Personal and Confidential to OSPI

You know the "strong passwords" that you require to access the EDS portal? They're ass. They're absolute ass. They're not protecting anything--the only thing passwords with 5 different requirements do is cause the end user to click the ol' "Did you forget your password?" button and have a temporary password sent.

Electronic recertification is a good thing, but cripes do you ever do it in the worst way possible.

Your friend,

Ryan

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Here's an Example of What's Wrong With OSPI

Last week they put out a press release touting an agreement with a company called ESRI to make a license for their product available to every school in the state.

I don't know their software--it looks nice enough based on the website, I suppose--but what I do know is that if OSPI is buying shiny toys during the worst economic downturn that most of us have ever seen, that's a problem.

I've been teaching long enough to see how this goes. Somebody with distance from the classroom falls in love with a program, and the next thing we know there's a site license and a training on how to use the thing. Some teachers, though, opt out. Eventually the whole thing peters out. The money is wasted.

Essentially, it's a local control argument, and this press release shows that OSPI doesn't get it. If school districts want this, then let school districts get it. Buying this thing for everyone from Selkirk to Seattle is a waste, because even if 90% use it you've tossed away the money on the 10% who won't. Here you have OSPI not only making the purchase but touting it as an effort that is worth their time, and that's a pretty good insight into the thinking of the Dorn administration.

I've put in an email to find out what the contract was worth. That'll be an interesting number.

Read more here, if any.

Wasted Effort

I spent about a day and a half earlier this month working through the new writing assessment with my kids. It was a pain in the ass that ate up an awful lot of instructional time. Looks like it was also wasted effort:

Dear District Assessment Coordinators and Principals:
This fall, grade 5 teachers in your district volunteered to administer the writing pilot for the Measurements of Student Progress (MSP). Stand-alone pilot research programs such as this are one of the best ways to obtain data necessary for the development of new MSP writing prompts. We very much appreciate the additional time spent by you, as well as your district and school staff and students.

About two weeks ago, Governor Chris Gregoire announced to OSPI that across the board budget cuts would need to be made by October 15. Since that announcement the Assessment and Student Information Division has had to make some very difficult decisions in order to meet this latest budget challenge. Many activities were identified that would either be postponed or cut. Among the list of activities was the grade 5 writing pilot.

At this time we are holding all writing pilot booklets in our processing center in Minnesota. All subsequent activities, including scoring and training workshops, also have been put on hold. It is our hope that at some point in the near future we will be able to resume processing, scoring, and convening a teacher training workshop.

Please share this news with the fall writing pilot participating teachers.
If you have any questions, contact us at (360) 725-6348 or at Assessment@k12.wa.us.

Regards,
Assessment Operations

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I Think I Found Some Government Waste

From Crosscut:

Participating were former GOP state party Chair Chris Vance, a Crosscut contributor who has also served on the King County Council, as a state representative in Olympia, and is currently on the state's payroll as a part-time advisor to state schools Superintendent Randy Dorn.

Beyond finishing 3rd in the race for SPI in 1996, when Terry Bergeson first took the office, what does Chris Vance bring to OSPI that's worth paying $2,000 a month for? Vance apparently advised Dorn in 2008; what does he do now? I also find some cites that have Vance with the PSE when Dorn was their executive director.

Is this essential?

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Fun With Public Records Requests

I've been curious since the grant application fell apart to know just how much effort Randy Dorn's OSPI put into it. Here's the answer:

Good afternoon, Mr. Grant,

Thank you for contacting the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) with your request for how many hours were spent by OSPI on the Washington State Race to the Top (RTTT) application, and how many different OSPI staff members were involved in the process. Your request has been logged as public records request No.10-0330.
OSPI does not have records on the hours spent on the RTTT application or the number of specific staff assigned to work solely on the application.
OSPI does not track employee’s work by specific projects or tasks, so we are unable to determine the number of staff or hours dedicated to this project.
There were, however, four staff who were considered the "lead team" from the agency, and all of whom had multiple duties during this period, including RTTT work. Again, they did not track their hours.
I hope this information was helpful, and let me know if I can provide further assistance.

Later, I got this follow-up:

In reviewing the agency’s documentation related to the Race To The Top (RITT) application, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has found that one staff member was assigned for a short duration to assist with administrative support for the Race To The Top (RITT) application. We show she worked a total of 37.4 dedicated hours on the project.

Does it seem odd to anyone else that OSPI would know to the tenth of an hour how much time the one staff members spent on the application, but not know how much time the four highly-paid lead people spent?

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I Can't Wait to See the One From OSPI!

Let the cleaving begin! It'll be as bloody as Saw VIIIIIIIXM, only worse.

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The Best Thing the State Could Do Is to Stop Screwing With Certification

In the eyes of the state, I'm not a qualified reading teacher.

I've been teaching 1st grade for 8 years. For the last two years during our walk-to-read time I've taken on the lowest group, those kids needing the most remediation. I've planned before school intervention programs, after school programs, been trained in Read Naturally, DIBELS, and Reading Mastery, and I've got the test results to show that *it has worked.* I love, love, love working with developing readers, and I wouldn't trade for anything the feeling of seeing a kid turn on that light and become a capable, competent reader.

But in the eyes of the state, I'm not a qualified reading teacher.

In May I wandered up to Mead High School and took the WEST-E, which tests your teaching knowledge in a variety of subject areas. Passing is 240; I got a 288. By that measure, then, I'm amply qualified to teach reading.

But still, in the eyes of the state, I'm not a qualified reading teacher.

I can add an endorsement by doing the National Boards, which holds absolutely zero interest for me, enrolling in a program through one of the local colleges, which I don't have the money to do, or pursuing a Pathway II endorsement through one of the local colleges. If I did that, I'd pick Wazzu-Spokane. It'll cost me $1,600.

This is bullshit.





Reading around, one of the things that they say that you should do to make yourself useful to your employer is to have a varied skill set--don't be able to do only one thing, or when that one things goes away you're not needed any more. I've written about this before thinking about school psychologists and music teachers, but it holds true universally.

It used to be that with the Golden Certificate you could teach any subject, any time. That went away because of the stereotype of the ineffective teacher who was qualified in the eyes of the state but in reality sucked at their job.

So we substituted that for the initial/continuing paradigm, and added endorsements into the mix. Now the thought was that forcing teachers into getting continuing credits and clock hours would keep them fresh, keep them vital, keep them "in the game" in a way that would benefit kids.

Turns out, clock hours and continuing credits were often a joke. I've sat in the summer "workshops" filled with very honest, very cynical teachers who were there just so they could get their certificate renewed. So we threw away that system and piled on Professional Certification instead. Now, we'll be performance based! Portfolios! Evidence! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

By my math, how we "do" ProCert has changed at least 5 times since I was part of the first ProCert group to go through Eastern in 2004. Instead of actually paying attention to their students we have young teachers assembling binder after binder after binder to demonstrate their mastery of a profession that they shouldn't have mastered yet, usually putting out thousands of dollars that they don't have in the process.

The dream of a highly qualified and effective teacher in every classroom is a good one; it's where we should be. The certification process as we're doing it now, though, has become so divorced from that goal as to be totally irrelevent. Because "we" "can't" get rid of "bad teachers", the system has been constructed in such a way that good teachers can't get into positions that they would excel at, and at the same time people are faced with as steep an uphill climb as exists in any profession just to keep their jobs, and that's ridiculous.

What's the solution? Simple, to me: shitcan the whole set-up. Start taking power back from the Professional Educators Standards Board. Say a hearty "Hell no!" to the certification changes that were embodied in HB2261. Stop acting like National Certification is the be-all, end-all of teacher effectiveness, because the Board process was never intended to be for everyone.

There's more than compensation involved in job satisfaction. Want to make a teacher's job easier? Make it easier for them to actually be a teacher, without having to worry about 10 tons of crap falling from on high. The fixes to certification in Washington have broken the system even more--it's time to start over.

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Will the Great Recession Put the Breaks on Dorn's Hiring Spree?

With the big state-level news lately being that Governor Gregoire has ordered a 2% reduction in spending by state agencies (see here, here, here, or here) one wonders if the good Superintendent Dorn hasn't overextended himself with 9 job posting for OSPI this month alone. I'm guessing some of those are stimulus money hires, for if it wasn't for the stimulus money WE'D ALL BE SCREWED, but all the same it looks like the hiring freeze has thawed if you're the Dorninator.

(Dorninator trademarked by this blog, even though I don't think it sounds all that good and probably won't catch on, but all the same)
(Also, I miss Tone from the Top. Come back to us!)

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I'd Like to Welcome Randy Dorn to the I Thought a Think Family

Item, from the News Tribune:

This from News Tribune columnist Peter Callaghan:

One interesting revelation from Thursday's debate between Randy Dorn and Terry Bergeson is that Dorn, the challenger, said he would support a constitutional amendment to eliminate the school superintendent as an elected office.

Dorn said the top schools job should be appointed, perhaps by the governor.

Bergeson, the 12-year-incumbent, said she thinks it should continue to be elected by the voters.

Me, in July:

On a mailing list I’m on someone recently shared a conversation that they had with a state senator. He echoed what I’ve heard other legislators say during my lobbying trips—Terry Bergeson is ineffective and something needs to change over at OSPI—but then went a step further and said he was considering legislation for this next session that would change the SPI position from an elected one to an appointed one.

That’s an interesting idea. I don’t know that it’s a good idea, but it’s one that merits some conversation.

OK, so he probably got the idea from the same guy I did, and he's probably not a raging ITAT fan who waits with bated breath for the next post, and he might not be getting an I Thought a Think tattoo even as we speak. I think it shows you, though, that there could be more legs to this idea than I initially thought.

Read more here, if any.

An Idea: Have the Governor Appoint the Superintendent of Public Instruction?

On a mailing list I’m on someone recently shared a conversation that they had with a state senator. He echoed what I’ve heard other legislators say during my lobbying trips—Terry Bergeson is ineffective and something needs to change over at OSPI—but then went a step further and said he was considering legislation for this next session that would change the SPI position from an elected one to an appointed one.

That’s an interesting idea. I don’t know that it’s a good idea, but it’s one that merits some conversation.

Washington is actually in the minority by having an elected state schools chief. Education Week (here) says that of the 51 people nationwide who are equivalent to our SPI position, only 14 of them are elected, a finding that's further explored by the Council of Chief State School Officers here. An interesting study would be to compare the NAEP scores for states and see if there’s any correlation with how their school chiefs are put into the position, but that’s a topic for another day.

Let’s look at both sides of the idea, starting with the pro:

• If the Governor appointed the Superintendent, then it stands to reason that the Superintendent would be more accountable to the Governor. Ideally, then, SPI would be a sort of cabinet-level position, given the authority they need to do the job as long as it falls within the parameters the Governor sets.
  
  
• Given the above, then, you would hope to see the sort of synergy between the Governor and the SPI that you do when a mayor takes over control of the school system. It could be comparable to what Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein have established in New York, or Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C.
  
  (Before my DC and NY readers rip me a new one, settle down. I haven’t done the negatives yet)
  
  
• You would also avoid the problem of multiple agendas. Consider if Dino Rossi won the Governor’s mansion this November and lifelong Democrat Terry Bergeson was returned to the Old Capital Building for another run as SPI; can their goals possibly be the same?
  
  
• I think the idea of mandate is important, too. The OSPI election has never been high profile outside of those circles that care most about education; even your average teacher doesn’t get invested in the process the way that they should. Consider President Bush after he won in 2004 and made his speech about political capital; he had a mandate to keep his policies in place, and he used it. Winning the OSPI election doesn’t have that same authority; maybe having to go through a legislative appointment would be a change for the better.
  
  
• If you make it a non-elected position you also take away the incumbent’s advantage. SPI should not be a sinecure, a lifetime appointment. Similarly, an SPI who isn’t running for office might have different interactions with the legislators and the public writ large than one who has to keep their eyes on the next election.

Oh, but there are negatives as well:

• It takes the choice away from the voters, and that’s maybe the most important consideration of all. We like our voting here in the Evergreen State, we like our sunshine and our open books, and making SPI appointed hurts all three of those ideals.
  
  
• What would the vetting process be? What would the Governor’s charge to their search committee be? How much influence would special interest groups (the WEA, the PSE, the EFF, Where’s the Math, Mothers Against WASL, League of Education Voters, AWSP, WSSDA, WASA, WASBO, etc., etc.) have in the selection, even if that influence is exercised through back channels?
  
  
• Along those same lines, then, making the SPI an appointed position could make it an even more political one. Those groups I listed above may not always have luck getting their message out to the public, but they all do a crackerjack job of lobbying and communicating with legislators. The hearings could be a hoot.
  
  
• Change isn’t always good. Say what you will about Terry she does have an institutional memory of what’s gone on in Washington schools that stretches back 30+ years, and that’s a perspective that very few others can claim to have. Would education reform start over again and again and again every time a new face took the office?
  
  
• Consider, too, Mr. Klein and Ms. Rhee from above. Both have their strident critics, and both have made some bad decisions. Sure, they're city superintendents and we're talking state level, but Klein especially shows that a mandate can be a bad thing.

This could well just be legislative bravado—even in the short time that I’ve been making trips to Olympia, I’ve seen plenty of it—but should a bill be introduced it’ll be something well worth watching.

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Terry Bergeson is the 8th Longest Served Superintendent of Public Instruction in the Country

So says the June 18th issue of Education Week. She’s 4th among elected SPIs, and one of only 10 who took to the office in the ‘90s.

That’s a good run.

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Oh, Snap!

Seagull Manager is my new favorite phrase.

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Thoughts on the OSPI Race

Well, that happened.

Many were looking for a Gandolf to coming riding over the horizon and save the day, but that person never materialized. The six declared candidates are Terry Bergeson, Randy Dorn of the Public School Employees, and four perennial also-rans. At this point Bergeson has to be considered a lead-pipe cinch to win, buoyed as she is by positive WASL articles and the lack of any serious competition. The biggest name in the field after her is Randy Dorn, but when you haven’t even managed to get a decent campaign website up with two months to go until the primary, you’re not giving your campaign a fair chance.

What does Terry going back to Olympia mean? The WASL keeps the strongest supporter it has, though the legislature has taken some of the starch out. Interest groups like the WEA and Where’s the Math? take a licking, because they have been outspoken in their distaste for the incumbent. Strong standards remain the order of the day, though with frequent refinements.

Anyway you slice it, my summer just got a lot less busy. I wonder if the OSPI candidates will debate at all?

Read more here, if any.

Next Halloween, I’m Going to Dress Up as a Rich Semler Campaign Ad

I’ve got the bumperstickers.
I’ve got the buttons.
I’ve got the 3 x 4 yard sign.
I've got all the makings of a cheap and easy costume.

What I haven’t got is the candidate any more. I wish Rich and Ginny well as they work through her health issues, though; he’s made the right decision, and I'm hoping that he'll keep his toe in the water and be a leader on education issues here in Washington, even if on a smaller scale.

The deadline to declare for statewide office is this coming Friday. The only name that I’ve heard mentioned is Bill Fromhold, who could probably get enough of the vote in the primary to be able to make it through to a general election in November. I don’t know that he’d want to take on a run for OSPI this late in the game, though, particularly given that he's already said he's not interested in the job.

A part of me wonders why we haven’t seen a conservative candidate for OSPI. From the EFF you could posit Lynn Harsh or Cindy Omlin, the executive director of the Northwest Professional Educators. Dan Grimm, the head of the Basic Ed Finance Committee, comes to mind, though I’m not sure he’s a Washington resident any longer. In the House the ranking minority member is Skip Priest, who has already passed on the chance to run, while the assistant ranking minority member is Glenn Anderson out of eastern King County, who has a decent résumé after having been on every education committee there is during his time in the House.

In the Senate the ranking minority member on the Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee is Curtis King out of Yakima, but a more interesting name might be Janea Holmquist, who signed her name to the opposition statement for 4204, has been exposed to the issues by virtue of being on the aforementioned committee, and could be fairly perceived as a rising star in the state Republican party. Her senate term isn't up until 2011, though; Holmquist for OSPI in 2012?

It seems odd that, in a year where the state GOP claims to be as energized as they’ve ever been, they wouldn’t field a sympathetic candidate for the office that eats up the biggest share of the state’s budget.

Read more here, if any.

A New Hat in the Ring

Randy Dorn, the executive director of the state Public School Employees Union (PSE), has announced his candidacy for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The water gets muddied again; it had been looking like a two-horse race between Terry Bergeson and Richard Semler (sorry, David Blomstrom), since Skip Priest and Jim Kastama had both passed on running. There's a couple different ways to look at this:

• It's a positive for Richard Semler. The concern with the primary as it was shaping up was that Terry Bergeson could get 50%+ in the August election and thus negate the need for a general election in November. If Dorn can siphon more support from Bergeson and keep her below that 50% threshhold, it benefits Semler. On the other hand...
  
  
• It could be a strong negative for Semler and great for Terry Bergeson. The WEA just endorsed Semler, which now creates a WEA v. PSE dynamic as they each push their guy. Dorn has more statewide experience than Semler does, via his work with the PSE, but Semler's going to have the full force of WEA-PAC acting on his behalf. Ideally they'd both beat on Terry Bergeson, but I think her incumbancy gives her some powerful advantages--it could be that Semler and Dorn split the anti-Bergeson vote, which is great for her.
  
  
• The PSE benefits no matter what. The concerns of the classified staff are often the hardest to hear. The WEA has tried with their living wage campaign, but if Randy Dorn can speak to the needs of his membership during the course of the campaign, that's a plus.

It should be a fun summer to watch.

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My Dinner With Rich Semler

Dr. Richard Semler, candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, came to our local Uniserv meeting last Wednesday night to make his pitch. There was a really good turnout, and I was very impressed by the man. The take-home quote:

“We need someone who knows about schools.”

That’s the piece that’s been bugging me the most about Terry Bergeson, I think—while her force of personality is undeniable, and she is a hell of a public speaker, I’m not sure that she understands the effects that her policies are having in the average classroom. Take the WASL (please!). It’s a constantly changing measure, the results don’t get back to the kids until months after the test, and the cost involved is disastrous. She’s married to that assessment, though, and has shepherded it up through the years, which leads me to believe that she doesn’t have the ability to back away from the system, or even to know how to repair it.

Dr. Semler was very direct about the flaws in the testing system, and though he didn’t use it by name the alternative that he proposes is very similar to the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test that the NWEA puts out. I like the MAP, especially for reading and math, and when there’s a legitimate testing option that is cheaper and more usable than the one we have now, it certainly seems like something that should be considered.

I was gratified to hear what steps he’s taking to keep his campaign moving in the right direction. It sounds like he’s hired both a fundraiser and a full-time campaign manager, which is a positive sign. I was also very impressed by his wife, who came on the visit with him and also brought a ton of energy to the room. They both seem like neat people.

I do think his problem will be name recognition. I’d love to see him write some opinion pieces for the main dailies around the state; buying simple advertisements that direct people to the website to learn more would also seem like a good way to go. The WEA hasn’t made their official endorsement yet, but I’d hope that they’d do that soon and then offer him a platform to speak from at Rep Assembly. Having the WEA and Where’s the Math isn’t enough, though—-he needs to find a way into the consciousness of The Average Voter who doesn’t think about schools and will be tempted to vote for Dr. Bergeson just because they know the name. I think too that the August primary makes this issue that much more critical.

In short, I think Richard Semler would make a hell of an SPI. I like the knowledge base he showed, I liked his specific suggestions for improving the system, and I think he can bring a perspective to the job that would benefit education as a whole.

Vote Semler.

Read more here, if any.

OSPI Race: Eek.

Recent numbers from the PDC website; C4 forms from Richard Semler dated April 8th and Terry Bergeson, dated March 10th.

	Income	Expenses	Cash on Hand
Richard Semler	$39.603.21	$37,429.69	$2,173.52
Terry Bergeson	$61,753.29	$13,183.04	$48,573.25

I'm actually on my way to go see Dr. Semler speak tonight, and I'll be writing a check. With the primary being at such an odd time--August 19th certainly doesn't seem like the time for politics--Bergeson could conceivably get above 50% of the vote right out of the shoot and win the election when no one is looking.

I've talked before here on the blog about how money matters. We can blog from now 'til election day about the many, many mistakes of Terry Bergeson and that it's time for a change, but until the public writ large gets that lesson nothing will happen.

Read more here, if any.