Better education through social engeneering ??????

So what's your point, Mr. Valdez? You seem to be saying that Seattle needs good schools, but you are incapable of defining what a good school is, let alone providing some guide to making our schools good. You blame a bureaucracy, but offer no cure - not even a hint of what would be in that cure.

Instead, you make the problem worse. Your impotent hand-wringing over the quality of Seattle's schools, your lamentations over the impossibility of fixing them, and your defeatist conclusion that we shouldn't even try are all wrong. You are making the situation worse by contributing to the misinformation that feeds the mis-perceptions. You are wrong about the state of the schools; Seattle students out-perform the state average. You are wrong about change; Cleveland High School and Hawthorne Elementary are getting turned around, there are other examples of improvement. You are wrong about the worth of the goal; all children can be taught to basic standard of literacy and mathematical skill.

How about you stop hurting and start helping? How about you help us reach some consensus about what is a quality school? Then help us keep or develop the supports that create that quality while we drop the efforts that detract or distract from it.

I have asked around and I get a very consistent answer. People will send their child to a school if two - just two - conditions are met. 1) The school is safe. 2) They believe that their child will get an appropriate academic opportunity there. If we focus on these two aspects, then we will have a community that chooses the neighborhood public schools and supports them.

Funny that you should write this at a time when Seattle Public Schools actually has the opposite problem. The District has so many students that they don't have enough seats for them. Seattle doesn't need to attract more students - they need more schools for the students they have.

Just one of Seattle's many professional know-it-alls. Consider the source. Consider the media that hands them the podium.

The way that can be named is not the way.

When I read the headline on my email I thought, "Oh my gawd. Run to the window and look at the flying pigs because I actually agree with something Roger said."

Whew, close call.

Locating Seattle's schools in mixed-use development won't magically solve the problem we have in this city. I'm not sure the exact components of the solution, but I know that stuffing kids in the middle of an urban core with very little (if any) immediate access to open space isn't the solution.

Roger is on the right track here with the idea that Seattle's subpar schools -- or, more accurately, the near-universal *impression* that Seattle schools are subpar -- are a huge component of sprawl. He's also right that if his uber-urbanist pals want to actually do something helpful for Seattle for a change other than "talking their book" as we say in the markets, then they should be first in line for any effort to improve Seattle schools. As is typical, however, he goes off the rails thinking density is the solution for this problem, too.

When I ran for Seattle City Council in 2009, I doorbelled about 4,500 homes. One of the most memorable conversations I had was with a woman who I caught in her driveway on the way to pick up her kids from private school. Her and her husband tried to stick it out in Seattle's public schools because they were proud graduates of a public school system. But their kids were falling so far behind, they made the tough personal and financial decision to put them in private school.

She told me the story of how she had recently calculated the tuition expense and realized it would have been cheaper for her family to pack up and move to the suburbs and put her kids in public school there than stay in the Seattle. Moreover, if she had it do over again, that's what she would do.

Sprawl in our area is certainly not caused by a lack of zoning capacity in Seattle. Lack of housing units (single family) of the kind desired by home buyers, poor schools (impression or reality), and continued lack of support from now three Mayors in a row for Seattle's public safety needs is the cause.

David Miller

The idea that Seattle has a lack of SF zoning is possibly the most stunningly stupid thing I've ever read in the comments at Crosscut, and there's some serious competition there.

That said, I agree that this article doesn't really tell us much about how to improve the schools here, although it's certainly true that improving them is a vital part of keeping people in Seattle when they have kids.

Let's see how folks will respond to some actual facts about Seattle Public Schools.

1. The schools are, for the most part, good. Survey after survey show that families with students in our schools are either satisfied or very satisfied with their child's teacher and school.

That's not the only measure of school quality, of course. Other common measures include test scores. Seattle Public School students' pass rates on the state proficiency tests are higher than the state average.

I think the best measure of school quality would be one that assesses the probability that a student working at grade level receives grade level instruction, that a student working below grade level gets an early and effective intervention and that a student working beyond grade level gets appropriate challenge. I haven't seen that measure yet.

2. Our teachers are, for the most part, good. Teaching is tricky business. Like any other profession it is a mix of science and art. The work is less and less about dispensing knowledge and more and more about guiding and motivating. Great teachers spend more time asking questions than giving answers. Most of our teachers work very well with most of our students. There is no teacher who is going to work well with every student and vice versa.

Where there are ineffective teachers, it is the principal's responsibility to identify them, improve them, and, if necessary, dismiss them. Although there is a lot of talk about "teacher quality", none of the people who talk about it can describe it, let alone measure it. They are talking nonsense. They should, instead, focus on principal quality. If there is a good principal in place, then there won't be any ineffective teachers in the building - at least not for long.

3. Families are not leaving Seattle to escape the schools. More families are enrolling their children in Seattle Public Schools than at any other time in the past 20 years. The schools are overcrowded. The District has to re-open about a half-dozen schools to accomodate the enrollment growth. While it used to be that the number of children enrolled in SPS kindergartens was equal to about 67% of those born in Seattle five years earlier, that ratio is up to 80% today. There is no flight from our schools - enrollment is growing strongly.

4. The schools are fine; the District is a disgrace. The real problem with Seattle Public Schools is not in the schools but in the headquarters. That's where we find bureaucratic bloat, a dysfunctional culture, mismanagement, scandal, and cronyism. The typical school district in Washington spends 6% of its budget on the central office. Seattle spends about 9% there. There has been a little bit of window dressing around making cuts - mostly re-categorizing line items in budget - but no real reform.

Even the people who LOVE their schools hate the central office. The school staffs don't have much love for it either. It is mostly the source of trouble. The central office doesn't have a clear mission and doesn't fulfill its duties very well at all.

The most frustrating thing about Seattle Public Schools is that it could be truly great. The community here values education and values public education in particular. There is a lot of money and support available to the District if they would just start doing the right things instead of all of the wrong things.

Step 1: reject the re-election of the four school board candidates elected in 2007. Peter Maier, Sherry Carr, Steve Sundquist, and Harium Martin-Morris must be replaced. Institutional culture flows down from the top and these four have fostered a culture of lawlessness. They have obstinantly refused to perform any oversight, provide any governance, instill any accountability, or represent the community. The District cannot get better with them in office.

Step 2: The Central Office needs to define its mission. They need to focus on just two things. One, taking over all of the non-academic functions to free the schools to focus on academics. And two, quality assurance; making sure that the schools are good. They need to do this work and discontinue any effort that falls outside this narrow mandate.

Step 3: School quality needs to be measured as described above. Principals should ask their teachers what they are doing to keep the grade level students working at grade level, to accelerate the learning of students working below grade level, and to challenge the students working beyond grade level. The District should be asking the same questions of the principals. The District needs a coherent response to students working below grade level. There has to be some assurance that they will receive an early and effective intervention.

It is astonishing to me that Seattle Public Schools can claim that closing the academic achievement gap - an opportunity gap, really - is their number one goal and priority, yet they have NEVER made any plan to achieve that goal. How is that even possible? What kind of messed-up organization sets a goal and makes no plan for achieving it?

Enough for now. I hope I have done my little part to set the record straight.

A thought-provoking article, and I especially like Mr. Miller's and Coolpapa's comments.

I tend to agree with Coolpapa that the schools per se are more or less "fine" in Seattle. My biggest complaint is actually CLASS SIZE. An otherwise fine classroom could be GREAT if class size could simply be reduced from 24 to 18, or ideally 15.

Smaller class sizes could be easily paid for if central administration were largely eliminated and the majority of administrative powers were devolved to the individual schools, where money could be allocated with direct PTA oversight.

I personally also think the school board/superintendent governance structure doesn't work well in Seattle. School board members tend to be inept in one or another way (and they are often quite unprofessional), and the relationship between board and superintendent is inherently too confrontational to get much work done. It'd make more sense to have the superintendent appointed by the mayor and oversight exercised by appointees from PTAs, of parents and teachers representing all areas of the city.

My other complaint is that the physical facilities are not equal school to school in Seattle. Several schools need replacing or renovation, and I'm not seeing a lot of movement on that front in the recession.

In the end, though, Seattle Public Schools do offer something intangible but important that a lot of suburban school districts and private schools are less able to offer, which is exposure to various kinds of diversity - not just racial diversity but also socioeconomic diversity, kids with LGBT parents, etc.

@coolpapa How can you say the schools are good when 30%+ of kids don't graduate on time?
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-gets-mixed-report-on-graduation-rates-1268860.php

@ David Miller How can you say the major driver for sprawl is a lack of public safety when Seattle's crime rate is at a historic low?
http://timothyburgess.typepad.com/tim_burgess_city_view_/2011/06/auto-theft-surging-while-overall-crime-plunges.html

These off base statements really undercut your argument.

@MoreSeattle - Because getting 70% of students to graduate on time is an all-time high. We have never done that well before. That number, while you don't appear satisfied with it, is consistent with national averages. What is your benchmark?

Let's remember that there are a lot of students in our high schools who would not have been there a few years ago - students with disabilities, students who don't speak English, students living in poverty, students who are contending with some pretty horrific home trouble (violence, addiction, absent parents, jail, etc.)

Tell us, MoreSeattle, what on-time graduation rate you would regard as good and what basis you have for choosing that number? In addition, please let us know to what extent you believe that the schools can overcome the circumstances of drop-outs' lives to keep more of them in school and on track for graduation?

@coolpapa - The number I would choose is 70%+ because it is better than now. Comparing us to the national average gets us no where. U.S. public schools are no where near the top globally and falling fast. You may accept the status quo but your apathy is a diservice to our youth.

I'm sorry, MoreSeattle, I didn't get the number that you believe would be acceptable. 70%+? Plus what? That's not a number; it's a range. Please commit to a number.

You say that the national average isn't a valid benchmark. You want to use a global one. Do you have a global one?

As for falling fast, I've read studies that show that our students rankings are rising internationally. What's your data to support your contention?

I don't accept the status quo and I am not apathetic. I am, however, able to read for comprehension and do research.

You may torture animals, but your cruelty is black mark on all of humanity.

I'm also curious about why you expect the U.S. high school graduation rate should be near the top globally. Is it because our culture places such a high value on education? Is it because our schoolchildren compete for high grades? Is it because our national heroes are scholars? Is it because the kids with the best grades are universally admired and the most popular kids in our schools?

Oh, and MoreSeattle, please share with us how you believe that the schools can overcome the circumstances of drop-outs' lives to keep more of them in school and on track for graduation.