Archives for June 2006

One of the curious things about the CAC’s final recommendation report is the number of column inches devoted to explaining the decision to close Graham Hill Elementary, a rationale (or should I say, “rationalization”) that consumed half of the five pages covering the five schools impacted in the SE quadrant.

Indeed, no other school on the list was critiqued with such surgical precision in an effort to paint a picture of comparative academic weakness. While most schools were simply compared by WASL performance, the CAC was forced to first separate out the scores of our Montessori students from those in our so-called “regular” program, and then finally zero in on only the Reading scores of those “regular” students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. And rather than using the multiyear averages generally cited elsewhere, the CAC only looked at 2005… a year our school was in turmoil under an incompetent principal the staff was struggling to oust.

The CAC’s conclusion:

By the 2005 Reading results for students living in poverty, the percent meeting standard for students in the regular program was 12th of 17 in the quadrant (above only the two schools with lower results we were already recommending to close or merge).

From this the district brands Graham Hill a failed school? Gimme a break.

Hell… why not break it out even further? Why not compare our 2005 reading scores of bilingual, “regular” program students living in poverty with the 2005 reading scores of bilingual “regular” program students living in poverty at other SE quadrant schools? Why not compare the math scores of students whose last name begins with the letter “Q” for that matter?

The fact is, when judged on the same criteria used to judge other schools — you know, counting the scores of all our students — Graham Hill consistently ranks in the top third of SE quadrant schools. But even when you break out our Montessori scores (something that had never been done before in the thirteen years of the program, and something that has yet to be done with the Montessori program at Bagley,) our “regular” student’s WASL scores still fare well compared to our neighboring schools.

The following table compares the two-year (2004-2005) WASL average for Reading, Writing, and Math at all 16, SE neighborhood schools, with Graham Hill’s Montessori program broken out separately from our “Contemporary” program (which is what we prefer to call the program the CAC demeans as “regular.”)

RANK	SCHOOL	PROFICIENCY
1	Maple	78%
2	Graham Hill Montessori	76%
3	Kimball	67%
4	Beacon Hill	61%
5	Brighton	57%
6	Muir (with Spectrum)	54%
7	Wing Luke (with Spectrum)	53%
8	Van Asselt	50%
9	Graham Hill Contemporary	49%
10	African American Academy	47%
11	Dearborn Park	46%
12	Hawthorne	46%
13	Dunlap	44%
14	Orca	33%
15	Rainier View	29%
16	Emerson	28%
17	Whitworth	28%

As you can see, our Contemporary program fares respectably; despite its high number of bilingual and special education students, it is actually nipping at the heels of Muir and Wing Luke, both of which house Spectrum programs. Meanwhile our Montessori students earn amongst the highest combined scores in the quadrant. (And at 100 percent proficiency for two years running, they earn the highest Reading scores in the entire district.)

Curiously, the CAC report specifically focuses on our 2005 Reading and Math scores, but ignores our Writing scores entirely. Could it be because the following table comparing our 2005 Writing scores to other schools in the quadrant doesn’t exactly scream out for Graham Hill’s closure?

RANK	SCHOOL	PROFICIENCY
1	Graham Hill Montessori	83%
2	Maple	73%
3	Beacon Hill	61%
4	Wing Luke (with Spectrum)	60%
5	Kimball	58%
6	Dearborn Park	56%
7	Graham Hill Contemporary	53%
8	Van Asselt	51%
9	Rainier View	47%
10	John Muir (with Spectrum)	45%
11	Dunlap	44%
12	Hawthorne	44%
13	Brighton	35%
14	African American Academy	34%
15	Emerson	32%
16	Orca	30%
17	Whitworth	9%

Hmm. I wonder how the “regular” students at Muir and Wing Luke fare after you break out the scores of their Spectrum students?

We’ll never know, because the district and the CAC never bothered to evaluate their dual programs as separate schools… only Graham Hill received that honor. And only Graham Hill required two pages of cherry-picked data to twist its way onto the CAC’s closure list.

The two-year drop in enrollment from 388 in 2003 to 325 in 2005 that the CAC cites as evidence of our school’s decline? That intentionally ignores the fact that our enrollment temporarily peaked when we absorbed a large chunk of Brighton’s population while that school was closed for renovations. And it also ignores the fact that our official enrollment numbers consistently fail to reflect the 32 students in our Montessori preschool, who when properly counted raise our capacity utilization to over 91 percent… again, amongst the highest figures in the quadrant.

So the question remains: “Why?” Why did the district feed misleading data to the CAC, and refuse to correct or explain it after our repeated protestations? Why was the CAC guided to dissect our school in two, when other schools with dual programs, like Muir, Wing Luke and Bagley were evaluated as one? Why did the CAC contort itself to recommend closing a school that in terms of diversity, first-choice ranking, capacity utilization, and academic performance ranks amongst the highest in the quadrant? Why would the district want to shut down a school that recently underwent a $5.2 million renovation and expansion, and eliminate a Montessori program that produces some of the highest WASL scores in the district?

Superintendent Raj Manhas’s own recommendation list comes out later today, and if Graham Hill is still on it, perhaps he’ll show the Graham Hill community the common courtesy of explaining the real reasons why.

UPDATE:
Saving Seattle Schools has more thoughts on the district’s selective use of data and criteria to rationalize closing schools:

Over and over at the Town Meetings, I heard schools refuting the data used in the CAC recommendations. It became clear that either the CAC had selectively picked data, choosing what best supported their decisions, or they had faulty data, or both.

The Graham Hill closure is a perfect example. The CAC report states that: “…students in the regular programs at Graham Hill fared less well than students in surrounding regular programs, and that allowing them to choose other programs would result in their being better served academically.” For supporting data, they used the 2005 Reading WASL scores only.

[…]

Using two years of data for all WASL topics, rather than one year of data for just one topic, the CAC would have been unable to conclude that, regarding the Graham Hill Regular program students, other area schools can “serve them as well or better.”

It’s a shame to reduce a discussion about academic performance to a mere comparison of WASL scores, but if that’s the metric the district is going to use to justify closing my school, then that’s the metric I’ll use to defend it.

Over on Slog, The Stranger’s Eli Sanders addresses the question of whether Rep. Dave Reichert truly is, or is not a moderate… and he allows Reichert to provide the answer in his own vague, rambling words.

Sanders links to video on TVW of Reichert addressing the Mainstream Republicans of Washington at their annual Cascade Conference last week in Sea-Tac. Speaking before a gathering of self-proclaimed moderate Republicans, Reichert curiously attempts to explain away his own voting record, by recounting a rambling anecdote about a conservative voter who complained about his alleged moderation:

Now, I said, “You know what sir, that would be a huge mistake, and here’s why.’ (I wanted to explain to this person how things work back in Washington, D.C., and why certain votes have to be taken.)

Sometimes the leadership comes to me and says, “Dave, we want you to vote a certain way.’ Now, they know I can do that over here, that I have to do that over here. In other districts, that’s not a problem, but here I have to be able to be very flexible in where I place my votes. Because the big picture here is, keep this seat, keep the majority, keep the country moving forward with Republican ideals, especially on the budget, on protecting our troops, on protecting this country. Right? Being responsible with taxpayer dollars. All of those things. That’s the big picture. Not the vote I place on ANWAR that you may not agree with, or the vote that I place on protecting salmon.”

“Back in Washington, there are lots of games played…” Reichert informed his audience. As for the carefully crafted perception that he is moderate and independent? “That’s where I need to be in a 50-50 district.”

Uh-huh.

As one Republican elected official who was in the audience that day incredulously told me:

“Of course we understand that strategy… but you don’t come right out and say it in public!”

And on camera, no less. See what I mean when I say that even Reichert’s fellow Republicans think he’s an idiot?

My question then is, who is the bigger idiot? Reichert, who stupidly admits to the TV cameras that in an effort to help him look more independent, House leaders are telling him when he should or should not vote against them? Or our local editorialists who have been so reliably eager to congratulate Reichert every time he makes a show of breaking with the party line?

Reichert knows that his alleged “independent streak” is a stinking load of bullshit. His fellow Republicans know that this is a stinking load of bullshit. Only our local media seem to be oblivious to the stench of politics as usual.

Much of the myth of Reichert’s moderation and independence stems from a handful of strategic votes against his party’s leadership on bills whose passage or failure was pre-ordained. Indeed as Daniel Kirkdorffer studiously explains in his thorough analysis of Reichert’s voting record (an absolute must read for all serious journalists,) the overwhelming majority of Reichert’s allegedly moderate votes were entirely meaningless:

[Supporters] argue that Reichert has voted 55% of the time on the same side as the majority Democratic position. Problem is that almost half of those votes (206) were undisputed procedural votes, and hence meaningless when determining voting tendencies. Furthermore, his overall voting record has him voting 94% of the time with the majority Republican position.

So how do we really gauge a legislator’s voting record then? Well we do so by looking at the 389 votes where the parties took opposite positions, and we see where legislators stood on those votes.

As soon as we do that the first observation is that Reichert only voted 11.7% of the time on the same side as Democrats, but 88.3% of the time with his Republican colleagues.

However, the most important votes of all were generally the key votes on the passage of bills. 35 times since January 2005 the House has been at odds on these most important votes, and Reichert has only voted with the Democrats on two such occasions, which is just under 6% of the time.

Even in his stand against the despicable Terri Schiavo bill — for which he was loudly lauded by the local press — Reichert had little impact on the final 203-58 vote. Indeed, when the shit hits the fan as it did with ANWR, when he voted for drilling after voting against it, Reichert has always been a reliable vote when called upon by his party leaders. And he always will be.

That is what Reichert was laboriously trying to explain to his fellow Republicans last week. That is what his colleagues in the audience understood. And that is what our local media has an obligation to explain to voters.

[SPECIAL UPDATE: Rolling Stone has posted: “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?“]

BradBlog reports that Rolling Stone magazine is about to publish an expose that alleges massive voter fraud and disenfranchisment in Ohio, that likely changed the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. The result of four months of investigations and interviews conducted by author Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rolling Stone reporters, the article alleges that 350,000 voters were disenfranchised in Ohio, while as many as 80,000 rural votes may have been fraudulently shifted from Kerry to Bush.

The article also explores the unexplained disparities between exit polls and final results in 10 of 11 battleground states — disparities as high as 9.5 percent — and all shifting in Bush’s favor.

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. “As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,” he says, “it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.”

I’ll post a link to the Rolling Stone article as soon as it becomes available.

UPDATE:
BradBlog now has extended excerpts, and they’re stunning.

Indeed, the extent of the GOP’s effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. “Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,” Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. “You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.”

UPDATE, UPDATE:
The entire article is now available on Rolling Stone: “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” Read it and weep.

Local Republicans have made much hay about Rep. Dave Reichert’s plum assignment as chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, and Technology. A lot of good it’s done us:

Washington state and the Seattle area will receive less federal homeland-security funding this year than last, a decrease that mirrors a nationwide drop in counterterrorism spending.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced $1.7 billion in grants to states and urban areas Wednesday, including $32.2 million for Washington state overall and $9.2 million specifically for the Seattle area, which includes King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. In recent years a portion of the state grants also has gone to the Seattle area.

The state total amounts to a 23 percent reduction from last year, while the Seattle area decrease is 22 percent. Nationally, homeland-security grants were down by about the same percentage.

[…]

Security money is decreasing because Congress’ will to fund emergency preparedness is fading after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Eric Holdeman, director of emergency management for King County. Federal spending is also hampered by huge increases in spending for the Iraq war, Holdeman said.

The Seattle area should have received more because it is near the Canadian border and has a port, ferry system, high name-recognition and danger of earthquakes, he said. “I actually thought we would rank higher.”

Thanks Dave, for your powerful leadership on this issue… leadership that has earned Congress a failing grade from 9/11 commissioners on your willingness to implement its recommendations.

It looks like the Seattle P-I has been Drinking Liberally:

“It’s the physical manifestation of the blogosphere,” Goldstein, 43, said. “It has allowed us to establish friendships and relationships with people that we couldn’t do otherwise.”

Once again, that David Goldstein guy really knows what he’s talking about.