As a parent I see no discernable vision for school improvement beyond endless community meetings.  I support community input as long as it informs a vision and does not take the place of one.  Is our achievement gap shrinking?  Are our students learning to be purposeful participants in our democratic society?  Do we educate the whole child?  We were once considered one of the most socially just and innovative school districts in the country.  Are we still?  How would we know?

All of the below suggestions for specific changes to our schools can be evidenced in educational research including such prominent educational scholars as Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford), John I. Goodlad (UW, retired), and David F. Labaree (Stanford).

Make the Robinswood (New School) reconstitution a University Lab School that works cooperatively and collaboratively with the UW College of Education.  Bring in the best teaching practices, as evidenced by educational research.  Invest in improvements to the facilities like state of the art science, engineering, and technology labs.  Bring in the best district teachers through a rigorous application process.  Most importantly, follow the International School attendance process except, reserve at least 75% of the available spots to free and reduced lunch students.  Those spots should be assigned randomly to children throughout the district and should not be dependent on a lottery.  The best practices that emerge through research done at the Lab School should inform practices throughout the district.

Schools are far more than academic learning factories.  Create a new rubric and standard by which schools are judged that incorporates genuine and specific student feedback to account for school climate and culture.  Schools should be held accountable to not just academic excellence but excellence in school leadership and innovation and a positive school climate and culture.

Re-prioritize the gospel of the common curriculum so that schools have the freedom to innovate instruction around such things as project-based learning, service-learning projects, and creative problem solving.  Project-based learning and service-learning injects instructional intentionality and purposefulness back into the work students do.  There still should be a curricular framework but we should examine it under the lens of research to find weaknesses and accentuate strengths.

Create a significant building-specific role for district master teachers, making them instructional and policy leaders within schools to foster instructional innovation.  Great teachers are district gold.  Too often the only road for greater leadership for great teachers is administration or graduate school.  Conversely, we should give new teachers an extra and shared planning period with a master teacher to help them hone their craft.

Bellevue Schools once stood for innovation, equity, and excellence.  I fear that over time our schools have become seduced and controlled by test scores and achievement rates alone, overlooking the holistic needs of our students.  Rigorous coursework doesn’t always end with an exam.  Test scores are not the sole measure of student learning or great schools.

A concerned Bellevue parent,

Paul Sutton