When we started this blog, we made the decision to allow anonymous postings, based in the reality that not everyone has a Blogger or Gmail account. No account = no posting of comments. However, if you aren't willing to put your name on a comment, then you shouldn't be posting it.
We fully expect, and invite the NBE staff, building administration, and even Seattle School District central staff to read, and to comment - that's what this blogging stuff is all about and that's a good thing.
If this turns from sharing information to anonymous personal attacks, then we'll change the user settings to require identification, or remove offending posts.
-Rick
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I am re-posting this comment from the thread on "Declining WASL Performance" in order to stimulate discussion with a slightly different perspective.
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I have some concerns with the slice of data that has been presented here. Among my questions is what defines a "peer school"? Looking at the list, one might conclude the criteria are affluence and racial homogeny. A bit of perspective is called for when playing with numbers.
To wit: There are 65 elementary schools in Seattle. The list above only shows 21 schools, and it doesn't show the most important WASL metric: how many kids are passing all three parts of the test. Last year, 66% of NB fourth graders passed all three phases of the WASL. 12 Seattle elementary schools did better on this key metric of all-around performance. 51 schools did worse. 1 equalled our performance. As Seattle goes, we are a top tier school.
By comparsion, Shoreline has 10 elementary schools. Only one of these exceeded 66% of kids passing all three WASL phases.
Edmonds has 28 elementary schools. Not a single one exceeded 66%; their highest performer was Maplewood Parent Co-op at -- you guessed it -- 66%.
One last example, let's really go into the belly of the beast: Bellevue schools, best in the state, contains 28 elementaries. But only five schools beat our 66%.
I'm not saying we shouldn't strive to improve. We absolutely should. What I'm saying is we're not in crisis. We're doing well, and we need to keep that in mind while we explore strategies for optimizing our classroom performance.
A Watchdog Dad