End of Year letter to School Board

Dear Seattle Schools Directors,

The linked article below identifies the Seattle School District's actions quite well. Hope you all get a copy of the book "BETRAYED"; it certainly applies to the piece.

From Schools Matter comes this posting:

"Highly-Qualified" Temporary School Missionaries
for Children Who Need Experienced Teachers

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/highly-qualified-temporary-school.html

Arne and the Disruptors (great name for a bad band) are always talking about edu-reform taking us beyond the status quo. Well, they are at it again, and the resulting changes this time are like most of the rest, taking the status quo backward, rather than forward.

The arrogant corporate fools in charge of federal education policy have slid language into a continuing resolution that will allow alternate route "certification" programs like TFA to claim that their candidates are "highly qualified" for NCLB purposes after four weeks of preparation.

With these clueless, well-meaning 2-year missionaries of TFA serving only in poor, brown, and black schools that desperately need teachers, rather than trainees, this has to be a solid basis for a civil rights lawsuit.

No sense just stopping there. Let us take a look at plummeting year to year score changes for Seattle's students in Special Ed and for ELL students. Was that well reported on Dec 15 at the Board Work session by MGJ? ... NO ..
So where is the accountability?
Where is the action in response to failing plans?

There is none, the children are Betrayed.

It seems the only hope of constructive action is huge political pressure because evidence is continually rejected as a basis for making Board decisions.

Betrayed and Betrayed again, some strategic plan.

And off the public marches to appeals court over the math decision because the Board just refuses to make use of evidence in decision-making.

So looking at those Black Student Math scores of only 12.5% of Black students passing in math with the Discovering Text in year one (at a cost of $1.2 million). ELL pass rate is now down to 7%.

The UW had their CoE MEC project in action at CHS and RBHS and with increased professional development and produced Black pass rates of 5.7% and 3.9%.

So what is the Plan? Where's the Beef?

Sincerely,

Dan Dempsey