School Board work session tonight, June 22!

[David Grosskopf]

At 5:00 this Monday night, there is an open meeting work session with
the Curriculum Instruction sub-committee on the School Board. Below is
the agenda:

Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee—Meeting of the Whole
June 22, 2009, 5:00-8:00 pm

AGENDA
1. Textbook Adoption Guiding Principles
a. Policy audit
b. Current policy & state law
c. School Board input/discussion on HS goals & principles
2. Break 6:15-6:30 pm
3. Curriculum Alignment Work
a. Context—Roles & Responsibilities
1. Superintendent—Means
2. School Board—Ends
b. Current state of curriculum in SPS – why do we want to change?
c. Desired state of curriculum in SPS
d. Discussion

Can anyone make it?

David Grosskopf

[John Bito]

I'm willing to go to the meeting this evening, but I'm unversed in the
workings of the Board and inexpert on the policies that are being
discussed. If I were to attend, what purpose should I have?

[c001papa]

I plan to be there. I will take notes and try to make a report either
tonight or tomorrow.

[lynne...@comcast.net]

I plan to go tonight in my role as interested parent observer, and will take notes.

Lynne Cohee
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

[c001papa]

Wow! What a really frustrating meeting!

On the good side, the Board was very clear that the District staff
needs to be more open with the public about what they are doing, how
they are doing it and why they are doing it. Director Carr in
particular was very clear and effective on this point. Director
Sundquist made the point very well at the end of the meeting. A number
of Board members made reference to the anxiety in the community about
the LA alignment, but only Director DeBell put his finger right on it:
people like and want alignment; it's standardization they don't want.
The Superintendent appreared to totally miss the point. It shot right
past her.

The meeting opened with a discussion of the players and the roles in
the materials adoption process. The Board's role is to provide
guidance and principles at the start of the process and to vote to
approve or reject the recommendation at the end of the process. The
curren guidance from the Board is set in the materials adoption policy
and is so vague as to be meaningless. The Board members then
brainstormed a bit on what they would like their more robust guidance
to be - this would require a policy update. The other players in a
materials adoption are the Instructional Materials Committee, which is
a standing committee, and the Materials Adoption Committee, which is
an ad hoc committee brought together for each materials adoption. The
role of the Instructional Materials Committee is to review and,
presumably, approve the process taken by the Materials Adoption
Committee. They do not approve the outcome, just the process. Oddly,
no one could say who appointed the Instructional Materials Committee,
how they got appointed or even when they got appointed. It is
apparently lost in the mists of time.

Interesting footnote about the high school language arts materials
adoption committee: everyone who applied to be on the committee was
appointed to it. Here's another interesting fact about it: it has only
one student parent on a committee of twelve. The staff, however, is
perfectly satisfied with their outreach effort and sees nothing wrong
with this result.

After a break, the Board reconvened (only Directors Chow and Bass were
absent) and were taken through a powerpoint on the status of the
curriculum alignment project. It was the what when why and how of
curriculum alignment.There was universal agreement by the Board
members that the community engagement on alignment has been inadequate
to date. Oddly, they seemed to believe that if people were just told
what it was and what it wasn't - and if they were able to dispel
misperceptions about it - that people would embrace the process.

Director Maier, and then, more to the point, Director Sundquist, asked
about how earned autonomy would figure in all of this. Superintendent
Goodloe-Johnson first gave one answer, and then, seeing that it wasn't
playing well, gave another. At first she said that earned autonomy did
not apply to curriculum. Then she vaguely hinted that a class that met
the standards and content requirements could be substituted for a
required class, but she added the caveat that it would have to be
subject to certain review. It sounded like death by bureaucracy to me.
It was very clear that she was opposed to the whole idea and would
make the requirements for substitution such that no course could
qualify.

I'm sure the powerpoint will soon be available and you will see that
it clearly goes beyond curricular alignment and into standardization
of texts for the express purpose of facilitating scripted lessons.
They are coy about the language, but it's there. There is no
acknowledgement that curricular alignment does not require the
standardization of texts, nor do common assessments nor does
professional development - all reasons given that they need to
standardize texts. All of the reasons given are spurious. The only
reason that survives critical review is for the central staff to write
instructional guides and scripted lessons which are specific to the
materials.

They may well actually risk engaging the public on this. If they do,
one of the critical questions we need to ask is whether it isn't the
Board's responsibility to adopt curriculum. They may say that this
duty is abbrogated by the State Standards, but the District isn't
aligning curriculum to the State Standards. The District is aligning
curriculum to the College Readiness Standards. So, again, particularly
given that Seattle Public Schools is adopting something other than the
State Standards as our curriculum, isn't it the Board's responsibility
to adopt curriculum? Also, make them explain in detail exactly why
schools need to standardize texts. If students are supposed to learn,
for example, allegory in the 10th grade, then aren't there hundreds of
books that are suitable for 10th graders that all provide excellent
examples of allegory? Why in the world would every class have to read
the same one? That is when alignment steps over the line and becomes
standardization.

I'm still pretty angry about this. In part, I'm angry that no one on
the Board would speak plainly even though a number of them clearly
understood the issue. I'm angry also that the Superintendent could so
completely miss the point and that no one set her straight.