It pisses me off when The Stranger's ineptitude and general assholery make me feel sorry for the likes of Maria Goodloe-Johnson and Christine O'Donnell.

Why would you feel badly for MGJ? She has never addressed the union no-confidence vote and she's trying to undermine her staff of teachers further by sneaking in TFA. Student achievement has dropped under her leadership.

She needs to be held accountable for her many failures. Neither the school board nor The Seattle Times seem very interested in doing their jobs and this is why the community and the union are up in arms.

I'll be very surprised if she finishes her contract here. She'll find an opportunity elsewhere that she "can't pass up" (isn't Michelle Rhee's seat open?) and leave Seattle with nothing but a huge mess to clean up.

Thank you Riya for asking questions that it seems no other media outlet in this town is interested in asking. I've been following your posts and I was waiting for you to get a little more uppity!

So long as schools in the rich neighborhoods and north of the Ship Canal get funding, she'll be re-appointed by the Board.

The second that isn't true, her ass is grass.

@3,

Because she was asked and was expected to answer an idiotic question. Bhattacharjee's question boiled down to: Why do people hate you?

This reminds me of when Josh Feit was oh so proud of himself for asking Rudy Giuliani some inane question about gun control.

Someone in her position (she works for the taxpayers and she gets paid more than the governor) should be willing and able to address common criticisms. She's not and she can't - another indicator of her poor leadership.

Keshmeshi is either:
A) MGJ's sockpuppet
or
B) An intellectual shitstain.

But Seriously, I am not in the least bit surprised that MGJ has resorted to parading around behind a wall of sycophants. She is as arrogant as she is incompetent.

I'm sorry, did I miss something? Exactly how is Riya's multi-point, specific question not right on target? It's hardly the case that any question short of fawning admiration is automatically reducible to "Why do people hate you?"

I also believe that school superintendents are not at the level of achievement or importance that justifies a phalanx of paladins, factotums, attachés, and bodyguards.

This was a perfect question to ask; such a shame she was unable - or unwilling - to answer it in even a semi-cogent manner.

Maybe it eas that big bottle of FourLoko in your hand...

That was a perfectly legitimate question to ask, though I might have rephrased it as "What is YOUR reaction to the no-confidence vote?" It's completely reasonable to ask her to address it directly, and total BS that she and her minions refused to.
That said, I've been following the school district shenanigans for close to 10 years and in that time there's never been a superintendent people are happy with.

@1 It's called journalism asswipe.

"accountability, teachers and leaders matter the most"

I wold have berated her and called her cunt for such a stupid statement. Parents are the most important, it all starts at home. But leftists find the home to be a corrupt place and expect the state to raise their children, so I'm not shocked by her retardation.

"cutting budgets for minority programs"

I'm sure the Asians are the ones benefitting the most from these programs.

This is the first Slog post I can recall about the the running of the Seattle public schools (as opposed to the funding of them). Undoubtedly there have been other posts, but I likely just didn't notice them before.

Anyway, I'm thankful for this coverage and for these hard questions that other media don't ask of the superintendent or other school district and union leaders.

Great post, and please keep the schools beat alive on Slog. It is very helpful to have this coverage here.

Perhaps the best question: "With the upheaval in voting in our district, the dissatisfaction of both your employees and your employers, the general dismay with the allotment and productive dividend of Seattle Public Schools, are you not surprised that an initiative to move your position to the November ballot has not been discussed?"
Does anybody have the balls? If we can question the constitution based our "social benefits" of two people committed legally to each other (is it the question or the answer that seems so scary?), why can't we question the position of the lead of our school districts?
Seattle Public Schools are more then a joke. They are taxing us dry, and providing less then expected results.
Why do the heads of public agencies earn such a larger salary then their subjective employees here? Why should she earn more then the governor, or the mayor?

This was a great question. There are lots more great questions that could be asked that she will never answer.

The Superintendent is the promoter of expensive stuff that usually does not work. Anyone who feels sorrow for her is completely uninformed on the Seattle Schools situation.

Great question, and it's amazing that asking such a direct and pertinent question of a public figure generated such a bizarre reaction. Please, keep asking these questions. And thank you for the coverage of Seattle schools...

One of those people in her posse was probably a representative of Strategies 360, a marketing company that the Alliance for Education, a Gates' backed organization, hired to carry through the superintendent's agenda and control her message. That representative was there during that meeting.

See: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com…

And about Strategies 360, on their website they state “S360 is one of the country’s leading strategic positioning firms. With offices across the Pacific Northwest and in Washington, DC, we are experts at negotiating the political landscape, crafting content, building coalitions and targeting communications.”

See:http://www.strategies360.com/

I think it is very reasonable for a journalist to ask a leader what they are doing to address an overwhelming vote of no-confidence from the people he or she leads. I think it's very telling that she didn't have an answer. Apparently her view is "Fuck 'em." Which is fine - that can be her choice. In fact, that attitude she has towards the staff is probably a root cause for the no-confidence vote.

I also think it is very reasonable for a journalist to ask about public response to the decisions by the leader of a government entity. Again, the superintendent's response, which boils down to "Fuck 'em." is indicative of the root causes of her failure to communicate.

It has been obvious since her time in Charleston that she views working people as trash and needs minders around her to keep her from blurting it out on record in public.

Her strategies are not proven strategies. Her puppeteers base their solution du jour on their whim or what they think will work not what does work. The numbers are numbing.

50% of all kids in SPS fail state standards in math, reading & science. Only 5 - 10% of them are failing on their report cards. Since the state tests are pretty dumbed-down and the classrooms are double dumbed down, you can pretty safely interpolate that about 70% of the kids in the classrooms aren't grasping the material.

It actually is way outside of the family problem often cited. We're talking priveleged 2 parent household kids not learning.

When they go off to college they have to go remedial often for multiple quarters or even a year to reach college level in their skill set thus the 5 year college problem and it's costs.

MGJ has not made any progress. Her performance review barely mentioned improved education outcomes. None of the central bureaucracy is held accountable for progress - of course because they're making the bed that they're surely not going to sleep in.

Again, they're all on the autopilot commands of their billionaire donors who can't themselves point to a single success in their 20plus years of creating total choas in American education with their theories that don't pan out.

Insist on proven strategies and forget the rest. It's like the schools are one big R&D lab for the billionaires - something that should get a fixed percentage of the pie is getting the whole pie and ice cream as well. It's ironic - they'd never allow that in their own businesses but they insist they're bringing the business model to education. I call BS on that.

Thank you for asking those questions. MGJ has a lack of respect for stakeholders and a disdain of integrity that takes the breath away. It is high time she was called on it.

Riya, you are a journalist. You asked her no personal questions, you asked her questions about her job performance. Totally legit. Bravo and I wish I had been there.

When I ask her tough questions (I write for the blog Save Seattle Schools and we cover all education issues far and wide and Riya is one of the few journalists in this town who write about education that I respect), she does the exact same thing. Her eyes narrow and she says she doesn't understand the question. I think she learned this at the Board Superintendents Academy (aka Charm School).

Neither the Board or the Super have said one word about the vote of no confidence. That's troubling. The person who is to motivate and inspire our teachers is the one person whose leadership they don't believe in. No real public discussion about why they want to get rid of Family Support Workers (which are funded under the City's Families and Education levy so the district may not have final say in this) and Teach for America? NOT ONE SINGLE WORD or announcement to parents. They are our children and we have a right to know who is in the classroom. Shame on this district and this Superintendent.

I have told the Board that if our Super gets Michelle Rhee's job, let her go. Don't look back, just let her go.

"...schools in the rich neighborhoods and north of the Ship Canal get funding,..." that would show how much you know about SPS. Every area of the district is hurting because more money goes to central adm projects than to schools and this budget cycle it will get even worse( we failed 1098, eliminated the soda pop tax and pass Tim Eyman's initiative). Our PTAs fund 35 full-time positions in this district (not to mention how many part-times ones). That is a huge amount of pressure on PTAs to fundraise (not to mention provide money for maintenance and school programs). It's just ridiculous but this is how our Superintendent does things.

More info and discussion - htttp://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com

Watch out Riya, she's gonna try to get you fired.

Don't feed the trolls, Westello.

She has a plan that she cannot unveil to the public because it's not pretty. She will get Teach for America youth consultants to teach in Seattle classrooms. Then the scores will plummet even further and she will blame it on the real teachers and the union. And with the current teacher backlash, she will finally be able to bust the union. Until then, as charliemas indicated, she'll give us the "fuck 'em" response.

Worse than that, TBoneStone:

As is apparent in the slog post by Ms Bhattacharjee, the superintendent, by narrowing her eyes to laser beams defending (with her posse) the Fortress of Rule, managed to avoid the most timely issue, Teach For America. NEXT WEDNESDAY AT 6:00 PM, the school board, four of whom were placed on the board via extraordinary campaign donations from the Gates and Broad Foundations and their minions, the Alliance for Education and the League of Education Voters, will vote "yes" on TFA because they are owned by these same puppeteers of the "reform" movement.

The reformers use standardized test scores (particularly the "achievement gap," the difference in scores between wealthier or whiter and poorer or blacker) to base their entire reform movement. They are deprofessionalizing the role of teachers, as you note into mere consultants or instructors, by showing "gains" on these very narrow and shallow test scores. TFA, if allowed to come to Seattle, will replace fully certified teachers with uncertified instructors who are taught, back at TFA headquarters, to go into the poorest and blackest schools, then teach to the test. They use "backward planning" in the worst way: Use state tests (which, by the way, aren't based on "standards" as we know them, with some content, but purely on "skills," and NOT critical thinking, inquiry, or innovation but merely rote repetition to plan back - here's the answers to the HSPE; here, then, are the answers to my classroom assessments; here, then, is my curriculum and instruction. Teach, then assess if they met "standard", reteach until student can fill in the bubble on the multiple choice question correctly. The District's new MAP test, sold to them by a company the superintendent sat on the board of to sell the test to SPS (NWEA), is multiple choice.

So TFA instructors might well drive students to score higher on tests, thus showing "growth," but this is only on these tests, which do not test even a quarter of waht SHOULD be going on in a classroom. Art, civics, experimentation, history, critical thinking, innovation....ain't tested, doesn't count.

TFA is a blatant attempt to undermine REAL education and real teachers with a numbers-based statistical model that does not look ar important areas of learning, is foisted off on the poor and the disenfranchised, leads to profit and a whole industry of consultants and contractors that privatize the "industry..."

Remember Blackhawk, now Xe, the company that sold thousands of mercenaries to the US Govt at the beginning of the Iraq war? This was another form of privatization - sell of the public institution of defense so people can profit off free-market war. This thing with "reform," as exemplified by the superintendent's disdain for her teachers and her embrace of reform's TFA, is a blatant example, and we can beat it down. Go to JSCEE next wednesday, protest, sign up to speak (8:00am monday morning via phone or mail - see district websire > board > agenda > November 17)

Please please please email the board with your concerns, go to the meeting, and stop this tragic "reform" that feeds our poor and minority students pap while paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to NWEA, consultants, contractors, and other "educators" who taught for two years with TFA, then bailed out of the classroom to make twice as much money preaching "reform" at those real teachers who stayed commited to teaching children.

@15- So strange that I am a liberal, yet believe that parents are the most important facet of a child's education. Which is why I oppose the Conservative's attempts to blame the teachers for every education failure.

Thank you for asking these important questions, and thanks also to The Stranger for (finally) covering Seattle School District issues. Please keep up the good work.

I would echo the kudos Riya for asking questions a journalist should ask, but most haven't. While her entourage is odd, I'm more interested in her answers and the questions that are asked.

"No, these are my staff, they are my communications people in case I need them," she replied curtly.

She walks around with her posse of staff and communications people, and yet none of them can answer a legitimate question.

I wish people would start putting the blame on the bloated administration, the high paid executives, communication people, staff, coaches, etc. and the expensive tests and data monitoring systems, for the high cost of public education, and quit laying the blame on the teachers. Teachers are being cut, classes are getting larger, classroom support is being cut.... and MGJ gets raises and bonuses...... and people go on putting the blame on teachers.