Check out the Jan 23, 2008 report from Charlie Mas on the Save Seattle Schools Blog.
It is great coverage of our current math situation.
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Putting this blog into some context -
May 31, 2005
Residents who fought the district's proposal last month to close 10 schools are eager for more analysis and alternatives.
Managers of the state's largest district say they will balance next year's budget with about $17.5 million in cuts and changes, but they face a $14 million budget gap in 2006-07 and as much as a $21.5 million gap in 2007-08
Charles Mas, another parent activist, delivered his own proposal to the School Board recently. He proposed outsourcing the district's property management and $25 million in building maintenance and utility costs to the city of Seattle. The city would levy a special tax and use the restricted revenue to cover these new costs. Lake Washington School District, for example, outsources its food service; Bellevue outsources its laundry.
Mas also said the district should hold back money from schools that can't meet minimum enrollment thresholds and provide extra money to those that are substantially above the threshold.
"Schools should not be protected from failure," he wrote to the board. "Schools that do not attract students should be closed, re-invented, and re-opened with a better plan for serving the needs of their community. I'm not opposed to school closure. Some schools SHOULD be closed, but the criteria for closure should be how well the school is serving the community, not how old the roof is."
and now...so who is CM serving?
This is administrative mismanagement and communities that will pay are already disadvantaged. Seattle and SPS are waging a war of assimilation on ethnic communities. They want to invoke fear, cause an exodus of communities to racially-intolerant white suburbs where minorities will be further isolated into unfunded support programs. South Africa apartheid. Civil rights is not colorless.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2005-06-15/news/the-poverty-factor.php
This article makes things even more clear.
Only 68% of the children in Seattle attend public school? This news article does not publish the math WASL scores.
But in comparing the demographics of Seattle and Bellevue districts, what's more striking is the percentage of Seattle's 46,000 students who receive free or reduced-price lunches because of their families' low incomes.
In Bellevue, one of the most ethnically and economically diverse suburbs, 18 percent of students have lunch subsidized. In Seattle, it's 40 percent.
It costs more to educate underachieving kids - its that simple. You can't educate them with books they don't comprehend. Math is boring because they dont understand. You can't be a teacher if your kids aren't learning something in your classroom. What's the point?
The more importance you assign to a WASL score, the more corrupted it will become, until it will be useless as a tool for measuring growth. Its that simple.
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