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Title : Two Items of Note - HC Capacity at Ingraham and High School Sciences
link : Two Items of Note - HC Capacity at Ingraham and High School Sciences
Two Items of Note - HC Capacity at Ingraham and High School Sciences
Some of you have wondered this outloud at this blog about HC capacity at Ingraham and one parent did so to Director Mack:A parent pointed out to me that this page still says "space available" for Ingraham IBX, and since the cap is lifted it might be confusing to people.
Now unfortunately, that link to the enrollment page that she was sent is now dead but here are the answers from Enrollment (to directors and bold mine):
We have done the following in regards to communication around the additional HC seats available at Ingraham:
- Updated the school choice documents referenced below to indicate the increased seat capacity at Ingraham.
- Updated the Advanced Learning Page with this information about increased seat capacity at Ingraham.
- Briefed Admissions, Enrollment Planning, and Advanced Learning staff on the changes to ensure that families questions can be answered appropriately particularly in regards to those asking about the seats available at Ingraham.
- Connected and informed Principal Floe about increased available of HC seats. Principal Floe is supportive of the change.
We’ve also sent out a communication to all families about the Board vote on Wednesday and the changes that will take place beginning in 2019-20. We are working on more targeted communications for individual schools, programs, and services.
The second update is the discussion at yesterday's Curriculum&Instruction meeting about high school science.
I first want to note what an absolute gem Director Burke is. Smart, analytical, calm - he is one the best directors to serve on the Board in all my years of covering it. He is also the chair of the C&I committee and so led the meeting, several times on different topics, asking cogent and direct questions. (I don't mean this to say other directors didn't but he really gets the job done well.)
But I also see a disturbing trend and it happened twice at this meeting during two different topic discussions. Directors were given documents that were not publicly available and then referred to during the meeting. That leaves me and other members of the public pretty much tweedling our thumbs and trying to follow the discussion. My notes have scattered "ASK FOR THIS" messages to myself and frankly, it sure gets tiresome to have to do that. I'll have full coverage of the meeting elsewhere.
Onto the high school science debate.
There were two documents - one from Burke and one from Kyle Kinoshita, Chief of Curriculum, Assessment and Instruction.
Burke's is a memo - "High School Science - Summary, concerns, requests" and to the other directors, Superintendent Nyland, Stephen Nielsen, Michael Tolley, Kyle Kinoshita and Mary Margaret Welch (head of the science department at JSCEE). It's a round-up of information about the proposed changes to the high school science courses and he asks a lot of good questions, none of which I heard answered at the meeting.
Kinshita's compilation of documents including Science Alignment Update January 28, 2018, the Racial Equity Analysis Tool and how it was used in the work and Response to parent communications from Ballard High School.
Ms. Welch led for the district. She gave a brief overview, saying the standards had changed starting in 2009 and that her team had been doing the work to update high school sciences over the last five years. She said that there had not been a high school science adoption "for a long time" so teachers take the standards, bundle them and then frame as units. She said it used to be teachers would go to their file cabinets for units and now it's an "electronic" one and they can share and collaborate with other teachers.
She said the team had worked with UW and UC Boulder and this is "what great science minds saythis is what to do."
She said that the issue of getting rid of the term "physical sciences" was needed because it was misunderstood by colleges and universities and therefore, it was better to call it Physics/Chemistry. I had no problem seeing that phrase online and, oddly, Welch said, twice, that it was called that when she went to high school. I'm confused why she thinks others would be confused.
As to the sequence she said that the State has said all students will take lab sciences and that the junior year is for an elective and "we can't dictate what they take."
Burke pushed back saying that it looked like a body of institutional knowledge has become curriculum but without real resources for teachers. Wells claims they do have the resources.
Kinoshita said the science standards changed in 2005, 2009 and 2013 and said that the materials were "adopted" because of changes in the standards. He also said there was pressure with the rise of popularity of STEM.
Director Mack said that the state school board directors association - WSSDA - had encouraged delinking these for graduation. She said she did not understand making this change.
Both Kinoshita and Welch said they didn't care about whether the name got changed on Physical Sciences but that they needed to "upgrade" for 9th graders and not what was more appropriate work for middle schoolers.
To my point of not having information in front of me, there was reference to some percentage of teachers who agree with this; 62% physical science and 80% life sciences. I'll have to ask for that data. Interestingly, Welch said she had only sent the data to the directors on the committee who asked for it.
Burke pushed back again, saying he had been thru many adoption cycles and "they don't look like this." He said his discomfort came not from what was being done but how it was being done with not enough feedback from higher ed sources and parents.
To the issue of parents - which, except for two times, - did not come up in the conversation at all. Once was Burke's reference and the other came at the end from Welch. But in the documentation that Kinoshita handed out, here's what they said under "How have parents been involved?"
Teachers who have been involved in the collaborations have shared with parents of students in their classrooms about their work. It then cited "parent nights" and "through classroom communications home."
The document also states: "Up to this point in time there has been nothing more to share."
I also note that previous documentation referenced that some of the teachers on the committee were also SPS parents.
Then, in the Equity Tool document:
In addition to alignment team members, many high school science teachers throughout SPS have engaged their students, and therefore their families, in the standards and pedagogy of NGSS.
It also says that Ms. Welch has told "principals, counselors, and individual buildings science programs and their administrations to communicate the goals and implications of this alignment on stakeholders, including students, families and teachers."
I find this engagement weak and lame.
How much did you ever get from parent nights on issues like this?
What classroom communications sent home? When, in high school, does a parent ever get info directly from a teacher about curriculum and "pedagogy"? I had two kids in two different high schools and I never got anything like that. Readers? (Not sure if reading your kid's syllabus counts.)
And that "we told the students and therefore their parents" is laughable.
Welch shot back at Burke, "With all due respect, this swirl is because of deferred maintenance. We have worked diligently to make sense of the standards and worked with university collaborators."
My feeling is that Burke and other directors greatly respect all the work and do not, in any way, want it thrown away. What they want is documentation over exactly how we got here and why there was not more engagement with families about what was coming.
She also said that West Seattle already has made these changes.
She said this was "a moment of equity" and that SPS had "not structured courses to be accessible to all children." She and Kinshita referenced "tracking" in schools, citing the example of being in advanced math and then being able to get into Biology sooner. They said it didn't make any sense and "we don't believe in that." She said Ballard has 5 (!) tracks but HCC is different and that group will "see no changes."
She also said that every IB school is different and "we need to restructure that."
On that point I'll just say that they are then headed for a clash. On the one hand, they cannot allow principals to have their own kingdoms with little regulation as it appears is the rule now but, on the other hand, have strict patterns for class offerings.
Mack said she was still confused about why the change was occurring now "if we are already doing the work." She said that was great but there is the looming 24 credit change (and possible 32) and then that potentially changes all of high school and it seemed confusing to make a change now. Mack made this point twice before she had to leave (she was filling in for Director DeWolf who was unavailable - Director Patu was in attendance but mostly stayed silent during the conversation.)
Michael Tolley stepped in and said he thought the Board needed more critical information.
Burke said the effort and focus should be in middle school and continue to shift practice but not with fundamental course structure changes and that there should be a formal adoption process that is vetted by a broader group.
Kinoshita said they are moving forward. He said the Board has governance over courses and instructional materials and they are adjusting courses and "I won't be party to offering courses that have no instructional materials attached."
Burke agreed but said that there needs to be an overall structure of PD, assessment, and student materials as well.
Kinoshita said they are "embarking on that." He said this was an opportunity to move forward.
Welch said that she was hearing from unhappy teachers and that "it's really incredibly destructive if they were to think that they did something wrong."
She said, " All we did is take state standards and that's our obligation to students and teachers where there were no instructional materials and we came together to prepare excellent materials."
It seems to me that she is conflating teachers being able to teach, following changing standards, with what is a realignment of courses. I do not believe them to be the same thing.
She said she didn't care what the courses were called but "teachers have already transitioned and can't go back."
Burke said that if teachers and communities were not engaged, it limits implementation and "if success is our goal, I'm asking you to vet this thru an adoption process."
Welch asked if he could put that statement into a written form to help her team "understand the point."
Then it got real.
She said that "angry voices have demoralized the team and sucked our time up" instead of being "productive" using "misconceptions when this all could have been avoided."
I note that the documentation from the district calls those "misconceptions" "myths."
Welch had seemed ramped up from the start but then she let loose. She said the Ballard teachers "came on attack and mobilized" and that there was "a riot in the northend."
Now, I didn't go to that meeting at Ballard and I heard it was quite a spirited discussion but, to the best of my knowledge, no chairs got thrown, tables flipped or police called out.
Burke said he disagreed. He said we (the district) tells the community about plans and sometimes they let us know what we missed and we can either thank them for the input and for pointing out something we might have missed or say no, we thought of that.
He said, "It's not always a polite conversation but that's how we make sausage in this factory."
Kinoshita said, "The Ballard principal got in there and confronted staff about how to have a rational conversation with them."
Burke quietly said that he would not put blame on teachers "but on us not doing due diligence." Welch agreed.
Welch chimed in again that "this was a miscommunication that could have been avoided but was purposefully put forward" in public. Welch said that she had been a teacher and thought she was a good one and didn't understand what the directors didn't understand.
She then asked, "Should I cancel the rest of the family science nights?" Burke said that was absolutely not his call and that's up to Teaching and Learning and the superintendent.
My takeaway:
- Welch is furious with the Ballard High Science department and certainly was fine with throwing them under the bus to make them look bad. I sense that her point was that they could have come to the team, stated their concerns, and not done it in a public way.
- I think Welch and Kinoshita are not happy that those Ballard teachers let parents know and that somehow, the parents had become pawns, rather than thinking adults.
- I think publicly mischaracterizing a meeting as "a riot" certainly does not help an already tense situation.
- It would seem that despite what staff says, this looks to some on the Board like an adoption and the Board wants to see more effort that looks like what a normal adoption of curriculum looks like.
thus Article Two Items of Note - HC Capacity at Ingraham and High School Sciences
that is all articles Two Items of Note - HC Capacity at Ingraham and High School Sciences This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
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