[Ed Note: Elections are coming up, and this stuff is important, so we’re covering it. You may disagree with the opinions of the writers. We invite opposing viewpoints to share their perspective.]
Most votes this fall divide cleanly along liberal / conservative battle lines. You don’t have to think too hard, just decide if you find Paul Krugman or George Will more credible.
The exception is the Seattle Public Schools levy, which is scrambling all of the usual alliances. Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson is behind it, but it is opposed by her usual cheering section at the Seattle Times (who go to pains to say it’s not a rejection of the superintendent’s leadership). The teachers’ union supports the levy, but many teachers are opposed (who go to pains to say that this would in fact be a rejection of the superintendent’s leadership). The school board and parents at the Seattle PTSA have endorsed the levy, but the other hyper-involved parent crowd at Save Seattle Schools stand opposed, as well as the League of Women Voters.
The reason this levy is the first to draw significant opposition is that it is uniquely under the control of central district offices and pays for rolling out the new teacher evaluation system. Concern is raised when you pair that centralized control with the results of a terrible district audit this past summer. Concern is further raised when you consider the near unanimous (99.4%) “no confidence” vote in the superintendent’s leadership by SPS teachers this past August.
The “no confidence” vote is partly due to the autocratic management style of Maria Goodloe-Johnson (see no kumbaya), but more substantially because the district has failed to build credibility with teachers. The district is simply unresponsive when teachers are dealing with a difficult child, broken classroom infrastructure, or a struggling coworker. Instead, the district expends its energy rolling out new programs with unprepared “trainers” that lack real-life classroom experience, followed by a list of impractical and unsupported mandates for the classroom. For instance, the district could be engaged with existing procedures for helping or ejecting school employees that are not successful, but instead the district has been expending its energy on a new evaluation system.
The result is that schools that succeed in the district do so despite district offices, not because of them. The district has retreated into the ivory tower syndrome that develops when management loses its credibility. In this environment, the levy is seen not as a method to strengthen schools, but rather as another “easy-answer” education fad that will disrupt schools. Worse still, the questionable current fad of assessing teachers based on metrics is a poor fit for a diverse school district with a politicized and dysfunctional administration. The size and diversity of the district undermines the use of standardized metrics as schools separated by poverty necessarily have different needs and goals. Schools succeed only when they remain a united community focused on education, and a merit system driven by a distrusted and dysfunctional administration undermines that cohesion and purpose.
Instead of moving towards centralized, scripted lessons targeted at borderline students, we should be working towards an environment of mutual respect between teachers and the district. Breaking down the ivory tower would be a start, rotating employees between the classroom and district offices year to year. As part of that, dealing with bad/ineffective teachers, principals, and district staff needs to be executed on. We also need a superintendent to earn the trust of teachers. Most importantly, the approach to improving our schools needs to work from the bottom up, not through top down education fads. Voting no on the levy and then giving money to your school’s PTA is a great starting point in that process.
i hear you, but will this really send a message to tone-deaf ears?
The biggest problem I have is with Eric’s flawed logic for voting against the levy. He start with a list of links of others that oppose it for a good reason, which I summarize as “Operational money is being misspent, and saying no to such a small levy sends a message to get your act together without actually hurting the schools.” He should have stopped there, as that could very well be true depending on your notion of organizational development and management.
But let’s be a little more balanced. Citing the SEA teachers union’s vote of “No Confidence” means nothing when you consider that their main gripe was that they did not want the SERVE (Support, Empower, Recognize and Value Educators) evaluation system which favored performance over tenure for raises and decisions concerning layoffs. –A practice observed by most every other industry to retain your stars, train those with potential and remove the chaff.
He also incongruously identify that ”dealing with bad/ineffective teachers, principals, and district staff needs to be executed on” , but yet you deride the district for spending time on a standardized evaluation system which would identify the same. How else would one go about this?
Seattle Schools have underperformed nationally since well before the arrival of Goodloe-Johnson, and developing a baseline understanding of teacher performance is critical to understanding where the problems lie. The teacher’s competence may not be the problem. It could be resources, training or any other number of issues. The first step is to uniformly identify the teachers and students who are underperforming, then figure out how to best help them. It seems this is what Goodloe-Johnson is attempting to do, regardless of your feelings about her bedside manner.
Lastly, Eric advocates giving the money to your local PTA instead of the levy. The most obvious flaw here is that people that don’t have kids in school at the moment don’t typically belong or give to a PTSA. But let’s ignore that for a moment and run with this concept:
So let’s see, I live in Wallingford. Do I give that money to BF Day, John Stanford, Hamilton, or McDonald? Should we try to replicate the enrichment programs across those schools, or should they complement each other based on aggregate student interest? Should we give to a general PTSA fund, or earmark it for my own pet interests? Should we ask for an audit trail of the money we donate to see it’s efficiently spent, or perhaps issue a matching challenge that we will give even more based on performance? Or heck, maybe it would it be better to give that money to the Rainer Beach PTSA so that those kids come close to getting the same resources as our kids here in Wallingford, now that the new Student Assignment Plan makes you attend school in your home neighborhood?
Wow, it’s all getting pretty complicated pretty fast. We should probably put an oversight committee together and establish a general fund for distributing the money, putting an action plan in place and monitoring it. Oh wait a sec, thaaaat’s right– We HAVE one of those!
interesting comment Chris..
so would you say opposition to the levy is really opposition to a reform-minded teacher evaluation system?
OK, must defend the logic of the post 🙂
Don’t confuse the SERVE vote with the superintendent vote. The teachers voted for the SERVE contract in a split vote immediately before voting unanimously against the superintendent’s leadership. I am very surprised that the school board has regarded this as a non-issue. Consider if over 99% of Microsoft employees vote “no confidence” in Steve Ballmer- wouldn’t that be cause for concern?
I agree that SERVE might be helpful if the district were competent. Unfortunately, most of the really “bad” employees are already in district offices. This is for 2 reasons- first, when you are a failed teacher or principal, your career options pretty clearly point towards school administration. Second, bad teachers and principals in the past were not typically removed from the system by way of following the correct process, but were instead handled as a crises, and that typically involved moving them to central offices where they could be swept under the organizational carpet. Even without SERVE there are mechanisms to remove underperformers, they just need follow through. The district can do that follow through without SERVE- just talk to the principals!
I disagree with any generalized critique of the entire district as “underperforming”. Many schools in SPS are among the best in the nation, and some are among the worst. This is due to a combination of the student bodies they serve and the principal in the schools.
Finally, I agree it would be best to give money to a central organization and have it sensibly distributed. I have never voted against a school levy before. In the absence of competent leadership though, we are forced to operate locally. It would be great if you gave money to any of the PTAs you mention.
@ confusedparent, no I wouldn’t go that far, in fact if your objective is to “send a message” that we want more transparency or we’re not “rollovers” for levies, so be it.
But the organizations that are telling us to vote it down (with the exception of the PI) seem to have an issue with Goodloe-Johnson and her agenda. If you look at what SPS want the money for, it’s just to balance out the cuts made by the state to various programs, and to mitigate the end of some federal funding. And we already approved their ability to raise the levy cap last Feb, now they’re asking for the money, so it’s really no surprise.
@Eric, I wasn’t confusing the two votes, I was attacking the underlying motivations of the voting teachers. In my experience, most folks don’t/can’t separate their faith in the leader from their faith in the plan, and the SPS plan increases accountability and devalues tenure. And your faith in any plan is limited if you don’t feel you were consulted in the plan’s formation, which seems to be folks chief issue with Goodloe-Johnson. So for me, not funding the plan (which seems sound imho) because consensus wasn’t properly garnered is just pouting at the expense of kids who need the resources.
BTW: Do you have data on “failed” teachers switching to administrative jobs? Seems odd as jobs managing curriculum and edu admin programs typically involve obtaining an advanced degree in education/administration and it would be difficult to “sweep” someone into that sort of role without the qualifications.
Many SPS schools are best in nation? Garfield, Roosevelt, and who else? That’s sort of like saying the Mariners aren’t underperforming because they have Ichiro and Felix Hernandez.
Lastly, I think you are off target saying the best and worst are a factor of student composition and the principals. The number one factor in the success of any school is not the demographic of the student bodies nor the principal nor the teachers. It’s the parents. Parents who emphasize the importance of education, spend time with their kids on homework, reading, math, etc. Parents who provide educational opportunities for their kids over the summer to prevent “summer slide” etc. That’s why poverty matters so much: because it’s a lead indicator that the parents are working all the time and don’t have this time to spend because they are focused on food, shelter and other basics. Poverty is also often a lag indicator of a lack of education of the impoverished. Parents in that situation are unable to place the proper emphasis on education for their kids, and often aren’t equipped to help. We can (and should) feed and cloth the kids that need help, but it doesn’t address the parental support.
Even at Garfield which is one of our best and is Silver on US News & World Report, the “Disadvantaged Students’ State Test Proficiency Rate” was 57.4% compared to the Non-Disadvantaged Studentswho averaged 91%. A 33% gap.
So like it or not, everything we do as a society with our public schools is really to balance out this birthright inequity so everyone gets a fair chance. Giving my money to fund my local school is what has led to a nation of have and have-nots. The PTSA at our school is able to fund Yoga, Hip-Hop classes and Writers in Schools programs with our contributions, which is fantastic for my kids, but other districts don’t have new textbooks, and the whole SPS system has a school day is a class-hour shorter than most states’.
So I am ok with any plan that (1) puts metrics for accountability in place(2) creates a dashboard so we know where the biggest bang for the buck is and (3) is carried out without too much second guessing and interruption. And I am ok funding that plan.
The teacher vote was influenced by the vote on SERVE, but it stands on its own. It means that virtually all teachers, even those who are likely to receive merit pay and who voted for SERVE, are opposed to the superintendent’s leadership. In talking with teachers I have yet to hear any of them speak of the district as anything but a source of problems, never solutions or assistance.
I should not have raised the issue of “why” the administration is dysfunctional, as it detracts from the underlying point- that the district is not helping schools. I have seen 2 failed teachers that went back to school for administration degrees and a failed principal that was placed in central offices, but that’s all. I’m sure there’s many other good reasons why the district administration has problems, such as the churn in leadership over the years.
I’m not comfortable calling out which schools are “good” or “bad”, and I don’t think test scores should be the basis for evaluation. In my experience, I personally have not seen a public school in our neighborhood that is “bad”, and several that I think are “good”. If you stick only to test scores, “good” schools will appear wherever Spectrum and APP go, and “bad” schools will appear when there is poverty. If I remember correctly, everyone at Lowell reached standard last year, so by test score measures it is a “perfect” school. I dislike how test scores focus all school resources on bumping up borderline students so more kids will pass the test and bump up school ratings. This leads to a focus on teaching scripted lesson plans designed for the standardized test and leaves out all other children and programs, including spectrum, APP, special ed, music, arts, project based learning, and so forth.
Painting the school system as underperforming is a broad brush that pushes parents to private schools- if you talk to parents of students in public schools, you will typically hear happy stories I find. I think it’s fair to say the central district is underperforming and that damages schools, but it’s also important to call out that each school is different.
Regarding student composition I was talking about how well equipped they are for school, and that’s clearly a result of home life. School achievement is a web of interdependency and trying a one size fits all approach between an APP school and a school with 90%+ free and reduced lunch is lunacy. I don’t think public schools should exist purely to “balance out the birthright inequity”- they should be designed to help all students reach their potential.
I think we’re having a “great taste” vs “more filling” discussion except when it comes to the utility of layering on yet another set of metrics and dashboards. Principals and the district can already see how students perform on the MAP / MSP / HSPE year to year, and every school has a broad set of assessments online already in the form of the REA reports. I don’t see more metrics or oversight as being productive. We need accountability to start being applied at the top before it trickles down to the bottom. Can’t we get a superintendent that’s backed by even 10% of teachers, or is that too high a standard?
First, a factual clarification–The League of Women Voters took a “No opinion” stance on the levy, not an endorsement of a “no” vote. So did the 43rd District Democrats (Wallingford’s district). Both of these groups have previously endorsed school levies, so the no opinion was significant. I know the 43rd was almost evenly divided among “no” “no position” and “yes” –people want more information on why the Seattle School District came out so badly on the state financial audit, and what actual steps are being taken to clean up the district’s handling of finances. There are also concerns about where the funds are actually going.
Most of the opposition is about the district’s mis-handling of funds, and the large size of the administration. There is also the issue of how vague the district is now on how they intend to actually spend the money.
The school board has come out with a last-minute promise that this time they’ll really have some oversight into spending–they said the same thing about four months ago when the audit came out, but have not yet made any specific proposals or changes.
The Seattle Public Schools administration was historically bigger per-student than other large cities. The SPS denies this, but while they say they have made some cuts, the administration is still hurting less than the schools.
The levy is not all about filling gaps in state funding:
The School district proposes
$16.8 million for 1% teacher raises.
The district contracted for a teacher raise (new spending) without having the funds in place. Good fiscal management. hey, I like teachers, but this is not how a budget operates.
$5.9 million for high school science textbooks.
Hinging textbook purchase on a levy is either bad spending priorities (what the heck are they spending money on when there is NO line item in the general budget for textbooks), or shameless politics (it’s for the Kiiiids! They need boooooks!). Or both. Much easier to wait for a spending vote to get the books than actually budget for them in the first place. Who needed that?
$25.5 million for–something or another.
Originally, levy money was to go toward teacher evaluation using the MAP test (incorrect use of data, new spending, money going to new administrative offices), but in the face of opposition, the district seems to have backed off this (can you change the spending proposal after the levy is on the ballot?).
They now say, on their Levy FAQ that was last updated 10/11/10:
“It is not appropriate for us to speculate at this time precisely how this category of funds ($25.5 M) will be applied”
Yay! I want to give the audit-failing school district $25 million when they can’t come up with ONE MORE specific proposal for the money.
If the levy fails, the board may finally be forced to take action. The administration may have to be cut further (like everyone else). And they can come back next year with a levy for specific programs with oversight controls. Remember, this is a special levy. There are already two operating levies in place–the legislature allowed districts to go for a third. But do we want to just hand over the money and trust the district, or do we want a better plan first, then the levy vote?