When asked her opinion of Ayn Rand's fantasy novel "Atlas Shrugged," Dorothy Parker is reported to have said: "This is not a book to be put down lightly. It should be hurled, with great force."

So it is also for this stupid idea. These are OUR schools, not Bill Gates' schools. Nobody has yet crowned Bill and Melinda Gates king and queen to my knowledge, but this obsequious fawning over all things Gates since he started financing Crosscut has pushed this reader's patience to the edge.

This is privatization, plain and simple, and they're not even trying to hide it anymore.

Lilly goes on to say, in parentheses, as if it was just a throwaway: "That she did seriously damage the district and had to resign was just a coincidence that had nothing to do with her Broad training."

Now reasonable people might disagree on many things, Dick, but this is just an insult to the intelligence of anyone who, uh, reads the news. Looting the public till to benefit cronies is part and parcel of the entire Broad agenda, and this is so well documented, across so many school districts, that I marvel at the sheer gall of trying to slip this little turd past anyone with a pair of eyes.

No and hell no.

I thought at first Mr. Lilly was being satirical. But holy cow, he's serious.

There is so much wrong with this idea I almost don't know where to start.

First and foremost, our schools are not for sale or lease. Want charters? Pass the legislation.

Second, The Bill and Melinda Gates Free Private School District? Okay, I'll bite. What have they done educationally to deserve this kind of latitude? Breaking up high schools into smaller schools (their first big effort)? It fell flat on it's face and that was after schools and districts had put in tremendous amounts of time "transforming."

Third, the in-fighting for what the Gates's schools would have over the regular schools would be HUGE. Mr. Lilly was on the Board; would he like to run again and be the Board member taking the flack because the Gates school had some benefit that the other schools don't?

It's funny because the UW's College of Education is using this same idea with Teach for America. "Oh, let them in and we can do great research on their methods." Their methods have only had marginal success and it is
isn't even long-term success. So why allow Gates to experiment as well?

I love the way Mr. Lilly lumps all the people who mistrust (for good reason) the Gates Foundation. Way to marginalize very different people.

That Mr. Gates and Mr. Broad are aligned in throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at education in every direction doesn't raise any red flags? That Gates is trying to make an effort to hide some of this (read the recent NY Times article on his efforts) doesn't raise some red flags?

"To these folks, former Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson was a kind of Manchurian Candidate likely to destroy the district from within because she attended the Ely and Edythe Broad Foundation’s superintendent training programs. (That she did seriously damage the district and had to resign was just a coincidence that had nothing to do with her Broad training.)"

I'm thinking Mr. Lilly doesn't know much about Broad training (which I believe Board members used to get themselves) because Dr. Goodloe-Johnson followed a game plan laid out by Broad. Just a coincidence? No, it's not. Her hubris brought her down and it wasn't just a personality quirk.

Tell you what, you get Gates to promise to enroll his own kids in these schools and we'll see. He who believes class size doesn't matter (but his own kids will never see a class size larger than 16 and neither did he) and has nothing but disparaging things to say about our public schools, let him enroll his own children first.

No one is for the status quo. But Gates and Broad are not going to be the men behind the curtain guiding public education in this country. They were not hired, elected or appointed to do so. Bless the Gates for some of the important work they do but for me, I'd like them and ever other ed reformer to to keep their mitts off our district.

Want to help the capacity problems? Give us vouchers for private education. There are seats already available at private schools across the city. It would be much more cost effective for the state to give parents a voucher for $3000 instead of sending $7500 to the school district. It wouldn't pay for all of a private school education, but it would go a long way at most parochial schools.

Demand for capacity is reduced. Cost of educating students to taxpayers is reduced.

Lilly obviously wants to be a Big Thinker but unfortunately lacks the tools for the job. Getting one large idea into his head takes up so much room that there is just no space left for figuring out how it connects to everything else.

If Gates wants to GIVE us some money or BUILDINGS, fine. I would even say for all the crapola we (SPS) have had to put up from them, he owes us.

This is charter schools under a different name. Charter schools don't produce any better results than public schools, and the Gates Foundation's record is not particularly strong either. Charter schools are also not legal in Washington. If Gates wants to run a private school, there's nothing stopping him from doing so, but don't let him take away public assets in order to do it.

Broad Foundation training was absolutely instrumental in allowing the corruption in Seattle Schools that went on under Goodloe-Johnson. The training includes arrogance that parents, teachers, and lower-level staff know nothing and should be ignored. Goodloe-Johnson surrounded herself with yes-men and never gave an honest hearing to anyone with an opposing view or who had problems to report. She actually got written into her contract that the Board was not allowed to talk to anyone who worked for the school district but her and a couple of her appointees. That's the perfect breeding ground for corruption of the sort we saw in Potter and the sale of Martin Luther King school to a church group with connections to some senior District staff.

This is a very interesting suggestion. One historic parallel is the experimental school John Dewey started when he was teaching at the University of Chicago and where he worked out his early theories about progressive education. The schools, which continue today, were instrumental in putting the University of Chicago at the forefront of education departments. They exemplified Dewey's philosophy of pragmatism, which puts great emphasis on finding out what works as the basis of the search for truth. I don't imagine that the University of Washington would want to try such a thing, since it draws criticism from many quarters, but they might want to partner with the Gates Foundation in exploring Dick Lilly's valuable and highly constructive idea.

One other historic footnote. A prominent disciple of Dewey was Frank Cooper, who was the real founder of Seattle's public schools as superintendent, 1900-20. Cooper arrived to put into practice many of Dewey's theories about schools, including smaller schools, small class sizes, and making schools the anchor institutions for neighborhoods (including evening and summer classes for adults). His notion of schools as broad community assets for all ages, not just school children, is another seminal idea that could help revitalize Seattle Schools.

This might work as a challenge to the Gates Foundation to open some of their own schools and see how tough it really is. It doesn't really work as a solution to the District's capacity management problems.

The district leadership aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but they don't have a lot of closed buildings in areas of real overcrowding. The greatest overcrowding is in the Northeast where the only shuttered buildings are Cedar Park and John Marshall. Either one would be tricky to re-open as a school - for the Gates Foundation or the District.

Two of the buildings that Mr. Lilly mentions, Van Asselt and Columbia, are not in overcrowded areas. Some of the buildings he mentions are leased.

That report from the Facilities folks is so riddled with errors that it is completely meaningless. Look at what it says about Hamilton. It totally neglects the fact that there are over 200 APP students in that building who do not appear on that table.

The District doesn't need Gates Foundation money for capital projects to address overcrowding. The District does need to get on with re-opening Wilson-Pacific as a middle school and re-opening Fairmount Park as an elementary school. These projects will be expensive, sure, but, as Mr. Lilly knows, the operating budget is very tight but the district always seems able to find money in the capital budget. The schools can form and start classes before their buildings are ready. The new Wilson-Pacific middle school can meet at Lincoln and the new Fairmount Park elementary can meet at Boren until their buildings are ready for them.

Taking steps to encourage enrollment at Pinehurst would be a cheap and easy way to relieve some of the overcrowding in the northeast. Or, for no cost, the district could just stop discouraging enrollment there.

Other than that, the District just needs to allow Jane Addams, McDonald, and Sand Point to grow and take on some of that enrollment that is crushing Bryant, View Ridge, and Wedgwood.

If anyone can think of a building or a space in northeast Seattle that would make a suitable location for an elementary school, please reply here with it.

Perhaps the University of Washington college of education, another Education Reform true believer, would like to host an elementary school on their campus?

As Mr. Lilly knows, Seattle has already done this.

The New School, now called Southshore K-8, is almost exactly this experiment. By the way, it worked really well. It showed that public schools can deliver excellent results, even with a challenging population, if they just had a lot more money.

Southshore has had some diminished outcomes of late as the school has expanded and needs to assimilate a lot of new students into its culture. When the new students get with the program the school will go back to earlier performance.

The New School Foundation is winding down its support, so we'll see what the school can do without the extra funding.

But as far as the experiment goes, we've done it.

But coolpapa, Southshore couldn't POSSIBLY be a model for what Gates and his flack Lilly want -- the teachers there are (booga booga) UNIONIZED.

I'm with talisker. Demonize it as "privatization", but 1) the current system - obviously - isn't working very well and 2) I - personally (and I suspect there are many more) - am tired of the union/political influence in the education of our kids.

Mr. Brewster,
You write that the UW might want to partner with the Gates Foundation in exploring Dick Lilly's valuable and highly constructive idea."

Wow. I know Crosscut was recently the recipient of $400,000 of Gates money, but isn't this a bit over the top? I mean, this is pure rah-rah. It solidifies the notion many have lately that CC has been bought by Gates as its mouthpiece. Have you some research or knowledge that backs up your assestions that this is a "valuable...constructive idea"? How is it valuable to siphon off public school students into a well-funded "experiment" while leaving public schools underfunded? How is constructive to pour millions into a couple of private schools in an effort to break deprofessionalize educators and standardize education into mere test-taking? As others have pointed out, Gates is free to do this on his own: Rent facilities somewhere, start a free school, and get who he can. Why on earth does there need to be buy-in from the public schools he is intent on destroying?

You go on to write that "superintendent, 1900-20. Cooper arrived to put into practice many of Dewey's theories about schools, including smaller schools, small class sizes, and making schools the anchor institutions for neighborhoods (including evening and summer classes for adults). His notion of schools as broad community assets for all ages, not just school children, is another seminal idea that could help revitalize Seattle Schools."

This is exactly what is needed for public schools, everybody knows it, many of us citizens and educators have been crying for this for years...But it is somehow Gates who will enact it? How so? By funding smaller classes, night school, daycare...? This is the state's responsibility and the city's. How will Gates fund this "experiment" and why isn't it done already? Everett does it. Other districts do it. How is it somehow better if it's done by Gates and his public-school trashing cronies in the "reform" movement?

Your bias (paid for, evidently) is apparent. I'm very surprised. I watched as you started a fine weekly, started a fine civic institution (Town Hall) but here you are, apparently, mouthing the rhetoric of the Reformers bent on deunionizing and privatizing public schools.

Shame on you. Back up your assertion that this is "valuable and constructive" and tell us why small classes and daycare and community outreach can't be done without your patron, Gates. Oh, and give that 400k back: It stinks, and reduces your credibility about 200%

I admire how bluelight never lets facts get in the way of ideology.

"the current system - obviously - isn't working very well"

Actually, the current system is working very well. By what measure would anyone dispute this? High school graduation rates are at historical highs and they are near international highs as well.

Unlike a lot of places, including the United States of the past, we are attempting universal elementary and secondary education with an academic focus. We are not intending to leave the poor or the disabled out of the system. We are not dividing students between academic and vocational paths in their early teens. We have a diverse and multicultural society that does not put a particularly high value on education. I think our public schools are doing a great job. I defy anyone who thinks overwise to provide evidence to support their contention.

The teachers' union has almost no influence in the education of our kids. That's an absurd statement. I have no idea what bluelight is referring to. Whom would he like to influence the ecucation of our kids? The Gates Foundation? Halliburton? And how would any of them not be political?

There is nothing to stop the Gates Foundation from leasing empty buildings and creating schools in them.

There is nothing to stop the Gates Foundation from setting the tuition at those schools at zero.

There is nothing to stop the Gates Foundation from accepting students through whatever method they choose, including lottery. They could even select students to match some demographic profile.

I'm sure the folks at the Gates Foundation already know that. Which means that if they wanted to do this they would do it already. Since they haven't done this, that shows that they don't want to do it. Which makes the whole column kinda pointless.

Mr. Brewster,

At 10:23 am you wrote:
"One historic parallel is the experimental school John Dewey started when he was teaching at the University of Chicago and where he worked out his early theories about progressive education. The schools, which continue today, were instrumental in putting the University of Chicago at the forefront of education departments."

U of C is no longer at the forefront of education departments.....
The quality of research at many colleges of education is pathetic. The University of Chicago recognized this some time ago. It no longer has a College of Education. ..... If one would care to take a look at the UW College of Education, it is easy to understand the U of Chicago closing its school of education ... what is hard to understand is why the UW CoE is still open.

The UW CoE brings in a lot of money. The cost of educating an education student is among the lowest of all majors. There are lots of grants available to the CoE. The UW has managed to lower student test scores at most of the schools where its Math Education Project provides assistance.

NSF/ Education and Human Resources grants to UW to deliver service to k-12 schools have no responsibility to produce results. The only accountability is to spend the money as indicated in the original grant proposal. UW CoE loves this as its lack of results is not a detriment to continued grant funding

It seems that educational decisions at most every level are more about adult issues and concerns than improving outcomes for students.

Please note: the 10th grade OSPI HSPE 2010 pass rate in Math for Black students in Seattle was 12.5% ... This result is for 10th grade students who are classified as Sophomore's by credits. Yes 87.5% of Seattle's Black students in grade 10 could not pass the annual OSPI Math test.

I wonder why only one person on the thread mentioned the SeaTimes article yesterday about the corrupt process involved in the sale of Martin Luther King Elementary. It seems to me that what they discovered should be headline news here on Crosscut, but no sign of it. The SPS maneuvered bid requirements intentionally to cut out a generous bid by Bush School and sold the building to a church which used public money to buy it. So the public is screwed by the loss of millions of private money in hand connected to the loss of tax dollars to do the buying for the church. Why is there no loud outrage over this situation? Doesn't the Board and the system have an obligation here to clean the Stables? Why are we not in the process of trial and punishment? Are we to continue to support levies in the face of criminal waste of money in hand by the Seattle Public Schools? Until the MLK fiasco is cleaned up, the Free Public Schools issue is, to me, just another opportunity for the pigs in the trough to line up for more graft. They will find a way.

Where to begin with this one?

Well, for starters, Bill Gates has zero expertise in education and the ed reforms he has been bankrolling -- charter schools, high-stakes testing, merit pay (and its accompanying teacher-bashing), large class sizes, "School of the Future" in Philadelphia -- have been largely discredited. He seems to be throwing good money after bad at failed ideas. So what qualifies him or his foundation to run our schools?

(Open Letter to Bill Gates from a Public School Parent: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-peters/open-letter-to-bill-gates_b_779226.html)

As others have stated, what's stopping Mr. Gates from building and opening his own private school? There he could test out all his ed reform notions, charge no tuition if he so chose, and most importantly, stop using our children in the nation's public schools as his guinea pigs.

Here's one thing I think is stopping him: the cost of buildings. This has been stated by other ed reform privatizers like Paul Vallas as the main hurdle to charterization of public education: finding and funding buildings. In some places, like New York City, the charter mavens take over existing public school buildings, sometimes co-housing, sometimes pushing the existing schools out. In other places, the charter backers (which, btw, lead back to hedge fund managers) get their buildings paid for them by taxpayers through bond measures. So I suspect that Lilly's idea (floated earlier this year by others on this site – eg. “Trustless in Seattle Schools” -- see ‘Crazy Talk’ below), is rooted in the notion that Gates himself isn't willing to pay to build his own schools.

(Loose Ends – Strategies 360, Susan Enfield, Crazy Talk & Quakes: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/loose-ends-strategies-360-susan-enfield-crazy-talk-quakes)

By the way, I see the growing enrollment in Seattle Public Schools as a potentially good sign of a vibrant city (as well, of course, as the result of the recession). Any city should be glad to see such an investment of confidence or hope in its schools. It's the 30% of school-age kids who go to private school in Seattle that's the dubious statistic. Growing enrollment is an opportunity to have even more public engagement and stakeholders in our schools. The only problem is if the district doesn't know how to manage this. And that perhaps is a point of agreement I have with Lilly. (Goodloe-Johnson's 2009 Capacity Management Plan which closed and split a number of schools, for example, had to be almost immediately undone by the costly $48 million reopening of schools a few months later.)

As Lilly points out, SPS did close many schools over the last decade, which are now needed. But the buildings are there and belong to the district, so the opportunity is there to reopen them as public schools. We do not need billionaire dilettantes with no background in education to run our public schools.

By the way, shame on Lilly for evoking the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wreaked upon New Orleans as some kind of positive example. (And cribbing from Arne Duncan and NBC's "Education Nation" in the process.) Many people died as a result of that disaster, lost their homes and yes, schools that they were attached to, Mr. Lilly. And the charter school privatizers swooped in and exploited this disaster to commandeer the city's schools -- with questionable results. You can read all about it in Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." I also wrote about it here:

(The Shocking Doctrine of Ed Reform Laid Bare by NBC: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/the-shocking-doctrine-of-ed-reform-laid-bare-by-nbc)

As for Goodloe-Johnson and her Broad Foundation connections and training, no amount of spin can turn her scandal-ridden tenure of incompetence to gold. She's even part of the MLK School sale to AME investigation that was in the news this week. To say Goodloe-Johnson was not influenced by the Broad agenda is ludicrous. I would only add that she was supported by both Broad and Gates, so she had multiple liaisons of the corporate ed reform bent.

The True Legacy of Seattle’s Fired (Broad Academy) Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/the-true-legacy-of-seattle%E2%80%99s-fired-broad-academy-superintendent-maria-goodloe-johnson

How to tell if your school district is infected by the Broad Virus: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/how-to-tell-if-your-school-district-is-infected-by-the-broad-virus/

Seattle School Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson’s ongoing conflicts of interest: a href=”http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/seattle-school-superintendent-goodloe-johnson%E2%80%99s-ongoing-conflicts-of-interest/>Seattle School Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson’s ongoing conflicts of interest

Suep.

Seattle Public Schools parent
Founding Editor, Seattle Education Blog
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/
Founding member, Parents Across America
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/
Education blogger, the Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-peters

Thank you coolpapa for saying everything that I was thinking and more.

An earlier poster gawked at the idea that the current system isn't working and cited (without citation) record high school graduation rates as evidence that they system is working. I question whether that poster actually has any children in SPS because I personally don't know of any SPS parents who truly believe the current system is working. I'm sure there are some out there...I'm just saying I don't know them. In my experience, the current system doesn't work. I love Seattle but hate the schools. Unfortunately, the cost of non-parochial private schools is prohibitive and keeps us tied to the district. I have one third grader left in SPS and two older children who left the SPS to complete their educations elsewhere (one actually went to the California pulic school system, of all places, to succeed). Based on the district's failings, in my experience, I would GLADLY offer up my third grader as a guinea pig to the Gates Foundation. BRING IT ON!

You’re right, Dick. We could have the wealthiest people in the world, who are accountable to exactly nobody, whimsically experiment on the children of the world’s once-finest democracy. OR these wealthiest people in the world could pay some friggin taxes so our public schools could do their job with accountability to and scrutiny by the voters (and all us little piddling tax payers who actually DO send our kids to public schools).

I was a parent in SPS until June 2010, and for my daughter and her classmates, the system worked quite well. My daughter attended Salmon Bay and Nathan Hale, and found them both to be safe, friendly, and nurturing environments -- not without glitches, but by and large very positive experiences.

Both schools enjoyed active, involved parent communities that took great pride in their schools. I'd say that if you "personally don't know of any SPS parents who truly believe the current system is working," then I suggest that you broaden your circle of acquaintances.

The "current system" (which is, of course, always changing and adapting) works very well for many students and their parent/guardians. I know this because I know those people, and they speak of their successes.

babyblue, the "system" is the students, thousands of educators, parents/guardians, community supporters, a democratically elected board, the state and federal officials (some elected, some appointed), and the taxpayers who foot the bill.

You would prefer, it seems, that a private entity come in and create its own schools. That's fine, but you can't (and won't) use the buildings I help pay for to do it. Any organization is free to start a school. You can have one in your basement. But not in our city's public buildings, sorry.

There are all sorts of private schools in the Seattle area, and I'm sure one or more of them uses short-termer TFA instructors, worked long hours, to teach to simplistic tests then used to evaluate both children and instructors. Perhaps Mr. Gates will give you some money to pay for such an education for your children? And then you all can share the results of that education with us in, say, twenty years after we've seen what sort of human bean sprouts from such infertile ground? Let us know how that works out.

Meantime, we public schools supporters will be busy supporting the successes and trying to address the failures of individual students, educators, parents, and other stakeholders in a system that is public, equitable, deeply rooted in deep education, and supportive of education for its own sake, instead of education as corporate manipulative, a training school for dolts, run by dolts.

Ditto to Margie. And, Seattle Citizen, I think I love you.

Did anyone one laugh so hard they spit out their milk when they read Dick introduce his own idea thus: “Striking in its simplicity...?” As someone said, the whole thing started out sounding like satire.

and I, Miss Waterlow (who wrote that "these wealthiest people in the world could pay some friggin taxes so our public schools could do their job"), love you.

Ooh la la.
Seriously, I hope you’re putting that mad-as-hell eloquence and nose for the real issues to work in a more public forum. If you are, please tell us where.

Aww, solidarity in action. It makes me a little verklempt.

seattlecitizen, which parents does the system work very well for? School district employees? I thought so.

I am mad as hell at the "Reform" scam that is running rampant across this country, particularly when it impacts students who are poor or otherwise marginalized or disadvantaged (it's not an "achievement gap," it's an "opportunity gap"). Reform plays the race card, positioning itself as the savior of the poor, when in reality (for the most part) it merely offers a dumbed-down version of teaching and learning that is wholey dependent on the basest, most meaningless test scores to justify its existence. Worse, it needs to categorize children, our wonderfully multifaceted little ones, as mere "Black" or "White" or "Asian" or "Free and Reduced lunch" (ignoring the depth and breadth of a child's background, influencesm and circumstances.) It stuffs them into boxes in order to (purportedly) measure them, using the resultant "data" to loudly proclaim that "Black children get worse Test Scores than White Children! and thus justify the profit it hopes to make on (supposedly) rectifying this racist pap.

It's a game, and our children are the pieces played.

Who might profit? Technology manufacturers, software designers, textbook (digital or paper) makers, curriculum packagers, union busters, property managers (where they can put together the deal mentioned above, where a hedge-fund operator gets tax breaks on leasing a building in a "distressed neighborhood" and then sells those tax breaks), businesses who might not want fully educated staff, staff that might actually care about the world, but prefers a malleable and docile workforce (note that history, social studies, civics, art, music and other non-business subjects are left off the Tests used to quantify and systematize our youth: None of those are, evidently, important to this model.)

The head of NWEA, the "non-profit" company that sells the MAP test (Reading and Math only, of course) to Seattle Public Schools makes a half-million dollars a year. Not incidentally, the ex-superintendent Goodloe Johnson did not disclose to SPS school board that she was on the board of NWEA when she advocated its purchase. This purchase benefited her as a Broad Superintendent (she was on the board of Broad, too) and she used money from the Gates Foundation to fund its initial use (money funneled through the Alliance for Education...she sat on ITS board, too!)

Everybody makes money: Gates through selling software; NWEA through selling tests run on similar software; the Alliance by paying its staff to funnel Gates money; and (until she was canned) the ex-supt, who builds her "reform" resume so as to climb that corporate ladder. Win-win!

Students suffer: Meaningless tests, not based in any on-the-ground reality, sadly lacking in art, compassion, humanity....Meaningless curriculum, derived from those tests and lacking the same essential aspects of education; meaningless educators in front of them who are forced to become mere counter-workers, spooning out pablum to children hungry for knowledge and then testing the child to see that the pablum has run through the system in a predictable way...

Put it before a public forum? I have, often, yet in the past. I stand where I can stand, yet standing almost solitary, standing alone, is a fool's errand. When I see hundreds, no, thousands of concerned parent/guardians and citizens standing quiet vigil outside the district headquarters, I will join them. But until then, why bother? Until friends tell friends, until the community shares its distress with this horrendous hijacking of public education, why stand alone to suffer the slings and arrows of injustice? Better to sleep. Until the long battle is enjoined by all those who will suffer under this takeover, it becomes too tiring.

There are some (see saveseattleschools blog) who are always active, always attentative, always questioning and daylighting...but it's relatively few. They (we) need every citizen awake and active, otherwise the spin-meisters will win. SPS ust hired one of the spin-meisters away from Strategies 360, the PR firm that WAS the astroturf "grassroots" Our Schools Coalition: Formed by the Alliance, OSC was created to be a media feeder, and it succeeded. Much money went into it, Gates money. Now their commnicator is SPS's communicitor, and the battle goes on. Can the citizens drown out the propaganda generated by Gates/Broad/Walton/Duncan?

When that happens, I'll be one of the voices. 'Til then, I've moved largely to the rear, waiting these reinforcements so desperately needed.

I am the parent of two students in Seattle Public Schols and the system has worked reasonably well for them.

One of my children is now enrolled at The NOVA Project where she is a happy, motivated student and doing very well.

My other child is enrolled at Chief Sealth International High School and is also a happy, motivated student doing well in her classes. She is looking forward to taking classes in the International Baccalaureate program there.

They are both learning what they need to know and be able to do.

I know dozens of other families with children in Seattle Public Schools and I communicate regularly with thousands more. Nearly ALL of them report strong satisfaction with their children's teachers and schools.

Numerous surveys have been conducted which also report strong satisfaction among families with students in the schools.

The families are happy with their children's teachers and schools, less happy with the District.

So tell us, babyblue75, what school was so horrible that your child could not wrestle an education away from it?

Maybe those absent parents are afraid one or more than one of the union lackeys will go after their child?

That's just ridiculous, jaded. "Union lackeys"? Seriously?

jaded, visit http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/
None of the admins and hardly any of the commenters are "union" or even educators. They're merely concerned citizens. Read there and elsewhere for a more nuanced ("union lackeys"! ha! What depth! What insight!) discussion of these and other issues. Heck, maybe you'll learn something (unless you were taught by a Reformer's school, then you're outta luck: critical thinking ain't on the menu at one of those...)

Lakeside Middle and High School should take over all of the author's proposed school sites without the overt influence of their famous alum Bill Gates. As one of Lakeside's many thousands of students, he has not demonstrated any specific K-12 teaching or administrative expertise. His foundation is a resting place for too many career bureaucrats. Let the private schools take the place of failed government schools and may that improvement continue for the next several generations. Even surpassing the duration of the Gates Foundation.

animalal,
please explain why you describe "government" schools as dailed. On what do you base your assertion? As you read above, many are quite happy with them...

Why don't we simply let the Gates Foundation run the state? Then we wouldn't have to keep trotting out the tired phrase, "partner with the Gates Foundation". The Gates Foundation, being the gorilla, doesn't partner with anyone.

Yes, Sarah: Gates, Broad, Walton...ABC, GE, Xe...

I'm sure business can run the state much better than the state can, and surely they have the best interests of our children at heart. Why bother with all that democratically elected school board crap, all those public edcuators, those messy free thinkers and encouragers of critical thought...It's just not rationalized enough. We need the bean counters and the profiteers to make students, educators, and the tools they use digitized, standardized, homogenized: It makes the production process (child -> worker -> consumer) so much more efficient.

Sue Peters, thank you for telling us more about the Broad Foundation, Gates Foundation, The Alliance For Education and their connection with Susan Goodloe Johnson. The actions taken by SPS in the past few years make much more sense if one understands that the motivation behind these organizations.

And while we all might agree that Seattle Public Schools require reform, it disconcerting that reforms are being pursued by a set of external civic-minded benefactors and administrators that share at their core a belief in bringing practices and philosophies that are centered in the business world to public education. As a soon to be parent of an ex-SPS student, I'm particularly perturbed that such philosophies were kept quiet and away from public view. It has been my experience that such a stealth-strategy rarely work because it results in entrenched positioning by those who are target of such strategy, in this case the SPS teachers' unions.

Over the past 20-years as we've seen the rise of free-market fundamentalism in American politics, I come to believe that any policy that concerning the "power of markets" or "competition" is one that needs to be looked at extremely closely and critically for oftentimes such policies are promoted more from ideology than from a basis of facts. In that regard, this statement from the founders of the Broad Foundation Eli and Edythe Broad seems so summarize their motivation:

"For more than a decade, the majority of our investments in education philanthropy has been in the areas of school district governance, management, labor relations and competition. We have been proud to invest in organizations and leaders that have pursued new ways of tackling the challenges facing America’s public schools. Our grantees have succeeded in their efforts to redesign school districts, draw top talent into the field, and scale up successful alternative delivery models like high-quality public charter schools."

It seems like this is exactly the type of school that Dick Lilly is proposing. And that is what bothers me. This debate should not be one of stealth subversion. This is exactly the type of situation that happens when cities become one-newspaper towns. Debate in the public ceases to exist. It is seems obvious now that the Times' Dick Lilly, Lynne Varner, Joni Balter and the Times ownership share this same underlying philosophy. For why else would they not have been upfront with their support of such market based solutions to education?

seattlecitizen, You probably meant to say the word 'failed'. Government schools are mistakenly called 'public'. Since 1983 and the research called "A Nation at Risk", government schools have been viewed to be in desparate shape. People may like some of them because they are perceived to be 'free'. Taxpayers are not getting their money's worth even if some schools and programs are successful.

animalal,
Thanks for noting my typo. I bow in your general direction, and beg forgiveness for my glaring error. I'm glad you could figure out what I meant, whew!

But I note you don't answer my question: HOW are public schools failing? Many are happy with them, many successful...Yes, there are problems, but your sweeping statement doesn't acknowledge their success. You repeat the usual Reform generalities about "people" and "taxpayers," generally, being somehow dis-satisfied, yet give no evidence. Perhaps you know little about public schools, and are unable to detail their workings: Their wonderful successes in meeting the needs of more and more students (many who were once marginalized) and yes, areas where they struggle.

YOU, animalal, what do YOU think their failings are? Be specific. Otherwise, you merely sound like someone unhappy with anything guvmint, anything public...or like a shill for the Reformers.

Seattlecitizen -- You might be interested to know that there will be a mass march and rally in support of public education in Washington D.C. on July 28-31. Diane Ravitch and others will be there. It is cosponsored by Parents Across America.

More info here: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/

There will also be a meeting of the local chapter of Parents Across America this Saturday in Capitol Hill. More info here: http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/parents-across-america-seattle-meeting-date-and-other-announcements/

I believe the tide is turning against corporate-driven ed reforms. The parents of public education have seen enough to know that these reforms not only don't work, but are harmful to our children. The research backs this also.

From the SOS Rally call to action:

"Welcome to the

Save Our Schools March & National Call to Action!

July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, D.C. and around the country

We’re putting the Public back in public schools!

We, a collection of people from all walks of life and every corner of this nation, embody a mixture of ideas and opinions regarding how we can improve educational opportunities for all children. We stand united by one belief – it’s time for teachers and parents to organize and reclaim control of our schools.

As concerned citizens, we demand an end to the destructive policies and rhetoric that have eroded confidence in our public schools, demoralized teachers, and reduced the education of too many of our children to nothing more than test preparation.

A well-educated society is essential to the future of the United States of America. Our students must have access to a fully funded, world-class public education system, and it is our responsibility to hold our government accountable for providing the means to achieve it. Please join us!"

I have just seen the Seattle Public Schools projected enrollments for 2011 and for all of the years through 2015. Enrollments are going up, dramatically in some cases.

Fortunately, the solutions are available. They are also obvious.

1. K-5 enrollment growth of 869 students in the Washington area can be addressed by moving north-end elementary APP out of Lowell to the north-end where it belongs, and by attracting students to the less popular schools in the area, Madrona in particular.

2. K-5 enrollment growth of 726 students in the Denny area can be addressed by building a new K-5 on the old Denny site and attracting more students into the less popular schools in the area.

3. K-5 enrollment growth of 725 students in the Mercer area can be addressed by re-opening Van Asselt as a K-5 school attracting more students into the less popular schools in the area.

4. K-5 enrollment growth of 673 students in the Eckstein area can be addressed by attracting more students into the less popular schools in the area, such as Pinehurst and Jane Addams. The re-opening of Sand Point has helped as well.

5. Much of the K-5 enrollment growth of 606 students in the Aki Kurose area has been addressed by the re-opening of Rainier View.

6. Much of the K-5 enrollment growth of 515 students in the Whitman area has been addressed by the re-opening of Viewlands. There is also plenty of available capacity at Broadview-Thomson.

7. North-end elementary APP can be re-located to John Marshall. It's not a great building, but Lowell wasn't exactly the Taj Mahal. This population is much more focused on academics than architecture. Having a general education program there as well will also help to ease the overcrowding in the northeast.

8. The current overcrowding in West Seattle elementaries can be relieved by re-opening Fairmount Park. Putting the Spectrum program there would offer more relief to Lafayette.

9. Nearly all of the enrollment growth in grades 6-8 will come in the north-end. It's already overcrowded. Relief will come when the District re-opens Wilson-Pacific (this may require a tear-down and re-build) as a middle school and the new site of north-end middle school APP.

10. Enrollment growth in high school is centered on the Roosevelt 266, Ballard 229, and Garfield 71 areas. The solution is to re-open Lincoln as a high school. More relief can be offered to the already overcrowded Garfield by moving high school APP to Lincoln.

I don't pretend that it will be cheap to build new schools at Denny and Wilson-Pacific or to re-open Van Asselt, John Marshall, Lincoln and Fairmount Park. It won't be cheap. But what higher priority does the District have for its capital budget?

The sooner they get started the sooner they will be done.

Future Denny and Fairmount Park elementary students can go to school at Boren until their building is ready. They can move in as early as fall 2012.

The north-end elementary APP students can use the Mann building until John Marshall is ready. They can move in as early as fall of 2011. Yes, in four months. This is urgent. They are expecting 700 students at Lowell in the fall. They may also need to put some kids into available space at McDonald, Sand Point, or Queen Anne Elementary.

Wilson-Pacific students can use Lincoln until their building is ready. They can move in as early as fall of 2012. When they leave, the Lincoln students can move in. They will have to go to school in the building while it is under renovation as the Hale students did.

If the Gates Foundation wants to help, they can finance all of this construction with a cheap (interest free?) loan. The District can repay it with a bond issue in 2014 (BEX IV).

Two years ago the Seattle School District considered lowering the grade needed to graduate to a "D". http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009873682_grades16m.html

Here it is two later and this same school district, at least from a majority of the posts here, is the best thing since sliced bread. Does not compute. Either all the low achiever families moved out of district and the Woebegone families moved in (not likely) or parents lowered their expectations and the district has met them.
Probably the latter.

Djinn,

Let's remember that the District did NOT remove the GPA requirement for graduation. That idea came from the District leadership, not from the community or the schools.

The District leadership is a dysfunctional mess. The schools are, for the most part, just fine. There is a huge disconnect between what is said and done in the district headquarters and what is said and done in the schools.

Consequently the District headquarters makes headlines every time they screw up but there is no news about all of the good work being done quietly in the schools.

"...but there is no news about all of the good work being done quietly in the schools."

Two considerations about this statement. One, it's true but there's absolutely no verification to back up the assumption. Assumption it is until coolpapa offers something more a blanket feel good. The second consideration is that, perhaps there isn't all that much good work being done in the schools, quietly or otherwise. A person would think if the schools were such as you say, then somebody would be shouting it from the rooftops. So far the rooftop is empty.

We have test results which show students achievement, all middle of the road and nothing exceptional about any of it. At best it's a push.

Let's not forget the teachers and the schools don't operate in a vacuum. They get direction etc from district headquarters. So I'm not buying the huge disconnect concept. My experience while working in the Seattle schooled system is that mediocrity is the norm. There are moments of brilliance and moments of tedium, with tedium being the majority. Which is probably true of all school systems nationwide.

Djinn, I don't know how much experience you have working in the Seattle school system, but the schools use the disconnect to insulate themselves from the dysfunction of the District headquarters. They don't do anything (such as declare their excellence from the rooftops) that would attract the District's attention because it could lead to some District action. The schools have all learned that District interference is almost always destructive. They keep their heads down and try to maintain a low profile.

If you want verification, check the all of the surveys and polls that record and reflect the strong level of satisfaction among Seattle public school families. They like their teachers and their schools. It shows up in every survey.

I'm not sure how to respond to a claim that "mediocrity is the norm". It's like complaining that the average performance has only been average. That's kind of the deal with average. "Moments of brilliance and moments of tedium with tedium being the majority" is true about nearly everything. It's no shame and cannot be regarded as a criticism. That's why it is "probably true of all school systems nationwide".

Please don't put too much faith in test scores, but, if you must, remember that Seattle Public School's student test scores consistently beat the state average in every grade and subject. This district has challenges that other districts don't have, yet it beats the state averages. That's not due to work done in the central office but due to work done in the schools and the homes of Seattle students.

I am very happy to see someone like coolpapa writing well-reasoned, fact-filled comments about this subject. In particular, the neighborhood by neighborhood analysis of enrollment increases and available buildings. It seems a lot more thought went into that posting than into the original article, which starts well but has a ridiculous conclusion.

For a long time I wondered why the Seattle school district was hanging on to so many properties they had seemingly little use for. They are all over the city--in my little neighborhood alone there are two more that didn't even make coolpapa's list. I think enrollment in the district was something like 100,000 students in the not too distant past, but is now more like 45,000 as families have fewer kids.

I guess we know why now. Seattle's kid population is growing and more schools are needed. Luckily there are many buildings just waiting to be reopened or repurposed.

I'm left with some nagging questions, though. Why didn't the school district reach this conclusion *before* closing Viewlands and several other schools just a few years ago? Did they have no idea more kids were in the pipeline? Why not?

transitwork, I can explain. The District closed schools because they wanted more money from the legislature for education, but there was a lot of talk in Olympia about how Seattle Public Schools wastes money. Keeping schools open when they had low enrollments was seen as the prime example of the District's poor financial management. There were, and are, worse examples, but the focus then was on small schools as a waste. To satisfy critics in Olympia and as part of a bid for greater funding, the District was committed to closing schools. It was 100% politically motivated. (How did that work out? No so good.)

Because the areas of the District that had the greatest over-capacity were the low-income and minority neighborhoods, and the District didn't want to appear racist, they also victimized predominantly White schools for no good reason. They closed Viewlands, closed Summit K-12, and messed with APP and NOVA. All of that really was wasteful spending.

The irony, of course, is that the wasteful spending in Seattle Public Schools - then and now - is in the central administration. Seattle spends 9% of their budget on central administration when similar districts in the state spend only 6% of their budget on central administration. Seattle Public Schools' bureaucracy is bloated and wasteful. The headquarters has too much staff and they are doing things they shouldn't be doing - work that either should be done in the schools or shouldn't be done at all. Oddly, they are not doing the things that they should be doing: providing quality assurance, assuring compliance with state law and policy, taking care of the facilities, planning, and managing the financial work.

The current Board members who are running for re-election, Peter Maier, Sherry Carr, Steve Sundquist, and Harium Martin-Morris, bear the bulk of the responsibility for all of this grotesque mis-management and they should all be replaced. Not one of them deserves re-election.

Oh! But transitwonk wants to know if they knew that the enrollment would grow or not. Did they know that they were closing too many schools?

It's a mixed bag.

In some cases, such as Cooper, they knew. In other cases we can't be sure. In some cases they just couldn't have known.

The District was legitimately surprised by the increase in public school enrollment. For the past several years, the number of students who enrolled in kindergarten in Seattle Public Schools has been just about 67% of the number of children who were born in Seattle five years earlier. The relationship between these numbers was very stable. Then, all of a sudden, in 2008 and 2009 the number started to rise and rise steeply. In 2010 the number of students enrolling in public school kindergartens in Seattle was 80% of the number of children born in the city five years before.

They couldn't be expected to have seen that coming.

Just the same, the target utilization - set by the Board - was too high. It left them without wiggle room.

It is a pleasure to read coolpapa's thoughts and arguments. On the issue of the school closings and predictability, I suggest going back to the issue of Viewlands. There was a Viewlands parent who did a thorough demographic study, and who reported that within a very short time the building would be needed. The numbers proved it. Viewlands would have to be opened. Were you at the public meetings, you would have seen a completely uninterested School Board. Its members at the Viewlands meeting didn't even pay attention to the speakers, much less engage with their points of view. Viewlands, by the way, was a highly functioning and diverse school. So the demographic data was ignored; the school was closed. In the short time since, the building has been seriously vandalized (including copper tubing being stolen), as no security was provided for the building. What is going on now? Viewlands has to be reopened. I heard it is costing ten million dollars to get it ready for this coming fall semester. The staff has been dispersed, Broadview/Thomson has been overwhelmed by students in the interval. You can add the Board disdain for input and logic from the parent community as another multimillion disaster. The millions spent on getting Viewlands ready should go right into the pot of the MLK boondoggle. Is anyone keeping tabs on the millions blown away by the School District?