Friday, April 10, 2009

Seattle CAO leaving.. Santorno to Tacoma

In the Seattle Times:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009016986_santorno10m.html


From the article:
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Since Santorno arrived, she's led efforts to establish a uniform math curriculum in elementary schools, strengthen literacy programs and establish classroom libraries in the early grades so students can do more independent learning.

She's also made some controversial decisions, such as requiring West Seattle High to change its schedule from a four-period day to a six-period day.

She said Thursday she wishes some of her work had shown results faster. She wanted, for example, to see impressive math results during her tenure. That hasn't happened yet, but she's confident it will.
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Faith Based Math is what I call it as she's confident it will. This k-8 math plan did not work in Denver. She stuck Seattle with it and there are no results to indicate that it is working in Seattle. With the Everyday Math adoption instructional time was increased to 75 minutes per day and accompanied by lots of professional development. Fourth grade Math WASL scores declined and for Hispanics the passing rate dropped from 43.5% to 33.5%.

http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/waslTrend.aspx?groupLevel=District&schoolId=100&reportLevel=District&orgLinkId=100&yrs=&year=&gradeLevelId=4&waslCategory=7&chartType=1

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School Board President Michael DeBell praised Santorno, saying she's done a good job and he's long been impressed with her buoyant personality and obvious enthusiasm for public education.

"The only area where we haven't seen eye-to-eye is math," he said.

Does this mean the School Board is less than satisfied with:
the current No data, No promises, and No Reasons to adopt the Central Administration recommended High School Math instructional materials on April 22, 2009, coming from the Math Program Manager?

I certainly hope so.

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To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data....
Really for me.....She's confident it will just does not cut it.

Good Luck to Tacoma on this.

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