Let's Have a Serious and Difficult Discussion

There's been some articles/opinion pieces I've read over the last couple of days, combined with some discussions with other people, that lead me to believe we need to have some very serious discussions about parenting for educational success and how that is viewed (or not) within different communities.

Some of this is spurred by the call of political correctness over Brave New World (over at the Stranger Slog several people referred to whiny victimhood). I'm also reading a good book my son recommended to me that he read in his high school social studies class called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn in which a gorilla attempts to teach a young man how to view the world. It's very well done and very thought provoking.

I don't pretend to know all the answers nor can I say I understand the complexities of every group. I don't believe for a minute that we all live in equality and/or equity in this country. I do believe this country does represent the best chance that most people could ever have of reaching that goal. But somewhere along the line the idea that the opportunity of working hard and giving your children a better life evolved to expectation that it should come easily. And maybe without working so hard or by believing for a minute that you could buy a house with $1,000 down and no consequences or that living on credit cards will work.

The worst one? Believing that all you have to do to help your child academically is to send him/her to school and just remind them to do their homework (rather than making sure it gets done). And believing that if your child fails, then it's the teacher's fault or the school's. If a child is failing in school, there is NO one culprit.

So what did I read? I read Tom Friedman's column "Teaching for America" where he goes over the depressing stats about American students. He points out that students who perform the best come from Singapore, South Korea and Finland. (Let's put aside their small size and homogeneous nature even though it does play a part.)

Three countries that outperform us — Singapore, South Korea, Finland — don’t let anyone teach who doesn’t come from the top third of their graduating class. And in South Korea, they refer to their teachers as ‘nation builders.’ ”
Duncan’s view is that challenging teachers to rise to new levels — by using student achievement data in calculating salaries, by increasing competition through innovation and charters — is not anti-teacher. It’s taking the profession much more seriously and elevating it to where it should be. There are 3.2 million active teachers in America today. In the next decade, half (the baby boomers) will retire. How we recruit, train, support, evaluate and compensate their successors “is going to shape public education for the next 30 years,” said Duncan. We have to get this right.

BUT he ends saying we also need...better parents. Turn off the tv, restrict the video and the phone and most important "elevate learning as the most important life skill." It's funny because some people might say teaching children empathy or kindness or honesty is more important but really those all relate to learning.

The more we demand from teachers the more we have to demand from students and parents.

The second article was in the NY Times and is entitled, "Proficiency of Black Students is Found to be Far Lower Than Expected". I was talking about this with a friend (who in turn had been talking about it with some Rainier Beach parents she met at Betty Patu's community meeting yesterday). We both agreed we got tears in our eyes as we read it.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.

How can this be? How can middle class African-American boys do more poorly than poor white boys?

This came from the NAEP results from 2009. A report on this issue, "A Call for Change" was released on Tuesday by the Council of Great City Schools. (I have not yet read the report as it is 120 pages.)

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

"The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.

What it does not discuss are policy responses identified with a robust school reform movement that emphasizes closing failing schools, offering charter schools as alternatives and raising the quality of teachers.

The report did not go down this road because “there’s not a lot of research to indicate that many of those strategies produce better results,” Mr. Casserly said."

What is interesting is that the article then went on to say some disagree with the above. It stated that in Baltimore their drop-out rate had decline by half from 4 years ago and their graduation rates were up 6 percent in 3 years. They did this by a combination of the ed reform of closing failing schools (but it doesn't note what happened to the schools) BUT, like Everett School District, having one-on-one intervention (knocking on doors and alerting teachers and principals when a student missed several days of school). Meaning, parents would have a hard time missing that their student was in academic trouble.

So this brings me to the last column by the great Bob Herbert in the NY Times entitled, "This Raging Fire". Mr. Herbert is an African-American who frequently writes about that community. He points out the painful truths for the African-America child; a very high rate of single-parent households, high drop-out rate and incarceration rate and being twice as likely to live in a home where a parent doesn't have full-time employment. From his column:

It is inconceivable in this atmosphere that blacks themselves will not mobilize in a major way to save these young people. I see no other alternative.

The first and most important step would be a major effort to begin knitting the black family back together. There is no way to overstate the myriad risks faced by children whose parents have effectively abandoned them. It’s the family that protects the child against ignorance and physical harm, that offers emotional security and the foundation for a strong sense of self, that enables a child to believe — truly — that wonderful things are possible.

I wouldn’t for a moment discount the terrible toll that racial and economic injustice have taken, decade after decade, on the lives of millions of black Americans. But that is no reason to abandon one’s children or give in to the continued onslaught of those who would do you ill. One has to fight on all fronts, as my Uncle Robert said.

He ends this way:

This is not a fight only for blacks. All allies are welcome. But the cultural imperative lies overwhelmingly with the black community itself.

My friend who attended Betty Patu's meeting and was handed this article by a Rainier Beach parent said the parent told her that their community knows this. They don't need blame, they need support. To pull everyone up is going to take effort, not finger pointing.

What has to happen is no more excuses. I do not mean that anyone should forget what has gone before or believe that there is not still discrimination based on skin color, culture or sexual orientation in this country. But treading water and still sinking has got to stop.

I think the parents at Rainier Beach are reaching their frustration point and may be in the best place possible to mobilize for change. We need to support that.

The Garfield Option Not Discussed

As we have discussed the steps that the District might take to reduce the overcrowding at Garfield, there is an option that hasn't gotten as much discussion as relocating some or all of APP: boundary changes.

I think most of us presumed that any boundary change to right-size the Garfield attendance area would involve only the southern boundary, shifting some kids from Garfield to Franklin.
As we have discussed the steps that the District might take to reduce the overcrowding at Garfield, there is an option that hasn't gotten as much discussion as relocating some or all of APP: boundary changes.

I think most of us presumed that any boundary change to right-size the Garfield attendance area would involve only the southern boundary, shifting some kids from Garfield to Franklin.

But that's not the way the District saw it. The District version has the northern and western boundaries shifting as well, moving Montlake kids into the Roosevelt attendance area and some downtown families moving into the Ballard attendance area.

Montlake families should know that this option is on the table and they should voice their needs and preferences.
But that's not the way the District saw it. The District version has the northern and western boundaries shifting as well, moving Montlake kids into the Roosevelt attendance area and some downtown families moving into the Ballard attendance area.

Montlake families should know that this option is on the table and they should voice their needs and preferences.
As we have discussed the steps that the District might take to reduce the overcrowding at Garfield, there is an option that hasn't gotten as much discussion as relocating some or all of APP: boundary changes.

I think most of us presumed that any boundary change to right-size the Garfield attendance area would involve only the southern boundary, shifting some kids from Garfield to Franklin.

But that's not the way the District saw it. The District version has the northern and western boundaries shifting as well, moving Montlake kids into the Roosevelt attendance area and some downtown families moving into the Ballard attendance area.

Montlake families should know that this option is on the table and they should voice their needs and preferences.

Truthiness from Seattle Times: Big Surprise, the District Got College Readiness Wrong

The Times has what they call "The Truth Needle" and Linda Shaw, their education reporter, filed a report this morning. Let me allow her to tell you:

The claim: Starting in 2008, Seattle Public Schools reported that a meager 17 percent of its high-school graduates met the entrance requirements for four-year colleges. The district quietly quit using that number then recently revised it, without comment, to 46 percent.

"...revised it, without comment..." classic SPS. This is why, when you read a contract or a hard number, you should bookmark that page or print it out. It might just disappear and you'll feel like you got gaslighted (how old am I to use that reference).

Now that 17% is out there in ether and even though many of us were left scratching our heads (how did all those seniors at Roosevelt get into college?), what can you do? This 17% number has been used by LEV, Seattle Foundation and many other "community" groups.

What the Times found:
The 17 percent was one of the numbers district leaders used to justify the district's five-year plan that included a new system of assigning students to schools, more testing for students, and new teacher and principal evaluations.

That statistic was false, but the district used the number in presentations to the School Board and to the public.

Other groups picked it up as well, using it to lobby for their own priorities.

So what happened?
About two weeks ago, without fanfare, the district reported a new, much higher number. In a ream of data released that day on how its schools and the district as a whole are doing, it said 46 percent of the students who graduated this past June met the entrance requirements for Washington's public four-year universities.

The district did not call attention to the change, or explain why the number had changed so dramatically.

The reason: The 17 percent was never really what it seemed.

Brad Bernatek, the district's director of research, assessment and evaluation, said he came up with the 17 percent figure in 2008, but it was supposed to be a measure of how many high-school graduates were prepared to succeed in four-year colleges, not just get admitted.

To arrive at that figure, he counted only students who took four years of math and three years of science — more than what's required by public four-year colleges in this state. He also ruled out any student who didn't have a B average, even though a C average is enough to apply.

To repeat, Brad Bernatek just made his own ideas up about what students need to get into college. The district used this figure at many community meetings.

The district says:

It's unclear whether district staff oversimplified the explanation, misunderstood what Bernatek was trying to do or misused it in their zeal to convince the public and potential funders of the need for the changes outlined in the five-year plan.

What is clear: At least one School Board member raised questions about the figure from the beginning. And the district didn't publicly correct it, even after it pulled the figure from some of its own reports.

Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson says that was a mistake.

"We should have changed the public conversation," Goodloe-Johnson said Friday.

"We should have come forward sooner," she said.

While staff understood what the number was supposed to be, she said, she acknowledges the district didn't make its meaning clear to the public, especially after it decided to quit using it.

You crass, cynical bureaucrat. How dare you talk about public conversation when all you do is talk fast and spew non-related "information" to throw people off. Staff knew what it meant? Staff knew they were putting out false information? And they all sat on their hands and kept their mouths shut

Yoo hoo, School Board?

School Board President Michael DeBell said 17 percent always seemed too low to him. He raised questions about the number from the beginning, was told that staff would look into it, but said he never received a satisfactory answer.

"Every time I heard it, I cringed," he said. "I knew it was way too low. We were doing much better than that. I couldn't understand why we were putting that kind of data out."

Ramona Hattendorf, the former SCPTSA president said she asked Goodloe-Johnson about it and go the famous "I'll get back to you" phrase. She feels bad for spreading incorrect information. Don't Ramona, it's not YOUR fault. But please, SCPTSA know going forward that always staying on the side of the district is not your role and not where you should position yourself.

And Bernetek?

Bernatek said he stopped using the number about a year ago for two reasons. He worried about measuring students against a bar they didn't know existed, he said, and he also learned he'd left out some career- and technical-education classes that should have been counted as math classes.




In retrospect, Bernatek said, he wished he'd done more to make sure the public knew the issues with the number and why the district stopped using it.

"I didn't communicate that well enough," he said. "In fairness to the people who used it, it was still on our website."

He should be fired. I am going to e-mail the Board this morning and demand it. He knowingly (and likely with reason) put out false information

Thank you to Dan D. for this heads up.

Yet Another Broken Promise
The District has been promising/threatening an Alternative School audit/review/inventory since the start of the Strategic Plan.

Since that time, and in the absence of any audit or review, the District has

Closed two alternative schools
- The African-American Academy
- Summit K-12

Moved three alternative schools
- The NOVA Project
- The Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center
- Pathfinder

Created three alternative schools
- Queen Anne Elementary
- Jane Addams K-8
- STEM at Cleveland

Determined that special programs are not alternative
- language immersion
- Montessori

Suspended the Alternative Education Policy C54.00

And is threatening to close two more alternative schools:
- AS #1
- Middle College

A whole lot of decisions about alternative education have already moved forward in the absence of the data that would come from this review. More decisions are pending.

The Alternative Education Review was supposed to happen last year but didn't. When it was suggested that it wouldn't happen this year either, Director Martin-Morris became indignant (he's doing that a lot lately), and insisted that he was committed to the review being done this fall.

He keeps using that word. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

Director Martin-Morris, as the chair of the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee, is the one person most responsible for making this review happen. He is the person who promised it. He is the person who must accept the blame for the failure.

Here is a link to the agenda for today's canceled Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee meeting. I can't help wondering if the Alternative Education Review hasn't been re-titled "Schools of Innovation Review". Well, I guess it's good that they were at least going to talk about it, but Director Martin-Morris told us that the review would be done in the fall, not discussed in the fall. Can this review really be done before the Winter Break starts on December 17? That's about three weeks from now.

I don't think that the District can get this thing up and off the ground in three weeks, particularly now that the C & I meeting is canceled, and particularly if they are going to expand the scope to include all "Schools of Innovation", such as Schmitz Park and North Beach, which are using innovative math materials, all of the international schools, all of the Montessori programs, all of the A.L.O. programs, all of the schools using any non-standard instruction. Schools of Innovation is a MUCH larger category than the alternatives. They can't set the scope of the review, find an agency to conduct it, and get those folks into the schools in the three weeks remaining before Winter Break. This review will not happen this fall. That promise is broken.