Today afternoon Mayor Mike McGinn invited his staff, educators, and representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Microsoft for an unadulterated private briefing on charter schools.
The private email from the mayor’s office asked this private group to join McGinn for a “Charter Schools 101″—to “learn what exactly a ‘charter school’ is” (of course, we can’t possibly expect the Gates Foundation to know anything about charter schools, right?) The presenters were Paul Hill and Robin Lake from University of Washington’s Center for Re-Inventing Public Education (a pretty pro-charter school entity), who the email said, “have been working with states and cities on charter schools and evaluating their effectiveness for many years.”
Other private people who were invited were Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools Maria Goodloe-Johnson, SPS Director of Government and Policy Relations Holly Ferguson, and Katheryn Foreman, who reports to Microsoft’s chief general counsel Brad Smith. Obviously, this private briefing got the local blogosphere speculating whether the mayor and the school district were privately exploring charter schools.
“It was just an informational briefing,” said the mayor’s spokesperson Aaron Pickus. SPS said that Goodloe-Johnson didn’t go (Ferguson went). Glenn Bafia, director for the Seattle teachers union, who did go, reported back to his organization that the briefing had in fact been, just a briefing. Washington law doesn’t allow charter schools—the voters have rejected charter schools three times in recent history—so why does McGinn want to find out more about charter schools? He can’t bring charter schools to Seattle, nor can the district. Unless of course, there’s been some talk in Olympia about changing the law which I am not aware of.
Public schools work great — if they are in middle class suburbs like Central Islip (McGinn’s home town) or any of the many right-sized towns and villages across America.
In fact, cost per student for suburban schools can range $5000 to $6000 and produce scholars, where as urbist schools can charge $10,000 to $12,000 and produce almost no results.
@1 cool story bro
@1: wonderful yarn, bard.
@1 You’ve got those number reversed. Generally, about twice as much is spent per student at suburban schools than urban schools, and far beyond that for rural schools.
http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED473715.pdf
Maybe he just wanted to get some information on charter schools.
Hard to see why, @5, since as Riya correctly points out, they’re illegal in Washington.
Also I think it’s telling that not a single member of the Seattle school board was invited to the briefing, but the superintendent was. Hmm, I say: hmm.
There is no time or money to start a charter system right now and you would need a lot of oversight and infrastructure for something that can’t show quick outcomes.
We can discuss charters in several years after the economy calms down. Otherwise, it’s just more churn in an already churning education system.
You’re right @6; why would he not invite the only people in Seattle who actually have governance power over public schools? The School Board would have to sign off on this; not the mayor and not the Superintendent.
Again, there has to be a state law for charters; Seattle could not do this on their own.
It just seems like the Superintendent’s aide and the Mayor might have better things to do. It’s not like there isn’t a lot on their plate already.
Not clear why you need charters to get innovation in the public schools. Expanding alternative schools, building on successful and attractive programs, pushing decisions and control down to the individual schools and principals, none of that requires charters.