Saturday, March 21, 2009

$9 million for what exactly?

The Seattle Schools Strategic Plan "Excellence for All" states pg 17:
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Immediate Actions

• Math: A Math Project Team will develop an implementation plan and timeline for action
during summer 2008. Alignment of the elementary and middle school instructional materials to the new State Performance Expectations will be completed this summer.
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This document "Excellence for All" gives the impression that following the State Math Standards is a priority for the SPS.

SPS Math actions over the last year and the most recent recommendation of the "Discovering Series" for high school math certainly are not in following with the state math standards.

The Gates Foundation withdrew support from Seattle once before.

Now it appears that the district has rounded up $9 million to implement the Strategic Plan, but the words of the Strategic Plan in regard to math and the district actions hardly coincide.

I wonder how the School Board Directors view this apparent contradiction?

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*** With $9 million you would think a few bucks could go for math programs that follow the state math standards.

From School Beat March 20
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/news/sbnews/sb_staffcomm_031909.html

Seattle Public Schools received $9 million in grants from local and national foundations to support implementation of the District’s five-year Strategic Plan, Excellence for All. The plan is designed to raise achievement of all students by providing students and teachers with the resources they need to succeed.

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Directly from the School Beat March 20th release:

Seattle Public Schools received $9 million in grants from local and national foundations to support implementation of the District’s five-year Strategic Plan, Excellence for All. The plan is designed to raise achievement of all students by providing students and teachers with the resources they need to succeed. The grant funds support:
• expanded college-ready coursework for students;
• real-time student data to drive decision-making; and
• stronger professional development opportunities for teachers, school leaders, and District officials.
The grants come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($7.2 million), The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation ($1.2 million), The Boeing Company ($308,00) and The Stuart Foundation ($254,000).
The Alliance for Education worked with the District to secure the grants and will play a lead role in managing the funds; tracking, evaluating and communicating results; and engaging the community.


So how is the Alliance for Education going to communicate the correlation between Excellence for All statements and SPS math actions?

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In regard to "• real-time student data to drive decision-making"
Where are those PSAT results from the test given in November?

Perhaps the Alliance for Education can tell us.

I believe those results were available to High Schools in late January.
So where is a public release of PSAT data?

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