Rise Up for Students

Once upon a time back in 2011, Susan Enfield was the interim superintendent of Seattle Public Schools. Just when it looked like Seattle might hand her the job on a full-time basis, Enfield said she didn't want the gig. She withdrew her name from consideration -- not because she didn't want to be a superintendent, but because she didn't want to be a superintendent in Seattle.

Soon after, she was chosen to steer the ship for Highline Public Schools, a smaller district just outside Seattle with less-dysfunctional governance. Since that time, Highline Public Schools have repeatedly taken bold steps in the name of equity, addressing hard truths and implementing innovative programs and solutions in an earnest effort to make meaningful change.

The results so far have been remarkable. District-wide graduation rates grew from 62.5 percent in 2012 to 74.8 percent in 2016, but the graduation-rate gaps along racial lines have all but closed:

Highline's discipline rates have seen a similar trajectory, with out-of-school suspensions and expulsions dropping to 682 in 2017 from 2,117 in 2012. But again, even more impressive is that the disproportionality in the district's discipline rates is quickly disappearing:

Highline Suspensions and Expulsions by race

Seattle's schools, meanwhile, have languished in the unacceptable status quo, which includes problems with disproportionate discipline along racial lines and the fifth-worst achievement gap in the nation. Jose Banda, who took over as superintendent after Enfield's departure, didn't last two years and could not have been more pointless. Larry Nyland has been fine but uninspiring.

How did we get here? How did "progressive" Seattle manage to lose a thrilling talent like Enfield to a formerly hole-in-the-wall district like Highline?

Neal Morton wrote a story recently for the Seattle Times about a new program in Highline aiming to get more bilingual teachers into classrooms that's getting well-deserved attention nationally. While primarily focused on the forward-thinking, equity-minded pathway to teaching that Enfield's district has created, Morton's article touches on a number of the deep-seated issues that have led to the strange, nuanced tapestry of disparities between Seattle and Highline.

For one thing, it's important to know that a primary reason Susan Enfield left Seattle Public Schools is the utter dysfunction of the Seattle School Board. She has never, to my knowledge, acknowledged this publicly, but it's the truth. Chris Korsmo, CEO of the League of Education Voters, even said as much when Enfield announced she was leaving SPS nearly six years ago. Korsmo told the Seattle Times at the time that she knew Enfield might withdraw from the hiring process because "it was clear that the revamped School Board, which held its first meeting last week, would likely try to control more of district operations than Enfield may have been comfortable with."

That means Seattle schools' problems run so deep, and are so inexplicably supported by voters, that we can't even attract and retain the type of leader who might be able to help us solve them. And it's gone beyond just top-level leadership. Seattle has been hemorrhaging bold, equity-minded staff for years now. Many, not surprisingly, are ending up in Highline.

Take Jonathan Ruiz Velasco, for example, who's the focus of Morton's story for the Times. Ruiz Velasco worked for five years as a bilingual instructional aide at Bailey-Gatzert Elementary in Seattle's Central District. When he decided he wanted to become a teacher, however, Ruiz Velasco had to look outside of Seattle Public Schools to find an appropriate pathway into the classroom. He ended up as part of "a new program in Highline Public Schools, where bilingual paraeducators can tap state-funded scholarships to help them earn teaching certificates."

Seattle has fewer alternative pathway options for educators because the teachers unions, in conjunction with a misguided school board, have blocked the establishment of such pathways at every turn, working to discredit and disallow anything different than traditional teacher education and certification.

Teach For America's arrival in Seattle in 2011, for example, drew such fervent opposition that eager young teachers were targeted with vicious online attacks. Several had their personal information posted online, which led to a break-in and robbery for three teachers sharing a house, and to a dangerously compromised restraining order against a past abuser for another young woman.

The school board, too, made ridding Seattle of TFA one of its primary missions, and dealt aggressively and callously with the organization as it tried to make inroads. As a result, while TFA is flourishing in most of the state, especially in eastern Washington where politics and acknowledged needs are different, the organization does not currently place teachers in Seattle Public Schools because of the hostile climate -- meaning another alternative pathway to certification is unavailable in the state's largest district, and another potential partner was treated like an enemy.

Seattle is a "progressive" city in many ways. We can all gleefully smoke weed and marry whomever we like, but if you start talking about public education in a way that runs counter to the union propaganda, you're not going to stay popular for long.

And that just means our kids are just going to keep losing out on the progress they need us to make. What could our schools look like in Seattle if Susan Enfield had been our superintendent these past five years?

Until we are as committed to telling hard truths and making hard changes in our schools as we are to fighting to preserve the status quo, we'll never know. And our kids will keep getting left behind in the crosshairs.

By Chris Eide

What if I told you that there is a public school in the Seattle area, funded by public dollars and overseen by an elected school board that rigorously screens applicants, is as well-appointed as any private school you are likely to find, and is so sought after that young people move from overseas just to have the chance to attend?

Would you expect the anti-charter, McCleary-first crowd to vehemently oppose this school’s very existence?

Well, they don’t. It never even gets mentioned in those types of conversations.

What if I also told you that the school’s population is not representative of the people who live in the area? Would you be surprised that this school has about three times the percentage of white students as the school district it calls home? Or that there are three times fewer black students, four times fewer Latino students, six times fewer students from low-income families, and seven times fewer students with special needs?

These are private school numbers driven by private school selection processes, and yet Raisbeck Aviation High School in the Highline School District has been consistently lauded by (predominantly white) legislators and school board members since its inception — lauded by many of the very people who have objected to charter schools, which hope to serve primarily high-needs students and seek to make their application process as sparse as administratively possible.

Aviation High School has long stood as evidence of how privilege influences public school politics.

Now, however, under the bold leadership that typifies Highline Superintendent Susan Enfield’s work, the school is moving toward a more equitable student selection model, using a lottery to choose its students instead of the highly exclusive process it had been using. From the Seattle Times:

“Though some students and parents have raised concerns about the new system, one thing is certain: The 105 students in next year’s freshman class will better reflect the population the school serves. In the Highline School District as a whole, nearly half the students are female, and three-quarters are racial minorities.

‘Being a public school system, you have to have an equitable and defensible system,’ Superintendent Susan Enfield said. ‘Because we have more students each year than we have seats for, the [school] board and I have to be able to look any parent and student in the eye and say, ‘You have an equal chance of getting into this school.’’

The decision also followed a complaint from the parent of an Asian student, alleging the interview process was discriminatory. Although the student had been in Highline’s highly capable program, her father said she didn’t receive enough points on the application or interview rubrics.

Enfield said district officials already had been thinking about changing the admissions policy before that complaint was filed last July, and she and the Highline School Board determined that no discrimination occurred in that case. But the move to the lottery system ended a state investigation into the matter.

‘The concerns signaled to us that we needed to find a solution, or that solution would be determined for us by an outside entity,’ Enfield said.

Since its beginnings in 2004, Aviation has been a selective school. As one of the few aviation-themed schools in the country, it shares resources with The Museum of Flight and offers mentors and internships in aerospace companies. It’s consistently ranked as one of the top schools in the state. And in recent years, it has received about three applicants for every seat, with its students coming from all over the Puget Sound region.

But under the old application process, the school has long had both a gender and ethnic imbalance. It also was never able to reach a goal of 51 percent of students coming from within the district.

School and district officials said no explicit or implicit bias affected past admissions decisions, but there was no way to be entirely objective when judging each student’s commitment to the school and whether he or she would be a good fit.

Each year, they said, many applicants have been children of people who work in the aviation and aerospace industry, so the demographics mirrored that industry, which long has been ‘a white male world,’ said social-studies teacher Troy Hoehne.

‘But it’s changing, and it’s appropriate that the school change with it,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you would find a staff member who wouldn’t say we need more gender equality, we need to have a diversity plan that is more in tune with the population around us.’

Enfield said a lottery significantly reduces ‘the subjectivity to determine who gets in and who doesn’t.’

Along with changing the policy at Aviation, the district also changed its admissions process for two other schools that had used applications — CHOICE Academy and Big Picture.”

There is no question that Raisbeck Aviation High School is a great school and is working with students to excel in STEM fields. There is also no question that we need to provide high-quality STEM opportunities to students beyond those who already have access to great STEM education. We have brilliant young people all over our city and state, and they deserve the same access to opportunity as their more privileged peers.

Student demographics in Highline Public Schools and Raisbeck Aviation High School (courtesy of OSPI):