is no one on the speakers’ list who would be there to provide a counter viewpoint. So much for fair and balanced with the Washington State PTA.

Questions regarding Teach for America, Inc. that the Seattle School Board has yet to answer.

The Seattle School Board recently voted 5-1 to hire three more TFA, Inc. recruits. Four of these board members are incumbents in an upcoming school board race. These four board members also received funding from supporters of TFA, Inc. who poured money into the coffers of the Seattle Foundation to pay the additional expense of $4,000 per TFA, Inc. recruit per year to grace us with their presence in the Seattle Public School system. Conflict of interest? Borderline. Ethical? Probably not.

According to the Save Seattle Schools blog:

There were several donors to the Seattle Foundation TFA fund.  Three of them,  Matt Griffin, Evelyn Rozner and James Faulstich, have contributed heavily to all the incumbents’ campaigns.  (To point out, the average campaign contribution is usually between $25-100.)

Mr. Griffin gave Maier and Sundquist $1K each and Carr and Martin-Morris, $2k each.

Ms. Rozner gave Carr and Martin-Morris each $2k and Sundquist $1k.

Mr. Faulstich gave Carr, Martin-Morris and Sundquist each $250.

Peter Maier has the largest campaign fund at $37k, followed by Sundquist at $28k, Harium at $22k and Carr at $20k.

All of the challengers are well under $10K except for Michelle Buetow who is at $13k.

More than 50% of Sherry Carr’s campaign has come from 10 people/households including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife.

That’s enough to give one pause.

One of the people who gave testimony the night of the school board’s vote asked the following questions which were never answered by the school board members who voted to allow TFA, Inc. recruits to teach our children even though these recruits had maybe five weeks of training and are not yet certified. (Was this the Theater of the Absurd? Absolutely!)

Dr. Carol Simmons sent each board member after the school board meeting the following questions which she had raised during her testimony. She has yet to receive a reply from Peter Maier, Steve Sundquist, Kay Smith-Blum, Harium Martin-Morris, Michael DeBell or Sherry Carr.

To follow are the five questions that Dr. Simmons posed to the directors in an e-mail dated 9/21/2011.

Seattle School Board Directors.

Would you please tell me why you have not responded to the questions I asked in my testimony of September 21, 2011

The questions are:

1.  Please clarify to the residents of Seattle why you think hiring TFA recruits to work with our low income and lower achieving student population will in any way result in closing the achievement/opportunity gap?

2.  What is your stated rationale for hiring TFA recruits?

3.  What research supports that hiring TFA recruits will achieve your stated goal of closing the achievement gap?

4.  How have you met the WAC criteria of carefully reviewing other options for closing the achievement gap before hiring these conditionally certificated recruits?

5. If you have reviewed other options for closing the achievement gap such as the Disproportionality Task Forces recommendations, why have you disregarded these options?

I would appreciate an immediate response.

Maybe someone can pose these questions to the incumbents in a candidate’s forum in the next few weeks.

By the way, the PTA, in Seattle and statewide, have remained strangely silent on the issue of Teach for America, Inc. Ramona Hattendorf, Government Relations Coordinator for the Washington State PTA, had stated that the PTA had decided not to take sides on this issue and yet they are proposing a plank to support charter schools in our state? Hmmm.

Dora

Post Script: While preparing another post I came across a list of Sherry Carr’s endorsements. The list includes Stand for Children and the League of Education Voters.

And many thanks to Jana Brubaker for providing the graphic for this post. She’s a terrific graphic artist and can be reached at:

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