Seeking Shared Learning

Comments and expanded visibility . . .

2012-01-27T18:03:00.000-08:00

So far I have three comments from my last post on waivers for the weather emergency. Thanks to Scott for also sharing the post in an e-mail that may result in a few more comments. I'll give others a chance to respond before sharing again.

Today I received an e-mail notification that an excerpt form one of my posts was chosen by School Administrator Magazine for sharing in the Best of Blog section of the February magazine. This followed sharing full posts I think for a month earlier this year. I'm wondering who has the resources to follow education posts and then decide which should be shared. The excerpt is the one below. Sharing this will certainly not impress the reformers or others supporting changes to teacher and principal evaluations. Who knows, I could find my name on some list of those to avoid if this keeps up. I don't know if I like this expanded visibility. I am learning first hand that once online you lose control. It is like having no control over the volume knob, I like it Minimum not MAX!

“I think it is unfortunate that in our state and in states around the country millions of dollars are

being spent to create evaluation models whose stated purpose is to support teacher growth over

time, but whose intent is to get rid of ‘bad’ teachers.”

From “The Frenzy for Accountability” by Michael Maryanski (superintendent, Maple Valley, Wash.)

in his blog, Seeking Shared Learning

Waiver or no waiver . . .

2012-01-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

At Tuesday’s board meeting the calendar was revised to make up for last week’s lost days. As previously agreed to with the bargaining units, tomorrow will be a student day and the remainder of any lost days will be added to the end of the student year. There are some in the community who question why they can’t be made up during the mid-winter break so we share how the calendar is a condition of employment and the board does not have authority to unilaterally change it.

The other issue that is emerging both from community and staff is how the governor’s declaration of an emergency situation will play out. They are asking since it was an emergency why do we need to make up the days. Let’s just ask the state for a waiver. We know that this will be a possibility because OSPI has shared that districts can apply even though the official process required for emergency situations is not complete. It could take weeks before it is official.

The bigger question for me is the importance to us of the lost instructional days. Recently, a coalition of of our school and community groups was prepared to lobby legislators to not cut the school year from 180 to 175 days to save money, one of the governor’s budget saving options. We believe that it was important to not lose the instructional time given the standards and expectations imposed on our students and staff. Does that change because an emergency was declared? If they were simply snow days we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Does the need for the days change because of the event that requires making up the days? Does being able to waive the days without loss of state revenue and potentially salary influence our choice? These are some of the questions that must be asked and answered before making a decision on a waiver request.

What are your thoughts on this choice that we face?

Textbooks plus = big dollars . . .

2012-01-24T20:39:00.000-08:00

I found this follow-up to the Apple announcement last week on textbooks interesting. I knew that publishing textbooks is a lucrative business, but not to the scale I learned in this Alexander Russo post. In it, he shares a chart and an article from Epicenter that followed the announcement giving some insight into the publishing world.

The biggest publishers in the world today are education publishers.

It’s not even close. In 2009, Pearson’s Education division alone brought in more revenue than any other book publisher besides number two, Reed Elsevier, whose biggest businesses are Lexis-Nexis and Elsevier Science.

Education publishers dwarf trade presses. Only the top trade press, Random House (itself owned by Bertelsmann) is bigger than Cengage, the little-known education publishing division that Thomson spun off in 2008 before merging with Reuters.

To bring this closer to home, since 2010 we have purchased new math materials in grades K-12. These purchases totaled about $609,000; huge for us, but in the big picture we are a very small piece of the pie. In other words, there are millions of dollars to be made in each state every year as districts are on different textbook review cycles and this is only for one content area.

So, why would Apple not try to take a bigger cut than the 30% figure they reached with three of the top publishing firms? The article puts forth the following thinking.

But Apple has literally billions of other reasons to play nice.

Let’s suppose you don’t really care about textbooks. Pearson also owns Penguin, the world’s second largest trade publisher. They also own the Financial Times and a 50% share of The Economist.

That’s the same Penguin that partnered with Apple to help launch iBooks along with the iPad. And that’s the same Financial Times that proved publishers could bypass the App Store’s 30% cut and still grow their subscriber base on iPhone and iPad.

The article goes on to share some further insights into this world.

Their giant size and reach throughout the education and media landscape gives these publishers advantages and disadvantage. One disadvantage: they move slowly. One big advantage: You cannot outflank them.

One after another, Apple, Inkling, Barnes & Noble and other digital publishers have given up trying to outflank academic publishers. Now we will see whether Apple’s spotlight can get them to move.

It would be nice if Apple could have taken a bigger bite out of this behemoth, one that would make it easier for school systems and students to access current content.

Hopefully behind us . . .

2012-01-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

I lost power Thursday morning about 8 and got it back Saturday night about 6. I got to join the lines for gas for the generator and put up with the inconveniences of no electricity for two plus days. That was not fun, but ok to deal with. When it went out again this morning I waited about an hour before going out to once again get the generator going. Just as I was about to start it the power came back on and has stayed on since. Hopefully, this is the last gasp for this storm.

We lost many trees over the road and the driveway plus some beautiful bushes and shrubs that have been with us for twenty plus years. The place looks like a tornado hit it. Given all this it still doesn't approach the hardships faced by so many across the world each day. We are so fortunate and have so much that I sometimes lose sight of it and complain when I should be thankful.

This morning we still had three schools without power, but have been told by PSE that we will have it by tomorrow and they rarely make that kind of prediction. Given this, we should be back at school in the morning, but it will take time to get all the systems up and running. I guess we chalk this up to a lost week and move forward.

Apple's new partnership . . .

2012-01-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

Like many people I’m out of power at home so I didn’t get a chance to follow-up last night on Apple’s announcement shared in this Education Week piece. It is not the hit to traditional publishers that some expected and that I was hoping for. Apple has entered a partnership with three major K-12 textbook publishers—McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—to offer interactive textbooks through its iBooks store at $14.99 or less.

With textbooks selling for upwards of $100 that sounds like a pretty good idea until we learn that it is $14.99 each year and you must have an ipad to access the content. Sound like a good idea for all concerned, Apple will get 30% and the three textbook publishers the rest. I don't see it resulting in significant savings to districts. It does, however, allow for content delivery not possible with a textbook and more importantly the capacity to annually update content instead of on the current five year cycle.

The textbooks feature multimedia elements, including video, three-dimensional graphics, and photo galleries. They also allow students to highlight text to create flashcards and search within a glossary.

It leaves us with interesting questions to ponder as we look to the future.

I hope you are keeping warm and safe during this difficult weather period. I'll share some of my travails at a later time. For now, lets pray that the thaw doesn't cause significant flooding and that power is restored as soon as possible. We need power to open schools and the latest news is that some customers might not be back on line until Monday. That usually means places like my home in Ravensdale and our Junior High.

Apple media event . . .

2012-01-18T18:06:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow could be a big day in our profession as Apple is holding its first media event of the year with speculation that the focus is on textbooks. If true, it would be aligned with Job’s ideas as described in his biography and shared in this NY Times piece.

Mr. Jobs’s biographer Walter Isaacson says in the book that Mr. Jobs viewed textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform. His idea, according to Mr. Isaacson, was to hire textbook writers to create digital versions of their books for the iPad.

Obviously, this could have a significant impact on a multi-billion dollar industry and on future technology purchases in our school system. Textbooks are very expensive. The cost is also one of the reasons why we must use them over a period of time even as standards change from year-to-year.

Having access to online texts at a competitive price would be a welcome addition to our work. More importantly, it would allow for regular and timely adjustments to the content something that is very critical with shifting targets and a rapidly changing world. This would be especially welcome as we prepare to move to the Common Core.

Charter conversations heating up . . .

2012-01-17T19:58:00.000-08:00

I know that I said I would change my focus to the proposed legislation around evaluations, but the recent blog posts on charters deserve a mention and link. Lisa Macfarlane, Washington State Director of Democrats for Education Reform shares what she sees as a significant change for some democratic legislators.

New flash to the haters: There are many Democrats who support charter schools. Our country's top Democrat, Barack Obama, the man we all fought to elect, is a big charter school fan. He believes in the ability of successful charter schools to help some of our most educationally disadvantaged kids.

In the post she shares a rationale for charters and why this is the time. Once again the achievement gap is providing significant leverage for this push by a bipartisan group of legislators. She also uses as leverage the state PTA’s support that emerged in their fall legislative assembly vote.

What great charter schools have in common is a relentless focus on high student achievement for a group of kids that the traditional system has failed, and their results are making urban educators and policy makers take notice.

What concerns me is that this is taking place with the significant budget issues our legislators face while there are still many questions about the effectiveness of charters. In this Washington Post article there is a link to a study published in the journal Science that suggests that most of the research on charters has been conducted with methods that “tell us little about causal effects.”

They wrote in their study, “Better Research Needed on the Impact of Charter Schools,” that charter schools have been embraced by the Obama administration — and by the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations before it — as “the saviors of a broken educational system.” But, they said, researchers still can’t answer the question: Does attendance at a charter school improve student outcomes?

Given this and other research that suggests results for charters are at best mixed, raises questions about this being the savior for low income and minority students across our state. With only 50 charters authorized in the legislation and ten new each year, it would take a long time for enough “successful” charters to emerge to meet the needs of all of these students. Given the sense of urgency implied by legislators in filing these bills one would wonder if the proposed fix is aligned with the expressed need.

What is the plan to assure that these fifty charters end up being successful in meeting the needs of ALL students that is not currently in place in other charters identified in the research? I am not anti-charter, I just believe that there are other priorities and that much more thought is needed before this legislation is approved. This editorial in the Seattle Times, the multiple posts over at the League of Education Voters, and many others, however, disagree with me.

Seen here first . . .

2012-01-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Still no easy decisions given the current situation, so we decided to do a phone message to update everyone on best case scenario for tomorrow - two hours late. Our staff have been driving the roads and tell me at this time that we can make it to most of the district using some emergency routes.

Once again the amount of snow varies in different parts of the district. In Ravensdale, we have 3-4 inches with less in Maple Valley. The big unknown will be how much more snow we get and how cold it gets this evening. If it freezes, it will be much more difficult to have school tomorrow. It also seems that it may get worse before it gets better. This post on the Cliff Mass Weather Blog suggests that it is possible that we may see 8-15 inches over the region on Wednesday.

Weather related stress . . .

2012-01-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

I don't know whether to be thankful that we haven't yet had to worry about weather related late starts or closures or upset that it appears to be upon us. Though it would have been nice to make it through the year, today's snow and the forecast for the next few days make that unlikely.

Stay tuned and be ready for that early morning phone call.

Fixing through legislation . . .

2012-01-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

As expected, two new bills were introduced this past week to "fix" public education in our state. One of the bills would allow for charter schools, something that I blogged about here. I agree with Scott's comment to that post that this short session is not the place or time for this debate. The budget issues that they face, in my mind, are enough. They don't other major issues to consume their time. When you read the comments of legislators in the media our system needs fixing and they believe that this is one of the components to the fix. They also use the argument that charters are in most other states. Part of the leverage for this move is the growing achievement gap in our state as shared by one of the sponsors Rep. Pettigrew in this LEV post.

“It’s time to confront the fact that our school system is failing the same set of students, year after year,” said Pettigrew, the Majority Caucus Chair in the House. “Traditional efforts over past decades have failed to close the achievement gap, and today we have the opportunity to lay the foundation for a new approach. This bill will provide a much-needed alternative for students who wouldn’t otherwise have one, without compromising the effectiveness of our public school system.”

Other information can be found in this Education Week and Olympian articles. Even though the data shows mixed results for charters, some legislators see this as a key component of education reform missing in our state.

Asked why lawmakers were pursuing legislation instead of again asking voters to approve charters, Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, said he is not willing to risk defeat.

Asked why lawmakers were pursuing legislation instead of again asking voters to approve charters, Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, said he is not willing to risk defeat.

"I don’t think education is something you take a gamble with,” said Tom, a co-sponsor of the bills. “It’s high time that we take care of that here in Olympia.”

The second bill is designed to "strengthen" the teacher evaluation system something that I will save for a later post.

Polar guest opinions . . .

2012-01-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

In case you missed the Guest columnist in Tuesday’s Seattle Times here is a link. It is by Stephanie McCleary, a party to the education funding lawsuit leading to the recent State Supreme Court ruling. She shares her thinking concerning the ruling and public response by some legislators that education is still being considered for cuts in this session.

With those words, each Washington legislator promises to abide by our constitution. Admonished very clearly by our state's highest court that they are currently violating that oath, those same legislators are nonetheless poised to continue breaking that solemn vow.

Shame on them.

As with many of the guest columns and editorials, the real story is in the comments to the article and there are many for this one. Reading them makes me think that Russo may have it wrong when he says that anti-reformers have a greater online presence than reformers. At least on this topic, with this one guest opinion, that would not be the case as there are more disagreeing with McCleary. Below, are a few comments from those that take exception with McCleary’s position. To see a a different opinion on the court's ruling read today's guest opinion by Liv Finne the education director at the Washington Policy Center. The title describes her opinion well, "On K-12 education, Washington Supreme Court makes itself a super-legislature". I'll try to follow the comment string tomorrow night.

What if people found out that public funding (per pupil) has gone up 4x since the seventies but outcomes are flat to down?

What if they found out teachers are paid very well but most of the funding has gone to a bureaucracy surrounding and restricting them?

What if you (living under a rock) suddenly found out that public schools force classroom/teachers to take all comers and more: such that teachers must deal with disciplinary problems without authority, challenged kids who take huge amounts of time/effort, and students ready to be taught end up low on the priority list? If you are a parent this is not a feature.

You won't see any of that in this paper.

There's one heavily entrenched party supporting one heavily entrenched special lobby that decides the big answer is more money!

WA Public Schools = failed, corrupt, wasteful, state-sponsored babysitting service.

To change, MUST: (1) introduce vouchers (2) introduce charter schools (3) abolish all teacher unions (4) remove illegals (5) fire all bad teachers

The court decision was nothing but a cynical attempt by the WEA union to further pad teacher salaries and benefits by ripping the taxpayers off for more money. It has nothing to do with improving education of our kids. The schools have more than enough money its just not being wisely spent.

We can fix their goose. Just make all the local tax levys state levys and then 100% of the school funding comes from the state. The state fully funds education and they don't have a leg in court.

There is already plenty of existing money sloshing around in the K-12 system.

The legislature should take act upon TRI-Day elimination BEFORE it acts to create new taxes for education.

At the local level, voters should reject all levies until all TRI-Day dollars are going to fund ACTUAL school day expenditures.

The WEA's 295 local affiliates presently extract $350 million to $400 million of expenditures annually OUT of the General Funds of the local school districts from revenue derived either from the state, Maintenance and Operations levies and/or Federal Impact Aid and then claim that K-12 education is not "fully funded".

They do this via TRI-Days.

In Washington state the legislature has the sole power to increase teachers' salaries via cost of living adjustments (COLAs) or base salary increases. School boards cannot provide these types of across-the-board salary increases to teachers, but the WEA as found another way to increase pay; Time Responsibility and Incentive (TRI). TRI was set up to improve academic achievement, but the WEA has managed to use it for cost-of-living increases above the level funded by the legislature. Since these funds must come out of local levies, TRI contracts are negotiated above what local districts can fund and they then reduce basic education funding or use local levy funds and claim that the legislature is not fully funding basic education.

Are Charters in the future . . .

2012-01-11T22:15:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share this article from Education Week, partly because of the content and partly because I don’t recall seeing anything in the local media about. Based on the article and quotes from Senator Rodney Tom, a charter school bill will be introduced later this week in Olympia.

Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, said charter schools have proven to be effective in nearly every other state. In many cases, a stampede of parents have tried to get their kids into charter schools, he said.

"That should be the attitude we have at every school," Tom said. "Why would you want to prevent schools that people are clamoring in other states to get into."

The legislator’s passed a charter school bill in 2004 that was later rejected by voters that followed a voter rejection of a charter initiative in 1996. Though we have this history in our state of turning down charters, Toms believes that it is a safe topic of discussion.

Now that most other states are successfully using these alternative public schools to raise student achievement, Tom says it should be a safe topic for Washington again. He said he expected a bill to be introduced on Thursday.

Do you believe that this is an appropriate subject for conversation in this short legislative session?

A different perspective . . .

2012-01-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

My last posts have been about the McCleary supreme court ruling and how it is a victory for public education in the state. Even with some legislators suggesting that there may still be cuts our spirits were lifted by the ruling. Well, in this Educationnext post by Joshua Dunn he provides us with a different perspective.

The title describes his thoughts, "School Finance Litigation: With defeats like these, who needs victories?"

The response from the state legislature only confirmed that the Court’s decision is going to be largely irrelevant. The Seattle Times reported that, after the Court’s decision, “lawmakers on both sides of the aisle made clear that when the Legislature convenes Monday to address a $1.5 billion budget shortfall, education cuts will still be on the table,” despite the Court’s decision. Washington, like most states, has faced declining revenues, and funding education at the level desired by the plaintiffs would require drastic cuts to other essential government services.

If McCleary counts as a victory for school finance advocates, then states facing these lawsuits should hope for similar defeats in the future.

Just when I was thinking that we might make it through the session without additional loss of revenue, I come across this post and it makes me wonder what impact the ruling will have in the short term. I'll find out more next Monday when we visit our legislators and share what we learn with you.

A positive message . . .

2012-01-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

safehaven.com

The editorial in Saturday's Seattle Times told the legislators that they need to support the recent court ruling and NOT cut education in the session starting tomorrow.

The state budget crisis continues. There is no easy money. The Legislature must see the ruling as a strong impetus to speed up education reforms that save money and improve efficiencies. And it should make cost-saving reforms in other parts of government, funneling that money to education.

This is good news, but some of you may not be supportive of other sections of the editorial especially those focused on reviewing whether it makes sense to allow bargaining of contracts (salary) in all districts and a recommendation to remove options in the health care program. They also believe that the solution to the budget gap will require some new revenue and should not be an all cut budget.

Related to this is an opportunity through the League of Education Voters to sign a petition urging the legislators to NOT cut education. Once again you may disagree with other positions of this organization, but on the subject of revenue they are pushing for increases not decreases in revenue.

Let’s face it – we’ve been asking for more school funding for years, and you might think that a petition won’t make a difference. But the political and economic landscape have changed, and even though you are tired and frustrated, this will make a difference. Now is the time for every one of us to act. Sign this petition, and ask your friends to join you.

So, we have some options to consider. The court ruling provided leverage, but comments from legislators suggest that education may not be immune from continued cuts.

"We cannot simply put a check mark next to one category and walk away," said Carlyle, D-Seattle. "It is simply not possible to balance the budget without courageously putting all spending on the table."

Protecting education funding at the expense of other programs would be devastating to the social safety net, said Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle.

Next Monday on our off day a team of TEA, PSE, PTA, and administrators will travel to Olympia to share our message. What plans do you have to influence the outcome to eliminating the state's budget gap?

A celebration . . .

2012-01-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

This morning the State Supreme Court released their ruling in the NEWS lawsuit. In a lower court ruling last year the judge ruled that the state was not meeting its constitutional requirement to fully fund education. The state immediately appealed and this morning was informed that they lost and must fulfill their requirement for fully finding public education. Below are excerpts from the ruling posted on the League of Education Voters blog.

“If the State’s funding formulas provide only a portion of what it actually costs a school to pay its teachers, get kids to school, and keep the lights on, then the legislature cannot maintain that it is fully funding basic education through its funding formulas. Even assuming the funding formulas represented the actual costs of the basic education program when the legislature adopted them in the 1970s, the same is simply not true today.” (Decision, page 60)

“In sum, the legislature devised a basic education program to provide the constitutionally required “education” under article IX, section 1. The program defined the resources and offerings the legislature believed were necessary to give all students an opportunity to meet state standards. Yet substantial evidence shows that state allocations have consistently fallen short of the actual cost of implementing the basic education program. By the legislature’s own terms, it has not met its duty to make ample provision for “basic education.” (Decision, page 66)

Though this is a clear win for those of us involved with the NEWS lawsuit and for supporters of public education, the ruling did not force the legislature to take specific, immediate action to correct the situation. They instead chose to maintain jurisdiction over the case and monitor the legislature’s progress to fully implement its reform package by 2018 as shown in this Seattle Times post.

Instead, the court deferred to legislation already on the books that gives the state until 2018 to provide enough funding to meet its own definition of "basic education."

"The judiciary will retain jurisdiction over the case to help ensure progress in the State's plan to fully implement education reforms by 2018," according to a near unanimous ruling. "This court intends to remain vigilant in fulfilling the State's constitutional responsibility."

Though this ruling, I would think, makes it more difficult for legislators to again cut funding in the session that will resume next week that may not be the case as seen from this comment in the Times post.

But state Rep. Reuven Carlyle said that while the ruling will influence the Legislature's work, it will not take education cuts completely off the table.

"It is a powerful signal," said Carlyle, who represents Seattle. "At the same time, from a purely fiduciary point of view, we have a $32 billion budget and we simply have no choice but to look structurally at categories including health care, human services, nursing homes, parks as well as schools and universities."

One fear that I have as the legislature prepares to convene is that this ruling will give legislators leverage to make deeper cuts in other areas and simply say the courts have tied our hands. I don’t want this to make their very difficult job of balancing the budget easier by making dramatic cuts in other services. It should instead make the need to examine a balance between more cuts and increasing revenue more urgent. Starting next week we will learn what impact this ruling will have on the process and decisions that must be made. I hope that the parties and two houses can collaborate on decisions that do not result in other agencies and social service providers pointing fingers at us or at each other.

2012-01-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

Over at This Week In Education, Russo did a follow-up to his post on the battle for online presence between reformers and those perceived to be against reform that I blogged about here. In it, he shares his response to the unexpected flurry of comments that he believes supported his position that those against reform efforts currently have a more visible and effective online presence.

Nearly all of it came from those opposed to current reform efforts, which sort of proved my point. They were confused by my praise, simultaneously pleased and disquieted at having their efforts acknowledged, angry at me for praising them using code words like "feisty." They denounced the post, then bragged about it, or did both at the same time. (One thing is clear: they hate being called reform critics or reform opponents, which I understand but to me seems an uphill battle without a better alternative that someone will actually use.)

Reading his post followed by viewing a video that Amy shared with me about Stand for Children and then an eduflack post on It Takes an Educational Village created more dissonance for me. The video (sorry you need to go to the site, I still can't get them to embed) was developed by Rethinking Schools, an organization that Russo would probably label as against reform. The intent of the video is to show how Stand for Children has gone from a grass roots organization fighting for poor children and increased public school funding to one that is now funded by those in the forefront of the reform movement.

What happened? How did Stand morph from an organization with a focus on children’s health issues, nonschool factors, and research-based school improvements to an organization that pushes core elements of the corporate destruction of public education?

Stand has seen an enormous influx of corporate cash. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began by offering a relatively modest two-year grant of $80,000 in 2005. In 2007, Stand for Children received a $682,565 grant. In 2009, the point at which Stand’s drastically different political agenda became obvious, Gates awarded a $971,280 grant to support “common policy priorities” and in 2010, a $3,476,300 grant.

They go on to identify other organizations providing support such as the Walton Foundation. You can read their description of the change on their web page here. The video and article do a good job of painting Stand as completely aligned with corporate reformers. On the other hand, in this editorial from a Rethinking Schools Newsletter you can get a sense about who they are and what they are fighting for. They describe the current situation in the words below.

For defenders of public education, that civic courage must enact the realization that our schools can only be saved if they are simultaneously transformed. Teachers must ensure that our unions and professional organizations stand on the side of children and parents—that we embrace an expansive democratic practice that engages community members as vital allies and addresses the deep inequities beyond the schoolhouse door that imperil the well-being of our students.

Contrast this with words from the Stand for Children web page that describes their work. I see some similarity in the words being used.

We have more than a decade of experience working together with parents, communities and organizations as partners. Together, we elect state legislators and local officials who will be champions for education. We deliver policy victories at the state level. And we follow through to ensure new policies are effectively implemented in public school classrooms.

Finally, I'll share this eduflack post that laments the fighting and speaks to the need for collaboration with the community as did the Stand for Children and Rethinking Schools words above.

Ultimately, it really does take an educational village to improve our public schools. Teachers, parents, community leaders, policymakers, taxpayers, the business community, and students all have a vested interest in seeing our schools improve and our kids succeed. And all have a potential role they can play in the improvement process. Now is not the time to say I can do this myself, and try to walk the road alone. We need all the help we can get.

As I read these posts it is ironic how using similar words by these diverse organizations leads to such different responses. All recognize the need for change that requires a collaborative effort, but the behavior is not consistent with a collaborative approach. Reading and reflecting on these pieces results in more dissonance for me and concern for the future of public education. No one is positioned to win this battle wherever it is being fought. There is too much money to ignore the influence that the corporate reformers bring to the table and there is too much knowledge and commitment that educators bring to expect anything but a protracted fight. In the mean time, energy is wasted and finger pointing increases. One would think that those on both sides are too smart to continue this battle, but that is not the case. Maybe we need a new language to describe the need because the current words are not bringing us together.

Comments on the reform message . . .

2012-01-01T20:20:00.000-08:00

Jonathan and John made comments to my post on the reformers and scrappy traditional educators online presence as identified in an Alexander Russo post on This Week In Education. Jonathan shares his thinking about the intent of Russo’s post considering his body of work and relationship to the reformers. He suggests that what the reformers need is leadership and a convincing collection of evidence.

What I do know is that what reformers need is leadership, not some hope for viral influence using the internet to achieve change. Russo's post about comments and Twitter responses as a coordinated 'battle' between David and Goliath is absurd. Assembling a convincing collection of evidence and spreading the word is a lot tougher than generating $$$ from a 'debate' website.

In his comment, John agrees with Jonathan on the need for evidence to support the claims of the reform movement.

I think there is leadership, Jonathan, but until they can find concrete, scientific evidence that their reforms will bring about positive change in our school system, their message will continue to lack strength. As educators, it should be our mission that we continue to demand these facts.

I believe that there is leadership, but what is lacking is coordinated leadership. We see the education department pushing their reform priorities through waivers to NCLB and required changes to qualify for initiatives such as Race to the Top. Foundations such as Gates provide revenue to those systems aligning with whatever their flavor of the year is and then there are others looking at the potential revenue associated with promoting choice. If they were to in some way find enough common ground to organize their efforts the “scrappy traditional educators” would be in serious trouble. This would be especially true if it would lead to a credible online presence in the online debate, something Russo says is lacking.

But these voices are neither coming from the classroom nor active in the online debate during the days and weeks between mainstream news stories, which are an increasingly large part of the education discussion. This leaves others - think tankers and crackpots and Whitney Tilsons and such -- to fill in the empty spaces. But those folks aren't numerous or prolific or tenacious or, ultimately, credible enough, either. They are too self-important to leave comments on other sites, and too professional to post on weekends or after hours when everyone else with a day job is most active.

Jonathan ends his comment with this question.

We should ask ourselves, has 'reform' really made things better?

What do you think?

Yes . . .

2011-12-31T20:34:00.000-08:00

Battle for online presence . . .

2011-12-29T18:59:00.000-08:00

Moving my focus back to what’s happening in the world of public education brings me to this piece in the This Week In Education by Alexander Russo on the battle between reformers and reform critics to use online sources to get their message out.

There's a strange dynamic going on inside the online education reform debate in which the well-funded reformers play the role of wimpy David and the scrappy traditional educators are Goliath. But the mismatch could change quickly in the new year, and if it does things will get noisier but also -- I hope -- a little more interesting.

I don’t know if I agree with his labeling the reformers as David considering the large amounts of money that they bring to the table and the influence that they have had on forming the debate around choice and charters, LIFO, teacher evaluation, and unions. He contends that the reform critics have the edge in this arena because there are many out there sharing their message and they appear to be able to coordinate a response when necessary. From my point of view in the larger picture the reformers appear to me to be in the position of Goliath not David, but in this one area he may be right.

Amy shared with me this response at Living in Dialogue to Russo’s post from one of the reform critics he identified, teacher Anthony Cody. In it Cody shares his view of the battle using the same view point that I find difficult to move from.

As I tried to point out yesterday, the online debate is rather meaningless if the real decisions about our schools continue to be made based on misinformation, bribery and political gamesmanship. I believe the online debate has been deliberately ignored by the corporate reform sector, as they see it as a battle they can well afford to lose, given the access to real power their funds buy them.

I’m wondering what it will do to the debate if, as Russo suggests , things could get noisier if the reformers are successful in coordinating their message through online vehicles. For whatever reason I seem to have more reform-minded sites in my RSS feed than “scrappy traditional educator” sites as Russo calls them. I also tend to believe that people in government at the state and federal levels are also being informed by these same individuals and organizations and that the teacher voice is losing influence. I don’t know what Russo means when he hopes that it gets a little more interesting. I would settle for a little more stability and collaboration with less influence from those sectors trying to tell us how to do the work, or at least an equal amount of financial support from those same individuals and foundations so that we can provide them with a model of system success that can be replicated.

Now you know 5 . . .

2011-12-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

On the topic of overcrowding in our schools I want to share some additional information that you may find interesting. I would also ask that you consider sharing the “Now you know . . .” series of posts with others in our community. We must find ways to get factual information about our current reality in the community to generate conversations and a deeper understanding of our current and future student housing needs. The majority of this and other information can be found in the Ad Hoc Citizen Committee Housing Proposals found here.

The series of charts below will share comparisons of King County school districts passage of bond measures from 1985 to 2011. Though there are many variables that influence the need for a bond measure such as enrollment growth and age of buildings the comparisons are quite striking considering our growth and current reality. Before looking at approved bonds, however, the chart below captures our current situation. It lists the square footage per student taking into account all schools and total enrollment in each King County school district. Tahoma is at the bottom with less than 100 sq. ft. per student with the average for the other districts excluding Skykomish being 146 sq. ft. per student. What does this mean? It means that we are placing more students into buildings than they were designed to accommodate and are doing it by adding portables and using spaces efficiently. It means that we have not as a community created learning spaces approaching the average square footage per student that students in other King County school districts experience every day.

The next chart identifies the total bond dollars approved between 1985 and 2011 in King County School districts. Though we were the second fastest growing school district behind Issaquah on a percentage basis over this time, we can see from the chart that only three school districts have approved fewer bond dollars than our system. What does this mean to you?

I think the next chart is even more telling. It shows bonds approved compared to enrollment growth for the same time period in our neighboring districts. The yellow bar represents enrollment growth and the green bar bonds approved. We have far fewer bond dollars approved compared to enrollment growth than any other district in this comparison.

The final chart builds off of the previous one by showing the bond dollars issued per student enrollment increase for this same time period, 1985 to 2011. Once again, Tahoma is at the bottom of the comparison with about $14,000 per student increase and far below the average for the districts excluding the highs in Bellevue and Renton, of about $49,000.

So, what does all of this information mean? For some, perhaps a celebration because we are experiencing academic success compared to these same school districts with less community support in the form of approved bonds. For others, it means we have created a situation that will soon result in critical decisions this community will need to make about the future of its school system. Yes, we have been successful by adjusting grade level configurations and adding portables to accommodate student enrollment growth. And, yes we can continue to meet these needs in the near term, but at some point without increased capacity we will not be able to offer the current program that has produced this success. Though slower growth projections have lessened the urgency, the time line for adding new capacity requires multiple years of planning. We cannot wait until the students are here to make decisions, we must move forward and plan for our future.

The question is a simple one. Do we want to move forward on our journey to prepare young people for post high school success in learning and work with today’s planned learning environments? If yes, then we will need to add additional classrooms and infrastructure space to our school community. If we do not add space we will need to change our school culture and the question then changes. How do we safely house more students than the buildings can hold? The answer to this question will result in a far different school system than we experience today and one that we may face in the coming years.

Now you know 4 . . .

2011-12-27T18:38:00.000-08:00

the-abyssmal-ramblings.blogspot.com

In an earlier post, I shared the chart showing building capacity and the concerns that many have expressed with it. Specifically, the column titled Tahoma max capacity***, is one that was difficult to identify and has been questioned by many. The concern being expressed is that the numbers in this column give the impression that we have room for additional enrollment in all of our buildings.

How can we say that we are overcrowded if we have room in all buildings? That is the question that emerges in people's minds when reviewing the chart and is not what we intended for the column to do. The intent was the opposite. We wanted it to signal to people that we have a problem today that will become more critical and difficult to solve with additional enrollment, but we can maintain our current program with some revisions until the max number is reached in each grade level configuration. Instead of creating a sense of urgency it did the opposite while also making it difficult for many to accept the fact that we are overcrowded. Most people don't compare the Design capacity columns to the enrollment column to see that we are full.

The column was also designed to provide a timeline for the community to understand when significant program changes will be necessary if we cannot add classrooms. In reflection, I believe that answering the question about when will double shifting or multi-tracking be necessary resulted in creating the max column. I still believe that is a question many have and that the system has a responsibility to answer. But, could it have been done without creating the column is the question that I continue to struggle with. Yes, we could have taken the position that we are full and in the absence of new space we will need to implement other delivery models, but the bond measure is designed to not reach that point keeping the focus on the need for new classrooms.

It is good to reflect, but a continued focus on the column and what could or should have been done is wasted energy. For now, the chart is public and may or may not be used in the future. Though it is questioned and did not achieve the intended results, it was our attempt to be transparent; something that I believe is an essential quality of our school system's culture.

Last minute leads to lost chance . . .

2011-12-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

mommyrantings.com

Well, I missed the opportunity to wish readers a Merry Christmas as I got caught up in my usual last minute shopping spree, then preparing for family. It was great fun and a I had a wonderful time with family. This morning it is just my wife and I and except for a few barks from the dog it is quiet and calm and that also feels just great. My biggest problem is the number of cookies with cream cheese icing, See's candies, and ice cream cake left over. It seems that I have no will power to refuse them and I fear as they disappear they will become visible as added inches to my waist line and other parts of this rapidly sagging body.

Maybe next year I can change my behavior and start preparing for the holidays before it is upon me, or maybe not. I think it is now a badge of honor to reply to the question that is always asked, are you ready for the holiday? It may be difficult to let go of being able to give my standard reply of no I still have two more days.

I hope your day was as enjoyable as mine.

Now you know 3 . . .

2011-12-22T21:25:00.000-08:00

To continue painting a picture of our current reality related to student housing I will share enrollment by building compared to the enrollment the building was designed to house. Sharing this information with various groups over the last year has resulted in feedback from many that we are not accurately describing how bad our current reality is. This feedback is based on the column in the graph below titled, Tahoma Max Capacity***. By sharing the numbers in this column, we are telling the community that we can continue to place additional students into already overcrowded schools and for some that is a problem. To be transparent, however, I believe that it would be a mistake to change the message that we gave in last spring’s bond documents.

Without getting into the technical discussion of 100% or 85% utilization for buildings housing students in grades 6-12, you can see in the chart that we have more students in all four elementary buildings, the junior high, and the high school than they were designed to house. Using the 100% utilization that is above the 85% norm for secondary schools, we have about 700 more students in our schools than they were designed to hold. If we use the 85% norm for secondary schools that number is over 1000.

How are we able to house these students and still provide a quality program? The answer is the 84 portables that we have on our sites. We have portable classrooms, but many are very old and do not meet the quality of learning environment that we want for our young people and staff. Portables work for classrooms, but placing more and more students into hallways, eating areas, elective areas, and rest rooms results in overcrowding and the problems associated with cramming bodies into tight spaces. We are also in a position where we have little or no capacity to add additional portables on school sites. The chart below shows the number of portables being used to house students and programs in local school districts. No district in the chart is housing more students as a percentage of enrollment then we are in Tahoma.

Our current reality is one of overcrowded schools except at the middle school level, aging portables on all school sites, and enrollment projections showing continued growth over the next decade. At some point we will not be able to house additional students in the same spaces and offer the same program. In my next post I will share more of my thinking on the max capacity identified in the first chart above.

Now you know 2 . . .

2011-12-21T19:32:00.000-08:00

As I shared in my last post I will continue with information from the Ad Hoc Citizen Committee Report on future student housing options. Now that we know we experienced the second largest percentage increase in enrollment in King County since 1985, what does future enrollment look like?

The chart below shows the demographers projections through the year 2011. We can see that growth has slowed with the sagging economy, but we are still looking at an increase of almost 1100 students over that period of time. These numbers include development of the Summit Pit site (Donut Hole) starting in 2016 using the housing projections in a project no longer on the table. So, why include them? Because in conversations with city and county staff we were told that the property will be developed over time. Even if we didn’t consider this site in our projections, we will still see an increase in enrollment with few options for housing them given the current delivery model and grade level configurations.

The enrollment growth that we have experienced has resulted in large schools. Based on 2010 enrollment, we have the two largest elementary schools in the state, Lake Wilderness and Rock Creek. From the charts below we can see that compared to other King County districts, all of our schools are very large. Please note that in the high school comparison most schools house four grades while THS houses three.

In a future post I will share how many students we are placing in each building and compare that to the built capacity of the site.

Now you know . . .

2011-12-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

I decided that I will share some additional information on the current reality of our student housing situation in a series of posts with a Did You Know theme. Though I have a small readership, if people begin to share this information it may lead to conversations in our school community that accurately reflect current reality and the difficult situation we find ourselves in today. The information in this post and additional information can be found in the citizen committee’s report and recommendations to the board.

I will begin this series of posts with enrollment information since it is enrollment that is driving the need for the system to add capacity. The chart below shows enrollment growth in King County school districts from 1985 to 2010. Though we are not one of the larger districts this chart shows that we have experienced significant growth over that period of time.

The chart below shows the rate of growth for each district over the same period of time. From the chart we can see that our system has experienced on a percentage basis more growth than any district except Issaquah, 139% to 141%. The others are far below this. Our enrollment has more than doubled since 1985.

In the next post I will share enrollment projections through 2021 and housing capacities to provide a context for our current reality.

A focus on overcrowding . . .

2011-12-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

Last week Channel 5 did another piece on our overcrowding problems that was shared on Living in A Custodial World, high school Head Custodian Rick Bergum's blog. In his post, he raises the issue of increased operating costs if we were to implement year-round, multi-track or double shift delivery models. He is accurate in his assessment as either of these options would increase not only energy and material costs, but would also result in increased staffing costs.

Though it would result in increased operating costs the bigger question is what impact would it have on our school culture and program. That is the question that voters in our school community will decide. With a slower increase in student enrollment we have time to consider long term solutions, but we are still today in a situation where we are over crowded with few options to house more students at all grade level bands. At some point in the coming years we will need additional classrooms and infrastructure spaces or we will need to change our delivery model.

If you follow the e-mail string on the Channel 5 post you get a good idea of the struggle we face as commenters share their thinking. Of particular interest is an exchange between ScottG and Cougsrback. Below Cougsrback captures our situation. Unfortunately not all understand or agree with this position.

ScottG apparently has no knowledge of the situation in the Tahoma School District or how Washington schools are funded. Planning has been in place for some time. Unfortunately, voters are in no mood to approve property taxes to pay for additional facilities. Existing property taxes are not sufficient to build more schools. Those taxes pay for operations and a bond that was approved in 1997. Since then, the school district has grown significantly and is again in need of more classrooms. This district has stretched its resources to the maximum and has made good use of tax dollars. Until voters approve a bond measure there are very limited options to deal with the overcrowding.

The School Board is currently reviewing proposlas from a Citizen Review Committee. I will share more as they review the options and make both short and longterm decisions for housing current and projected student enrollment. The citizen report can be found here.

Action in Olympia . . .

2011-12-15T19:58:00.000-08:00

There were two pieces of news from Olympia this week that deserve a comment.

The first is a Policy Brief by Governor Gregoire highlighting what she sees as the next steps in education reform. The focus is on the new principal and teacher evaluation models based on instructional frameworks and the changes related to ratings and professional growth opportunities. The opening paragraphs in this Seattle Times article is interesting considering she is promoting the change as renewed professional growth opportunities.

Offering a blunt assessment of the state's failure to get rid of struggling teachers, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Tuesday proposed a tougher statewide evaluation system aimed at weeding out ineffective educators.

"The current system doesn't work," Gregoire said of teacher and principal ratings. "It's too broad. It doesn't help people grow. Teachers need to know what they're doing well, and where they can improve."

In an Education Week article she shares the need to ensure the public that we have quality educators in our state.

"We need to address this concern out there that we have bad teachers," Gregoire said. "For the most part, we have very, very good teachers. We want to make sure the public feels confident that we have everybody at the proficiency-or-above level."

Considering that some have been working on this for two years with support from OSPI and that we started our work this year, the timing of the announcement is interesting especially given the significant budget issues confronting her and legislators in Olympia. Superintendent Dorn says he hasn’t seen the details of her proposal and will be submitting his own bill by the end of the week. Doesn’t sound like a collaborative effort, more like competing bills and waste of energy and resources to me? I am trying to suspend my negative assumptions about what is driving the changes in teacher and principal evaluation, but this policy brief and article simply reinforce them.

The second announcement is from a Seattle Times article on the legislative action thus far in the special session. The title of the article says all one needs to know; State legislators settle on plan for down payment on shortfall. In essence they used a combination of cuts, transfers, and delayed payments to carve $480 million out of the $2 billion revenue shortfall. They prolonged the agony by leaving the difficult decisions for the regular session. The changes in this down payment will not be seen or felt by most in our school system, but stay tuned as those necessary to reach the $2 billion target could dramatically change this situation.

Refocus on reform . . .

2011-12-13T06:46:00.000-08:00

The Seahawks won - started this post, but didn’t finish last night after the game. The articles share the need for reform to focus not just on schools and teachers, but for societal changes as well. We need HELP to support success for ALL young people.

I decided today to share an opinion piece in Monday’s Seattle Times by David Sirota, What real education reform looks like. Later in the morning Amy e-mailed this Washington Post article by John Kuhn, a superintendent from Texas. Both articles talk about what the authors believe to be at the root of problems in public education; economics. They label what many of the reformers choose to ignore, the problems associated with poverty that students bring with them to school. They instead choose to focus on the negative influence of teacher unions on change and the need for value-added evaluation models while promoting charters and choice.

Sirota shares the recent Stanford University study that demonstrates the importance of a family’s economic situation on future academic performance. We have been aware over time of the importance of the parent’s education on performance of their children and we are now learning more about the gap in student achievement being influenced by poverty.

Finally, the growing income achievement gap does not appear to be a result of a growing achievement gap between children with highly and less-educated parents. Indeed, the relationship between parental education and children’s achievement has remained relatively stable during the last fifty years, whereas the relationship between income and achievement has grown sharply. Family income is now nearly as strong as parental education in predicting children’s achievement.

In his piece Sirota argues for implementing new funding models that drive money to schools in high poverty areas and away from models based on property taxes that tend to drive more revenue to wealthy areas. He also shares what he believes to be the potential for achieving his goal in the following words.

Policy-wise, it’s a straightforward proposition. The only thing complex is making it happen. Doing that asks us to change resource-hoarding attitudes that encourage us to care only about our 0wn schools, everyone else’s be damned.

In America’s greed-is-good culture, achieving such a shift in mass psychology is about the toughest task imaginable, but it’s the real education reform that’s most needed.

In his article, Kuhn takes on the reformers and proposes a model to hold states accountable just as NCLB is designed to hold schools and school districts accountable.

They repeatedly call on get teachers and administrators to quit making excuses and hold themselves accountable for the educational outcomes of poor and minority students. Who could be against that?

Well, I’m calling their bluff. Let’s see if it really is all about the children.

NCLB has done one important thing: By disaggregating data, it has forced teachers and administrators like me to agonize over the outcomes of our neediest students.

But after 10 years, it is clear that NCLB’s reforms haven’t spurred miracles, and it is time that the profound problem of inequality is addressed. The deck is stacked against kids who live in poverty not just because their schools are on average worse than others, but also because of the circumstances of their lives when they leave campus.

It’s time that we admit that it isn’t just teachers holding back poor and minority students back. The problems are societal.

So I’m calling on reformers — Kress and Rhee included — to lend support for a new kind of reform, one that steps outside the schoolhouse and shares the onus for achievement with more than just teachers.

I’m calling for data-driven equality, modeled on Kress’s work, expanding it to force greater societal changes that will help teachers bridge the achievement gap.

Let the 50 states disaggregate equality-related data by ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, and let us rank the states and reward them for closing all the societal inequalities that are truly at the heart of our achievement gap. There should be an incentive for voters to elect lawmakers who will craft policies that minimize inequalities.

Both of these articles shed light on a problem in our society that results in a significant influence on the capacity of ALL young people to experience social and academic success in school and later as adults. How is it that as a country, we allow over 20% of our youth to live in poverty while spending billions to support others in need and in conflicts across the globe? I’m struggling as I reflect on my own giving and the priorities that I infer from news media and calls to action. Though neither of the proposals in these pieces is likely to occur, I applaud the authors and the focus they have created on this important issue in our society, not just in our schools.

If this topic interests you these are two good articles.

Another word cloud . . .

2011-12-11T21:23:00.000-08:00

I decided it was time to do another word cloud. I used Word It Out for the cloud below. It is easy to see what profession I am in from the words and my recent focus on feedback. I wish the words state and cuts didn't need to appear.

Breaking the trust barrier . . .

2011-12-08T19:38:00.000-08:00

Scott has posted a comment on feedback and raises the issue that surfaces in much of our work; the need for trust. If I had the power to change one mental model held by many people it just might be the one around trust. In a PLC where work is driven by a shared vision I don’t believe that people need to earn trust, I believe that it should be given and if behavior over time is inconsistent with that vision than one earns mistrust. As Scott suggests, we are not at that place in our PLC formation throughout the school system where trust is given. I believe that it is in specific contexts like interactions between teachers and our math coaches and in the work we are beginning with systems thinking tools, but not system wide.

The big thing is that I believe peer feedback requires a level of trust that I am not sure we have in all of our buildings or in any of our buildings for that matter. In a conversation regarding trust I had on Monday with a room full of presidents, I brought up that there are two major components that I felt were in schools and groups. One is comfort and one is trust. These are two very different things. I feel very comfortable in my school to share my views, my thoughts, and jokes. But do we all trust each other to give genuine honest feedback to grow as teachers. I am not sure all of our schools are there.

If teachers have a comfort level with feedback from administrators the question is how do we create this same comfort for peer-to-peer feedback? If as I suggest and Scott supports that it is working with feedback from colleagues in math, we might learn what lead to his feeling comfortable with and having trust in the teacher providing the feedback. What did the system intentionally do that produced this result? What did the teacher providing the feedback do over time to gain trust and create a comfortable context to observe and share? How does an individual teacher become more aware of the assumptions that they have about trust and feedback to crack the door open to receiving it from a colleague? What makes it easier to receive feedback and even wanting more from an administrator?

Any follow-up to these would be appreciated.

Continued focus on feedback . . .

2011-12-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

I received a comment from Jonathan to my request for feedback and he brings up a good point.

I believe, as each school site works to develop a thorough understanding and seamless implementation of Classroom 10 concepts, each school will probably need their own unique support.

My school site, for example, is not in the same place as Cedar River Middle School with its understanding of Classroom 10. I have had conversations over the years with a staff member at CRMS and their understanding is very much advanced from our site.

Schools like CRMS may be ready for feedback at this time, where my site may benefit from more basic types of support.

His observation is accurate as each building is at different places that require differentiated support. Even within a school, in my observations across the district, teachers are at varying places on implementing key content learning goal and key content checks for understanding. This would also suggest the need for differentiated support structures to be put in place. It also makes the teacher leader position more critical as there are not enough administrators to support the number of teams that we have in our very large schools. Teacher leaders must and will be a part of what Jonathan calls the more basic types of support and will also become part of the feedback structure so essential in a change initiative.

Feedback becomes essential when teachers have experienced an adequate level of learn, observe, practice and can be expected to be implementing the eight components of the goal or some specific component(s). It can also be supportive as teachers are first attempting the new practices, but can be counterproductive in the absence of adequate knowledge and for some a safe place to try them.

So, to push a little further on this feedback thing, what must be in place for teachers to use feedback from their teacher leader colleagues or others to support them in changing their practice? What do you see as the framework for collecting and delivering effective feedback? The most effective feedback would come from whom?

This feedback thing is not just about this initiative or work in schools. We use it with students to support learning, we use it as parents to support learning and growth, coaches would not be successful without the capacity to use feedback to change behavior, and the list goes on. We need this component in our work and are ready to embark on preparing teacher leaders with the knowledge and skills to collect and provide it. How will teachers receive it?

Shadow Lake recognition . . .

2011-12-07T20:53:00.000-08:00

This evening our ESD hosted a reception for those receiving the honor of being one of the top 5% of the highest improving schools in the state. To qualify the school must sustain increases in math and reading as measured by state tests over a five year period. This means the focus must be on both content areas over this period of time, something difficult for many to sustain over this period.

Congratulations to our own Shadow Lake Elementary School for being selected in this top 5%. Chris and her staff should be very proud of this accomplishment and we need to join in thanking them for their commitment and hard work that resulted in this achievement.

Not giving up . . .

2011-12-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

g4tv.com

No takers yet on the request from my December 2nd post on feedback. In that post I asked for the following.

The focus for teacher leaders will be on positive and questioning feedback. I have a positive presupposition that teachers want feedback concerning their progress on our Classroom 10 goal. I would appreciate hearing from any of you if this is an accurate presupposition. It would also help to know what type of feedback would be most helpful and how it will be received from teacher leaders; will it be as effective or perhaps more effective than that received from an administrator?

Thanks for reading and considering a response to this critical component of an effective change initiative.

I know that I have some regular readers out there who I believe have an opinion on this and I also know that most rarely, if ever, comment on a blog post because I am the same way. I decided I would ask again because of the importance of this critical step in our Classroom 10 initiative.

In the absence of feedback we make decisions that are not always supportive of meeting our goals and there is much at stake in this initiative. We view it as an intervention with the potential to support student learning in every classroom when learning goals and checks for understanding become drivers in lesson design and delivery. I understand that using a blog is perhaps not the best way to ask for feedback on my assumption and for further clarity on a delivery model, but it would be good for the system to have an open conversation on this topic. So, once again I ask that you consider supporting my thinking as I influence our Classroom 10 goal.

The student voice . . .

2011-12-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

As the legislators grapple with the $2 billion budget gap in Olympia we sometimes lose sight of the bottom line, the students in our public schools. In a Seattle Times guest column two Garfield seniors, Grant Bronsdon and Sam Heft-Luthy show us what is at stake. Yes, the courts have told the state that it is not meeting it's constitutional requirement to amply fund schools and, yes the state has appealed to the State Supreme Court. So, the adults fight about ample funding while school districts make program cuts because of reduced state funding. Districts ask local tax payers to make up the gap because the legislature increases the levy limit which leads to success for some students and increased revenue disparity for many more in districts that can't pass maximum levies.

While we wait to find out what cuts the legislators will use to balance the budget and for the legal process to conclude with the Supreme Court's decision, these two students remind us of what cuts do to students.

As students, we are told that we are the future, but if we truly are the future, we must have a say in the choices that are made today. Education, the paramount duty of the state, must remain intact to ensure that we can live up to the dreams promised to us by the state of Washington. It is immoral to shirk this fundamental mandate.

We call for our legislators to provide a responsible and reasonable solution to the state's budget problem that doesn't put the weight on the shoulders of students. Whether that solution is new taxes, cuts to other programs, or a comprehensive re-evaluation of the current public-education system, we need a plan that will actually improve the quality of education our students receive.

Across-the-board cuts to vital education funding may seem like the easy solution at first, but they are nothing more than a poison-soaked Band-Aid.

By cutting the education of the present, we are pawning off our future, rather than funding it.

The future for these two students and for all students in our state will be influenced by the decisions made in Olympia over the next few weeks. Even with more cuts, many will continue to experience success in both K-12 and in post high school learning and work. For many others, however, the loss of additional revenue will reduce the capacity of our schools to meet this goal for ALL students and that is something that must be considered in the decision making process. Do ALL kids really matter? Do we hold them accountable to rigorous standards necessary for post high school success or do we lower the standards commensurate with reduced revenue? And, we need to remember that the courts have already determined that this revenue, before more cuts, is less than ample to meet those identified standards.

What message do you want to give to our legislators as they struggle with these difficult decisions?

psdgraphics.com

The importance of FEEDBACK . . .

2011-12-02T18:25:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday at our T&L Leadership meeting giving and receiving feedback was one of the topics in our lesson plan. Wednesday, it was feedback that helped me come down my ladder and suspend assumptions so that I could contribute to our TPEP meeting. I am constantly reminded about the importance of feedback in change initiatives like our Classroom 10 goal, yet I still struggle with how best to provide it as teachers begin the work of creating well-constructed learning goals that drive teacher and student behaviors, and monitor and adjust based on data from checks for understanding.

My dissonance is associated with our new teacher leaders who have been given and have accepted the responsibility to support their colleagues on this learning goal journey. We know that there is a skill set necessary for effectively providing feedback and a necessary mental model for receiving it in ways that are accepted and that can lead to change. My hesitance has been with our lack of opportunity to provide them with the skill set and lack of understanding of where they are in their PLC work because we know that in a PLC feedback is not only accepted it is demanded. So, I have been pushing them and principals to measure their current reality and influencing them to provide feedback in other than one-to-one situations. After Tuesday I am now moving more towards creating opportunities for feedback in a variety of settings. It is simply a necessary component of learning and growth that we must provide. I need to remember our adult learning model: Learn – Observe – Practice – FEEDBACK – Reflect.

To move in this direction we will share with the teacher leaders at our December training a protocol for providing three types of feedback; positive, questioning, and critical. The focus for teacher leaders will be on positive and questioning feedback. I have a positive presupposition that teachers want feedback concerning their progress on our Classroom 10 goal. I would appreciate hearing from any of you if this is an accurate presupposition. It would also help to know what type of feedback would be most helpful and how it will be received from teacher leaders; will it be as effective or perhaps more effective than that received from an administrator?

Thanks for reading and considering a response to this critical component of an effective change initiative.

Struggling with a mental model . . .

2011-11-30T22:13:00.000-08:00

daveelf's photostream

In this post from earlier this month I shared an article about Tennessee's new teacher evaluation model and the problems they are confronting. Today, I had the opportunity to work with teachers and administrators in our system on our state-mandated teacher evaluation model that must be in place by 2013. Unfortunately for the others in the room, I struggled to suspend my assumptions based on the Tennessee story and the national trend partly driven by the administration tying grant money to systems using student achievement data in teacher and principal evaluations. Our state has joined many others in an attempt to align our model with the criteria for a winning grant.

My mental model resulted in an argumentative attitude and counter productive behavior for at least the first hour. I am struggling with the stated goal being to develop a model to support teacher growth over time with what I believe is a primary intent, rating teachers to find leverage to overcome LIFO, last in first out as shared in this Christian Science Monitor article. It was another difficult experience that demonstrates how mental models can control behavior. Through feedback from others such as Amy telling me I interrupted her and focusing on how the model can support teacher and adminstrator conversations, I was able to suspend my assumptions enough to contribute to the work.

Even after a more positive experience, however, I continue to struggle with this mandate. Like many things, our system is ahead of many others. We have a model, Classroom 10, and a system goal already in place. The state is in year two of the TPEP pilot and has identified three models for systems to choose from. We are not a pilot district and we don't want to give up our model, so we find ourselves in the position of aligning Classroom 10 with one of the three choices, the 5D's from the Center for Educational Leadership at the UW. Using their product is supportive of meeting the mandate, but I question if it is value added to our effort.

Though I have many questions, the mandate is in place and we must move forward. We are doing this by working collaboratively with a small team of TEA representatives and administrators. Today was day two of the work and I hesitate to guess how many more days will be needed to draft the entire document and then turn to developing the mandated principal evaluation model.

Before closing, let me ask one additional question. If the intent of the model is to support growth over time, of what value is there in the state reporting by district the number of teachers rated in each of the four mandated categories, Unsatisfactory, Basic, Proficient, and Exemplary?

Successful rally . . .

2011-11-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

Scott, John, and other TEA Executive Committee members pulled it off. I would guess somewhere around 75 to 100 teachers, PSE staff, parents, students, and administrators rallied this afternoon at Four Corners to show our support for public education and against further budget cuts. Somehow they got KIRO Channel 7 and KOMO Radio to cover the rally and earlier in the day they both interviewed Scott at Shadow Lake. Unfortunately, I was also asked for an interview by KIRO. This is not my favorite thing to do, but hopefully they didn't include much in their coverage, at least not anything to cause me or the system any embarrassment.

It was fun and the right thing to do as the legislators began their special session this morning. There were similar gatherings across the state so if they had time to watch the news they saw the concern being expressed for the continuing cuts to "Basic" education.

Fate of the superintendent letter . . .

2011-11-27T19:25:00.000-08:00

In this post last week I shared with you the tension I was feeling about a possible letter form our ESD superintendents to our area legislators. At that time I was not able to sign the draft because of the recommendation for a reduced school year, something that the Governor included in her proposed budget. Over the next three days there were changes made in an attempt to convince at least 2/3 of the superintendents to sign the letter. Unlike the superintendents in the northern ESD counties, the changes did not result in enough support for the letter to be sent.

The following portion of the letter with a recommendation for how to make equitable budget cuts created the impasse and lack of 2/3 support.

An example of a funding reduction that could meet the equity principle is to reduce compensation uniformly for all employees, including a freeze or reduction in the salary allocation model. To be equitable, establishing clear legislative intent is essential so that reductions can be applied as intended across the state. Furthermore, all cuts should be made so that school districts can include them in their budget planning, rather than being imposed mid year.

So, how did I respond to the request for support? Though it will probably result in loss of credibility with some of my readers and colleagues, I indicated that I would support the letter with reservations. I did not like the inclusion of the recommendation, but I believe that it was more important to send a unified message to the legislators as they begin the special session. I don't see a scenario where public schools will not be cut. If I did, I too would hold out as some of my colleagues did, but for this reason, not the one that was shared by some. The message from some was that including the example would anger bargaining units in their systems and send the wrong message. Yes, that is a possibility and for some a probability, and my transparency may result in just that to me in our system. Given that, I think it is still important for you to know my decision and how I made it.

Even though I believe that cuts will emerge from the special session, I will be at tomorrow's rally with my TEA, PSE, and PTA friends showing my support for public education and encouraging our legislators to not make cuts to our public schools. Read about the rally here and see you at Four Corners tomorrow.

Rally for public education . . .

2011-11-25T20:17:00.000-08:00

Below is a description of a rally for education sponsored by TEA. I copied the language from their web page. With legislators facing uncharted waters with the $2 billion gap and the Governor already sharing her recommendations that I posted about here, this will be an opportunity to share our concern with future cuts. I thank TEA for the leadership and planning for this event and look forward to seeing you at Four Corners. Oh, they are also asking that we wear something red.

On Monday, November the 28th, we are going to rally in Maple Valley! We plan to assemble at Four Corners from 3pm to 5:30pm to deliver the message that our schools cannot take any more funding cuts during the special session in Olympia that begins November 28th.

Our hope is to get the local media out to this event to get the word out that legislators cannot continue to cut funding to our schools. Students only get one schooling opportunity, and it is not right or fair to make cuts to our children's education. It is not right or fair to ask students to learn in overcrowded classrooms that lack basic resources for all students.

We want our voices heard! TEA is hosting this event, so grab a friend and come help us to wave some signs on November 28th!

Thanksgiving . . .

2011-11-23T19:14:00.000-08:00

On the eve of Thanksgiving, I wish for all of you an enjoyable day with family, friends, good food, and plenty of football. I also want to share with you a short video on Teaching Channel of Secretary Duncan sharing his thanks for teachers and the important work that they do. I think that you will appreciate his sentiment and in this time of budget cuts and teacher bashing it is both timely and rewarding.

On this StoryCorp site you can learn about the National Day of Listening on November 25th where you can join Secretary Duncan and StoryCorps in asking everyone to take a few minutes to say thanks to a favorite teacher on the day after Thanksgiving. On the site you can also create a video that can be sent to a teacher that had a positive influence on your life. What a wonderful way to say thank you. Please consider sharing a message on the 25th with a teacher, one of those people performing one of the most important functions in our society.

THANK YOU TEACHERS!

The first budget is out . . .

2011-11-21T21:06:00.000-08:00

In a news conference today Governor Gregoire presented us with her supplemental budget proposal. It comes as legislators prepare to begin the special session that she has directed. As expected, it contains proposed cuts to public schools of $873.5 million out of the $2 billion all cut budget proposal. You can find a summary of the proposed cuts on the WSSDA web page or on the OFM site here.

Big hits include the expected cut to Local Effort Assistance (LEA); revenue that property poor districts receive in an attempt to make raising local dollars more equitable across the state. In the Governor's proposal our district would go from receiving about a million dollars this year to zero in a two year period. The other big cut was a surprise to me. She did not propose the cut that would have raised class size, but instead proposed a reduction in the school year from 180 to 176 student days, equivalent to about a 2.2% cut in salary for school staff. I have already shared my disagreement with this proposal and the accompanying loss of learning time.

Saying she had been persuaded by those who talked with her about not increasing class sizes, the governor reluctantly is recommending cutting the school year from 180 days to 176 days, for a savings of nearly $100 million to the state. By cutting days, state funding for school employee salaries would be reduced by 2.2 percent, while transportation and MSOC would be reduced by a proportional amount.

There are many other proposed cuts in her budget that can be found on the sites referenced above. She also has provided the legislators with revenue ideas including a half-cent raise in the sales tax that could buy back some of the proposed cuts. Whether they can reach agreement on new revenue measures will become more evident when the session begins.

For now, the only positive part of the Governor's proposal is that the cuts would not be enacted in this budget year. Though positive, it does not make the future more promising. Though I want to say enough is enough, this taste of reality from the Governor makes that more difficult. Though we may applaud Superintendent Dorn for his response to the Governor's proposal, by taking this stance we may lose capacity to influence the final decisions.

The cuts being proposed would be catastrophic to basic education, and amply funding basic education is the state’s paramount duty. Our school year is already too short when compared to our economic competitors. We simply can’t go backward on school days.

From the perspective of the schoolchildren in the state – and that’s my perspective – either voters need to approve more revenue or the state Legislature needs to find another way to avoid these cuts. Cutting basic education simply can’t happen.

Service by Bear Computers . . .

2011-11-20T16:43:00.000-08:00

Students from Bear Computers at the high school are working to support students and families who do not have access to a computer at home. They refurbish surplus school district desktop computers and offer them free to families in need. The program will benefit up to 145 families while providing meaningful work for members of the club.

Information about the program can be found online here and registration information can be found here. Thanks to advisor Mike Jackson and the students for their efforts to support those with this need. Please help us share this opportunity with members of our community.

An application can also be obtained by calling Jill Jolk at 425-413-6204.

Feeling some tension . . .

2011-11-17T22:37:00.000-08:00

It has been a difficult two days as I struggle with whether to support a letter from our ESD superintendents to all local legislators. You may have seen the recent article in the Seattle Times about a similar letter that implied it was from superintendents across the state, but wasn’t. It came from superintendents in Island, San Juan, Skagit, Snohomish, and Whatcom Counties. You can read the letter here.

Though I am in agreement with much of the letter from the superintendents in those districts, I would not have been able to sign it. Why? I have two reasons with the first being the recommendation to cut the number of days in the school year from 180 to 175. For me, it is not only about shifting the burden from the state to the local district to bargain a loss of revenue. It is also about lost opportunity to prepare young people for meeting the standards imposed on them by the state and federal government. As an example, last year we moved to end of course assessments in mathematics at the secondary level. Today, end of course means 180 days for learning and for the other activities in a comprehensive school program. I don’t hear, nor am I advocating for, reducing the expectations to align with a 175 day school year. Is maintaining standards while reducing opportunity to learn fair to the students that must take the test or for the educators that make the decisions on what to do and not to do with five fewer days to learn? I don’t believe so. Yes, I know we could argue about being more efficient, focused, and not wasting days for staff development, but we are not going to change the mental model of students, parents, and staff in a short period of time that will transform how we use days.

My other reason is a struggle that I am having with making recommendations on how to do the cuts. When we talk with legislators that is always a question they ask us so sending a letter without answering that question could result in significant loss in capacity to influence. Yet, how do we reach agreement on what those recommendations should be? That is where the superintendents are at in our ESD, we are struggling as a group to find common ground on what we need to say and can support individually and collectively. I struggle because I find myself aligned with those not wanting to suggest fewer days or other specific cuts and we are in the minority.

In reflecting on this and what I am saying in this post I am beginning to realize that my biggest struggle may be with sending a letter signed by superintendents. I don’t really know what influence it would have, if any. If what we recommended aligned with a particular strategy for one or the other party it could become leverage in the debate so that could be a positive outcome. Our problem as superintendents is that our various communities, just like our schools, are diverse systems. Though I believe deeply that if we cannot unite with one voice our capacity to influence is greatly diminished, finding that one voice is proving to be very difficult. These competing beliefs are causing me tension because I want to be a part of that one voice.

Maybe the bottom line for me is that I believe that legislators listen more closely to those that vote in their district and that our ability to influence as superintendents may come more from our lobbyists and our individual efforts than a letter. Perhaps shifting my energy to encouraging those in our school community to communicate directly with their legislators is a way for me to find some resolution to this tension. Oh well, I have until tomorrow to make a final decision on whether to sign or not. I’m hopefully waiting for another revision that more closely aligns with what I believe so that I can sign, though I don’t think that will happen.

Though it is not how I prefer to work, I am moving closer to a position of enough is enough. I urge the legislators to create expectations that are achievable with the resources they choose to provide. Stop placing the burden on local districts to supplement in order to reach the identified standards. This results in increased inequities for students across our state. Our current reality is one of shifting targets as we now begin work to move from state to Common Core standards and shifting resource allocations as we prepare for year two of mid-year cuts. That is not the learning environment that will prepare our young people for success in post high school learning and work or for what our governor and legislators continue to tell us that we must do. We accept the challenge of preparing our youth to fill the jobs of the future and contribute to moving our state out of this economic mess. This high demand must be balanced with high support not shifting targets and budgets. Identify what young people need to know and be able to do and provide us with a stable and reliable funding mechanism designed to meet those expectations. With this in place, you can then hold us accountable to achieving them for all students

A School of Distinction . . .

2011-11-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

I missed sharing this honor that Shadow Lake Elementary brought to our school system last month. I know that I have shared it at many district and community events, but I can’t find a blog entry so here it is. It is a significant honor as only 99 schools across the state received it this year. It represents continued improvement over a five year period. The picture is of Nancy and me presenting Chris and the school with a banner commemorating their honor.

Shadow Lake is our first school to receive the School of Distinction award from The Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE), in partnership with the Association of Educational Service Districts (AESD), the Association of Washington School Principals (AWSP), Phi Delta Kappa-Washington Chapter (PDK-WA), Washington Association of School Administrators (WASA), Washington State ASCD and Washington State School Directors’ Association (WSSDA).

The award is given to the top 5% of schools in our state who have made sustained improvement in reading and math over five years as measured by state assessments. In the Puget Sound ESD region, 38 schools in 18 school districts achieved this honor. You can read about it on the PSESD web page or on the district web page.

Staff from Shadow Lake has been invited to attend an awards ceremony on the evening of December 7th at the ESD. Congratulations to the staff, parents, and students of Shadow Lake Elementary for supporting increased achievement over a period of five years. This award demonstrates commitment to a vision of improvement for all young people. We applaud and thank you for your effort and commitment.

State board acts . . .

2011-11-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, the state board took action to rearrange the state's required graduation credits. The total stayed at twenty, but they added one additional English credit for a total of four and a half Social Studies credit for a new total of three. They also made successful completion of Washington State History a non-credit requirement and added a half credit requirement for civics. These and other changes were passed on a 9 to 3 vote. I shared some of the process the State Board is using to make all Washington graduates college and work ready in this 2010 post on the essential 20.

You can read about the board's action on their website here where they describe what took place prior to the meeting. Tahoma was one of the 70 districts sending formal written comments to the board.

SBE staff reported that they had received formal written comments from 70 school districts and other stakeholders over the past two months on the proposed rule-making change. From staff comments, it appeared the majority of school districts that sent formal comments were opposed to changing the requirements at this time.

According to SBE staff, the top reasons for opposing the change at this time were:

Fiscal impact of making the changes, including the cost associated with staff mix, materials cost, adding sections, etc.
Loss of flexibility and choice by reducing electives
Concern from districts that may be meeting requirements now but are using local levy dollars which wouldn’t necessarily still be available with future funding cuts by the state
Some questions about how the two-for-one CTE credit requirement would be implemented

Our primary reasons for opposing the change at this time are related to cost and loss of flexibility. With about 40% of current seniors not meeting the new Social Studies requirement, if the requirement were in place today, it would have a significant impact on our elective program. This would create staffing concerns for the district and would take away additional flexibility from students and families as they plan for post high school learning and work. Since the legislation that is driving this change required that there be funding in place prior to implementing any changes, we agree with one of the dissenting board members reason for voting no.

Dal Porto also mentioned his concern about breaking the SBE’s commitment with school districts to push forward no unfunded mandates until funding is provided for the changes.

The changes are required for the class of 2016, the current eighth grade class. Because there were districts raising concerns, the board decided to compromise by allowing for a two year waiver to extend the requirement to the class of 2018. We have until June1, 2012 to decide if we want to apply for the waiver. I'm disappointed that this action was taken. It is not timely and I am not supportive of requirements that limit additional flexibility as do some who testified at the meeting.

Wood spoke specifically about a concern losing electives and questioned whether the SBE’s preferred “core” subjects really were the most relevant and critical to the success of all students.

“Is a fourth year of English, spent diagramming sentences, or a communications class in public speaking more relevant?” asked Wood.

WSSDA Past President Kevin Laverty (Mukilteo) and Northshore School Director Janet Quinn also spoke in opposition to the changes.

“We just can’t do it anymore,” said Quinn. “We have a dedicated group of educators who are doing their best, but they just can’t take on one more unfunded mandate. Something has to give.” She also mentioned that electives were sometimes the only thing that kept a student in school.

The frenzy for accountability . . .

2011-11-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

Amy Adams sent me a link to this New York Times article about implementation of Tennessee’s new teacher evaluation system. As a winner of a Race to the Top federal grant the state made the decision to develop a new model partly based on using student achievement data. Fifty percent of a teacher’s evaluation in Tennessee is based on their students’ state test scores and the model requires the principal to make at least four observations in every teacher’s classroom. The last part makes sense though I don’t see how it is possible in a large school with the additional requirements referred to in the article.

The state is micromanaging principals to a degree never seen before here, and perhaps anywhere. For example, Mr. Shelton is required to have a pre-observation conference with each teacher (which takes 20 minutes), observe the teacher for a period (50 minutes), conduct a post-observation conference (20 minutes), and fill out a rubric with 19 variables and give teachers a score from 1 to 5 (40 minutes).

Mr. Shelton is a middle school principal who used the following words to describe the situation.

“I’ve never seen such nonsense,” he said. “In the five years I’ve been principal here, I’ve never known so little about what’s going on in my own building.” Mr. Shelton has to spend so much time filling out paperwork that he’s stuck in his office for long stretches.

One other component of the model makes even less sense. Since not all teachers teach subjects that administer a state test such as P.E., art, music, K-3, and vocational teachers the decision was made to allow the individual teacher to choose which test they want to be judged on for fifteen percent of their testing evaluation. That has led to comments such as the following.

Several teachers without scores at Oakland Middle School conferred. “The P. E. teacher got information that the writing score was the best to pick,” said Jeff Jennings, the art teacher. “He informed the home ec teacher, who passed it on to me, and I told the career development teacher.”

All of this was done to align with what the federal education department sees as a necessary component of improving public education. For Tennessee, it has resulted in problems and requests to change the model that are currently being discussed. Why should we care? Because there is currently a process underway in our state that could also result in using test data to evaluate teachers and principals. It is the Teacher Principal Evaluation Project that has been in place for a year with some districts in year two of a pilot.

You can find information about the project on their site here and if you go to the TPEP Task Force page you can see that value added and student achievement is a topic of discussion at the meetings. Below are the agendas for the last two meetings.

November 10, 2011 – NEWESD 101 – Spokane, WA

• Agenda
• Common Cores State Standards: A Commitment to Student Success – Greta Bornemann, OSPI
• Developing and Assessing Teacher Effectiveness – Linda Darling-Hammond, Standford University
• Using Value Added for Teacher Accountability: What Could Go Wrong? – Jesse Rothstein, University of California, Berkeley

October 27, 2011 – City University – Renton, WA

• Agenda
• Overview of Student Growth for Non-tested Grades and Subjects – Gretchen Weber, American Institutes for Research
• Presentation and Discussion: How to Use Student Learning Objectives in Educator Evaluation – Joann Taylor, Austin Independent School District

To be in position for future federal grant opportunities the state will need to be using student achievement data to evaluate teachers and principals. I think this is inevitable given the current national trend and focus on teacher quality. My hope is that those engaged in this process do not replicate the problems being experienced in Tennessee. I agree with Alexander Russo in this post about both the situation in Tennessee and Florida. You can read about the Florida problems here.

These examples show just how disconnected teacher evaluation is getting from what teachers do.

I think it is unfortunate that in our state and in states around the country millions of dollars are being spent to create evaluation models whose stated purpose is to support teacher growth over time, but whose intent is to get rid of “bad” teachers. We don’t need a four tier model, required observations, and paper work to focus on instruction and support teacher growth. We need a shared vision of quality instruction and the capacity for principal and teacher leadership to create the cultures where quality is demanded and support is in place to balance this high demand.

In our system it is our focus on Classroom 10 and for this year on learning goals and checks for understanding. The conversations between teachers and principals and teachers are productive and are resulting in changed practice across our system. The layering on in two years of a new evaluation model that is aligned with our Classroom 10 goal will complicate the work and make it more difficult to maintain focus on the goal. We don’t need the threat of an evaluation to create changed classroom practice. We are experiencing it through our work and the foundation of that work is a collaborative system with the capacity to engage in difficult and important conversations about what quality learning and instruction look and sound like. This might be a model that reformers should consider.

The Student Housing report . . .

2011-11-08T22:28:00.000-08:00

Kevin Kalberg and Tanya Donohue

At the board meeting this evening we shared the student housing proposals from the Ad-hoc Citizen Committee that has been studying the issue since June. Over that time the committee met two times a month to understand our current reality and to identify options for the board to consider with the failure of last April’s bond measure. This included options for both short and long term housing needs.

It has been an interesting process as the group struggled to understand how we could be in the current situation and sharing their frustrations with our struggle in educating the voters about the need. They did accomplish the goal they were given and you can see the report on the district web page here. The board has some difficult decisions that will need to be made and the report will assist them in this process.

The committee was made up of nineteen citizens committed to our school system and determined to identify options that maintain the quality program currently in place and planned for the future. To a person, they volunteered to continue to support the board throughout the process and I believe will be there to support the final decisions made by the board. We owe them a huge thank you for their commitment to our school system and for sharing their time and thinking with us.

Committee members: Jett Thompson, Marcy Rice, Kaethe Long, Craig Mahoney, Chad Wall,
Michael Crowe, Megan Sheridan, Sean Cassidy, Christina Delia, Kartha Heinz, Kari LaBree, Kevin
Kalberg, Jill Saldivar, Joy Stramer, Kari Thomas, Catie Larsen, Tanya Donohue, Jim Flynn, and Dick
Peacock.

In addition to the citizens, there were two school board representatives; Tami Henkel, and Didem Pierson.

Support for the committee’s work was provided by staff members Mike Maryanski, Rob Morrow, Bruce Zahradnik, Fritz Gere, Robert Talbert, Terry Duty, and Kevin Patterson.

John Schuster represented teachers and Barbara Roessler represented classified staff.

State champions . . .

2011-11-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to our girl's cross country team who ran to a state title on Saturday at Pasco. Coaches Connor and Brady have built a quality program that experiences success from year-to-year and this year they made it all the way. Seeing that almost all the girls will be back, I would say that next year should also be successful.

Not only did the girls win, the boys finished in eighth place. Again, this shows the dedication of these young men and women and of the coaches that support them in this sport.

Not liking it . . .

2011-11-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

Google recently changed their RSS feeder page, something that I had become comfortable with over time. Not being very techie, I didn't take notice when they shared with users the information on the change to the page and further changes in the future. After reading some blog posts I guess it has something to do with integrating Reader into the new Google+.

What I do know is that I don't like the change and there are others who share my sentiment including Iranian youth. It seems that for some technical reason the Iranian government can't block Reader in the country so it has become a way to share uncensored news. The recent revisions to Reader may change this.

As explained by Amir on Amirhm.com, Google Reader is not a separate domain (i.e., it’s available at www.google.com/reader) and it’s available behind a secure URL beginning https. This setup makes it hard for the government to directly block and filter Reader, even though many other social services, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and Picasa, are routinely banned in Iran, a country that’s ranked as the world’s worst oppressor of online freedoms.

In Iran, Reader is able to serve as a hidden social outlet. It even has super-users like activist VahidOnline, a user with more than 7500 followers. These folks help share and spread news through Reader with posts that become online discussion boards for a network of Iranian users.

I'm in agreement with Stephen at Stephen's Web that it is now more difficult to use and with these comments from a former Google product manager. I find it much slower to use. Is anyone else having trouble with the change?

Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows.

Sorry, more budget news . . .

2011-11-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Though not planned, once again I'm focusing on the Governor’s proposed budget cuts because today the possible loss of state support for transportation made the news. KOMO dropped by a bus stop in Normandy Park to get parent reaction to the cut which is on the Governor’s list of potential items to reduce the $2 billion gap.

As with others on the list, there is disagreement as to whether transportation would fall under the protection of the state constitution as a part of basic education. Superintendent Dorn believes that transportation is a part of basic education and thus could not be cut.

Washington's state schools chief, Randy Dorn, says there's one more consideration here: the state Constitution requires the state government to amply pay the costs of basic education, as defined by the state Legislature. Student transportation is part of the definition of basic education and although it's been a long time since the state has paid the entire cost of busing kids to school, that doesn't mean it shouldn't even try, he said.

A staff member form the Office of Financial Management believes otherwise.

Jim Crawford, an education number cruncher in the state Office of Financial Management, said the definition of basic education is open for debate.

"Because it's basic ed, doesn't mean it can't ever be touched under any circumstances," Crawford said, adding that the Legislature would have to adjust the definition to make way for many of the governor's ideas for cutting the state education budget.

Representative Hunter also weighs in on the issue with the words below. As Chair of the Ways and Means Committee, he will have influence on the choices that are made to reduce the budget gap.

Jim Crawford, an education number cruncher in the state Office of Financial Management, said the definition of basic education is open for debate.

"Because it's basic ed, doesn't mean it can't ever be touched under any circumstances," Crawford said, adding that the Legislature would have to adjust the definition to make way for many of the governor's ideas for cutting the state education budget.

I find it hard to believe that cutting transportation funding is a viable option for consideration, but I’ve been surprised before. Since I last posted about this topic, we have received more detailed information on what the Governor’s proposed cuts would mean to our school system. Below are the two big dollar items and one I have not yet identified.

Increase Class Size: The proposal is to reduce revenue for students in grades 4 -12 that would have the potential to raise class size in grades 4-6 from 27 to 29; grades 7-8 from 28.53 to 30.53; and grades 9-12 from 28.74 to 30.74. Vocational class sizes would also go up by 2 students. The potential revenue loss to our system would be $1,226,310.

Levy Equalization Reduction: In our system this is projected to be $787,621.

One of the potential cuts I have not talked about is reducing the monthly state allocation for health benefits from $768 to $745. This would amount to a revenue loss of $157,386 in our system and a cost that would be assumed directly by staff members.

You can find these and other impacts from the Governor’s proposed cuts on the state’s Office of Financial Management web page.

In closing this post, remember the importance of letting your legislators know how you feel about these potential reductions to our revenue the remainder of this year and next. We are being told that the majority of calls legislators are getting come from those concerned with cuts to social service agencies that provide support to the young, the elderly, and the poor. Other than WEA, they are not hearing from voters concerned with additional cuts to public education. If they only hear from the associations that represent us, it will be much easier for them to balance the budget gap with cuts to our revenue.

Continued recognition . . .

2011-11-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

We continue to receive recognition from outside our school system. On Tuesday Tahoma High School was recognized by the College Board, the agency that administers the Advanced Placement program. The school was recognized as one of 367 earning a placement on the second annual College Board Honor Roll. You can read more about the honor on our web page and soon in the local papers. There were only 14 schools earning this honor in Washington.

School districts earn a place on the AP Honor Roll by simultaneously increasing access to Advanced Placement coursework while maintaining or increasing the percentage of students earning scores of 3 or higher on AP exams.

We need to thank Principal Duty for supporting and encouraging this program, the Teaching and Learning Department for their support and guidance, and Brooke Dillon for her day-to-day leadership and nurturing growth of the offerings and participation. Finally, we need to thank the teachers for the learning opportunities and the students for their commitment to taking these college level courses.

On the same day Rock Creek Elementary was featured on Channel 5 for their food composting program. Any of our schools could have been featured because as I shared in a previous post, all of our schools have this program. You can see the piece here. It does a nice job of showcasing students while also sharing our problem with over crowded schools.

These are two additional indicators of our success in two diverse areas. Once again, we can be proud of our school system; the commitment of the adults to creating quality learning environments and the achievement of our young people. I'm sure that I am missing many other areas of achievement and would welcome comments from readers sharing them.

Good news, bad news, and a misperception . . .

2011-10-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

There is both some good news and bad news as we learn more about the Governor's proposed budget reductions. The good news is that the levy equalization cut (LEA) would not start until January 2013. That means that we will not lose the revenue this year, about $930.000. The bad news is that her proposal also puts in place a new system that results in no LEA revenue in the future for many more districts including ours. So, potential short term gain and long term loss. At least we will be able to plan for the change, unlike the potential loss of about $1 million with the Governor's proposed grade 4-12 class size increase that, if enacted by the legislature, would result in a revenue reduction this year.

Somewhat related to the budget concern is an interesting conversation I had this afternoon with two Boeing employees. They were asking me how the Governor and legislators can cut teacher salaries like they did in this past budget when there are negotiated agreements in place. They were surprised to learn that the cut was to the district's revenue and not to actual teacher salaries. They quickly saw that the legislators looked tough in the media, but that they were actually simply shifting the problem to the school districts. The same thing could happen again in the November special session if they were to use salary cuts or reductions in student days to reduce state expenditures. We will continue to monitor and share what we learn.

Celebrating GREEN . . .

2011-10-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended a ribbon cutting on the Cedar River trail that featured Maple Valley's mayor and council members and our own Glacier Park Green Team led by advisor Cathy Haws. You can read here about the work on the trail and Glacier Park's adoption of a portion of the trail by their green team. I am very impressed with their web page and commitment to this work.

On another green note, on the high school web page you can read about our district being one of two in the county that have all schools participating in food waste recycling. Our students demonstrate their commitment to the environment in multiple ways such as these. We also have green team advisors at all of our schools who give their time and provide leadership and support to these efforts. THANK YOU!

The first cut . . .

2011-10-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

The budgeting process started today when Governor Gregoire released her list of potential budget cuts and as expected it will create problems for us and for all other districts in this state. Needing to cut in the range of $2 billion, she listed potential cuts of approximately $4 billion. From that list she identified her recommendations for consideration when the legislature convenes in special session on November 28th.

I watched part of the news conference and it was not pleasant to watch. The need and the process to arrive at the proposed cuts have taken their toll on the Governor as she outlined what she calls a budget that I hate. At times she was testy with reporter’s question especially around the point of balancing cuts with raising additional revenue. She stated more than once that she was not ready to talk about raising revenue.

What do the cuts mean for us? Though we are still getting information and analyzing the impact on us, the initial review looks like there are two main areas of concern. The first is levy equalization (LEA) that she is proposing to reduce by 50% or about $500,000 for us. The second is a proposal to increase class sizes in grades 4-12 that would be about a $1 million revenue loss for us. Just these two areas are about equivalent to 50% of our total fund balance, so it would be very, very difficult to operate the remainder of this year without some reduction in our expenditures.

In the next few days we will have a better picture of what the Governor’s proposed budget does to us. Of course, this is her proposal and the legislature must now weigh in. It is her hope that leaders of both parties will use her proposal to identify where they can agree so that they can come in on the 28th and be prepared to take action. That is also our hope.

You can see the proposed education list and cuts here and read about them here.

I'm stepping up . . .

2011-10-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

As always, Scott had an informative and thoughtful comment on my last post about the state PTA placing charter schools on their legislative agenda. He shares information about the process used by the organization to complete their legislative agenda and also a link to a sight showing member priorities. He also shares his thinking about how it became a priority through special interests at the state assembly even though it did not emerge as such in membership voting.

The thoughtful part of the comment is his personal thoughts about the decline of T in PTA. He shares how he needs to step up, be more visible, and participate in the conversation. Yes, I agree that we should. I also know that in our district these groups are very supportive and raise considerable amounts of money that go back into our schools to support teachers and students. They do this while also giving hundreds of hours of volunteer time and ask nothing in return, yet we don't see large numbers of staff joining the organization. So, an additional way to to participate would be by signing up and becoming an active PTA member; something that I know they would appreciate. I am going to take my advice and do just that and encourage you to also consider it.

http://www.wildcatbluenation.com/2011/07/monday-six-pack-stepping-up.html

An opening for charters . . .

2011-10-23T18:24:00.000-07:00

After many attempts by various groups and legislators charter schools have not become a part of public education in our state. Since the 2004 vote by the public overturning legislative action there has been very little discussion until Race to the Top. When the state made the decision to apply for this federal grant, charters once again became a topic of discussion. Some blame the failure of our state's bid partly on the lack of charters, something that the Obama administration is pushing. Once again, we can see how federal action, in this case millions of dollars, can have an impact on state actions.

At the recent state PTA conference charters became a topic of conversation and a part of the organization's legislative package. This Seattle Times article from last week provides information about the decision to support charters and if you check out the comments some of the concerns being expressed.

"This is an additional way of looking at schools and what we need to be doing differently," Shelley Kloba, the Washington PTA's state legislative director, said Thursday. She emphasized that the charter school issue was just another tool in a wider PTA agenda.

I'm surprised by the move and find myself wondering if it comes from the ranks or is a move by those supporting charters and also having a position of authority in the PTA hierarchy. From some of the comments to the article it may be the latter. I don't know the position of are our PTA officers, but would be interested to hear from them.

You can find the language for the proposal on the PTA site here.

Missed that one . . .

2011-10-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm going to share a third post on the Harkin/Enzi Senate reauthorization of ESEA bill. Why so much focus on this? Because when it finally happens, it will drive federal education policy for years and we have learned with the last two administrations that this can have significant impact on our work. Though I believe that some positive changes were ushered in by NCLB, it also pulled us away from our focus on Classroom 10 and had a huge influence on the focus at the state level. Think charter, assessment, teacher evaluation, and common core.

In my previous post I was skeptical about the chances of the Harkin's bill getting out of committee in a short time. Well, on a 15 to 7 vote it moved from committee to the floor. I agree with Petrilli at Education Next that this is a big deal.

This is a big deal, folks. The ESEA reauthorization process hasn’t gotten this far since–well, ever. In 2007 the House education committee floated a draft bill which then died an ignominious death. The Senate HELP committee has never produced a bill . So to have a comprehensive bill marked up and sent to the floor represents a significant milestone.

I also found this point from the article very interesting and hadn't really thought about it, but now I can see how this could very well be the current reality of the Democrat's position on reauthorization.

Republicans are in the driver’s seat. Yesterday’s unanimous Democratic vote might have been a display of party unity, but it also demonstrated a willingness to vote for almost anything. The Democrats want to send a bill to the President, and they will need Republican votes in order to do that. So expect GOP senators like Lamar Alexander to make their support contingent on key changes to the bill–and to get a lot of what they want. Meanwhile, the House bills (which are being put together in pieces) will surely come out to the right of the Senate. If Democrats want to get something across the finish line, they are going to have to accept something that looks a lot more like Alexander-Burr than Harkin-Enzi.

If you are interested and want to read more, additional articles on the subject are here, here, and here.

Not smooth sailing . . .

2011-10-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

blipfoto.com

The Harkin/Enzi bill I shared in my last post not only has detractors in the education community, it is experiencing problems in the committee debating the bill. Though it underwent revisions last weekend it is not being embraced by all senators. Senator Rand Paul used a procedural rule to force a temporary adjournment of the committee’s proceedings. It didn’t cause significant delay because the chair, Senator Harking was going to reconvene the committee and continue discussions this morning. He was, however, not pleased with Senator Paul’s action.

“We had hearings with superintendents, teachers, principals, broad input from across America,” Harkin said. “Does that mean every two years we have to start from scratch every time? The senator from Kentucky had every day since he was sworn in in January to come to me or Senator Enzi and say, ‘Here’s what I’d like to have in the bill.’ Other senators did that. Our doors are open. It was no secret that we were meeting. . . . If the senator filed 74 amendments but is objecting to our meeting to even consider his amendments, can please someone explain the logic of that?”

Senator Paul, who proposed 74 of the 144 amendments to the bill, used the words below to explain his concerns with the bill. I don’t know much about the federal legislation process, but 144 amendments seems like quite a number to process before the bill can even be considered on the Senate floor.

“This process is rotten from the top to the bottom,” said Paul, who was elected last year with support from the tea party. “I would ask that we have a hearing; let’s find out what we think of No Child Left Behind before we rush through a 868-page bill that no one has time to read. This is what’s wrong with Washington.”

This push back to the legislation is another indicator of the unlikelihood of seeing any reauthorization of IDEA emerge from this session. So, once again, the Obama waiver process appears to be the viable options for states as we get closer the 2014 100% at standard deadline. By the way, our state is one that has indicated to the federal education department an interest in seeking a waiver.

Reading deeper into my stack of RSS feeds I found an update at Education Week. It seems that Senator Paul has reached a compromise with Senate leadership.

The markup continued today after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., initially threw up hurdles, filing 74 amendments and using a rare procedural move to limit the time the committee could debate the bill. He and committee leaders reached an agreement that allowed things to move forward while assuring him of a hearing on the bill Nov. 8, before it goes to the Senate floor.

Sen. Paul eventually agreed to scale his amendments back to just a handful, including one to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act. That amendment failed.

Looking more closely at the Republican motivation for this legislation can be found in the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Enzi.

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., was more forceful. In fact, he cited the waiver process as a key reason the committee needed to get going on the bill. GOP lawmakers should "keep in mind that if they are concerned about an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy becoming a kind of national school board, they should support the legislation rather than allow the secretary's waivers to dictate the strings that come with state and local flexibility," Enzi said.

The question, however, remains the same. Is there enough bipartisan support to push through this legislation by December? Even if the Senate were successful there is still the divide between the house and senate approaches to removing NCLB as the federal education focus.

A Senate shot at reauthorization . . .

2011-10-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

Could the Harkin/Enzi bill coming out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee be the second nail in the coffin for NCLB? The first would be the Obama administration’s waiver opportunity unveiled last month that I shared in this blog post. Based upon the reaction by many to the Harkin/Enzi bill, I think the waiver request has a better chance of success. Never the less, Senator Harkin in this New York Times article sees his bill as a partnership and the best that could be done given the current political climate.

“We are moving into a partnership mode with states, rather than telling states you’ve got to do this and this and this,” Senator Harkin said in a call with reporters. The bill is a product of more than 10 months of negotiations with his committee’s ranking Republican, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, Mr. Harkin said.

Others don’t see merit in the bill. In this Education Week post we see that five key education groups are asking the Senator to put the brakes on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA. The groups are the American Association of School Administrators, the National Education Association, the National School Board Association, and the National Elementary and Secondary School Principal Associations. In a letter to the Senator they share their concerns with measures of student growth, flexibility in designing school turnaround models, the requirement to revamp teacher and principal evaluation models, and the focus on high stakes summative assessments.

It sounds like this group of key constituencies would rather roll the dice on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's waiver process, and perhaps even a Republican Congress, than deal with Harkin's bill.

In the same Times article, we learn that conservatives and special interest groups see this as rolling back the gains of NCLB but find themselves in a similar position of not supporting the Senate bill.

By eliminating the law’s central accountability provisions, the bill would represent “a significant step backward,” returning the nation to the years before No Child’s passage, when many states did a slipshod job of promoting student achievement, they said.

Under the Harkin bill, “states would not have to set measurable achievement and progress targets or even graduation rate goals,” six groups including the Education Trust, the Children’s Defense Fund and the National Council of La Raza, said in a letter to Mr. Harkin on Tuesday. “Congress, parents and taxpayers would have no meaningful mechanism by which to hold schools, districts, or states accountable for improving student outcomes.”

Mike Petrilli at FLYPAPER makes this suggestion.

“Anyone one of these would be a poison pill for conservatives. Taken in combination, it makes Republicans’ decision easy. Scrap the bill and start over – with Senator Alexander’s proposal as the jumping-off point. It’s a much stronger bill, closer in many ways to the Administration’s own blueprint, a much more serious about re-calibrating the federal role in education. And if Democrats won’t go for that – well, wait for a more favorable environment in 2013.”

I shared the Alexander proposal in this post.

Finally, here is how Kevin Carey at The Quick and The Ed summarizes the Harkin/Enzi bill.

So now we’re left with (Maybe Standards) + (No Accountability) + (Continued Teacher Injustice). No bill is better than this bill.

All of this criticism and the gap between the Senate and House process probably means there is little chance of a reauthorized ESEA this session. That leaves states with the waiver process for relief from the accountability requirement of 100% of students at standard in reading and math by 2014.

Blog Action Day . . .

2011-10-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is food. Bloggers from around the world have signed up to post today on a topic of world concern and since it is World Food Day the choice of topic was easy. I love to eat so it is also an easy topic for me, but instead of sharing my eating habits and favorite foods I'll share a link to The Sustainable Food Lab. I learned about the site from LeAnne Grillo who is doing some work for us at SoL Ed.

The mission of the Sustainable Food Lab is to accelerate the shift of sustainable food from niche to mainstream.

We define a sustainable food and agriculture system as one in which the fertility of our soil is maintained and improved; the availability and quality of water are protected and enhanced; our biodiversity is protected; farmers, farm workers, and all other actors in value chains have livable incomes; the food we eat is affordable and promotes our health; sustainable businesses can thrive; and the flow of energy and the discharge of waste, including greenhouse gas emissions, are within the capacity of the earth to absorb forever.

In our country we don't always think about where our food comes from or the people involved in growing it. This and other organizations are beginning to change that for us. They are concerned with not only the quality and safety of the food, but also with the quality of life it provides for those involved in growing it. Costco is one of the local businesses involved with the organization and this article from their newsletter shows what this means with a focus on egg production.

The lab's focus on sustainable farming practices is one that we need to embrace as the farmers of the world struggle to produce safe quantities of food necessary to feed a world population that continues to grow. Doing this while preserving the capacity of the earth to ensure future generations with safe and healthy food is the goal.

Another goof . . .

2011-10-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, I made an error in my last post and to my embarrassment Scott pointed it out to me in his comment to the post. In his usual way, he sandwiched it with positive feedback. I identified Steve as a key part of our relationship with TEA and at one time he was. Steve Pu;lkinnen was Uniserv rep. for many years and assisted in laying the foundation for our collaborative work. But, for many years now it has been Scott Mitchell who has provided the leadership and vision for what can be achieved with a balance of advocacy for his membership and understanding of a system perspective to problem solving.

Thanks Scott for identifying my error, for the kind words, and for your leadership.

Culture of collaboration . . .

2011-10-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to meet with leadership from TEA and PSE, the organizations that represent our teachers and our classified staff. During both meetings, the importance of being open to influence and being aware of one’s mental models and ladders of inference was reinforced for me. At points of time in both meetings, the content of agenda items could have led to polarization and traditional positional responses with the real discussion done in the parking lot after the meeting. For me, it meant I needed to suspend assumptions so that I could continue to hear and consider the expressed needs before jumping to conclusions. I believe that others in the room were doing the same thing.

Why are we able to do what many others seek to reach, but struggle to accomplish? I believe that there are many contributing factors such as our work with building common purpose, our commitment to collaboration, our behavior that manifests in contract language that demonstrates respect, and our openness to the concerns of members in both organizations. I also believe that our leadership training and focus on collaboration and effective communication have laid a foundation for the capacity to engage in skillful conversation.

One of the skills that we teach is what the literature calls left/right and we call public/private. It identifies the importance of saying in the meeting (public) what you would say to your best friend in the parking lot (private) so that you can influence decisions that are made and have those decisions be more likely to deal with the root of the problem and sustain over time. Most of the time, which is more than I observe in some other meeting contexts, this is what happens. I believe that it is the norm for these monthly meetings.

Of course, the people engaged in the conversations also have a great deal of influence on the culture. I have been fortunate to work with two HR people, Mary and Bruce, who have been able to support these conversations and maintain a collaborative culture over time and I’m confident that Mark will continue with this success. I have also been blessed over time with association leaders who are first advocates for their membership, but who also have the capacity to see a bigger picture and value collaboration as a problem solving tool. Believe me when I say that there are many times when I give thanks for people like Steve, Amy, and John for TEA and Barb, Connie Jo, and Karen from PSE. We have the capacity to disagree and problem solve with commitment to our various constituencies and laughter to energize us as we struggle with difficult issues.

Though it will be hard for some to believe, I look forward to these meetings and for the opportunity they give to live our belief in the importance that we each bring to the work of educating our young people. I am very thankful to be able to do this with quality people committed to success and willing to think and act systemically.

We can help . . .

2011-10-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

An editorial in today's Seattle Times encourages people to visit one of the county's 318 Starbucks stores. Why? Not necessarily for their caffeine fix, though I'm sure that Starbucks would appreciate it. They are asking readers to visit DonorsChoose.com, an online charity for classrooms. Through support of the Gates Foundation, $10 vouchers are available at Starbucks stores to be used to support teacher requests. It is a national organization doing good work so that teachers do not have to use their own money for classroom projects.

About 1,000 teachers in King County have posted project wish lists on the website. Founded in 2000, the nonprofit website connects public-school teachers in need of resources with donors. Around 118,000 public-school teachers have received funding for $46 million worth of books, art supplies, technology and other resources to help learning.

Interested donors purchase the vouchers, go to the website and then choose the teacher request that they want to support. In these difficult economic times with budget cuts we need to find additional ways to support teachers and this is one of those opportunities. Thanks to the Times for sharing this resource and for encouraging us to support our teachers through this action.

Federal education role . . .

2011-10-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://hpronline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/education_full.jpg

The growing role of the federal government in education and the views of G.O.P. candidate's is the focus of this analysis piece in today's New York Times. It is certainly something that we must consider as we get closer to the presidential and congressional elections. If the republican candidate were to be elected president and both the House and Senate were controlled by conservative republicans, we could see a very different Education Department emerge. Although many would welcome this, the landscape would change and if Michele Bachmann got her way it would be dramatic.

“Over a three-year period,” she explained in August at a rally in South Carolina, “I’d take the money we send to schools and write to superintendents, ‘No more requirements you have to deal with, but over three years you won’t have any money.’ ”

I don't expect to see this extreme change in the time frame she identifies, but thinking about it raises concerns. It would mean the loss of federal Title 1 money based on free and reduced lunch counts and federal support for special needs students. These are the cornerstones on which the department was built, extra support for economically and disabled students. Only later with NCLB in the Bush administration and then with RttT in the Obama administration did assessments, reporting, and incentives become a part of the work. For many of the candidates, these additional requirements and the influence of the Tea Party are resulting in the anti-federal push.

Though the anti-federal role position resonates with many and is supportive of education being the responsibility of the state, I don't believe that it will result in elimination of the department even with changes in leadership. I agree with Hess when he says:

“You can imagine,” said Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, “the Republican candidate is saying, ‘Not only do I want to end the Education Department as a bureaucratic monster, but I want to defund programs for needy kids or special-needs kids,’ or ‘I want to let states spend those dollars on other kids.’ That’s a very difficult debate for the Republican candidate.”

Those that advocate for a continued federal role and some form of accountability like NCLB argue that absent this accountability the gains made in education of disadvantaged groups will be lost.

The question is whether states and local districts, without Washington’s various carrots and sticks, will continue to raise academic standards and give equal opportunity to traditionally ignored student populations.

I know how I answer this question and believe that it would be the stance of all in our school system. We are not continuing to look for ways to support the achievement of all of our young people to qualify for federal dollars or to seek federal grants. We do it because it is our purpose for being and because we want success for all of those we have the responsibility to support. QUALITY LEARNING EVERYDAY IN EVERY CLASSROOM FOR EVERY CHILD, is not a saying, it is a belief that drives behavior.

Homecoming football plus . . .

2011-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Last evening was the homecoming football game at THS and the Bears put on quite an offensive show. They scored on the first play from scrimmage and didn't stop, putting up 55 points in a win over the Royals from Kent Meridian. These kids can score on the ground and in the air and have been doing it all year. It was a fun game and a great way to celebrate homecoming.

As good as the game was, I was even more impressed by the post game show featuring our performance band. Mr. Cole and his staff have the kids looking and sounding great. During the game, the pep band kept the stadium rocking and the percussion section is exceptional. It was a nice way to cap off an enjoyable evening.

Big $ at risk . . .

2011-10-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

This League of Education blog post does a nice job of sharing what levy equalization is and how it will become a primary focus for the legislators as they grapple with a $2 billion revenue shortfall. This gap could also increase as we were recently told by a key legislator that the November revenue forecast will be even further below projections. In any case, levy equalization is on the table because it is the last of the big dollar items not covered under basic education.

Below is an explanation from the post of what levy equalization does.

The amount a local school district can raise via a local school levy is set as a fixed portion of a school’s operating budget. Currently law allows all districts to collect at least 28% (raised from 24%), with some grandfathered in at higher rates. Local levies are based on property taxes, and thus property values. With the great disparity between property values in different communities, the state established a way to alleviate the fact that well-to-do districts can raise more local money. This program helps school districts with lower property values offer the same level of education as higher-value districts. It is called Local Effort Assistance, or Levy Equalization, and the acronym LEA was born.

There is an equity problem that LEA tries to address. If there was no levy equalization in 2010, a $100,000 home in Republic would have paid over twice the taxes of a $1,000,000 home in Redmond for a 28 percent levy. Why should far poorer taxpayers in a $100,000 house have to pay twice the taxes of a $1,000,000 Bellevue home to get the same local levy for their schools?

I think this brief explanation does a nice job of sharing why levy equalization is so important. It is especially so for small districts that would find it very difficult to pass levies at the percentages that are common in our area. We are one of those that are at the 28% level and we also qualify for levy equalization, projected to be about $930,000 in revenue this year.

Levy equalization has survived the budget cuts of the last few years because of support from republican legislators representing those districts receiving levy equalization and democrats supporting the need. There are 240 districts out of 295 currently receiving revenue so there has been broad support for it in the legislature. There are problems, however, with LEA because the formula creates disincentives for some to raise local dollars and an argument can be made that 240 districts don't need the support. Even with these problems it has survived. But, given today's budget crisis something has to go and this looks like one large pot at risk. The loss of another $900,000 to us would create problems not easily resolved and even bigger problems for some districts suffering significant budget issues. If cut, it could lead to some smaller districts being forced to consolidate.

Thank you Superintendent Dorn . . .

2011-10-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't get a chance to read today's Seattle Times, here is the editorial supporting Superintendent Dorn's refusal to identify for the Governor an additional 10% in cuts to public education. To deal with the revenue shortfall she had asked all heads of state agencies to identify an additional 10% for possible cuts. Superintendent Dorn has refused to comply with the request.

"I have directed staff not to submit a list of options to you that would cut the State's payments for basic education by $97.3 million as requested," Dorn said in a written response to Gov. Chris Gregoire's budget directive to state agencies.

Thank you Superintendent Dorn for taking this stance. I doubt that it will have any influence on the decisions that need to be made, but at least he is advocating for all students in the state. The bottom line is that cuts will be a reality and it is likely that we will also feel the pain. Will it be 10%? I don't think so because of previous cuts, the lawsuit now before the State Supreme Court, and the constitutional requirements that we are all familiar with.

Is the Superintendent playing politics as some suggest in the comments to the editorial? I choose to view his position as advocacy for public education and not playing political games. It is an attempt to balance the high demand placed on all public schools with the support necessary to achieve NCLB benchmarks and the need to prepare students for success in post high school learning and work. Additional cuts will eliminate even more of the support structures that many do not understand are essential components of learning communities focused on student achievement and adaptive change. Reading the comments to the editorial reinforces for me the lack of understanding that many have for the complexity of our work. Some examples are shared below.

**Our education system needs restructuring. We need to return to the curriculum of the 1960s when the SAT scores were much higher.

The reason our test scores are moving lower and lower each year is because we have changed the curriculum from one of teaching the basics to one that is so broad based little is learned because there is not enough emphasis on the three Rs and science.

**Dorn is the boss and paid to lead, not obstruct. There are places to cut and ways to save. It may mean kids with laptops learning from home and reducing classes to a couple of days a week.

Less money, it means the same to a state superintendent as it does to your household finances. Crying to the world and ignoring the problem will not resolve the issues, except who will be replacing Dorn next election.

Almost all of the 24 comments are against the Times for supporting Dorn's stance. You can find them here. On this one I say thanks, though it probably won't influence the outcome it is good for our Superintendent to say enough is enough.

Two leadership books . . .

2011-10-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

Many in our system know that I enjoy reading and studying about leadership and sometimes ask me to share some of the books that I read. Two books that I have read within the last year that are influencing my thinking and my work are Change the Culture Change the Game by Collins and Smith and Clear Leadership by Bushe. If these books had been available earlier in my career I am sure that they would have influenced the direction and pace of my work and that of our system.

I am particularly interested in what Bushe calls the "interpersonal mush" that forms when we make up stories about our experiences and about others. This "mush" is the result of forming ladders with little or inaccurate data and gets in the way of skillful conversations and quality solutions to difficult issues. One of the strategies that he identifies is using the Experience Cube. In simple terms, he suggests that we need to ensure that people know what we are observing, thinking, feeling, and wanting to preclude mush from being formed. In the absence of us sharing this about ourselves others will make up stories that may or may not be true, but will in either case guide their actions toward us. Of course, we do the same thing about others when they do not share the information. Though it is much more complex than this, the book provides us with guidance on how to move our journey forward while creating and maintaining communities of learning.

I would recommend these books if you are interested in leadership and increasing your capacity to support and influence your colleagues. Of the two, Change the Culture Change the Game is a more difficult read but very supportive of understanding what to focus on in creating cultural change that will sustain over time.

What next . . .

2011-09-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

Though it has nothing to do with our work, I found this video on Russo's This Week In Education fascinating. It is about 3D printing and shows a crescent wrench being reproduced on a printer. When finished it actually works.

I have no idea on cost or potential, but it is intriguing. I'd like to embed the video on my post, but I still haven't been able to do that. You can get to it on the Russo post (he is obviously more technically adept than I am) or on the link below. Let me know what you think. Any education uses? Maybe we could use it to build a new school or at least a few more permanent classrooms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw&feature=player_detailpage

Find comon ground and get moving . . .

2011-09-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

Reflecting on the President’s and Mr. Duncan’s waiver proposal leads me back to a series of blogs from the previous week on four NCLB bills proposed by four republican senators. It leads to believe that there is some common ground to get moving with some sense of urgency on reauthorization. I think the bills and the waiver opportunities have merit and are at least moving in the right direction, something that we have not yet seen from either house.

Key features of the proposed bills include the following.
• Removal of 100% at standard by 2014 and labeling of failing schools.
• Continuation of testing at grades 3-8 and once in high school in reading and math.
• Required reporting on subgroups.
• Adoption of college and career ready standards with similar flexibility to the proposed waiver standards.
• Required support for lowest achieving 5% of schools with additional intervention options.
• Scrapping the highly qualified teacher provisions.
• Consolidating 59 federal programs into two flexible funds.
• Expansion of charter options.

These are certainly a beginning and foundation for dialogue. Yes, others want more flexibility and the removal of mandated testing while still others see any change as rolling back progress on changes supporting all children. Unfortunately, as I shared in my previous post on the proposed waivers, the reauthorization process has now become an election issue with each party blaming the other. Below is a response from a House Democratic aide to the proposal from the four senate republicans.

. . . said the Senate GOP is "continuing to play politics with education policy, and not doing anything serious for kids." The move is "fully in line" with the GOP's desire not to give Obama a victory on education, the aide argued.

In this Democrats for Education Reform post they take a similar stance.

"In one fell swoop, Senators Alexander, Burr, Isakson, and Kirk have capitulated in the one issue area where Republicans could reasonably claim to stand with rank and file voters against the political and economic powers that be," said Charles Barone, DFER Director of Federal Policy. "By giving in to those in the education establishment for whom education reform recently has made life difficult, they have pulled the rug out from under parents and state and local advocates across the political spectrum who have used federal law to leverage unprecedented changes in their school systems."

What I find interesting is the similarity between the senator’s proposals and the proposed waiver conditions. These include no longer needing to meet the testing benchmarks and labels that go with it, adoption of a set of core standards, continued testing, and support for the bottom 5% of schools. Why can’t this agreement result in meaningful attempts to reach agreement on a reauthorization?

Senator Alexander, one of the authors of the senate bills is going further in an attempt to move legislation and accomplish reauthorization by the end of the year. In an attempt to move forward he will be resigning his Republican Senate Leadership position to work more closely in a bipartisan manner with democrats on education reform. We need more of this – the foundation is there for dialogue in these four bills, in the house action to date, and in the waiver proposal. It is time to move forward. Yes, there are very difficult issues that need to be resolved, but making it an election issue will only polarize positions, not move us forward.

Waving goodbye . . .

2011-09-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last week the NCLB waiver possibility became a reality as President Obama shared the plan in a White House news conference. We have been hearing about it for months in speeches by Secretary Duncan and now know that states can apply for the waiver, under certain conditions. Like most things related to education, the response has been varied and depends upon the publication or blog you choose to read. For example, if you go to the Education Department site you will read how positive the move is for states and schools. In SecretaryDuncan’s letter to Chief State School Officers explaining the waiver process he shares some of his reasoning.

. . . Instead of fostering progress and accelerating academic improvement, many NCLB requirements have unintentionally become barriers to State and local implementation of forward-looking reforms designed to raise academic achievement. Consequently, many of you are petitioning us for relief from the requirements of current law. One of my highest priorities is to help ensure that Federal laws and policies can support these reforms and not hinder State and local innovation aimed at increasing the quality of instruction and improving student academic achievement.

It is hard to argue with this reasoning, but will the waivers free us up from the onerous requirements of NCLB without adding additional requirements? Once again, it depends upon who you read. For example, in this Washington Post blog by Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest one comes away thinking this may not be a good idea.

The Obama administration’s new No Child Left Behind “flexibility” plan offers our struggling public schools a leap from the frying pan to the fire.

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan provide no relief from No Child Left Behind’s massive over-use of testing — more testing than in any other advanced nation. In fact, they are demanding more, not less, testing. They provide no relief from NCLB’s mandated misuse of test scores for school accountability. And their plan will push states into adopting highly flawed and inaccurate uses of student test results to judge teachers and principals.

Or this from Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

“The truth is the secretary has the states over a barrel. Most governors want a waiver. Almost every state, they’ll be asking for a waiver,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who has introduced a Republican education package that would remove most of the national standards and leave them to the states. The waivers “run the risk of 100,000 schools being supervised by a national school board,” he said.

What must states do to receive the waiver that can be awarded as early as January? They must adopt college and career-ready standards. They don’t force states to adopt the Common Core, but they are promoted as college and career-ready. Second, they must have in place rigorous interventions to turn around the bottom 5% of schools and an additional 10% of schools with low graduation rates or large achievement gaps. Third, they must have in place a teacher and principal evaluation system that in some way uses student achievement data.

What do states get in return for agreeing to these waiver conditions? They are free of the requirement to have ALL children at standard in math and reading by 2014, a goal that never had a chance of being reached. Schools would no longer be labeled as failing if this provision of the law is waived. As shared above by Neill however, the testing requirements remain in place.

What next? In the short term the political battle and finger pointing will continue. The Republican response has been swift and negative as seen in this NY Times article.

“In my judgment, he is exercising an authority and power he doesn’t have,” said Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota and chairman of the House education committee. “We all know the law is broken and needs to be changed. But this is part and parcel with the whole picture with this administration: they cannot get their agenda through Congress, so they’re doing it with executive orders and rewriting rules. This is executive overreach.”

An obvious question then would be if we all know it is broken why have we not been able to fix it considering the law has been due for a rewrite since 2007? There will be much political capital to gain as election season heats up and the major players use NCLB to seek votes. For us, it means more waiting to see what eventually will land on us from above. In the meantime we will continue to move forward on what we believe will support success for more young people in our system.

Turnaround . . .

2011-09-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

Most of the turnarounds I read about are the ineffective strategies used to turnaround "failing" schools. This turnaround, however, is about football. We went from 0 and 3 last week to 3 and 0 this week. The Bears, Huskies, and Seahawks all won. Once again the Bears and Huskies put up big points, something it appears they will need to do all season as they struggle on defense. The Seahawks on the other hand have little offense, but yesterday came through on defense. For one week at least the results feel good.

Not good for us . . .

2011-09-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

The deepening budget problem has resulted in the Governor calling for an unprecedented special session in late November. Normally, the legislators would wait until the regular session and begin with a supplemental budget process as they did last year when cuts were made at that time. This is not good for us for many reasons. I have shared many times how difficult it is to cut once a budget has been adopted and now this will happen two years in a row. We have also been "trimming" our budget for the last three years so the "fat" has been pretty much lost. I understand and have empathy for our elected officials because they are in a similar position.

This does not, however, remove them form the need to provide us with an adequate and stable funding base. Something must change so that we do not go through the painful process of developing a balanced budget and then find within the first month that there will be less state revenue than what the budget was built upon. Even more troublesome is that they then decide we should go three months into the budget year before they can tell us how much less revenue we will have.

One additional reason for concern is the timing. They are waiting until November for the next revenue forecast. That makes sense for them, but for us it is a problem because we must certify our levy collection that month. If we knew the cut by then we might have the capacity to offset some of it through this process. Waiting until the end of November, if they even get done by then, eliminates this important option for us and for many others school districts.

In this Seattle Times article we learn that cutting at the state level is also much more difficult. According to the Governor, they have fewer options.

Gregoire contends that nearly two-thirds of the budget is essentially off-limits to cuts because of federal mandates and state constitutional restrictions. The biggest components are basic education, Medicaid, pensions and state debt.

That means the $2 billion in cuts must come from the remaining $8.7 billion of the budget that is unprotected by the constitution or federal law, the governor said. "That is, bottom line, a 23 percent cut," she said.

. . . "We're going to have to admit there are things we simply as a state can no longer do," she said.

The ranking Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, however, has a different opinion.

Zarelli disagreed that any part of the budget is off-limits. For example, he said, the state could choose to stop certain services even if it meant losing federal matching dollars.

"A lot of times we simply do things because there is a 50 percent federal share. We still have state money in there. If that's not a high priority lets look at it from the perspective of what could you do with that money," he said.

I think this might be a long session or the leadership will cut a deal and get it approved and out so that they will be ready for the regular session where they can begin the process all over again.

Losing respect . . .

2011-09-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

I seem to lately be focusing on the issue of respect for teachers and battles between the various groups attempting to fix us, meaning public schools. This post is from Larry Ferlazzo a teacher sharing his Q and A ongoing column on Education Week Online about teacher respect. Weekly, Larry is asked a question that he responds to online. The question for this week is:

What social/political causes have contributed to the downgrading of respect for the teaching profession?

In his short response he agrees that there has been a decline in respect for teachers though he does site the recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll I blogged about where 71% of those surveyed say that they have trust and confidence in the men and women teaching their children. He goes on to share, how in the same poll 68% of people heard more bad stories about teachers in the news media than good ones. He doesn’t say so, but this can’t help but be a contributing factor to the overall feeling that current teachers have about their profession.

He also uses something called Google Books Ngram Viewer to search, compare, and graph word usage in hundreds of years of books. He admits it is not scientific research but the resulting graph is interesting, how the words blaming teachers passed the words respecting teachers about 1990.

In the column Ferlazzo invites guests to respond to the question. One of the invited guests was Dennis Van Roekel, NEA President who shared the following in his reply agreeing with the questioner that respect for teachers is indeed declining.

Improving public education is a shared responsibility. Too many of us have fallen prey to a fallacy that schools can overcome all problems. Our students need social programs and safety nets that make it possible for them to arrive at the schoolhouse door ready to learn. Our foreign competitors have found ways to limit inequality--why can't we?

I find this argument in much of my current reading about the “reformer” battle and am influenced by it. I think that the reformers tend to shunt the poverty and social issue to the side in their eagerness to focus on the teacher as the pivotal point of successful reform.

Though we do not have significant poverty in our system our Free and Reduced Lunch numbers are increasing and this does have an influence on the capacity of our schools to meet the needs of every child. This was once again evident to me today in my conversation with one of our principals where we discussed the problems associated with students coming to our schools not ready to be students. They aren’t prepared for participating in a classroom setting, they struggle to sustain a focus over time, they do not have the life experiences that prepare them for the school success, they don’t have support at home, and the system struggles to provide the non-academic interventions that are needed prior to or at least concurrently with the academic support.

Van Roekel also addresses this point.

We hear all the time that American students score lower than some of our foreign competitors, but critics don't seem to want to know how and why that happens. One reason: Our child poverty rate is over 20 percent. Finland's is less than five percent. In American schools with low child poverty, our students can take on the best in the world.

Ferlazzo’s blog is one that I have shared before. He is definitely on the other end of the continuum from those labeled as “reformers” and one you might want to follow as he regularly updates his readers on this issue.

The good vs. the bad . . .

2011-09-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve been holding a blog post sent to me by Amy Adams for about a week as I was focused on other things and also because of what it pushed me to think about. Amy is TEA’s chief negotiator and has been for many years. Over this time and even before that we have had numerous conversations about our work and her advocacy for teachers. Though we don’t always agree on an issue, we share our thinking, seek to find common ground, and I believe leave with mutual respect for the roles that we play and for our concern with the future of public education.

The post that she shared with me is by David Sirota and comes from SALON. It is titled, The bait and switch of school “reform” and is a lengthy blog post. In it, Sirota takes on the positions espoused by the “reformers”, in this case beginning with Steven Brill’s new book, Class Warfare. I haven’t read the book, but I have read reviews in blog posts. Brill would be viewed as one in the “reformer” camp pushing for charters, rigorous teacher evaluation models that use student achievement data, common core, common assessments . . .

Sirota sees Brill and others as contributing to a simplistic view of the education issue today with greedy teachers on one side and “reformers” including very wealthy corporations and foundations working for the kids on the other side.

The dominant narrative, in other words, explains the fight for the future of education as a battle between the evil forces of myopic selfishness (teachers) and the altruistic benevolence of noblesse oblige (Wall Street). Such subjective framing has resulted in reporters, pundits and politicians typically casting the "reformers'" arguments as free of self-interest, and therefore more objective and credible than teachers' counterarguments.

The truth, of course, is that for all the denialist agitprop to the contrary, corporate education "reformers" are motivated by self-interest, too.

Sirota identifies three of those areas of self-interest that I share below. He makes some interesting arguments that I will let you read by going to the post.

Self-Interest 1: Pure Profit

Self-Interest 2: Changing the Subject From Poverty to Inequality

Self-Interest 3: New Front in the War on Unions

I believe that the following excerpt from the post captures the essence of Sirota’s feelings on the issue of profit.

Corporate education "reformers'" self-interest, by contrast, means advocating for policies that help private corporations profit off of public schools, diverting public attention from an anti-poverty economic agenda, and busting unions that prevent total oligarchical control of America's political system. In short, it's about the profit, stupid.

Neither side's self-interest is perfectly aligned with the goal of bettering our education system. But one side is clearly far more aligned with that goal than the other.

I find myself agreeing with the premise that education writers and “reformers” have been successful at creating a simplistic view of our current reality in public education with teachers and unions on one side and “reformers” and rich individuals and foundations on the other. I would add, however, that included in the “reformer” camp would be governors and other state leaders pushing to weaken union influence and the Obama administration embracing many of the same reform strategies being pushed by these individuals and groups. They are not pushing reform for a personal or corporate profit.

I also don’t agree that the primary motivation of corporate “reformers”, education writers, and foundations is about profit. Certainly, those from the corporate world are concerned with profit and that there is money to be made as public education continues to be pushed towards necessary reforms. But, I also believe that there is a genuine concern in the level of knowledge and skills possessed by our high school graduates and the impact that this has on the future work force. Perhaps I just want to have a positive presupposition because of all the conflict, but I struggle to see profit as the primary motivation for the majority of those in the “reformer” camp.

Putting the blame on teachers and teacher unions frankly makes me mad. Teachers care and work hard to support young people and unions were introduced at a time when changes and advocacy were needed. Of course, my frame of reference is from our system and the manner in which we approach our work. If I were in Tacoma right now facing a strike over a transfer policy needing to change I would think differently. But, it is possible to form productive partnerships with teacher associations led by officers who balance advocacy with a focus on the needs of young people in our schools.

Once again, reading this post is upsetting when I think of the wasted energy devoted to this “fight” and to the influence people outside our profession have through control of millions of dollars given to anyone willing to agree with their positions. This would include schools and school systems and those in elected positions seeking support for reelection.

Though not labeled as such, I consider our school system and myself as reformers. We learn from the research and are focused on success for all students. We use nontraditional delivery models and see the need for including online and blended learning opportunities. We acknowledge the need for change and are open to influence by those that have experienced success. We are one of those systems trying hard and getting positive results. I believe that our culture and the relations that we have with both bargaining units contributes to our success. A foundation might want to study us as a possible “reform strategy”, it might go further than weakening the union, or all kids moving to charters. Oh well, I can at least dream.

Thanks, Amy for sharing this. Much of what I read in the blogs I follow gives me the other side, it is important to hear from teachers and teacher unions. I think much of our problem is because of all the voices out there on both sides. There is far too much “interpersonal mush” controlling our experiences and behavior.

A losing weekend . . .

2011-09-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping that this weekend will not be the norm for the season, because it is my first 0fer with Tahoma, the Huskies, and the Seahawks all losing. The Bears lost on Thursday night to Kentwood 24 to 17, the Huskies losing to Nebraska 51 to 38, and the Seahawks blanked by the Steelers 24 to 0. I can only say yuck.

The Bears and Huskies are young. They give up big plays, but they do not quit. They score points, but unfortunately they also give up a lot of points. I see hope for both and enjoy watching them as they grow and mature into solid football teams.

The Seahawks are also young, but unlike the Bears and Huskies they don't score points. Today they were shut out with little offensive production. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be because the Steelers started out slowly. It is going to be a long and difficult season and hard to watch. Combined record thus far is 3 wins and 5 losses. not a good start.

Reacting to budget unknowns . . .

2011-09-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Well, it is now official; there is a projected $530 million shortfall in tax collections over the next three years that could result in a $3.2 billion budget gap. Something must change for the state budget to balance. With the republicans saying no to a tax increase and with passage of the initiative requiring a two-thirds vote on any tax increase the alternative is more cuts. We have been down this road before, but as I have shared it will be different for us because we used the fund balance and with enrollment less than we projected we can't count on additional revenue from this source. See this Seattle Times article for some legislator reaction.

Republicans budget writers said tax increases were not acceptable and that they can block any such proposals because of a voter-approved initiative that requires a two-thirds legislative majority to pass them.

"How do you get more revenue out of people who still don't have work?" asked Republican Rep. Ed Orcutt of Kalama.

Democrats were considering a proposal that would ask voters to approve taxes in order to support education, which has faced much of the cuts. Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, said lawmakers need to work on getting a plan together to pass before January.

This comment from our state's chief economist may be the most disturbing part of this situation.

"I truly wish I could assure you that this nightmare is about to end, but I see no end in sight," said Arun Raha, the state's chief economist.

In this Tacoma News Tribune article Victor Moore, the governor’s budget director, has a slightly different take on the current situation.

Moore said not all is doom and gloom. He noted that the state is still on track to finish the current two-year budget cycle with $87 million in its checking account and $442 million in the “rainy day” savings account. Thirty other states have negative balance sheets, he said.

“We are still positive,” he said. “I’m looking at a slowly recovering economy, and we will balance the budget in November. To say we’re in a deficit doesn’t take into account the work we will do.”

Unfortunately, I'm not as confidant and I am concerned with not knowing what this will mean for schools. We have an opportunity to establish the levy rate that could influence our revenue for the year, but not knowing if or what revenue may be cut may keep us from using this process to maximize revenue. The Governor has ordered her budget director to immediately cut $200 million that should not impact us, but probably won't be enough to satisfy the need or the legislators who are scheduled to come together for the next session in January. We don't want to wait until January and operate as if there are no concerns, but at the same time we do not want to overreact. What would you recommend?

Importance of relationship . . .

2011-09-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Today, we had our first PTA Roundtable meeting of the year. Representatives from each PTA meet with us monthly during the school year to share information, coordinate initiatives, and surface rumors in our school community. One of the first things that I did as superintendent was to organize the initial meetings that led to the formation of this group. I believed then and continue to believe in the importance of relationship with these key contributors to the success of our school system. Since those initial meetings, members of the PTAs have stepped forward to assume coordination and facilitation responsibilities for these meetings. I look forward to these opportunities for sharing and engaging with these important members of our school system.

At this morning's meeting I was asked to share the video Don't Stop Believing that was developed at the high school. Though it hasn't yet gone viral there have been 1279 views. I encourage you to take the four minutes to view it and share it with your friends. I have seen it multiple times and each time it gives me goose bumps. Though I laugh at parts I know how some of the featured adults needed to stretch their comfort zones to participate. I also know that this personal stretch once again demonstrates their commitment to the young people in their school and to the belief that drives their behavior as they create options for each student to experience success on their journey. I am so proud of Terry and his leadership team for showing us the importance of relationship and doing whatever it takes to develop and maintain One School.

Kindness . . .

2011-09-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

One of the newsletters that I follow is Simple Truths, a source of motivational and inspirational gifts. The newsletters always contain something from Mac Anderson the founder that are inspirational and sometimes thought provoking for me. In this one he shares a video focused on the formula for bringing joy into your life summed up in one word; kindness. The video consists of short sayings on kindness embedded in beautiful pictures and is worth the three minutes. They made me reflect on who I am, how I live my personal and professional life, and what I can do to be more kind. Below are two examples from the video.

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Leo Buscaglia

“To the world you may be just one person . . . but to one person you might just be the world.” Mark twain

If you want to sign up for the newsletter you can do it here.

Two big questions . . .

2011-09-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

After one week and the first official enrollment count there are two big questions that concern me and that have the potential to have a significant impact on our school system.

Given the projected shortfall in revenue, how will the Governor and legislators balance the budget?
How do we change the mental model held by many in our community that we don't need to increase our capacity to house students?

On the budget issue, this Seattle Times article is a concern because if what Senator Zarelli is proposing were to take place we would not know until after the first of the new year what to expect in budget cuts. Instead of a special session he is suggesting that a bipartisan panel be formed to identify potential cuts for the full legislature to consider in January. Unfortunately, not all legislators agree so if nothing can be worked out the Governor may have to implement across the board cuts of up to 10%. That could mean up to $700,000 for us and I would not want to wait until the new year to know this.

To make the budget issue worse, our first enrollment count was below projected enrollment and at this time is below the first count for last year. This means that we will not have additional enrollment revenue to make up for some of the expected budget cuts. If implemented this would be the second year in a row that we will have experienced a revenue reduction after passing a budget and starting the school year.

The second big question has even bigger consequences for the future of our school system. Our schools are full and we need additional housing capacity. We have increased capacity by placing 73 portables on our campuses without increasing infrastructure in any of the buildings. These portables, using space for classrooms that were not designed for this use, and changing attendance areas has resulted in a mental model for many in our community that don't worry we can make it work. Well, that may be possible for the short term, but we can no longer add portables and have few spaces left for regular classrooms. Either we add capacity or we change who we are. How do we increase capacity before significant changes must be made to our program? Potential options will come from our citizen's committee studying the issue, but changing the mental model and passing a bond measure will be more difficult.

These questions hover over everything that we do, but are out of sight for most people in our community and for many in our school system. They drain energy from the system and cause anxiety. We must find ways to make them visible and understood so that answers can be found that result in stability and focus on what we must do to prepare all young people for success in post high school learning and work.

On the lighter side . . .

2011-09-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

If you are a doodler like me, you may find this post on Mind/Shift interesting. The author shares a research study that suggests that learning is enhanced in science when students draw a scientific concept. Doodling helps!

The research suggests that when students draw a scientific concept, such as a sound wave, they understand it better. But just as important as their understanding, perhaps, drawing helps them feel more engaged and excited about learning.

I don't know if it helps adult learning outside of science, but I believe that doodling assists me in staying engaged. It went from doodling to games on my phone. The games create a negative mental model for others in the room, so I made a commitment to the ELT to discontinue that practice. Now, when I have paper I doodle. I think I'll start paying closer attention to the doodles to see of they are in any way connected to the conversations.

Smooth start . . .

2011-09-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

It was a good opening to the school year. When asked, all principals said things went well except for a couple of issues. I received no parent complaints about busses being late or not showing up, so Bruce as the new Transportation Supervisor was spared a phone call from me. I’ll need to find another reason to question him about his new role.

One of the important considerations for the first week is enrollment because the majority of our general fund budget is based upon the number of students that enroll. Yesterday, not counting the high school and kindergarten, we were about 70 below projection. Today, counting the high school, that same number is about 20 above projection. Typically, we would like that number to be between 75 and 100 above projection because it normally decreases over the course of a school year.

Even with our housing issues, I would like to see that number well above projection this year because of the potential for additional budget cuts as early as this month. We know the September revenue projections will be below those that the state used to finalize their budget and the Governor has already warned state agencies to prepare for further cuts. A cushion in the budgeted enrollment would assist us in working through these expected additional cuts. To balance our district budget for the year without major program changes required us to use some of our fund balance, something that we will not be able to continue over time. We now wait to see what the cuts will be and determine at that time if any enrollment increases might offset some of those cuts.

I’m looking forward in the next week to my first opportunity to get into classrooms with principals and to the conversations that follow as we implement our Classroom 10 goal and the support structures necessary to achieve it. Though budget and housing are two very important issues facing our school system, the work in classrooms is still the number one priority as we have another opportunity to support all students through quality learning, every day, in every classroom, for every child.

A big thanks . . .

2011-09-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

I want to thank all of the custodial and maintenance staff for their effort and commitment over the summer to get our buildings ready for tomorrow's opening. Like many things in our district, we are not overstaffed in this department. These men and women deserve a thank you from all of us for preparing and maintaining these learning environments.

Here is a link to Living In A Custodial World, a blog authored by the high school head custodian Rick Bergum. In this post he shares last minute work that the crew was able to complete for tomorrow.

Once again, THANK YOU to the Custodial and Maintenance staff!

On yesterday's post the link to the free ebook didn't attach. Sorry, here it is.

Free tools for teachers . . .

2011-09-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

At Free Technology for Teachers, Richard Byrnes shares links to sites that support teachers use of technology. In this post he shares a link to a free ebook, The Super Book of Web Tools for Teachers. This can be a valuable source of ideas for those comfortable with web 2.0 tools and a support for those wanting to try new things,

I recommend that you add his blog to your RSS feed.

My blog in a word cloud . . .

2011-09-01T19:22:00.000-07:00

I tried a new site for creating word clouds called Tagul. It was easy to sign up and and to use. I need to spend some time playing with the options because the background of this one makes it difficult to see the words. I like the prominence of teacher and learning since that is what we are all about.

This one took about 30 additional seconds and I think is a better visual. If I spent more time filtering out more of the words like August that are simply dates it would be a better representation of the blog's content focus.

Motivating the unmotivated learner . . .

2011-08-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

As we start a new year, this is a timely post by Larry Felazzo on ways to motivate the unmotivated learner. He shares responses to the question from Daniel Pink and Dan Ariely, two researchers and authors doing work in this field. There are no silver bullets, but there are some strategies and insights that are good to keep in mind because these students are in most classrooms.

Pink focuses on the importance of why and bringing relevance to the learning for the student, something that we are focused on with our key content goal. Ariely talks about the "Ikea Effect" - people valuing something more because of the labor they invested into creating it. There is a short video by Ariely where he shares some of what he has found to be helpful in his research with examples for teachers.

A big week . . .

2011-08-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

This is an important week as teachers "officially" return to prepare for the new year. Yes, most have already started this process, but this is the week when principals and leadership teams have the opportunity to share their message and establish a focus for the year. The message this year will include, in part, the system focus on Classroom 10. We struggled last year with this goal, but with support from principals and teacher leaders we now have a goal that is focused with support structures in place. It is a two year goal with the potential to influence learning in all district classrooms.

As we start the year, we will immediately feel the influence of the budget cuts on our work. The furlough agreement we reached with TEA resulted in a loss of time that was traditionally used in August to prepare for the coming year. I know from conversations with principals that they are concerned with losing these opportunities, but understand and agree with the decision. We can only hope that the loss of salary and time will be replaced in the next biennial budget. In the short term,we are waiting anxiously for the September revenue forecasts and hoping that they will not result in additional cuts to a budget that starts September 1st.

As the week unfolds I will be interested in your thoughts about our goal. Please feel comfortable to share with me as I will be in buildings or respond with a comment to this or future posts.

One last word . . .

2011-08-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

Two comments and a post by Jay Mathews at Class Struggle bring me back to my posts on the question from the PDK/Gallup Poll on American Education focused whether teachers are born or made. In the poll 70% of the respondents said natural talent and 28% said college training. In his post Mathews shares the response from Michael Milone a research psychologist to both the quality of the question and to the responses.

“First of all, they should never have included the question because it is completely absurd. Second, how can that many Americans be that stupid. (Oh, wait, never mind.) If just about any other profession other than teacher had been substituted, the answer would have gone the other way. What I find so annoying is that by including the question, they have validated the mistaken opinion (think attributional error) that there is no special training needed to become a teacher, and that people are born to it. Given that the majority of human behaviors, particularly those that are intentional, are shaped by life circumstances, education, and experiences, the notion of ‘natural talent’ for teaching is akin to associating intelligence with race or flatness to Earth.”

I find myself leaning more towards the training side though I understand that there is a balance and a necessary predisposition to want to work with young people. Good teaching is far too complex and requires knowledge and experiences that do not come from natural talent. Yes, we "talk" about the natural born teacher that intuitively does things that others find difficult to understand and do. But, is it intuitive or did it come from a combination of experience, learning, and reinforcement in the classroom that results in this capacity? I don't discount the necessary dispositions nor promote the traditional college experience as the only way to become a quality teacher. The comment from Msetliff to my previous post uses the following words to identify these dispositions.

There are some traits, characteristics, etc., that are inherent such as personality, presence, passion for a subject, "a way" with kids, an ability to inspire that probably cannot be gained from a teacher prep program.

The comment also includes a suggestion for an apprenticeship model to support the learning process. Having options and being able to differentiate is currently what is emerging in the field, causing some concern for teacher unions and college preparation programs. Apprenticeship would provide districts like ours with the opportunity to share our beliefs and influence the instructional practices that we identify as components of Classroom 10.

Apprenticeship would be a lovely addition to our profession. Two years would be nice; five might be better, depending on the apprentice. Notice that we aren't differentiating in the world of teacher education based on the prior knowledge and skills of the apprentice teacher. Budding teachers who possess the basic essentials could be exposed to the best practitioners in big doses.

In response to his rant about the quality of the question Milone received this response from William Bushaw of PDK that the question is of poor quality and will not be used again.

“Every poll I’ve worked on, we have identified at least one question that at the time seemed like a good idea, but then did not end up being a particularly good question. This certainly qualifies as one of those questions. It will not be used again as long as I am the poll’s co-director.

“Fortunately for our readers, or in this case, maybe unfortunately, we promise to report the results of every question we ask. That keeps us from holding back on questions for which we don’t like the responses, which we believe would be unethical.

“Thanks for your e-mail, and as you can tell, we agree with you. The question was not well conceived.”

An updated Mindset . . .

2011-08-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

Last August I did a post on the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014 a reminder for professors of the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of incoming freshman. The Mindset for the Class of 2015 is now available and once again there are many on the list of 75 that remind me of how old I am.

12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
13. Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you're talking about LeBron James.
23. There has never been an official Communist Party in Russia.
29. Arnold Palmer has always been a drink.
42. Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road.
56. They've always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe: Michael who?

I didn't list some that I don't even understand, that would be too embarrassing. Though the list can be amusing, it is a reminder of the gap between my life experiences and those entering college this year. We have the same or, perhaps even a larger gap, for many of us with those entering Kindergarten this year. It is a reminder of the importance of making learning relevant for the student given their experience and future learning needs. Making it relevant for me with my life experience and for others in our system might look and sound quite different than what we must do for our students.

Still pushing for comments . . .

2011-08-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Once again, thanks to Scott for sharing his thinking about the issue of whether teaching is more about natural talent, college training, or some combination of these. You can find his comment here. Though he believes that it is both, he leans more toward it being natural talent. How about some of the other 56 readers of this blog, what are your thoughts? Does it take a natural inclination to be an effective teacher or can one "learn" everything necessary in college?

He also shared his thoughts about NEA's concerns with Teach for America and the concern that these teachers are taking jobs that could be going to teachers that have come through a traditional teacher training program. In case you are not familiar with TFA, it is a program designed to identify and recruit bright college graduates to become leaders in schools with high levels of poverty. They receive intensive on-the-job training in exchange for a two year commitment to work in a low income community. From their webpage:

We recruit a diverse group of leaders with a record of achievement who work to expand educational opportunity, starting by teaching for two years in a low-income community.

This year I believe that there are teachers in Seattle from this program and also in Federal Way. The program is one cited by reformers as having a positive influence on learning for thousands of young people. So, if nature is more important than the college learning experience wouldn't we expect good teachers to come from this program as well as traditional programs?

Are teachers born or . . .

2011-08-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Scott posted a comment on my last post where he shared some further information from the PDK/Gallup Poll of Public Attitudes Toward Public Education. I agree with him that there is some interesting information in the results. I wonder if Secretary Duncan is reviewing them? Some of the responses, such as attitudes toward charters and against the republican governors are supportive of his positions. Others, however, related to the attitudes towards teachers and dismissing them are not as aligned with his policies.

I am still interested in hearing about your thoughts related to the question I included in the previous post and that I will again share below.

TABLE 4. In your opinion, is the ability to teach or instruct students more the result of natural talent or more the result of college training about how to teach?

Natural talent 70%
College training 28%
Don’t know/refused 3%

So, are teachers born, developed through learning at the college level, some combination, or perhaps through some other process? Does the quality of the teaching matter? If it is through natural talent then why do the major teacher unions have a problem with teachers that are in school systems through the Teach for America program?

Positive teacher news . . .

2011-08-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

The annual PDK/Gallup poll on education has been released. They have conducted the same poll since 1969. As one might guess, some of the data is similar to the past such as the percentage of respondents giving their local schools an A or B is fifty-one percent, but only seventeen percent would give public schools across the nation an A or B. This is the our local schools are great, but America’s schools are poor phenomena. This may be influenced by the answer to the question about whether the respondents hear more good stories or bad stories about teachers in the news. Sixty-eight percent responded bad news and twenty-nine percent good news. This would certainly align with my thinking and since most of the stories come from other systems they must not be as good as mine.

The data on teachers is positive with seventy-one percent having trust and confidence in those teaching children in the public schools. It is mixed for teacher unions with forty-seven percent saying that teacher unions have hurt the quality of education in the United States. When respondents, however, are asked who they agree with in states where teacher unions are fighting with governors over bargaining rights and budgets, fifty-two percent side with teachers and forty-four percent with governors.

There are many more questions on a range of topics that you might find interesting. The results can be found in table form here. One question that I found interesting is the one below.

TABLE 4. In your opinion, is the ability to teach or instruct students more the result of natural talent or more the result of college training about how to
teach?

Natural talent 70%
College training 28%
Don’t know/refused 3%

How would you have answered this question?

One home project down and a work challenge to face . . .

2011-08-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I was able to reclaim the garage after many years of using it as a storage shed. Multiple trips to the dump and an investment in some storage containers leaves me with one completely empty bay and most of the second free from clutter. All I have left is moving out the old freezer and replacing it with a smaller, more efficient new one. Feels good to have that behind me.

I went back to the office today and had an ad hoc housing committee meeting this evening. This is the group the board appointed to provide them with options for both short and long term housing options. We have met multiple times and thus far have identified options for short term housing if we are not able to pass a bond measure before reaching identified capacities. At the next meeting, staff will provide the committee with information on the pros and cons of the options to assist them in identifying those for recommendation to the board.

The committee is made up of 20+ community members all of whom care deeply for our school system. Some have worked on previous committees and for others this is their first experience with a district committee. They are passionate and want a bond measure that meets our needs and will be supported by the voters. Though strategy and marketing are not the task of the group, it has been very difficult to get them to suspend their assumptions and focus first on finding options for the board's consideration. The conversations always come back to what impact will it have on the voters. My experience is reinforcing for me the power of mental models and ladders in influencing our behavior. I am learning that my facilitation capacity needs to increase to support the group in completing their task.

Next meeting we will also begin to focus specifically on bond measure options that preserve the essence of who we are, but that may include changes to how we house students in grade level groupings. They will review the work of the previous committee and also consider new configurations and priorities. I am excited to see what they come up with. They are a group of bright, caring people with the capacity to find creative options not yet considered. I challenged them to provide options that make it difficult for the board to decide. I need to identify strategies that result in them suspending assumptions, valuing the diversity of experiences and beliefs in the room, and being open to being influenced by their fellow committee members. Easy to say, difficult to accomplish. I have some work to do to meet this challenge.

Disturbing budget news . . .

2011-08-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

In two weeks the board will be asked to approve the 2011-12 annual budget. In a normal year we would have been ready with a recommendation earlier, but this was not a normal year. The legislature went into an extra long session and made cuts that required us to meet with bargaining units. The process was further complicated because of a change to the budget and personnel software system we use.

The good news is that we have a proposed budget that uses some fund balance, but still should keep us in the 3% range. We were able to do this without needing to make significant cuts to staff or programs. We were conservative in our enrollment and other estimates so we should be ok for the year.

Now for the bad news. The economic forecast coming out in September is expected to have lower than projected revenues. In this Times article we learn that the governor may need to call another special session and has alerted state agencies to prepare for additional cuts. So, we may pass a budget in August that will, like last year, receive less state revenue than expected. We are hearing that this could be in the $100 per student range, a number that we would not likely be able to make up without adjustments or a significant drain on the projected reserve.

I don't see how they will be able to cut that much without dipping into basic education that would more than likely result in more law suits and negative energy drain. The state must find a way to provide for a STABLE basic education budget. The high expectations for student achievement must be balanced by high support from the state and federal level. Cuts to our state revenue after budgets have been developed for two straight years is not what I would call high support. Our local community is doing their share, it is time for the state to step forward and meet it's constitutional obligation to make education it's paramount duty.

Taking some time away . . .

2011-08-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a few days off and I'm not sure how much blogging I will be doing. I started my time off by spending 8 hours trying to reclaim my garage. The truck is full of garbage and I'll have at least one more load. My body is definitely talking back to me tonight. I think I'm getting too old for this manual labor. After the garbage dump tomorrow I have weed eating and mowing to consume the rest of the day. I'll need to get back to work to rest my body.

Yesterday, we finished the leadership retreat with about 50 administrators and teachers coming
together to continue our Classroom 10 journey. Our focus was on our key content and check for understanding goal. We reviewed the importance of vision and the mental models and skills we have introduced in our leadership institutes. To assist in planning for August inservice we also shared the new and exciting resources that T&L staff are creating and a planning tool that we believe will assist planning teams as they identify a focus for the year.

I'm excited about the goal that we have created with a focus on instruction. It means I will be in more classrooms supporting principals and teacher leaders as they create the high support necessary to balance the high demand of this goal. It is also the start of a new focus for teacher leaders, one that requires them to create deep understandings of Classroom 10 instruction and to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to support others in this change initiative. I'll share more details on this teacher leader focus in a future blog.

Flexing their muscles . . .

2011-08-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

The President and Secretary Duncan have taken another step towards dropping the major provision of NCLB; ALL students meeting standard in reading and math by 2014. Today, they announced that the Secretary will unilaterally override this accountability measure. The rationale for the unprecedented move is the lack of progress in Congress on reauthorization of ESEA.

Though we still don’t know all the specifics of the waiver process, in this Education Week article we learn that the waiver requests will be available in September and that the applications will undergo a peer review process by people outside the department. This means that states granted a waiver can reset the bar for acceptable growth and push the NCLB sanctions further into the future.

We know that the waivers will only be granted to states that agree to adopting college or career-ready standards, propose their own accountability systems, and include teacher evaluation systems that use student growth on state tests as a component of rating teachers. This sounds a lot like the criteria used to evaluate Race to the Top grants and another tactic to push states into accepting the Common Core.

Though the waiver opportunity will be viewed as positive by states, there are those in Congress that are not pleased. Republicans in the House wanting to see the federal role in education reduced will not support the move and Representative Kline, House Education Committee chair, is already on notice as opposed to the waiver process. The potential for a lawsuit is possible as some believe that the Secretary has the power to grant waivers, but not in return for implementing the changes wanted by the department. They see this as a way to legislate changes that have not been approved any elected body at the national level.

Time will tell who wins, and time will tell if our state makes a waiver request and if it will be accepted. We have accepted the Common Core and can make a case for a rigorous accountability system. Just like with RttT, however, the teacher evaluation system using achievement data is not in place. It will be interesting to follow this story. Receiving a waiver would remove many schools from the “failing” list and all them to move forward without being forced to choose one of the federal alternatives, something that would be welcome.

Survey reveals growing gap . . .

2011-08-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to an executive summary of the fifth annual survey conducted by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) and Education Next on education issues. The complete results can be found here at Education Next. You can take the survey and compare your answers here.

Basically, opinions of the public have changed little in the last year, but teacher opposition to many reforms has increased, placing them more at odds with views of the general public. This could be a result of the problems teacher unions have faced in multiple states such as Wisconsin and the continuing public debate over charters, merit pay, and teacher quality. An example of the growing gap between the opinions of teachers and the public can be seen in the chart below from this Education Next article.

Other questions focus on education issues like choosing between increasing teacher salary by $10,000 or reducing class size by three students, using student achievement data in teacher evaluation, testing practices, teacher accreditation, raising taxes to support schools, and knowledge of graduation rates nationally and locally. It is interesting to review the results and see the differences. The data is disaggregated using eight categories such as ethnicity, affluence, teacher, and parent.

Just when you thought you heard everything . . .

2011-08-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

About the Save Our Schools walk, from Free Technology for Teachers there is a link to a very short interview with Matt Damon after his speech. He shows some emotion and I'm thinking it caught the interviewer and camera person by surprise. Has been viewed about 1.5 million times already.

Still working on embedding video into my blog, but it is on the link above.

Is it possible that . . .

2011-08-03T05:51:00.000-07:00

If you are a teacher you will find Secretary Duncan’s comments about teacher pay that he made July 29th at a conference for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards very interesting. Would a starting salary of $60,000 and a top salary of $150,000 be an incentive for more people to consider our profession? Duncan seems to think so.

Like most things from the Education Department it comes with attachments including performance–based teacher accountability and a higher bar for students entering schools of education. He wants the best and the brightest to enter the profession.

"Top undergraduates will flock to a profession that demands high standards and credentials," he said.

It is a short article. What is worth the read are the comments from teachers and others not favorable to the Secretary such as this one.

I kinda thought that most people were drawn to the profession of teaching not because of its "high standards and credentials" but because of an intrinsic desire and need to help others. I certainly think more prestige would help attract more people.

What are your thoughts about what I consider a very remote possibility to increase salaries to this extent or on the direction of the Education Department?

A final post on the March . . .

2011-08-01T22:23:00.000-07:00

Though I haven’t had any feedback on my posts about the Save Our Schools March on Washington D.C., I will share one final site to read about it at Education Week where we learn that the number of people attending is closer to 3000, not the 8000 I shared yesterday. The article also has some feedback from the Center for Education Reform, one of the groups not supportive of the coalition’s goals.

The movement has also been the subject of criticism, most notably from the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based advocacy group for charter schools and other forms of school choice. The center took issue with the SOS group’s call for additional federal money for schools but less prescriptive accountability and testing requirements.

The SOS coalition “advocates for the status quo, and reform to them is about money, control, and no high-stakes tests or accountability,” Jeanne Allen, the center’s president, said in a statement. “SOS is about deforming education, not reforming it. They put up the guise that this is for the families and students, but in truth, these groups want to restrict and remove any power parents have in their child’s education.”

I haven’t spent enough time looking closely at the details of the coalition’s goals though I do know that both of the nation’s major teacher unions have been supportive of the effort. Even with the criticism, however, I agree with the need to examine the role of high stake tests and that we need to move the debate from those “bad teachers” and how do we get rid of them to what we can do to support the cultural changes necessary to create learning environments where all students experience success over time.

You can read more on the march than you probably have time for at Larry Ferlazzo's best posts on the subject here. Over on Alexander Russo's site is a link to an amusing video message from Jon Stewart to the marchers.

Also, as I asked yesterday, please know that I would appreciate any help on embedding a video into my posts. I have another one (like the Stewart video) that I would like to share and not just provide the link. Thanks for helping.