How to make our schools succeed?

Reading the Seattle Times this morning and, tempting as it was to post the story of the Vancouver man who might get a DUI for a tipsy incident on his riding lawnmower, I was even more interested in this brief article on some findings by a recent performance audit of the Seattle School District.

According to the auditors, the key problem facing the district is “a lack of central decision-making that has led to a ‘fragmented’ system with ‘diluted accountability’”. Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno (who, incidentally, was at our MLK Day service project at West Seattle Elementary) shared "The information we're getting from McKinsey is focus, focus, focus, and be narrow in what you want to do".

It’s somewhat ironic that I was posting this article this morning, as when I went to our blog to post this, I saw the two enthusiastic posts from Team Works volunteers who had recently completed a project at a local elementary school (go Team New to Seattle!!). We spent some time polling you all on the issues that were the most important to you last year – and the clear winner was education. We also found that the community issues most important to you really weren’t different from the community at large. Everyone thinks education is important, and when people get a chance to go into our schools they walk about totally fired up. Contrast that with the struggles in our school district. How do we make a connection between the problems that need solving and all the people who want to help our schools succeed?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2004247836_curriculum28m.html

Tara