Franklin Responds

[David Grosskopf]

To All Concerned:

Franklin High School's Language Arts faculty is unanimously opposed to
this uniform text adoption. Roosevelt is not simply a strong, vocal
minority, if indeed they represent a minority. References have been
made to researched-based, best practices as the necessity for this
common text adoption, but we have seen very little that compels us to
believe this is the direction we need to be going. We feel that in
order for our teaching to be student-centered, we need to focus on the
specific strengths, weaknesses, needs and experiences of the students
we teach. We need to have the ability to select texts and design
lessons which address the specific needs of these students and be able
to craft assessments that directly relate to what happened with these
specific students during the course of study. There are often
pleasant surprises along the way as ideas emerge and connect during
the study of any text. Assessments should reflect this aspect of the
process, as well. The sacrifice of theme-based, school-designed
academies and courses, including text-selection, for the sake of
uniformity and predictability seems, to us, unwarranted by any
rationale we have been provided. The common lessons and assessments
that would apparently accompany these texts would minimize the
teacher's ability to meet their student's needs.

We have a long history at Franklin High School of working in an
academy model and plenty of our own research and data demonstrating
success in the improvement of student's reading and writing skills.
Many of our students come to us with profound literacy deficits and
are many grade levels behind. They often lack schema that teachers at
some other schools may be able to take for granted in their student
populations. We have found that in our Humanities, Public Service,
Create, and Finance academies, with their teacher-designed curricula
and theme-based text selection, student interest has been piqued,
student engagement has increased, and student performance on both
state-administered and school-selected measures has consistently
improved. We would like to be able to continue to build on our
success at Franklin. Student's needs can best be met by teachers in
direct contact with them, designing programs that center on them.

While LA Department Heads were, to a large degree, supportive of the
move to align grade-level expectations for skills and outcomes, there
was far less consensus around the need or usefulness of the type of
text adoption that is now being suggested. But we were told that, in
essence, we had better suggest what books we wanted to see taught or
take whatever the district proposed. At least to my knowledge, the
notion that teachers would have a thoughtful, measured say in whether
this needed to happen at all was never considered. I also feel that
the idea of creating common lessons, assignments and assessments was
downplayed because it would be even more controversial. However, once
you choose uniform texts, the slope gets very slippery. And when you
sit at the table, involved in the process, even in dissent, I fear you
have tacitly accepted the premise that the common text adoption is
necessary. Having sat at the table as Department Head, I am seeing my
fears realized.

Too far, too fast. We want to lend our support to those applying the
brakes; enough polishing the rails of the oncoming train. While we
imagine that many teachers could live with one common text a year
(What if we all read the same book?), and maybe some would like to see
some clarification as to which year many bedrock texts should be
taught, we think adopting a narrow list of required core texts with a
very short and exclusive list of supplemental texts will effectively
create a banned book list in the Seattle Public Schools. As we
understand it, no unauthorized books would be able to be taught in the
whole-class setting if they are not on an approved list. The Language
Arts faculty at Franklin objects to this common text adoption, finds
common ground with the reservations of Roosevelt, The Center School,
possibly others, and many LA teachers throughout the district, and
hopes to see this process halted.

In solidarity,

Richard Damon
Language Arts Department Head

David Ehrich
Christie Graham
Ronald Hailey
Web Hutchins
Miriam Miller
V. Ellen Phillips
Angela Roh
Lindsay States