Arrived at Camp Snowball . . .

Today was a day of travel to Camp Snowball in Tuscon with a stopover in Phoenix, about eight hours in total to arrive at the conference site.  We opened with a dinner meeting and an opportunity to meet others from around the country with an interest in systems thinking, sustainability, and organizational learning.

Tomorrow we begin our learning journey with an opportunity to hear from Peter and others in the morning and in the afternoon with the core module we chose for our focus. I am still debating on a core module needing to choose between Developing Collective Intelligence and Practical Applications of Systems Thinking for School Leaders.

By the way, it was 113 degrees at the Phoenix airport when we boarded the commuter plane for the last leg to Tucson where it thankfully dropped into the 90's.

Off to camp . . .

Tomorrow morning I'm off with Dawn and nine others to Camp Snowball.  What was once an annual gathering of SoL Ed. partners for the last two years has become Camp Snowball, a learning opportunity focused on education for sustainability and systems thinking.  As I have shared before, we are a member of the SoL Ed. network though most in our system are not aware of it.  The work of the network is grounded in four operating frameworks that include: Education for Sustainability, Organizational learning, Systems Thinking, and Youth Engagement.  The focus is very aligned with our journey.

Here is a link to the SoL Ed. newsletter that contains an article about the Junior High's Green Ribbon national school award and the high school's garden.  There is also an interesting article from an elementary school in North Carolina where a resource room teacher is using system tools with students in her resource room.  The tools are supporting these resource room students to think differently that is having an impact on their self-esteem.

Its official . . .

It is now official, the federal education department has announced that Washington and Wisconsin have been granted waivers from many of the NCLB requirements.  Congratulations to Superintendent Dorn and to Deputy Superintendent Alan Burke for their efforts to bring this process to a successful conclusion.  You can read about the announcement in this Seattle Times article.

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On a different topic, thanks to Scott for his comment to my post on teaching and feedback.  Your hope for the new evaluation system to foster feedback that results in reflection on the teacher's part is what we are striving for with our Classroom 10 goal on key content.  It will be important for us to work collaboratively to insure that supervision practices do not get lost in the evaluation process.  Also, thanks for asking me for feedback.  I visited hundreds of classrooms this year to support principal learning.  I gave formal feedback only to you because you asked for it and gave in the moment feedback and asked reflective questions on a few occasions.  This was intentional on my part, but giving feedback is something I enjoy and perhaps should reconsider next year.

The need for practice, feedback, and reflection . . .

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I like this short post from Alexander Russo's blog This Week In Education.  It has me reflecting on the need for support for emerging as well as practicing teachers.

It is time, finally, to start training teachers the way we train doctors and pilots, with intense, realistic practice... to stop saying teaching is hard work and start acting like it. -- The Atlantic's Amanda Ripley

He links to this short article in the Atlantic titled Boot Camp for Teachers that starts with a former Air Force commander suggesting it is harder being a teacher than it was being a commander.

Before the Air Force technician George Deneault flew combat missions, he had to practice—a lot. “You can’t fool around on combat aircraft.” But when Deneault retired and became a special-ed math teacher, he walked into a Virginia classroom cold. When asked which was easier—being a military commander or being a teacher—he didn’t hesitate. “Commander.”

I don't know if the answer is to implement military training practices in preparing teachers, but I agree with the need for much more practice before teachers have the primary responsibility for the learning of young people at any grade level.  The traditional student teaching model does not provide the quantity of practice necessary for prospective teachers to experience the multitude of decision making opportunities a teacher faces in any given day.  This takes practice opportunities and the support of an expert coach.  Feedback is necessary and the coach must also have the capacity to ask reflective questions so that the learner can reflect and evaluate her/his practice.

Practicing teachers also need feedback and reflection to grow their practice.  In the absence of feedback, most of us will not learn, apply, and evaluate new strategies.  We instead continue to do what we believe is right and familiar to us.  Unfortunately, the norm in our profession for emerging and practicing teachers is little feedback and little focus on reflection, something we are trying to change with our Classroom 10 goal focused on key content.

When was the last time you were asked a reflective question that made you reflect and consider the actions you took or are planning to take in a future lesson?  What was that question?  If you have recently experienced this opportunity I believe that you do remember it as well as who asked it, when it was asked, and how you responded.  These are learning opportunities that we cherish and wish for more.  Consider sharing your question in a comment to this post.

Big money initiative . . .

Interesting article in today’s Seattle Times about big donors to the charter school initiative.  The headline tells much of the story.

Well-funded charter-school initiative has nearly enough signatures to make ballot

Supporters of allowing charter schools in Washington state have raised nearly $2 million from a handful of high-profile donors and say they are poised to submit the needed 241,153 valid signatures by the Friday deadline.

You can probably guess who some of these donors are.  So far seven donors have contributed with the smallest donation being $25,000.  The money was used to hire professional signature-gatherers through a California firm.

Jason Dominguez, a self-described ballot initiative professional from California, said he was getting paid $4 for each signature he obtained. The 31-year-old said he was among about 400 signature-gatherers who came from out of state to work for the initiative.

Supporters are confident that the outcome will be different than the previous three tries that failed in 1996, 2000, and 2004.

"A lot of people — parents, teachers, a lot of us — share the frustration that the status quo is working for some kids but not for enough," said Campion, executive director of the Washington chapter of Stand for Children, one of several education advocacy groups supporting the initiative. "I think Washington voters share that sense."

The article shares how those behind this initiative are using similar strategies to those used in the successful liquor business initiative that easily passed with a 59% yes vote.  Another similarity is the large amount of money raised by supporters.  The group formed to oppose the initiative, People for Public Schools, has yet to raise any money, choosing to wait and see if enough signatures were gathered.

The short time frame is one of several similarities between Initiative 1240 and Initiative 1183, last year's successful effort to get the state out of the liquor business.


Both initiatives used the same signature-gathering consulting firm, California-based Winner & Mandabach Campaigns, raised a lot of money before getting on the ballot, and worked with spokesman Mark Funk.

Will the fourth time result in success?  I believe that it has a much better chance now than it did in any of the previous attempts.  Charters are more common across the country, for the most part they get positive play in the media, people are disillusioned with the lack of success they read about in public schools, and there will be large sums of money donated to support a yes.  These changes may be difficult to overcome.  All of these to support 40 charters over five years.  What do you think, will the initiative pass?

OSPI wins approval . . .

My concerns in yesterday's post about the state’s application for NCLB waivers appear to be unfounded based on an e-mail today from OSPI staff.  It is another example of open mouth and let flow without good information, something I need to consider as I choose blog topics.  On the other hand, I’ll just chalk it up as a poor estimate of success. 

With the recent announcement from the United State Department of Education (USED) that five additional states were granted ESEA flexibility requests (waivers), several of you have inquired about the status of Washington’s flexibility application.  In short, negotiations are continuing and, after last Friday’s conversation with USED, have reached a point where we are confident that final approval will be granted and that Washington will be included in the next round of announcements.

This would once again suggest to me that the process implemented by the federal education department is more flexible than I and others first thought.  First, Virginia was successful without needing to sign on to the Common Core standards then our state experienced success with a teacher evaluation system that provides more flexibility in how student assessment data will be used than I thought would be approved.

This is good news for all of us, but especially for those in schools and districts that have not met Adequate Yearly Progress and are in school improvement.  They will no longer need to be labeled as failing under the NCLB guidelines and will move to the accountability system proposed by OSPI in the waiver request.

I look forward to Washington’s waiver request being approved in the next round of announcements expected in the coming weeks.

Still no answer . . .

On Friday, another five states were granted a waiver from the provisions of NCLB.  There are now 13 states that have applied that are still waiting for an answer with Washington being one of those 13.  What makes one of the last five interesting is that Virginia did not sign on to the Common Core, something that all of us thought was a requirement for a successful application.  You can read more about it in this Education Week article.

I also learned from the article that states that have not yet applied or that do not receive an answer by the start of the school year can request a one-year freeze on their AMO requirements.  So far only one state's application, Iowa, has been refused.  I'm still not sure that we meet the department's standard in the teacher evaluation category or in the interventions for schools that don't make adequate yearly progress over time.  My sense is that negotiations are taking place between OSPI and the federal education department over these two components of the waiver process and these negotiations are not easy.  Will it be yes, no, or back to the bargaining table?