RttT and Stand and Deliver Revisited An Open Letter to Seattle School Directors

The SEA union votes on RttT up or down Monday at 4:00 (5-17-2010)

Here is an open letter to Seattle School Board members. The Seattle School Board members already voted to "Go for the money" and apparently like the consequences..... not surprisingly as RttT is all about "Eli Broad" and the Billionaire Boys interests (certainly not the kids' interests)..

Hopefully the SEA union members' Reps. are awake on Monday.
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The meeting will be at Washington Middle School at 4:00 PM. If you can make it, please come and show your support for our teachers. Many of them feel alienated due to the pressure that has been put on the union through organizations such as the Alliance backed by Gates and Broad.

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The questions Seattle answered from OSPI to get a $2 million grant.....
ARE HERE
Any doubts about why things rarely improve in Seattle education no matter how much money OSPI and SPS throw at it will be answered here.

Note: We do need greater spending but the really big problem is pathetic direction and RttT does nothing about that except make things even worse. More dollars in the hands of the current leadership is beyond pointless. Note the Gov. slashed I-728 funds costing districts around $400 per student overall and now expects districts to spend tie working to win about $30 if successful.

This game is all about control and has little to with anything else.

Watch the Billionaire Boys visit the cashbox ala Enron.

There are monster parallels between Enron and the recent Wall Street mortgage meltdown and RttT comes next.

RttT violates Federal Code 3403
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Answer to OSPI question #2 and part of win $2 million for Seattle.

2. OSPI: The SIG funding provides an extraordinary opportunity for bold and disruptive change in schools identified as persistently failing. Beyond replacing the principal, describe how your proposal is bold and disruptive?

Seattle : Bold and disruptive are key terms that need to be addressed. Really high level of accountability.
Expectations and score cards around growth. Getting teachers to sign on to the plan. We have to change the direction.

Cleveland - new tech. network. More from community has been disruptive. We shouldn't be doing this. A whole school reform is disruptive.

Replacing the principal is disruptive. Everyone committing rather than giving people a choice. Work that we are doing is pretty board (sic.).

Our representatives voted to look at changes that may not be at the core values of core members.
4 tiered evaluation system is bold. Evaluation system in place at the beginning of school year.

We talk a lot around student centered education - but right now it is just talk. When we actually put in place it will be bold and disruptive. Going into these schools and require that the staff to work differently for the needs of the children.

Accountability, recognition of performance. We are really trying to have a clear understandable model for schools and communities to understand. Public transparency - increase around school performance, what is the district doing around it? Being able to do at a greater level then what we had planned.

When the schools open in the fall, teachers will have an expectation that things are different, students will see that things are different.

We have created a Transformation Principal Job Description - must have a proven track record in order to be considered.
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Staggering logic that: Disruption = Improvement in Educational Learning Environment... These folks have not used what is known to work for decades and they do not intend to start now.
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Ca Ching!!! $2 million dollars and what is the improvement plan? ... I failed to see that any proven solutions are going to be used in Seattle........ why?

WELL because ... the legislation does not require evidence of success to win a grant.
This way outfits like KnowledgeWorks Foundation can rake in the bucks by having New Technology Network provide Seattle with a defective model to copy and get paid, as only OSPI and the Seattle School directors need to sanction it ... Clearly evidence of success is NOT important.. ( past evidence of failure seems to be a plus for the NTN model as it won).

41 schools applied and 18 won grants ... Seattle had 3 schools apply and three winners ... 100% success ... wow how sad is that.