Your Just Reward

If you're in the Seattle area this spring and in need of some entertainment, the Fifth Avenue Theatre is offering educators a deal on Sunday in the Park with George. You can get up to four tickets for only $20 each (use the keyword "Impression" to get the discounted price). For more information, contact Erin Vargo at the 5th Ave: 206.6251418 x214; evargo@5thavenue.org. See you there!

Reading the Tea Leaves

This could be pretty important, from Forbes Magazine:

If you live in Seattle, it might be time to ask for a cost of living increase. The city has the highest inflation rate in the country.

"Seattle household income is fairly high, and that helps to maintain a high rate of inflation since higher income areas can afford price increases," says Steve Cochrane, an economist with Moody's Economy.com. "Some of it is fuel, but housing prices have also been more stable than anywhere else on the West Coast, which adds to inflation."

Normally, Seattle's 3.7% unemployment rate, well under the national average of 5.5%, would be a good thing. But a growing economy with low unemployment drives up wages and costs. The Emerald City's consumer prices are up 5.8% from this time last year, which ties for the highest inflation rate in the country with Dallas, where high energy costs for home cooling and driving are eating up incomes.

Consider that the COLA for teachers mandated by I-728 is tied to the inflation index in Seattle. Consider further how many districts struggled with COLA costs for their staff that aren't funded by the state, and that was at only 5.1%. Wrap all that up with a $2.7 billion dollar budget deficit bow, and I'd say that there's certainly going to be a movement to suspend the teacher COLA in the legislature this year.

(Hat tip to Slog for having the story first.)

DeResegregation in Seattle?

Interesting article in the Seattle Times today about how the schools in Seattle are slowly but surely becoming re-segregated on racial lines. My cousin grew up in Seattle during the height of the bussing movement, and the problems they point out with the program are a good history lesson.

Integration is a goal. Neighborhood schools is a goal. What should a district do when the two goals impede one another?

A Recruiter for the Seattle Public Schools Talks About How They Find Teachers

Read all about it here.

a Web 2.0 pandemic in the making

Ryan wrote about a rising fever of Web 2.0 in education. Now the Seattle Times has caught the bug with its Digital Democracy project:

We asked Seattle public school students to submit, on video, the questions they think are most important to the district's future. We selected five of those questions, and asked each Seattle School board candidate to respond in kind. Now it's your turn to watch the results. Click play on the question to hear what the student asked. Listen to the answers from each candidate by doing the same.

A sample clip from candidate Harium Martin-Morris is provided below. Kudos to the Times and the candidates for reaching out to voters.

If you can't beat 'em....wish you could.

Corporal punishment has been illegal in the public schools here in Washington for the better part of 15 years now.

Over at the Seattle PI, however, there's a groundswell of support for bringing the paddle back.

This is why comment sections are fun to read, and this is also why it's good that the internet doesn't run the world.

Seattle likes to L3RN

They never use the word "blogging" to describe their activity, but it fits:

Similar to YouTube, the popular Internet video-sharing Web site, L3RN (pronounced simply "learn") is touted as a tool for professional development of teachers, allowing teachers in different schools to discuss ideas and upload lesson plans and other information.

But for students, it means they can comment on their peers' work and also show off their projects to their parents. According to Hale's Advanced Placement students, it also has proved to be a lot of fun....

This fall, the district plans to add to L3RN by introducing another online system called Medley, a social-networking site comparable to MySpace.

Medley will allow students to have personal home pages. They can create online journals and send messages to their friends and teachers.

Should be fun to manage, as well. Ambitious. Let's hope it works.

Seattle school payroll to join 20th century

It took this...

Last fall, district officials discovered a Nova Alternative High School teacher allegedly adding overtime to her signed time sheets — something she had been doing since 1992, according to the district. Of the $179,000 the district believes she stole, $120,000 was in the past five years.

...to make this happen...

This fall, the district will launch a new computer system that links its payroll and financial systems, and it is hiring an internal auditor, reorganizing its human resources and payroll departments and training managers to better monitor their budgets.

...despite this.

The state auditor recommended in 2001 that the district cut off employees' access to their signed time sheets, records show. The state made the same recommendation in 2002. And in 2003, 2004 and 2005, audits continued to warn that the district's shoddy payroll system put funds at risk. Auditors pointed out smaller losses: $1,800 in 2003-04, $12,000 in 2004-05.

To be fair:

Despite the findings, Spencer said the district is in good financial shape. She pointed to an audit of the district's financial statements over the same time period. For the second year in a row, that report found no problems. Standard & Poor's and Moody's both recently raised the district's bond ratings — another sign of the district's financial stability, Spencer said.

Still, you have to be amazed that, in 2007, the district is just now linking its payroll and financial systems via computer. And I thought my district was slacking.

Update: Ryan points out how modernization has foundered in the LA Unified School District.

school board candidate hits the blog

In Washington we could use more school board candidates like Seattle's Lisa Steubing, who's taking advantage of the new/old media to share her thoughts, unfiltered-like, on the P-I's blog. A sample:

I believe in defining what professional teachers should accomplish--then giving them the academic freedom, the support and the tools to achieve those goals.

It is terrible that the WASL has such weight because it is tied to NCLB. Teachers have practically been reduced to technicians in preparing their students. The more we script and restrict instruction the less time we have for creative, in-depth and higher-order learning.

As part of a local union effort, I'll be interviewing Olympia's upcoming candidates, and will be sure to publish their thoughts on my other blog.

Update: Incumbent Darlene Flynn joins the fun. Commentators complain about a lack of communication; maybe blogging begins the healing process?

Math Wars, Battlefront Seattle

The debate about how best to teach mathematics is getting rehashed in Seattle as they prepare to adopt a new math curriculum. The Seattle Times and the Seattle PI have both weighed in with editorials, and we should know soon which way they decide to go: constructivist, as embodied in the much-maligned Everyday Math, or traditional, like you find in the Singapore Math curriculum.

The comments section of the PI editorial gives you a good microcosm of what the debate looks like. The traditionalist viewpoint thrives at Mathematically Correct and at Washington State's very own Where's the Math?, a great blog with frequent updates; those who believe in constructivism can find ample ammunition to support the cause at this subsite from Mathforum.org.

At the end of the day I think any of us would agree that the ultimate goal is to make sure the students are getting where they need to be. The rather nebulous part of that equation is that we're not always sure where they need to be; the recent delay of the math WASL, for example, or the NCTM's recent Curriculum Focal Points document are both pretty good reflections on the fact that the only constant is change.

What's the state of math in your district?