Goldy

While we’re slamming school officials, let’s take a little poke at Federal Way School Board Member Charles Hoff, who told an audience in State College, PA (not surprisingly the home of Penn State) that it had “a far better gene pool” than the district he represents. State College is a mostly white, middle to upper middle class community.

Hoff said that because of having several smaller high schools within the Federal Way school district, our test scores are among the highest in Washington State.

Instead of attributing this fact to more one-on-one attention, student’s efforts or stellar teachers, Hoff went on to make the argument that if Federal Way students can achieve high test scores while attending small high school, imagine what the sons and daughters who come from “a far better gene pool” would accomplish.

Since Hoff’s remark came to light, those familiar with Hoff’s views said that this remark was not uncharacteristic for Hoff.

Hmm. So Hoff is suggesting that the real solution to our educational problems is….?

Here is the truth about the Seattle Public Schools plan to close a bunch of elementary schools. It has very little to do with saving money. It has everything to do with increasing revenues.

That’s a fact.

If our local editorialists who have been so quick to back up the district’s plans would actually talk to some district officials — off the record — they will be candidly told that the district never expected to save much money, if any, from this round of closures. What the architects of closure policy will tell you is that if the district complies with demands from state legislators to consolidate schools — thus making a show of fiscal responsibility — they believe the district will be rewarded with a big pile of state money.

Again, that is fact.

Indeed, Superintendent Raj Manhas’ preliminary closure plan has reduced savings estimates to a little over $2 million a year, and it’s fair to be skeptical even of that. With half that money being reinvested in the remaining schools, we have only about $1 million a year towards closing our long term structural budget deficit… barely a drop in the bucket.

Again, facts.

I am being asked to disrupt my daughter’s education and sacrifice my neighborhood school for the good of all the children… when really, from the start, this closure plan has mostly been about providing political cover for gutless legislators who refuse to make the tough choices necessary to fully fund basic K-12 education statewide.

You’d think there was a story there that the local media might be interested in pursuing? Apparently not.

So at the same time the district wants to shut my daughter’s school to save a couple hundred thousand dollars, the billionaire owners of the Sonics want taxpayers to pony up a couple hundred million dollars so that they can build a new arena with even more luxury boxes.

Fuck that.

See that banner behind the picture of DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel in this week’s issue of TIME magazine? Know what it says?

D a r c y
B u r n e r

The article says a lot about Burner too:

Darcy Burner knew that prospective Democratic candidates sometimes left in tears after meeting Representative Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who heads the party’s efforts to recapture the House and was the one-man screening committee for recruits. Burner, an alumna of Harvard and Microsoft, didn’t cry. But she found the wiry former Clinton Administration official as ruthless as any corporate chieftain she had known, as he went down a checklist of questions, including one at the top he had written to himself: Is she worth the investment of my time and the committee’s money?

“Apparently, it didn’t occur to him that I could read upside down,” Burner recalls. Or maybe he didn’t care. Either way, at the end of all his queries about polls and consultants and budgets, she asked him, “How are we doing on No. 1?”

“The jury is still out,” Emanuel said with studied bluntness.

Burner, who wanted to run in a district that stretches from wealthy Seattle suburbs to farmland at the base of Mount Rainier, passed muster. Now the two are bonded on a historic adventure–the Democrats’ increasingly promising quest to evict Republicans from the leadership suites they have occupied for the past dozen years. “This Microsoft mom is going to be part of us taking back the Congress,” Emanuel said hoarsely at a rally in a Mercer Island, Wash., community center last week.

Equal parts coach, babysitter and disciplinarian, Emanuel, 46, has groomed Burner and 21 other varsity challengers–seven more than the number of seats that Democrats need to take control of the House.

And if that doesn’t put to rest the righties’ wishful thinking that Burner isn’t a top tier challenger, perhaps President Bush’s upcoming trip to raise money for the struggling Reichert will. Not too many House Republicans get (or want) that type of attention, but Reichert’s getting desperate.

Our good friend Tim Eyman showed up at the Secretary of State’s office this morning with only a “thin handful” of R-65 petitions. A veteran Capitol press corps reporter tells me that Timmy basically just used the assembled print journalists and TV cameras as an opportunity to plug his other initiative. He says he’ll be back tomorrow at 4pm. Uh-huh.

UPDATE:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I’d been predicting R-65’s failure for weeks, and told anybody who asked that I thought today’s event was a stunt along the lines of I-864. My reporter friend acknowledged: “Good call on your part.” Yet, the reporters still showed up and gave Timmy the forum he wanted.

Over on Slog, The Stranger’s Eli Sanders is justifiably outraged over being lured down to Olympia on a lie. The assembled reporters were furious, Sanders reports, but Eyman was unapologetic. “There’s no such thing as bad press, that’s the reality,” Eyman told Sanders.

So to my friends in the media I’d like to suggest that you take Timmy at his word one last time, and refuse to give him any coverage at all. Zero. Zilch. Nada. No clips on the news, no column inches in the paper… not even to curse him out. The guy just dissed you. (Again.) Don’t reward him.

Can the press resist? Sanders wonders the same thing:

Bottom line: This was one of the most unprincipled press conferences I’ve ever seen, and my sense is that the reporters whose time was wasted this morning are furious. I hesitate to even write about it, given Eyman’s “no such thing as bad press” mantra, but I do think it’s important to give a sense of how dishonest he’s willing to be in order to get a camera in front of him. It will be interesting to see how the dailies and the television stations handle this stunt

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According to an AP story in today’s Seattle Times, 17 percent of Ivy Leaguers practice “self-abuse“:

Nearly 1 in 5 students at two Ivy League schools say they have purposely injured themselves by cutting, burning or other methods, a disturbing phenomenon that psychologists say they are hearing about more often.

Hmm. I think that way back when I was an Ivy Leaguer, “self-abuse” was still a euphemism for “masturbation” (which of course is a euphemism for “jacking off.”)

For some young people, self-abuse is an extreme coping mechanism that seems to help relieve stress;

Again, isn’t that what masturbation is for?

I think what young people need today is some good, wholesome, old-fashioned sex, drugs and rock-and-roll.

Will from Pike Place Politics will join me in the studio to talk about the state GOP convention, immigration policy, and Dave Reichert.

Darcy Burner will join us a little later on.

In the first hour I’ll be trying not to make a fool of myself. We’ll be talking about “An Inconvenient Truth” and global warming. And then an update on the state Democratic Convention.

I’ll be subbing for Turi Ryder tonight on 710 KIRO, from 7pm to 10pm. I just got the call, and thus am a tad unprepared.

So… what do you want to talk about?

With the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s imminent demise, the Seattle Times will soon become our city and our state’s undisputed “paper of record,” and as such it has a unique responsibility to credibly represent the interests of all our citizens. Unfortunately, publisher Frank Blethen seems determined to use his personal bullhorn to promote his own personal interests.

The Times‘ editorial arrogance is never more apparent than on a day like today, when Frank has his op/ed toadies print yet another editorial attacking the inheritance tax. Of course, it’s the usual divisive, propagandistic bullshit, but I was struck by the sentiments of one particular paragraph:

In our highly partisan world, the death tax has given Republican candidates a perennial bogeyman with which to raise funds from owners of family businesses. Why the Democrats donate this issue to the opposition we cannot fathom.

No, I suppose you can’t fathom this Frank, as in your dollar-and-sense world you apparently can’t comprehend why anybody would take a stand on principle over interest.

There are innumerable exigent matters facing our region and our nation, but I would hazard a guess that there is no other issue over the past few years to which the Times has devoted more editorial space than the dreaded death inheritance tax. And yet the editorial board can’t seem to manage to scrape up a couple of column inches to acknowledge the impending worldwide catastrophe that is global warming, or to apologize for viciously ridiculing Ron Sims 18 years ago when he attempted to show some leadership on this issue.

I guess it’s all about priorities. Frank’s priorities.

I am really too angry right now to write about anything. So talk amongst yourselves.

An Inconvenient Truth opens in Seattle today at Pacific Place and the Guild 45th. I’m going to the 8:40 show tonight at Pacific Place, and a bunch of Drinking Liberally folk are going to the 8:40 show on Saturday.

You must see this movie this weekend. Big crowds will assure wider release.

I always thought I’d grow up to pursue a career in law, and I probably would have made a kick-ass attorney. But as I progressed through college and the prospect of LSATs and law school applications drew near, I strayed from that path for a number of well thought out and not so well thought out reasons.

Justified or not, part of my rationalization at the time was what I perceived to be the unique ethics of this adversarial profession. As an attorney my job would be to represent my clients to the best of my ability, and I imagined myself representing corporate or criminal clients who I knew to be in the wrong, yet for whom I knew I could achieve a victory in court. I did not relish the thought of pursuing a career where the profession’s ethical obligations might sometimes run counter to what I believed to be my moral obligation.

So I chose not to pursue a career in law, and for better or worse, here I am today.

Thus I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for pharmacists who seek the right to refuse to dispense certain legally approved medications based on religious objections, and I find yesterday’s decision of the WA State Board of Pharmacy to grant such right, ethically and morally objectionable.

Of course every pharmacist has the inalienable right to refuse to dispense birth control, but the sole means of exercising that right is to choose not to be a pharmacist.

Had I been an attorney defending a client whom I steadfastly believed to be guilty of a heinous crime such as murder or rape, it would still be ethically and legally inexcusable for me to knowingly withhold an exonerating piece of evidence. As an attorney it would be my job to defend my client… not to judge his guilt.

Pharmacists are medical professionals who take an oath to serve their customers. If they believe that a prescription my have adverse interactions with other drugs their customer may be taking, they have a right and an obligation to call that to the attention of the prescribing physician. But they do not have the right to question or refuse to dispense a prescription, solely based on their on personal beliefs about what is or is not an abortifacient, or their religious convictions as to the morality of abortion or birth control in general.

Pharmacists have a professional obligation to serve their customers, and if they cannot live up to it they should choose another profession. That is the choice all of us have.

We would not entertain the notion of an orthodox Jewish counter-clerk refusing to sell cheeseburgers at McDonalds, or a devoutly Quaker military officer refusing to send his men into battle. These would be individuals who chose the wrong profession. What’s next… a Christian Science pharmacist who refuses to dispense any medication at all?

Everybody is welcome to their own religious convictions, but they do not have the right to impose it on others. I’m not sure what powers Governor Gregoire has to counter the Pharmacy Board’s decision, but if she can’t do it forthwith I expect this to be a number one priority of the Legislature next session.

I don’t do nearly enough plugging of my fellow bloggers, despite my best intentions. So if you’re grasping for topics to crudely vilify each other over, take a look at what some of my favorite, neglected bloggers are writing:

• Loaded Orygun would kinda be the HorseAss.org of our neighbor to the South, that is, if I were writing it, and I didn’t cover all that Oregon stuff. Carla and Torrid are two of the best local bloggers writing… hard-hitting, edgy and relentless.
• Peace Tree Farm isn’t the most frequently updated blog in the region, but it’s one of the more thoughtful, and certainly one of the oldest. Check out N’s recent post on Bob Dylan’s birthday.
• Pike Place Politics. On our weekly podcast I like to tease Will that I never read his blog, but of course I’m only joking. The truth is I sometimes read his blog. But not nearly enough. Will’s snide focus on very local politics is the type of stuff I might do if I had the time. Or interest.

There are a lot of other great local blogs that deserve more attention (check out my blog roll) and I’ll try to do a better job of plugging them in the future.

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.