Remember the concert . . .

Just a quick reminder about the Music Faculty Concert as you plan your week. It is this Friday at Tahoma Middle School and it promises to be an enjoyable evening of music performed by our music teachers. Proceeds from the donations go to support music scholarships for graduating seniors. Come and join us for a wonderful evening of music and fellowship while supporting a good cause.

Tahoma Music Faculty Concert

Friday, March 16th

7:00 p.m.

Tahoma Middle School

An unwanted signature . . .

Last week following passage by the House, the Governor signed the new teacher evaluation bill into law.  In this Seattle Times article, she used these words to describe what this legislation will do for our state's public schools.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said she expected the measure to make Washington a national model in teacher evaluations. Dozens of states are working on similar systems, but many are struggling to make them work.


She said Washington state succeeded by designing the system from the ground up, involving teachers, principals, parents, administrators, education researchers, lawmakers and community groups.

"This law will help ensure every public school student has the good teacher he or she deserves, and every neighborhood school has the good principal it deserves," Gregoire said.
 
I struggle to share her positive thoughts.  This legislation builds off of work done by the groups she mentions above that was passed two years ago with what I see as significant changes.  The changes are the result of compromise between the democrats, republicans, and the Governor behind closed doors without the groups she mentions above.  Though not present, however, the "reform" advocates position had an influence on the negotiations reflected in the changes to the use of student achievement data in the process. 
 
The change that I find most objectionable is the requirement that every district must choose from one of three identified instructional models.  This means that our Classroom 10 instructional model cannot be the framework for evaluating our teachers.  Years of collaborative work is now in jeopardy as we face difficult choices on how to proceed.  So Governor Gregoire, I respectfully disagree that "This law will help ensure every public school student has the good teacher he or she deserves,".  Allowing us to continue our focus would have been better for the seven plus thousand in our system and for thousands in other systems who have also been engaged in similar work over time.
 
Realizing the glowing "expectations" she has for the law will be much more difficult than simply requiring the use of achievement data as one of the evaluation components.  If the intent is to support growth for every teacher it will require a significant increase in the professional development time currently available in our school system.  If it is intended to rid the profession of "bad" teachers it will not without additional changes.  Creating change intended to have significant impact on all public schools in this state should not be the result of compromise with a handful of people struggling to overcome budget issues and seeing this issue as a pawn in that process.
 
I have respect for our Governor and the difficult issues that she has faced over the years.  At the same time, I am saddened to see us lose the autonomy to continue our work knowing it will be aligned with how we hold ourselves accountable for the success of all students as part of a compromise in Olympia.

Vision or rhetoric . . .

I’m sharing Danny Westneat’s article in yesterday's Seattle Times not necessarily because I agree with his politics, but because it demonstrates the challenges faced by our legislators in Olympia and the political posturing we are experiencing. The article focuses on the Republican legislators verbal commitment to fund “Education First”, but when they gained control in the Senate last week they forgot this pledge and made cuts to both K-12 and higher education, something the Senate democrats did not do.  From the article:


"Our state constitution is clear: Education is the 'paramount duty,' " said state House Republicans when they released a plan calling for more school spending. To underscore it, they named their budget "Fund Education First."


. . . So what did the GOP do with its earthquake moment?


They slashed education!

I don’t agree with his choice of language that the Senate budget “slashed” education. It did include proposed cuts, but it is far from what was imagined just a few short months ago or what we experienced over the previous two years. Again, I don’t want to get into the budget itself, but more of the context we find ourselves in related to public education. When one party is on the outside of the power bubble it makes it easier to promote an initiative such as “Education First”. When then faced with the reality of controlling the budget process, it becomes a much more difficult task as witnessed by events over the last two weeks.

Matching rhetoric with actions becomes more difficult and tests the commitment to the stated belief of “Education First”. In this small case, the decision was to not move current reality closer to the stated vision of “Education First”. That makes me question if it is a “shared” vision and the beliefs driving the vision? Is it driven by a belief that we must meet the intent of the constitution and recent court decision? Is it driven by a belief that young people need a stable learning environment? Is it driven by a need to gain political traction knowing that some cuts will be necessary and saying this allows one to stand above the prosed cuts? I suspect that all of these and more are behind the initiative and until all can agree on a shared set of beliefs moving current reality closer to that vision will not happen. Once again, the lack of a shared vision of what school is for and how best to realize that vision results in what we see in this article. We were led to believe that last year’s legislation was intended to accomplish this, but lack of revenue and behavior suggest it is not shared at the level necessary to move forward with one voice and commitment.

Read the article if you are a democrat wanting to say told you so because it will validate your position. Read the article if you are a republican and want to get fired up once again at the liberal media, or at least this staff columnist’s support for teachers. Then if you have more time and want to get worked up, follow the comments that are numerous, combative, and not always closely associated with the article.

Purpose for schooling . . .

In this Ian Juke’s post, I was reminded about a Seth Godin manifesto, "Stop Stealing Dreams" written to promote reflection and conversation around the purpose and success of schooling.


It’s written as a series of essays or blog posts, partly because that’s how I write
now, and partly because I’m hoping that one or more of them will spur you to
share or rewrite or criticize a point I’m making. One side effect is that there’s
some redundancy. I hope you can forgive me for that. I won’t mind if you skip
around. This isn’t a prescription. It’s not a manual. It’s a series of provocations, ones that
might resonate and that I hope will provoke conversation.

I have not read much yet, but it is certainly challenging me in many ways while validating my beliefs and much of our system’s experience. This excerpt from Section 6 is an example of validating our work. We have for many years been focused on what he calls the “output“ of schools that are embedded in our Outcomes and Indicators and in our focus on the Thinking Skills and Habits of Mind. Test scores and other measures of traditional success are the byproducts of our work. Our struggle is associated with the difficulty in measuring these outcomes and negating the federal and state focus on tests to measure success.

If school’s function is to create the workers we need to fuel our economy, we
need to change school, because the workers we need have changed as well.
The mission used to be to create homogenized, obedient, satisfied workers an
pliant, eager consumers.

No longer.

Changing school doesn’t involve sharpening the pencil we’ve already got. School
reform cannot succeed if it focuses on getting schools to do a better job of what
we previously asked them to do. We don’t need more of what schools produce when
they’re working as designed. The challenge, then, is to change the very output of
the school before we start spending even more time and money improving the
performance of the school.

You can read his 30,000 word manifesto here. I will be doing so as he suggests, at my leisure and will probably find some sections to blog about.

Plan to attend . . .

Please consider joining me and others at this year's Tahoma Music Faculty's Concert.  It is a wonderful evening of music performed by our music faculty.  Great music, humor, and fellowship in one place.  If that is not enough for you to consider attending then please know that it is also a fundraiser in honor of Mary Lou Harting, a former music teacher at Rock Creek.  The funds go to support the continuing education of a Tahoma senior continuing a study of music following graduation.

So, join me in honoring Mary Lou and thanking these teachers for sharing their talent and for the important contribution they make to our work. The performance is supported by the Maple Valley Creative Arts Council founded and led by one of our board members Mary Jane Glaser.  She and our entire board are one of the reasons why we have not waivered in our commitment to the arts during this time of focus on assessments in the core content areas.

Tahoma Music Faculty Concert

Friday, March 16th

7:00 p.m.

Tahoma Middle School



Muddy Olympia budget situation . . .

coutofuganda.wordpress.com

Earlier in the week what appeared to be an easy budget negotiations in Olympia became anything but on Friday when the Senate republicans, with help from several democrats, were successful in getting the republican budget to the floor. Early today that budget was adopted with a few minor amendments. Since it doesn't delay payments to school districts, a major component of both the house and governor's budgets, I would guess that finishing this week has just become much more difficult. 

This budget includes a much larger rainy day fund and also cuts to both K-12 and higher education, something that the Senate democrats did not do.  The K-3 class size reduction would be a problem for us - we'll need to see how big on Monday.  You can see the differences in the two budgets below.

An important difference between the house and senate budgets for us is there are no provisions for cutting levy equalization or the levy lid in 2014 that were contained in the house proposal.  This would be a savings of over $2 million in that budget year.  For many in our profession, however, there is one component of the Senate budget that will not be supported.  SSB 6442 to create a consolidated K-12 health care system is alive and was poised for a vote today.

Needless to say, this came as a complete surprise as today's front page Seattle Times headline suggests.

These words from the article show us what we have to look forward to as this budget meets the solid Democratic majority House budget and Governor's budget.

If reactions by House Speaker Frank Chopp and Gov. Chris Gregoire to Friday's events are any guide, the Legislature will be in town far beyond the scheduled March 8 adjournment day.


"The Senate Republicans have exercised the worst abuse of power I have ever witnessed in the Legislature," Chopp, D-Seattle, said in a statement. "It says something about them that the minute they gained power, they abused it."

Gregoire, standing outside the speaker's office, was furious as well.

"I am chagrined that they're over there right now working on something I've never seen, the members have never seen — members on both parties have never seen, and they're going to take a vote tonight?" she said.

"This is not how we do business in Washington state."

Support from the task force . . .

Today the School Siting Task Force had its fourth meeting.  This is the group put together by King County Executive Constantine to study and make recommendations to the County and Growth Management Planning Council on the 18 school sites located outside the urban growth line.  This is important to us because we have one of those sites adjacent to the Junior High.  In last springs bond measure one of the projects was to build an elementary school on this site.  If the recommendations that were made last fall to not allow schools outside the UGA were passed it would have prevented us from using this site for a school.

In today's meeting four teams were tasked with reviewing each site, placing it into one of four categories, and then making a recommendation on how to proceed.  Fortunately, each of the teams placed our site into Category A, the category with the greatest potential for actually building a school on the site.  Three of the four teams then recommended that we "allow the school district to connect to the existing sewer, meaning we can build.  The fourth team recommended first that we "find an alternative site in the UGA" as they did with all the sites being considered.  This is great news and barring some unforseen circumstance, we should emerge from this process with the capacity to site a school on our property.  I believe that only 6 of the 18 sites made it into this category and two of those are still questionable so we are indeed fortunate.