Redirect the district towards those it serves
Seattle central administration has turned a blind eye towards the communities which fund its existence and the families it should be serving. Community engagement should be the foundation of district decision-making, not an afterthought. I invite members of the community to brainstorm with me and form a constructive venue for two-way dialogue. Help me reshape the district!
Sound instructional materials
I filed a lawsuit against our new high school math texts in 2009, because the Discovering texts were judged mathematically unsound by the State Board of Education, and did not actually have a record of increasing student achievement, as the District administration claimed.
It is inherently obvious that well-written, coherent textbooks in all subjects benefit students, teachers, and parents. Such textbooks are available, and are in use in many districts, private schools, and to home schoolers throughout the nation. Adopting sound texts and training teachers to use effective instructional materials for all subjects is the highest value tool in improving student achievement. We need to hold textbooks in all disciplines to a high standard of coherence, insisting on appropriate depth for the age level, and meaningful, educationally useful content.
Hiring, supporting, and valuing good teachers and principals
Our teachers are subject to an enormous amount of stress, both in the classroom and out. Each teacher introduces a classroom full of students to knowledge and experiences which will empower them to succeed in society, the economy, and in our culture. It's an enormous task in itself under the best of circumstances. Effective teachers require a great deal of knowledge, organizational skill, leadership, social, emotional, and psychological intelligence, energy, imagination, and perseverance. Seattle needs to retain and recruit great principals and teachers to staff our buildings, provide them with the tools they need, and step back to let them do their jobs. Our central "support" staff are rarely supportive at the classroom level – our first priorities must be to ensure there are effective instructional materials and adequate help in the classrooms.
Career + Tech Education, Arts, and PE
In the last decade, all of these areas have been squeezed in Seattle Public Schools, and their importance for students has been systematically discounted. Career and Technical Education ought to be available to all students who wish to pursue it, rather than limited to a few “academies.” Many students want to pursue post-secondary education in other forms than traditional four year colleges -- community colleges, apprenticeships, vocational education, certification programs, and more. Insisting that all of our high school graduates be prepared to enter a four year college is simply wrong, in my opinion, and a waste of effort for many who have no desire to pursue careers dependent on college degrees. On the other hand, arts education has also been severely cut in our schools, as though the arts are not a vitally important part of our culture, one that confers untold benefits to individuals and the community at large. The same thing can be said for physical education -- up until recent decades, PE was required for all ages, all year long; there were good reasons for this requirement. Did the community ask for it to be changed? Does the community want to work towards reinstating all-year PE? I will invite the community to develop its own priorities around all of these so-called “extras.”