Comments on: Charter school reflux

By: Steve Rawley

Steve Rawley — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:30:56 +0000

As of last October, 32.5% of Arthur Academy-Portland students checked a non-white option on their enrollment form. 52.99% checked white, and 14.53% didn’t specify, a pattern similar to Trillium, where 64.97% checked white and 17.52% didn’t specify. (Just 1.21% of students district-wide are listed as “unspecified”.)

So Arthur is not 50% minority, even if all those “unspecified” kids are non-white.

By: Zarwen

Zarwen — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:47:59 +0000

Strange that the charters in inner N/NE can’t seem to attract “families of color.” A few days ago I talked to a dad from Arthur Academy Charter in SE. He told me their student population is 50% minority.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:27:52 +0000

But what good is a recruitment strategy for families of color if you can’t guarantee a spot for them?

By: Lakeitha

Lakeitha — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:20:42 +0000

My jaw dropped hearing Bobbies Drill baby drill comment at last weeks board meeting. Like how long has she been on the board? Its about time she admitted that Drill baby Drill has become the NCLB and PPS theme song.
I had a Charter School Principal say that she wanted to talk to me about how to recruit more families of color and while that was a conversation that I did not want to have, it was interesting that she wanted to be intentional about recruitment.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:00:57 +0000

I'd strongly suggest that David meet with Rick Stiggins from Portland-based Assessment Training Institute. (See my latest post on this.) I attended a 3-day ATI conference a few years ago and was really impressed. Read Stiggins' Assessment Manifesto, a white paper detailing the need for balanced assessment systems.

By: Steve Buel

Steve Buel — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:03:24 +0000

David Wynde made some really good comments at the recent board meeting. He said Portland needed to be assessing their students in a more sensible way, i.e. showing growth of individual students not measuring against a benchmark. Then he repeated “Portland” needed to be assessing their students in a more sensible way. Meaning that the district should be doing it themselves not waiting for the state or the federal govt. to do it or mandate it. Good comments.

In fact, he said he wanted to see it done. This was interesting since as we all know, and the board members always remind us, that individual board members have no power. So how does this work? Does David Wynde have enough clout that Carole Smith says o.k. Or was he being emphatic for another reason? Will his suggestion just fall by the wayside since that would be a huge effort?

Here’s my opinion: David, make a motion, a resolution. “PPS will assess their students in this way also.” Takes 4 votes to pass. That is how the school board is supposed to work. If it is such a good idea then stand behind it. Get it done or forget about it.

Anyway. Nice going, David, you said the right thing.

By: Steve Buel

Steve Buel — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:52:07 +0000

I think it is a little early to think Gonzalez will step out or up or whatever on anything. He needs to toe the party line in order to assure himself the endorsements of Stand for Children, the Foundation, SEIU, The Oregonian, and the PAT. This is how you get elected to the school board. Essentially he is running for office right now. He should have started to raise money and make contacts. If he hasn’t he is already behind.

That doesn’t, mean, Terry, that I think you are wrong. I told him I would love to sit down with him and talk PPS politics and all I got was a noncommittal shrug. He seems focussed pretty much solely on the Latino community and the powers that be will be glad to let him have his way there since anything affecting Portland’s Latino community has nothing to do with Wilson, Grant, Cleveland, and Lincoln clusters. It is a great tradeoff. He works on a problem in which he is interested and supports their schools at the same time. Now, I am just surmising since I haven’t talked to Gonzalez. But there is a great line in Butch Cassidy where Butch says that if the owner of the railroad would just give him the money he was spending on stopping him from robbing the trains, that Butch would quit robbing the trains. This is how I feel somewhat. We need to work on improving education for Latino kids in Portland, but we also (note I said also — not the oft quoted argument in the school board that says we can’t do this because we need to also do this and this) need to work on so many other things where we are getting almost no leadership from the board. NCLB, lack of offerings in poor schools, student and teacher transfer policies, the mess at Jefferson, discipline policies, hiring, lack of a definition of good education, lack of PE and health, libraries, technology, civics, geography, history, and on and on.

So I plan to run for the board hoping to deal with all these problems and I guarantee if elected I will be more than happy to sit down with Martin Gonzalez and help him work on the Latino educational problems, but then, I will sit down with anyone who wants to talk.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:06:15 +0000

One more point on Einstein: his being labeled “developmentally delayed” in today’s parlance would be for his own good. This is what is so damaging about all this quantitative, “data-driven” nonsense. It leads extremely well-intentioned people to make extremely bad decisions about kids.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:01:58 +0000

Steve R. – I also hope you’re right about this all being fad. But I seriously doubt it. “Accountability” and AYP are now a permanent part of the fabric of public schools, for better or for worse. It’s for the better because it behooves schools to ensure that all kids are learning and that no child is left behind. But it’s for the worse because we have a system that creates the illusion that kids are not being left behind. As Steve B. notes, the things that are not being tested are being left behind. We need to rethink what “accountability” means. To whom are schools accountable, and why? And we need to rethink how we assess the learning of each child so we can be sure that children are reaching their full potential, not marching lock-step along in relation to some arbitrary set of norm-based data points, but growing and expanding according to their interests and their own developmental timeline. Remember: Einstein was a “slow learner.” In today’s insanity of AYP, he would have been labeled as “developmentally delayed” and sentenced to a life of drudgery.

By: Steve Rawley

Steve Rawley — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:26:50 +0000

I missed the meeting; will have to watch next time it's on. If what Beth Slovic wrote about it is true, maybe Adkins, Regan and Wynde will lead and González and the others will follow on NCLB. It's truly heartening to see Bobbie getting out in front of an issue like this.