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Oct 8, 2010 at 2:43 pm
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
There isn't a school administrator on earth who would touch the SSD job with a thousand-mile pole. The chance that anyone other than the most craven mediocrity imaginable would satisfy the teachers is nil. I don't know how good Goodloe-Johnson really is, but I don't think it matters.
Fnarf's right tho.
You have too many whiny activists around here, who'd rather cut off their noses to spite everyone else.
So what, fnarf? Let her continue her destruction without anyone calling BS? I don't think so.
Just vote "NO" on the supplemental levy: The money mainly goes to downtown administration, not the classroom, and by voting "NO!" we can remind the administration that they need to be accountable before we keep giving them money.
That many teachers are against the levy should tell you something: Teachers are usually the strongest supporters of school levies. League of Women Voters recently issued a "no stand" on the levy, instead of their usual support. That should also tell you something about support for this administration.
It's not just legal conflict of interest that folks on nonprofit boards need to look out for, it's the APPEARANCE of conflict of interest. This was a massive leadership fail on her part. I'm not a kneejerk hater or anything, but this is Leadership 101.
By the way, Riya, 'unpaid member' of a nonprofit board is sort of redundant. Though it's not illegal for a nonprofit to provide some sort of stipend for service, only corporate boards pay outrageous sums of money for board service.
Meanwhile...The problem to fix before we start a new superintendent search (I'd be happy with an interim, meantime...) is that four out of seven of the School Board were bought and paid for by the Reformistas. These four "raised" (had hundreds of thousands given to them) from the Gates Foundation and others who want to experiment in Seattle with the usual reform non-starters: Charter schools (we already have/had alternative schools); merit pay (proven not to work, see Vanderbilt Report of last week, among other research); "Teacher quality" as the sole problem (ignoring the issues students have, and actively cutting support staff such as Family Support Workers, counselors, career/college counselors...And most of this current board just stands by and lets the superintendent do whatever. There is no check, even though it is their job to be the boss of the superintendent.
Anyone wanting to learn more about some of these issues (Will) can go to this website and learn all sorts of interesting things:
http://seattle-ed.blogspot.com/
No quarterback succeeds without listening to his linemen. People would do well, and save taxpayers a ton of money, if they'd simply respect and listen to the teachers on the front lines.
It ain't whining Will. It's the frustration of having to make the best of what we have in spite of the folks in the administrative offices who go about their business with their eyes and ears covered, while genuflecting to corporate America & dumbing down our kids.
The teachers' no-confidence motion had a very lengthy laundry list, any single item of which could have inspired any reasonable person to vote no confidence. To suggest that this tiny modification in Darth Goodloe-Johnson's overall terrible job performance, had it actually happened, would have resulted in "more confidence"....Well, it makes Mr. Knapp sound like, to put it charitably, he needs a loooong rest.
Let us remind ourselves that NWEA received a sole-source contract. That's in litigation right now.
When Goodloe-Johnson resigned her NWEA Board membership, as long as it was after that contract was prepared, and it was after she revealed her membership on the NWEA Board to the School Board, is immaterial (except, seemingly, to Mr. Knapp)
Although I think we can say about this resignation that
a) Dr. No-Confidence held on to it FAR longer than was politically saavy
b) which perhaps demonstrates just how out of touch she is with the peons
c) It attempts to end far more than a "distraction". More like the tip of a vast iceberg of financial malfeasance
d) Based on the tone of her announcement at the Board meeting, she was pissed at having to do this.
e) So it wasn't her idea, and somebody held her feet to the fire...
f) In the hope this will all go away.
Think again.
The whole business is still a BIG HUGE FLAMING PILE OF STINKING CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM.
The teachers' no-confidence motion had a very lengthy laundry list, any single item of which could have inspired any reasonable person to vote no confidence. To suggest that this tiny modification in Darth Goodloe-Johnson's overall terrible job performance, had it actually happened, would have resulted in "more confidence"....Well, it makes Mr. Knapp sound like, to put it charitably, he needs a loooong rest.
Let us remind ourselves that NWEA received a sole-source contract. That's in litigation right now.
When Goodloe-Johnson resigned her NWEA Board membership, as long as it was after that contract was prepared, and it was after she revealed her membership on the NWEA Board to the School Board, is immaterial (except, seemingly, to Mr. Knapp)
Although I think we can say about this resignation that
a) Dr. No-Confidence held on to it FAR longer than was politically saavy
b) which perhaps demonstrates just how out of touch she is with the peons
c) It attempts to end far more than a "distraction". More like the tip of a vast iceberg of financial malfeasance
d) Based on the tone of her announcement at the Board meeting, she was pissed at having to do this.
e) So it wasn't her idea, and somebody held her feet to the fire...
f) In the hope this will all go away.
Think again.
The whole business is still a BIG HUGE FLAMING PILE OF STINKING CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM.
The ethics violation is the main issue. Whether or not she should be on the NWEA board instead of spending all her time on her paid job is another debate. A valid debate, but a different one.
Normal people don't give a shit. Normal people care about whether the schools function properly, and spend their time trying to think of ways to help her do her job, and realize that 99% of the time that means sitting down, shutting up, and getting the fuck out of the way.
It's not as embarrassing as what they're doing to Michelle Rhee in Washington DC but it's getting there.
Fact is, being superintendent in any big city district is extremely demanding, and requires a high level of diplomacy, a skill which is completely, utterly lacking in GJ. There is not one single positive achievement this administration can point to and take credit for. You and Fnarf can ignore that if you want to, but it doesn't change it.
You obviously missed the point of why I brought up the retirement party - it's an example of cluelessness, spending money on gift certificates while cutting schools' staffs...But you don't address any of the myraid other issues I brought up (and there are more); you would, I guess, have us "just get out of the way" of the trashing of our public schools and the democratic principals on which they're built.
Here's how it works: Public wants public schools, gives money. Public votes in a Board, who is responsible for ensuring superintendent follows the policies they set. Superintendent follows board directions. Simple as that. That's OUR public school system, the superintendent is MY employee, and she is ignoring the board, ignoring the policies, not practicing due diligence with MY money....and has, apparently, an ability to see her own unethical behaviour.
But I guess you'll just call me a whiner, because you obviously don't have a clue as to how public education functions, or what the superintendent is doing. Have you ever been to a school board meeting, fnraf? Have you even watched one on TV? Did you vote for a Board director? Which district? What is their name?
They could also do a better job of aligning their questions to our state standards.
For a million dollars over two years it is the least they could do.
Speaking of tests, during MGJ's tenure standardized test scores have dropped district-wide and across just about every demographic. Until she took over, scores had been rising. Maybe not so good for a "reformer" who puts so much stock in test scores...
I'd like you to do a little leg work on those numbers.
And even if true the measure of "district - wide" perhaps shouldn't be what we are looking at. We should look at schools where performance is increasing and think about how to emulate that rather than letting a couple of dramatic failures drag down the entire enterprise.
@27 The idea of real-time, formative assessment data is a good one; the MAP test ain't it. Kids lose actual classroom time and the rest of the rest of the school loses access to computers.
How is the MAP test not a real time formative assessment? The fact that kids miss 3-6 days of instruction to take a test doesn't mean that tests aren't valid. Being able to look at a student test results and see that this student has improved 5 (perhaps arbitrary) pts from October to January and then 3 more between January in June is valuable objective information. It shows that the student has learned something about his/her subject. We can also look at cohorts. Instructor B's classes have not gained or perhaps lost points. Instructor B needs to re-think instruction. Three months later we can check and see if there is improvement.
And by we I mean someone else. I am not some sort of administrator sock pupped/ troll.
@27 I have to point out that your the type of person that fnarf is talking about. Please don't ruin the good things that the district is trying to do because kids can't go to the library during their class time because others are testing in there. Encourage your kids to use the library at lunch time or before or after school. They don't need to miss class time to check out a book. They can do it any time.
Normal people don't give a shit.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say these "normal people" you speak of don't have kids or that these "normal people" don't have kids in SPS.
The stupid party the Sup paid for with district money wasn't much, tiny even I'll grant it, but when the state is in an economic crisis, the legislature is slashing K-12 funding, and the Sup is laying off staff at schools, it's a bit tone deaf to so publicly spend money on obviously useless items, even when the expenditure is very, very small.
Yes, I'm more concerned about the huge expenditures on new initiatives beloved by the central administration when we're laying off staff in the classrooms. That hurts my kid more.
But I'll admit that the fact that the district blew $7000 bucks on a party pisses me off in a special salt in the wounds kind of way. Sure, it's miniscule, but, you know what, I fuckin' gave my school $4000 last year to pay for stuff (staff, equipment) that the district should be paying for and, yeah, it's hard for me me not to have a little bit of hard feelings about that. A bit of me thinks I'd like my money back as they clearly didn't need it. I suspect many "normal" parents across the district who donate to the PTA to fund basics in their school ( as many, many PTAs do) will have similar feelings.
The Superintendent occupies a political position and when she makes bonehead decisions whether large or, like this, merely pissant, she inches herself ever closer to being bounced out of her position by an angry parents. And that's about as "normal" a story as one would expect.
Normal people don't give a shit.
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say these "normal people" you speak of don't have kids or that these "normal people" don't have kids in SPS.
The stupid party the Sup paid for with district money wasn't much, tiny even I'll grant it, but when the state is in an economic crisis, the legislature is slashing K-12 funding, and the Sup is laying off staff at schools, it's a bit tone deaf to so publicly spend money on obviously useless items, even when the expenditure is very, very small.
Yes, I'm more concerned about the huge expenditures on new initiatives beloved by the central administration when we're laying off staff in the classrooms. That hurts my kid more.
But I'll admit that the fact that the district blew $7000 bucks on a party pisses me off in a special salt in the wounds kind of way. Sure, it's miniscule, but, you know what, I fuckin' gave my school $4000 last year to pay for stuff (staff, equipment) that the district should be paying for and, yeah, it's hard for me me not to have a little bit of hard feelings about that. A bit of me thinks I'd like my money back as they clearly didn't need it. I suspect many "normal" parents across the district who donate to the PTA to fund basics in their school ( as many, many PTAs do) will have similar feelings.
The Superintendent occupies a political position and when she makes bonehead decisions whether large or, like this, merely pissant, she inches herself ever closer to being bounced out of her position by an angry parents. And that's about as "normal" a story as one would expect.
Have you actually talked to kids about how they percieve the MAP test? I have - they don't give a shit about it. They get answers wrong on purpose so that they get easier questions and they get through it as fast as they can, especially the 2nd or 3rd time they take it. Which is why many students are doing worse in May than the did in Sept. They BLOW IT OFF because they have actual graded or high stakes tests to worry about.
It's not about checking a fucking book out, it's about not having use of very limited computer resources for actual class work and instruction, like research or simulations, for months at a time.
Do me a favor and don't dare presume what kind of person I am, 'kay? Fnarf is dead wrong on this one.
Okay, first, it's true $7K is a drop in the district's budget. BUT, as someone who ran an after-school elementary school chess club, I know how far $7k can go. That much would fund at least 5 chess clubs in low-performing schools in our district who have no PTA to sponsor them. (You do know, right, that some schools have absolutely no parent groups?) That's how far that little bit of money would go.
Function properly? How about Garfield overcrowded with nearly 1800 students (not to mention staff and parents and volunteers) in a building built for 1600 students. And, the district knew this would be the case before the doors open on the first day of school. And, other schools are now overcrowded due to the new student assignment plan.
Function properly? The district hasn't had a line item in their budget for textbooks for a decade. So now they cry poor and ask for money in the levy for textbooks when they weren't even doing their job all along.
Function properly? The district has nearly a $500M (yes, half a BILLION dollars) in backlogged maintenance. The levy addresses none of that and we spend less than we did in the late '70s. The district has finally admitted that Garfield cost $120M (even though they didn't do a complete teardown), still has outstanding legal claims on the building and oh yeah, the roof leaks and the gym floor buckled.
Function properly? How about the movement of at least 30 principals last year in a never-ending game of chess?
functioning properly? How about 99% of teachers voting no confidence in Dr. G-J? How can she inspire and motivate them when they don't believe in her leadership?
Last word on function properly? The State audit which said many terrible things about the functioning of our district including this:
“The District’s Board and Management have placed public resources at risk.”
Signed,
A Whiny Activist
Any wonder the state audit dinged the supt and board for repeated mismanagement of district resources. (The state audit also called out Goodloe-Johnson's association with NWEA as a conflict of interest, which is probably why she was finally shamed into resigning -- while she and the board ignored parents and many others who have been protesting this obvious conflict and ethical lapse all year.)
Any wonder that a committee of parents has formed to oppose the upcoming school levy on the November ballot (the third school levy this year, by the way).
-- sue p. (Seattle Education 2010)
I could say that they are equally unimportant but instead I choose to say that they are equally important. See, its all spin.
Actually I would say that the MAP is more important. The results are immediate and that influences placement, the test happens multiple times a year and that demonstrates growth. Something that no other test does. Classroom tests are sumative but could never span the range of grade levels that the MAP does. We can try to differentiate class room tests but never create something adaptive like the MAP test does - Just like the GRE if you've been to graduate school in the last ten years.
If any student prioritizes the "High Stakes" (really what is at stake with this test?) state test over the MAP that student has an adult who is telling them that it is worthless and or a school that doesn't know how to communicate what is important.
What's at stake with this test? Why is high stakes? You mentioned one of the things in your comment: they influence placement. Another is that they are now a small piece of the teacher evaluation. Students know this. Some kight work extra hard because of it; others might decide to tank on it to nail the teacher. Who knows?
Which brings us to your comment about how they "show growth": Can you explain how they are accurate in this assessment of student growth? You seem very sure that they "show growth," so please explain how teachers, evaluators, and students know that they are accurate in how do they do this.
People have been discussing MAP over at http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/ for over a year - the consensus seems to be that a) the tests don't correlate with standards and curricula - they test things that might not be taught that trimester; b) they have some very suspect questions ("is the word 'lance" a noun or a verb?") c) BECAUSE it is adaptive (the questions get harder the better one does, or easier the worse one does) some students who are lazy just push keys, knowing that it will get easier and they can take a break sooner; d) computer-based tests in kindergarten? Really? and e) in using it for teacher evaluation purposes there is no way to know where any growth (if it's even accurate in assessing that...which it probably isn't...) came from. Here's a scenario: A Reading specialist and a Language Arts teacher both have the same student. Student "grows" according to MAP. Who gets the credit? Or was it the after-school tutor, the history teacher, the art teacher....who suddenly inspired the student that trimester? Perhaps the parents took a sudden interest in reading at home. Who knows? Conversely, if a student DOESN'T grow, who gets dinged?
Everyone knows the MAP test's primary purpose is to evaluate teachers. Unfortunately, when MSAP was rolled out it was explained that it was purely "formative," to help figure out where students are. Then, a month before school and during contract negotiations, the superintendent drops the SERVE bomb, a massively anti-teacher evaluation package (including giving her the ability to fire whoever she feels like firing) that includes MAP as the evaluation assessment tool...THEY knew what they wanted. That is why the superintendent is here: She's a Broad Foundation graduate, on their board (wish she would resign THAT seat...) and she is doing everything according to the Broad privatization guidebook.
It's an extremely high stakes test for both students and staff, and it's not even accurate. Way to blow millions outta the district and into the hands of the superintendent's NWEA company (whose CEO makes half a million a year, and which employs over 23 people making $100,000 or more each. "Educators" my foot.)
forget it. i want my teachers spending (and that is in "allocating time" not $$$$$pending) time on direct assessment.
and i want my 10 weeks of library time back dammit. we are one of those losing 10 weeks schools. it sucks and it especially sucks for the population of kids for whom access to library happens only at school.
can't get MGJ and her Big Ed Theories out of here fast enough. hope it's this year.
From some of the above
a) curricula dosen't correlate to the standards most of the time and I've mentioned that the MAP test doesn't align either. This is largely because students can be testing at levels way below or way above grade level. If it were possible for you to look at the question bank I would challenge you to find a single math question that wasn't represented in our math standards - If you found one that would indicate a gap in our standards not that the test was unfair.
b) Jesus, what assessment doesn't have questions that are suspect? Especially with thousands of question in the question bank? So what?...we should dump the test because some of the questions need revising? I would argue again that this is a no stakes test. It is only being compared to itself.
c) some kids will fuck up their answers to get easier questions and finish faster? That makes no sense. If a student is willing to answer questions wrong to finish a test faster that student is not going to be successful at any level or by any metric. That has nothing to do with an adaptive test. If the simply think that getting easier questions will help them answer more correctly than someone has failed to explain how the test works. "No answering a bunch of third grade questions correctly and quickly doesn't mean you did well for a sixth grader."
d) No.
e) No one knows how test score will be used in evaluating teachers yet. Despite what you may have heard MAP scores are not used to evaluate teachers.
And Roses:
Scores constantly go up over the course of a year. In the last two years I've only seen a small minority of scores decrease over the three tests and those are often students who are having general social and behavioral differences.
And 10 weeks of library time? Maybe if your school didn't treat it like such a chore they could find a way to make it work faster. I'm sure we test many more students in less time than that and we encourage them to take as much time as they need or want.
1) The NWEA ITSELF says that test scores trending down in the 2nd test of the year is known. This was reported to our Board when parents and teachers were concerned last year. 2) Go to a small facility school. Pick one with students of poverty. See how much library time is being lost. Not just one school. Many schools. Seriously, get out of your cloud, get into a couple of schools and see. Oh and you might talk to a few teachers and parents in the process.
Can't wait to kick this particular test (not all tests) to the curb as soon as the initial contract is out. That goes for our superintendent too.
I can't speak to the overall population, but I do know my kid's winter scores went down, and I don't think the kid has "general social and behavioral differences", whatever that means. My kid is pretty ordinary.
The reporting data included time spent on test. My kid spent about half as long on the test in winter as in spring and fall. I assume this is why the kid's score went down -- low effort. I can't say I was that surprised. It's a lot of testing. Kids' interest will flag.
So the students with "general social and behavioral differences" (?!) will be assumed to be dumber because they have lower RIT scores on MAP? Their teachers should use the RIT scores to giev them lower level lessons because, hey, they have "general social and behavioral differences"?
That phrase, "general social and behavioral differences," freaks me out: We ALL have these, don't we? Unless we are part of teh Borg, the one-mind group that is eveidently the target of MAP tests and all the rest of the "data-driven" machine that is trying to call itself "education reform."
"Don't be different. Do have different social attributes, don't behave differently or we will assume you to be dumb, as measured by our Dumb Test." Great. Teaching is dead.
Oh, and it's reported that K-2 students (seven and eight year olds) sometimes struggle with the computers themselves when taking the tests. This mainly impacts poor and immigrant students who are unfamiliar with them. So poor and immigrant students are now classified as "dumber" using the MAP test...this is JUST LIKE the perversion of the IQ tests a hundred years ago, when poor people were told they were dumber based on tests just like these. It is JUST LIKE the way the state tests, nation-wide, are being used to say that "Black children" or "poor children" just "don't do as well as white, rich children."
Classist and racist crap.
It's obvious to all that this test is intended to evaluate teachers. Go to the district's Labor Relations webpage
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/labor…
to see a photo of smiling Reformers (League of Education Voters, Alliance for Ed, El Centro de la Raza, business group, Tim Burgess, and the superintendent....all grinning like the cat that ate the canary) and the linked PDF http://www.seattleschools.org/area/news/…
"celebrating" the new contract. The reformers are full of self-congratulations about how they got the evaluation system to include these tests, and we all know it's MAP. None of them, in the announcement doc, say anthing BUT how great it is that teachers will be evaluated by tests (MAP)
Get real, inonymous.
"Reform" - a group of city, state and national busy-bodies who are trying to sell the privatization of public education through standardization, testing, union-busting (see Teach for America, which was added to last week's agenda, then quickly taken off, and will appear again on the Board agenda in November - fight this tooth and nail, people!)
The superintendent is a graduate of the Eli Broad Foundation's "academy," which is seeding dsitricts around the country with its grads in order to privatize education. Superintendent is also on the Broad board. Broad has successfully planted three more Broadies into SPS administration, in key positions to enact Broad Reform.
Arne Duncan, head of US Dept of Ed, started his "education career" as CEO of a charter school called Ariel Charter, a division of Ariel Investment. It's K-8 students learned all about becoming investment bankers.
Currently, Tim Burgess, a lot of minority groups, League of Education Voters, the Alliance for Education, have all come together in an astro turf "coalition" called "Our Schools Coalition," which purports to be OF the community, but is an arm of a PR and political messaging company called Strategies 360, run by Karen Waters. This group is merely doing the bidding of the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walmart Foundation...Charter schools, vouchers, merit pay, "fire-at-will," Teach For America...they aim to turn education into a free-market business, just like we've recently seen with Blackwater (Xe) which is the privatization of our armed forces by contracting out soldiering.
Look alive, people, these "reformers" are working hard, claiming to be speaking for our community, but really they are working their own agendas. Stand up against the reformers; they're killing public education as we know it. As a start, vote "No" on the upcoming levy; the money goes for more "reform."
Nevermind the retirement party.
The real question is how well the superintendent manages the District and what impact, positive or negative, she has had on students' academic outcomes.
The answer to that question is: she's doing a horrible job.
While I congratulate her for trying to bring management to an institution that has been totally lacking management for over ten years, she isn't doing a good job of it. She should have started at the top and worked down, but she tried to start at the bottom and work up. Fail.
Her Strategic Plan, which is a management plan rather than an academic plan, was good. Her execution of the plan, however, has been absolutely atrocious. Every single project in the plan is overdue, overbudget, and many of them have been shortcut. The HR stuff is three years overdue - the head of HR doesn't even start until next month. The IT stuff is two years overdue. The New Student Assignment Plan is two years overdue and was botched. The Capacity Management was botched. She closed seven buildings (Viewlands, Old Hay, Rainier View, Mann, Genessee Hill, Van Asselt, and TT Minor) then re-opened five - including three of the ones that were closed (Viewlands, Queen Anne (Old Hay), Rainier View). And she's going to have to re-open Genessee Hill because the northend of West Seattle is more overcrowded than Garfield.
The Superintendent has said a lot of the right things but everything she has done has been wrong.
The Board approved a non-competitive bid for $800,000 for the New Tech Network services to provide Project Based Learning services for three years at Cleveland high school.
There are requirements to waive the competitive bid requirements but neither the Board or Dr. Goodloe-Johnson went through the waiver process.
Non-Competitive bid for $800,000 in violation of State Law RCW RCW 28A.335.190, which requires competitive bids on large purchases unless an exemption is warranted.
The four directors, Carr, Maier, Sundquist, Martin-Morris, approved an $800,000 no bid contract with the New Tech Network, without taking the necessary steps for an exemption from the competitive bid process.
They did this twice: once on 2-3-10 and once on 4-7-10. What a crew.
Wasn't the contract for the NWEA's MAP test also sole-source, without competitive bidding? Didn't the superintendent, while sitting on the Board of NWEA, tell the SPS school board that NWEA's MAP test was the only test that would work, so it should be sole-sourced?
Didn't the role-out of the MAP test ONLY address its use a formative test, and NOT the current use as an evaluation tool for teachers?
Aren't there other tests that are very similar to the MAP (adaptive tests)? I know of least one other, and I'm sure there are others.
So wasn't the test sold to the board by the NWEA's board member, our superintendent, on the claim that it was the only test that could used for formative assessment, but it's not, and it's now being used for formative assessment AND evaluation?
What kind of shell game is being played here?
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com…
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