Below are links to 2 articles on school closures and those that will be or have been reopened. According to the PI story, the Closure Plan was to save $16.2 mil in general operating funds over 5 years after factoring in closure costs of $1.9 mil. And there was to be a savings of $33.1 mil in capital costs on deferred maintenance.

Unfortunately the district was working with inaccurate population projection numbers and we are now paying the costs of reopening 5 schools with more to come. It costs roughly $2-5 mil to reopen a school that has been closed for less than 2 years and from $10-15mil additional to reopen a school that has been closed for more than 2 years. The latter group needs to be brought up to ADA standards. I believe all the schools being reopened fall into this category. So the costs of reopening far exceed the savings on closures.

Many in the community were bringing to the attention of the district population growth projections that were more accurate than those being used to make the closure decisions. I have no idea why these numbers were ignored. Now we see in hindsight that it was a costly mistake to ignore the communities and race to close all these schools.

It should also be added that 5 schools have been sold since 2008. MLK has received the most attention. But the others were all sold well below market value without any public bidding. Allen El was initially appraised at $10mil, then at the request of the district it was reappraised at $2mil and sold for $3mil. All these schools were allegedly sold to help bridge a $25mil budget gap. All were sold to their tenants who probably would have continued to lease them.

It’s difficult to comprehend the thinking behind these decisions. I would have taken a much harder look at the numbers, including those presented by the communities. Accurate numbers would have indicated the potential population growth and the net costs of closing schools only to reopen others a few years down the road. We need to infuse more foresight into our planning. And we need to work more closely with school communities!
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/School-chief-sets-final-closure-proposal-1296755.php
http://www.mywallingford.com/2011/02/11/mcdonald-schools-reopening-in-seattles-child/

How do we change the top-down culture of the district into
one that works in genuine partnership with school communities? Here are some ideas:

Building Leadership Teams: Every school already has one of these.  We just need to give them more recognition and craft policy to assure that participants are elected, not appointed.  Community members and parents must be represented.   Policy should strengthen the working relationship between these bodies, School Board and central administration, giving them a voice in major issues that impact their school.  This would include capacity issues, school closures, hiring and firing principals, funding, curriculum selection, and more.

District Oversight/Advisory Committee: This committee would consist of elected members from the greater Seattle community.  They  would review decisions that are under consideration by the Board for the purpose of providing input.  Bainbridge School District has a Budget Advisory Committee that could serve as a model.  It’s a standing committee of administrators, board members, certified and certificated employees, the teachers’ union and members of the public and it’s 100% transparent.  It helps tremendously in; 1) gaining consensus on monetary issues; and 2) letting the public see how the process works.

This is the description from their website http://www.bainbridge.wednet.edu/dbac:

“The role of the District Budget Advisory Committee (DBAC) is to support and advise the
Bainbridge Island School District Board of Directors, Superintendent, and other district staff and committees in the development, review, and revision of both short and long-term financial management plans that support the mission and priorities of the District. This site will contain all information pertaining to the ongoing budget process, including meeting minutes and relevant documents. Click on a meeting date below to access all information from that particular meeting.”

Public posting of all District documents: All documents that the public can legally access are posted to a single website, making review and input easy.

Live streaming of all School Board Meetings: so anyone can watch from their home computer.

Give parents/guardians final say: on critical issues concerning their children, such as retention and other issues.

If you have more ideas I’d very much like to hear them.  Please post.

Standardized test scores don’t accurately measure learning, which is why they don’t accurately measure teacher or principal performance. The National Academies of Science recently issued an extensive report on this. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12521

Seattle Times just posted this story: Fear of more failing test scores sets off clash over No Child Left Behind. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2015510963_webeducation05.html

Many students are so intimidated by testing that they panic and do poorly for that reason alone.  If they have a history of low performance and failure this response is all the more likely.  Testing that threatens failure is outmoded, inaccurate and no way to effectively motivate student learning or teacher performance.

There are high-quality computer programs that support learning while also assessing it. These student-friendly programs should replace tests such as MAP, and ultimately high stakes state tests.  Computer learning programs in combination with teacher support and classroom activities improve learning outcomes dramatically.  They allow students to learn at their own pace and give them exactly what they need to progress from topic to topic.  They make it possible for students to remediate, accelerate, in many settings and on different schedules.

Since SPS has constructed a computer infrastructure for MAP testing we could easily switch over to learning programs that would effectively reduce failure and drop-out rate, improve learning and increase accuracy of student assessment—in one doable paradigm shift.

If you’d like to see what a good combined learning and assessment program looks like check out ALEKS.com.  There’s a tour and free trial.  It’s a remarkable system that gives each student a brightly colored pie chart showing what skills they need to master to
complete a full course.  An assessment determines how much of this they’ve already mastered.  As they progress through the exercises and assessments the pie chart changes to show their progress.  Students can select skills from the pie chart and progress at their own pace.  Every exercise assesses them and either moves them forward or gives them the review they need to achieve proficiency.  If they need help or instruction they simply click on a button and a screen pops up explaining the material they’re working on.  There’s no failure in this program.  Students simply progress at the rate they master the material.

ALEKS can be used in conjunction with any text or curriculum, and the company will tailor it to align to specified standards.  Although students can use it independently, it works best with teacher support and classroom activities.

I’m not promoting ALEKS, but rather recommending this approach as a highly significant improvement over standardized testing as we currently use it.  The approach eliminates failure and supports successful learning while accurately assessing progress without intimidation.

State and national systems need to make this transition to constructive and accurate assessment. Right now we test students in relation to only one set of standards, those that are prescribed for all students in their grade.  Students who have not mastered the standards fail.  And we do nothing about it, so they fail again the next year.  The obvious solution is to simply measure where each student is in relation to all standards within a range.  Then we can show their success in relation to one level and provide them with the support they need to progress to the next level.  State level standardized assessment could also be done using computer learning programs rather than high stakes testing.  It would be less stressful, more accurate, and fairer to all students.

Seattle Public Schools institutionalized a one-size-fits-all agenda beginning in 2009.  It’s part of the Strategic Plan.

Here’s how it’s described on the SPS website:  “Seattle Public Schools’ Strategic Plan, Excellence for All, commits the District to ensuring high expectations and a high quality school for every student. As part of a system-wide effort to increase the number of Seattle Public School students that graduate from high school prepared for college and the 21st century work force, Seattle Public High Schools (SPS) has committed to a curriculum alignment in core academic subjects across all Schools. During the 2009-2010 school year, all high schools began instruction with new mathematics courses and newly aligned curricular materials for Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra2 , PreCalculus, Calculus, and Statistics.”

In some ways it sounds good, but it isn’t working.   The failure rate on standardized tests among disadvantaged learners has gone up. Here’s why:

Curriculum alignment could be a flexible outline of what is taught in specific courses across the district, to assure consistency.  But right now it’s not.  In math, for example teachers are given no choice in teaching materials.  They are required to use the district mandated curricula, no matter what. Math curricula are particularly problematic.  Everyday Math (elementary), CMP2 (middle), Discovering (high school) all adhere to a discovery-based approach.  This method guides students to discovering problem solving strategies without explicitly teaching mathematics.  Many students find it frustrating, confusing, or impossible.  It’s particularly difficult for students who can’t read or write well, since the approach relies heavily on these skills.  Students progress without mastering essential skills because there is very little practice or even application of a skill once it has been “discovered.”  There is heavy use of calculators and problem solving is done in groups.  It’s little surprise that the failure rate on standardized tests is around 50% and far higher for disadvantaged learners.

The deficiencies of the district mandated math curricula are well established. None were recommended by OSPI when new WA state math standards were adopted in 2008.  The SPS School Board was sued for adopting Discovering in 2009 because there was so much evidence that it discriminates against disadvantaged learners. The court ruling was overturned in an appeal by the district, but the evidence against Discovering was not in dispute.  The continuing decline in math test scores among disadvantaged learners supports the concerns over this approach.  And yet all teachers are required to teach in this way, and the district will not permit them to supplement these math curricula.  Teachers are under the gun to raise the test scores of disadvantaged learners using curricula that make it virtually impossible.

I’ve also heard concerns over the reading curriculum, Reading 180.  There may be problems with implementation that need to be addressed.

How to we change One-size-fits-all to Success-for-all?

• We start by acknowledging that students will reach state standards in different ways, at different rates, and with varying levels of support. Right now we’re stuck with a system driven by standardized tests.  This doesn’t mean the curricula need to be standardized.  Standardized curricula fail students who don’t learn in the prescribed ways at the prescribed rates. We need to take a “whatever-works” approach and support the full range of learning needs and styles.  This will require far more flexibility than we currently have.
• We give students whatever they need to succeed. Schools that are actually succeeding in bringing disadvantaged learners up to standard provide a wide range of supports, not just academic.  We need to look at effective programs in other schools and districts, such as Everett where they have increased their graduation rate significantly by taking measures that go far beyond one-size-fits-all curriculum alignment. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012041977_graduation06m.html
• We do effective intervention and remediation as soon as students start to fail. This means assessing their learning needs and remediating in an efficient manner. We can’t do “more of the same”  and expect better results.  This is the current approach in math remediation.
• We replace ineffective curricula with clear and explicit texts teachers can use to teach all students. We must replace confusing, “mathematically unsound” texts that are institutionalizing failure for disadvantaged learners.  Texts should be clear enough for parents and guardians to use to help students at home.
• We give teachers the latitude to use teaching materials and approaches that work for their students. Our schools have closets jammed with texts and other materials that teachers are forbidden to use because they aren’t the currently mandated texts.  This is ridiculous and wasteful.  Teachers should be free to take what they need from these closets and use them at their discretion.
• We give teachers proven computer-based learning programs and computers to use in the classroom. There are many student-friendly programs that allow students to learn at their own rate, that continuously assess what they’ve learned and tailor instruction to their progress.  These are great ways to individualize teaching, allowing both remediation and acceleration.
• We flip the top-down process of improving student performance, and do it from the bottom up. Instead of telling teachers and students what’s mandated, we ask them what they need to succeed.  We institutionalize collaboration between teachers, students and parents and explore a wide range of solutions.   We open up the process to innovation and community input.

These improvements could be implemented right away.  If I’m elected to School Board I will be sure they are.  If you have ideas to add please comment below.