A blog success story: TheSFKFiles

Even though I'm years past that stage, I read the hot new blog TheSFKFiles almost every day, and often post comments. The blog was started by an anonymous (and very young) mom looking at SFUSD and private kindergartens who posts detailed reviews after touring schools. Its comments section has organically become the kind of forum that others have unsuccessfully tried to create. It's routine for each post to draw 20-30 comments, and many have 50-80.

One thing that keeps me reading avidly is the energetic discussion in the comments about the social impact of the public-vs.-private and city-vs.-suburbia decisions — the morality and values involved in those choices. I have definitely been one of the strong voices on those issues, but I don't even think I'm the one who first brought them up. And that's intriguing, because the social impact, morality and values involved in the decision weren't on my radar in the slightest when we were making those choices. Nobody talked about it, and I wasn't insightful enough to perceive that stuff on my own.

So with several hundred people reading that blog, and a large percentage of them preparing to apply to kindergarten, it'll be intriguing to know that they made their choices in full awareness that there are greater impacts to their decisions.

(There are some commentators on the blog disputing that there's any impact. At least one asserts that boycotting public schools is the most effective way to improve them, and that middle-class kids going to public schools only displace disadvantaged kids, thus harming them. One commentator — possibly the same one — compared choosing public schools to consuming Diet Coke and Skippy, and choosing private schools to selecting organic whole foods. Those views don't seem to win many adherents even among other self-described private-school parents.)

Anyway, I think that forum is a fantastic boon to parents and to San Francisco public education — and to widespread awareness of some important but not always obvious issues around education.

It should intrigue any blogger, including us here at SFSchools World Headquarters, that that particular blog has caught fire. I think PPS or someone connected with it even tried to start a listserve for San Francisco parents first looking at schools, and it went nowhere. Anyone care to speculate on why that blog has won so much avid interest and participation?

I'll pose some guesses:

• The K application process is a temporary but all-consuming obsession for many parents, mostly middle-class ones — since it's temporary, people are willing to devote major time and energy to it. And unlike the college application process (which we're addressing in the still-lightly-visited blog Taming the College Admissions Beast), parents have to do it all, and without resistance from a teen pushing for independence. (One regular College Admissions Beast reader told me her teen refuses to discuss the college search with Mom and Dad at all, even though the kid is a high-achiever and clearly college-bound.)
• The format of the blogger comments section is more user-friendly and less threatening in various ways than a format like a listserve, which you generally have to actively join. (I started a Yahoo listserve for Aptos Middle School and have learned over the years that some of our most active parents never joined it because they just don't get what it is, and many others have tried and couldn't figure out how. )
• The default for the comments section is to post anonymously, which loosens inhibitions considerably.
• The blog has a face — though she's pseudonymous and I for one have no idea of her identity — and most posters seem considerate enough of her to avoid getting too heated. And the blogger has ultimate control. I was on vacation and missed the whole thing, but she seems to have taken down one thread entirely when the comments got too abrasive. Nobody yells "censorship!" since it's so clearly her own personal blog.

Interestingly, the blogger seems willing only to post positive reviews. In at least a couple of cases she has posted that she's about to tour a school and will be posting her review later, and then has not posted anything, clearly by choice. I was about to post the name of one school with which I recall that happening, but then decided I should keep to the blogger's spirit, just for this post.

I initially thought that was an overly timid attitude — especially after I posted some not-too-flattering information about a private school in the spirit of "knowledge is power" consumer awareness and it was met with disapproval. But actually, maybe that's what's keeping the blog so effective, so perhaps I should be rethinking my own belief that the more information, the better.

That particular blog presumably has a lifespan of only one school application season, so I wonder if PPS can find a way to replicate it in an equally effective format in future years.

While SFUSD shrinks....

...the Marin IJ reprots that Mill Valley school enrollment keeps growing

A Mill Valley school enrollment boom that has exceeded officials' expectations likely will continue, brought on by a migration of young families to town, a new report concludes.

Could there be some correlation here?

[Boots] Part four: Le Deluge!

The fourth installment of Boot's BOE campaign diary:

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The fact that I had filed on that Friday the bare minimum of necessary papers for running for Board of Education did not in any way mean I was through with the paperwork. Far from it! I still had numerous papers to file with the Elections Department at an unspecified later date; paperwork to file at the Ethics Commission and paperwork to file with the Secretary of State. But first, I wanted to speak with ExCandidate. I really needed to talk with someone who had actually done this, and I was very grateful that ExCandidate would take time out of his busy life to advise me. I respected him personally and professionally. His voice sounded weary when he began to speak. Although it had been some time since he had run, having to revisit the experience was not something he was very keen on doing.

Did I need a campaign manager? On this ExCandidate was clear: he found his experienced campaign manager a waste of money. "All he did was tell me to get signs made up, which is something I had already decided to do."

I wasn't planning on hiring a campaign manager, but it was good to hear him reaffirm my decision. My father-in-law had already offered to serve in that capacity! Although this would be a case of the "blind leading the blind", since he had even less political savvy than I had, he was a successful and brilliant businessman and I thought it would be fun to have him as my manager.

I specifically asked ExCandidate about the notorious nightmare of a software program candidates faced at the Ethics Commission. ExCandidate agreed that it was the worst! He suggested that, if possible, I try a system other than the one provided to candidates by the Ethics Commission, although he said that there were some complications in doing this and certainly a lot of expense.

Lastly ExCandidate suggested that I speak with Machiavelli. My ears perked up at that. I knew Machiavelli by reputation...mostly what I read in the papers. Machiavelli was out of my price range. End of subject.

I was glad I got to speak with ExCandidate as soon as I did, because almost immediately my email, my mailbox and my telephone began to overflow with messages, invitations and questionnaires. I began frenetically responding and writing back. My webmaster was hounding me for various items for my website. I had no money for the campaign because I couldn't open up a campaign bank account without a candidate ID number. That number would only come from the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State's office informed me that it was swamped with other candidates requesting IDs and that it might be a "month or so" before the number could be issued. This meant that the campaign would be over before I even got my number! I pointed this out and the lady at the Secretary of State's office told me that if I wanted a number right away, I had to drive to Sacramento and present myself and they would issue me a number on the spot. So I jumped into my car on that hot August day and made a quick round trip to Sacramento to retrieve the precious ID number.

My Wells Fargo branch had never opened a candidate account before. Considering that it was a new experience for them, they were pretty good about opening it for me. I transferred some money from our personal account into my candidate account. Finally I was in business.

When I wasn't dealing with all this, I was dealing with my daughter's imminent departure for college and our trip to Italy. My husband and I were leaving with her on Labor Day weekend to plant her at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. after which we were flying to Italy for a couple of weeks.

The phone rang and it was Deep Ballot, eager to know how I was doing. I told him a shorthand version of where I'd been and where I was going. "What in the h*ll were you doing in Sacramento?" I could never understand why someone like DB was asking me these questions. Didn't he know these things? Later I realized how few people make the last minute decision to run for office. Most candidates plan their campaigns months, if not years in advance. I was certainly doing it the hard way. DB was horrified to learn of our trip to Italy. He went on a tirade about a candidate he once knew who, in DB's opinion, blew his campaign by having the gall to travel to the Soviet Union as part of the U.S. ambassador's entourage during the heart of the campaign season. I explained that we would only be gone two weeks. DB said, "That's just when all the endorsements are being made." Talking with him made me realize that it could not all be done. Even planting our daughter was carving out important campaign time, but I sure as heck wasn't going to miss that. Reluctantly, I cancelled our precious trip to Italy, losing all our airfare and other miscellaneous expenses. [I won't ever fly British Air again. I didn't expect a refund, but I did expect a reasonable credit. I got neither.]

I also told DB about all the questionnaires I was filling out. "Don't spend much time on those" he scoffed. Really? I thought they were pretty important and I vowed to fill out any which I received. DB was also lukewarm on my website, which I felt was critical.

Then DB said, "Get out a pen and paper. I'm going to give you my contacts." He was dictating fast and I was scribbling away. It became clear that if I spoke to even half of those on DB's list I would do nothing else until election day! Toward the end he said, "OK, try Machiavelli." I told him Machiavelli was out of my price range. DB considered that reality. "Well, you have nothing to lose by calling him. Tell him I recommended you call him."

The phone continued to ring with invitations to forums from numerous groups. And then an odd thing happened. I was suddenly UNinvited to events I had agreed to attend. And all for a reason I considered outrageous.

Next: The invitations thicket; the questionnaire bramble; and Machiavelli.

Finally, a US city with more private school kids than SF!

Eduwonkette has a very interesting series of posts about private school attendance in NYC that is a real eye opener for anyone that's been looking at the similar trends here in SF.

In Why NYC Private School Kids Drink Frappuccinos she gives us the hilarious graphic I've reposted here. Her earlier posts, here and especially here, uncover some juicy data. Aside from the telling correlation between private school adoption and Starbucks, the map shows that in some pockets of Manhattan over 80% of school age kids attend private schools. Her graphic showing the strong correlation between income and private school attendance is excellent. I'm not sure how to compare this with the oft-repeated figure that %30 of SF kids attend private schools. But it suggests that Manhattan might beat SF's sky-high private school adoption rates -- or at least provide some data points that might explain SF's demographics.

Some of Eduwonkette's commenters make the point that income alone does not explain attendance patterns. They note that the correlation is not strong in Brooklyn, for instance, and that religion becomes just as important as income, if not more for some locations like the Williamsburg neighborhood. Here is San Francisco we hear plenty of anecdotal evidence that both religious influences and wealth play a role in driving private school attendance.

From my own subjective perspective I suspect that religion used to play a much bigger role, and that class based factors are shaping the modern picture. As evidence, look at the growing stature and selectivity of schools like Sacred Heart or Riordan that used to have modest reputations and working class demographics. Now they are highly selective and come with decidedly non-working class price tags. Another data point comes from looking at new private schools that have opened up here, like The Bay School. It has religious roots, but the school itself is very secular and its marketing efforts are nearly devoid of religious overtones.

I think San Francisco has a legacy of private school attendance based on patterns of religious beliefs and immigration. This is probably unique along the West Coast and maybe an outlier nationally. But that legacy is hardly the driving force today. In the '70's the pattern shifted based on reactionary fear of school integration policies. SFUSD suffered a significant drop in attendance when the consent decree integration policies were introduced. In the modern era we've seen further erosion of attendance as the city has gentrified dramatically. Gentrification is a double-edged knife that reduces overall school age populations and replaces working class and middle class families with more wealthy kids who are much more likely to go private. Looks like these forces are not unique to San Francisco and can be seen in Eduwonkette's data.

If anyone knows of other article about urban private school demographics, please send them my way.

Fourteen award winning SF schools

Congratulations to SFUSD's "2007-08 Title I Academic Achievement Award winners":

• E.R. Taylor
• Francis Scott Key
• Garfield
• Glen Park
• Guadalupe
• John Yehall Chin
• KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Sheridan
• Sunset
• Sutro
• Ulloa
• Visitacion Valley
• Yick Wo

The criteria for the awards are described in the accompanying DOE press release:

The criteria to qualify for the award have become more rigorous each year. Title I schools must demonstrate the achievement level of twice the schoolwide API growth target, meet all significant subgroup targets, and achieve twice the API growth target for the socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroup for two consecutive years. Schools also must have made AYP for two years in a row, and at least 40 percent of the enrolled students in each school must meet the poverty index.

Test scores are an imperfect measure of a school, but broad measures of success such as these, sustained over years, in schools serving our poorest students is truly impressive.

[Boots] Installment 3: Head banging continues...

The third installment of Boot's BOE campaign diary:

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After I picked up the original paperwork from the Election Department and before the Friday deadline, I noticed that I needed two critical things: a campaign phone line and a website. I had an extra line at my home which was originally supposed to be a dedicated fax line which I didn't use much and it was put into service as my election phone. I decided I needed a website and I asked the IT guy we use at our business if he could help me. He said he had just started to learn web design and for an outrageously reasonable price he devised a website which may have been his first….for my campaign. All this was accomplished in about 24 hours.

The nice lady at the Elections Department took issue with much of my paperwork. First, my name! Luckily I had read most of the fine print in the paperwork and I was able to defend myself. She wanted my name to match my voter registration; I successfully pointed out that this was not required. Next, she refused to allow me to put my occupation as "attorney"! This was infuriating. I am a licensed attorney. My license is active. I have been licensed for almost 30 years and spent at least 25 of them litigating. What was her reason? According to rules, one must have earned money at the occupation within the past 12 months! This puts some candidates, particularly women and particularly women who stay home with children, at distinct disadvantages. In my opinion, it is sexist. One can put volunteer pursuits in the "occupation" field, but ONLY if they are approved by the Secretary of State and ONLY if they are fewer than three words. Thus, I could not call myself a School Site Council member (which I was) because the Secretary of State did not have this position in the big black book of approved "occupations" AND because it was more than three words. "Attorney volunteer" was not approved! "School Volunteer" was not approved. "Public School volunteer" was not approved. "Community volunteer" (whatever that is!) was OK. Now you know why so many people call themselves "community volunteer" in the voter handbook: it's just about the only volunteer work the Secretary of State recognizes.

I demanded to see the legendary Secretary of State's book of occupations. An enormous black volume was hefted onto the counter. This book was a hoot. I flipped through it and saw "working stiff" listed. I said, "I love this one!" She scowled at me and said, "If you notice, that one is NOT approved." Sure enough, next to "working stiff" was a notation that it was NOT approved. So if you wonder why so many candidates on the ballot are forced to claim odd occupations, you can chalk it up to the Secretary of State's hideously outdated (probably hasn't been changed since the 1930s), sexist list of occupations and approved volunteer work designations. Moral to this story: sometime in the 12 months preceding the election, make sure you are compensated in an occupation you plan to list in the voter handbook. Those of you who thought Larry Kane was an idiot because his campaign signs referred to "Coach" Kane and the voter handbook didn't, are ignorant of the irrational constraints imposed by the Elections Department and the Secretary of State.

Then there was the party line. I'm referring, of course, to the line on the candidate's application which says: Party:_______________. The Board of Education is a non-partisan election! The party line has no business being there, but I guess I can forgive it on the "one- size-fits-all"-bureaucratic- form grounds. The line appeared in several contexts and each time I wrote in something like, "non- partisan race" or N/A (not applicable). There were no objections to this at the Elections Department, but the ramifications set in later, as you will learn.

I was frazzled by the end of this procedure. DB was proud as punch. He beamed at me and said, "That was the easy part." Uh oh.

I left hastily and drove home. At home I noticed that I did not have my critical calendar/address book and thought I might have left it at the Elections Department. So I drove back to the Elections Department, which was now closed, it being after 5:00 PM. The lady in the Elections Department had told me that they expected to be working until midnight, so I knocked on the door and a guard opened it a crack. Inside I could see a few last minute candidates filling out forms. They must have gotten inside before 5:00 PM. I explained my dilemma and the guard said he would search for the book. A few minutes later the door opened and a head popped out. It was Starchild. Only the head…not the body. If the body had followed, the guard would have locked him out. Obviously he was a last-minute candidate. I was as surprised to see him as he was to see me. I wasn't sure if he would recognize me. Two years earlier, after the Bayview/Hunter's Point Board of Education forum I had attended as an ad hoc reporter for this group, I had given him and one other candidate a ride home. During the ride I had listened to Starchild talk about the nuts and bolts of voter handbook statements and learned a great deal. He didn't act as if he recognized me. With great urgency, he said, "Is DB out there?" I looked up and down the hall. As far as I knew, he had left right after I did, much earlier in the afternoon. I said, "I don't think so." "OK" said Starchild and disappeared into the Elections Department. Some time later the guard reported no luck finding my book. One thing was for sure, DB was an equal opportunity advisor.

--Boots Whitmer

Next: Le deluge!

Board of Education webcast, Dec 11, 2007

Here is the SFGTV webcast of the December 11 BOE meeting

The big news from the meeting was the 1-year stay of execution for the JROTC program. The extension was not a big surprise since the task force that was supposed to find an alternative replacement program has been unable to do so and had requested the extension. What was unexpected was Commissioner Wynn's move to continue to give PE credit to the JROTC students.

The anti-JROTC activists are predictably upset. That's natural enough. But to my eyes, thee headlines make the opposition look foolish:

Pro-War SF School Board Supports JROTC 5-2
School Board Cowers Behind Phony JROTC "Task Force"

"Pro war" BOE? Only in San Francisco...

SF public school advocacy is on fire

Apropos of nothing, I'm quoting from an anonymous comment on the Oakland Tribune's education blog:

Aren’t some of the above comments the same as what existed in SF not too long ago? That there were only 5 good schools+Lowell and your kids will become criminals if they don’t get into one of them? Something has changed in SF — the public school advocacy is on fire and there really does seem to be a huge shift in attitudes regarding public schools. Do you have any insight as to what caused this to happen? I hope that this is achievable in Oakland as well at least in some of the up and coming neighborhoods (Temescal and Diamond Heights). Oakland would do well to create a PPS (Parents for Public School) chapter...

News from elsewhere: official flees, parents pursue

I know this is actually distressing, but it's impossible not to love this story:

New York Daily News 12/11/07
Escape from N.Y. parents
BY ERIN EINHORN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

After insisting at a hearing that the Department of Education is responsive to parents, a high-ranking DOE official Monday fled City Hall through a side door with parents in hot pursuit.

As a brawny aide and the department's top lobbyist flanked him like ad hoc bodyguards, Jim Liebman dashed down three flights of stairs and into a courtyard, where parents and reporters followed him in a meandering circle for several minutes.

Continued...

And here's the New York Times version. I want to be Jane Hirschmann:

After Mr. Liebman finished speaking, several parents gathered outside of the council chambers with boxes filled with protest petitions containing nearly 7,000 signatures, hoping to present them to Mr. Liebman in front of the television cameras. But Mr. Liebman, whose title is chief accountability officer of the Education Department, ducked out a side door, leaving parents to chase him out the back of City Hall to behind the Education Department’s headquarters at Tweed Courthouse. There, several education officials ran in circles for several minutes to avoid Jane Hirschmann, the director of Time Out From Testing, an advocacy group, as well as parents and reporters.

Planting the seeds for a new Webster ES

A new Spanish bilinguial preschool at Webster ES is accepting applications. If you are interested in applying check out the Potrero Residents Education Fund (PREFund) website. The goal is to open the school either this spring or next fall. It will be a private preschool on the Webster campus that will be administered by Mission Neighborhood Center, a group with over 40 years experience managing childcare programs. More information about the preschool plans can be found on PREFund's preschool info page.

But the bigger story here goes back to the last round of school closures in 2005-2006. The Daniel Webster campus had been included among the schools to be closed. A group of local residents, many with preschool aged children, mobilized to help save the school. Ultimately the school was spared, but the community efforts did not end there. The new preschool is hopefully the next step towards a revitalization of the school:

Yes, a major initiative of the Potrero Residents Education Fund (PREFund) is to open a Spanish Bi-lingual preschool at Daniel Webster as part of its strategy to turn the elementary school into the best school it can be.

The hope is that the preschool will not only provide a much needed preschool option to young families on the Hill, but also serve as a natural feeder into Daniel Webster Elementary School, thus increasing its enrollment.

PREFund is organized so that it can support all educational needs in all schools on the Hill, but Daniel Webster is its priority project for the next year.

The PREFund group has already accomplished a great deal and deserves a lot of credit for the hard work they've done. Speaking of credit, they are accepting donations! But there is a great deal of hard, sustained work to be done before the preschool is operating, the fund raising goals met, the desired Spanish immersion program approved, and school fully revitalized with robust enrollment figures. Stay tuned. And spread the word.

JROTC vote tonight?

They punted last time and did not vote. My understanding is they have to vote on the requested extension of the program tonight.

Also on the agenda: an up or down vote on Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice Charter School

L.A. Times opens homework Pandora's box

L.A. Times 12/11/07
Columnist Sandy Banks:
To many parents, homework's a home wrecker

My column Saturday on the campaign by a San Marino mom to persuade school officials to cut back on "useless and ineffective" homework assignments uncorked a storm of bottled-up angst among readers, from Santa Monica to Pasadena to Orange County.

The woman I wrote about, Tracy Mason, said her middle-school daughter's homework load had crowded out sports activities, impinged on family time and turned their household into a battleground. She launched her less-homework campaign when she realized that her constant carping was poisoning their mother-daughter relationship.

"All of a sudden, they're hating you for being the homework enforcer and you're looking at it and thinking, 'This is just a bunch of crap anyway.' "

Her stance infuriated some parents in San Marino — a San Gabriel Valley suburb where the predominantly Asian American school district posts the highest test scores in the state. There, many parents want more homework for their children, not less.

But judging from the phone calls and e-mails I received, Mason has supporters in other places. Readers blamed homework overload for everything from childhood obesity to teenage suicide.

"We dread September," e-mailed Kimberly Frost of Santa Monica, mother of a Lincoln Middle School student. "Everything is put on hold. Our lives revolve around making sure our middle-schooler does his homework."From a family perspective, it is so detrimental." And the homework, she said, "is generally pure drudgery."

Frost was among about 50 parents who attended a PTA meeting on homework in Santa Monica last month. They heard accounts of research that shows that "burying our children in homework does not improve test scores," she said. "Anything over an hour a night starts to have the opposite effect [and] brings scores down."

But the research on homework is hardly conclusive. Some studies show that high school students who do more homework have slightly higher test scores. Others suggest that the type of homework matters more than the amount.

Most educators agree that 10 minutes per grade level — that would mean two hours a night for a high school senior — is about right. But what one student can finish in 20 minutes might take another an hour.

Because homework is considered a good way to promote responsibility, some districts require homework every night for even the youngest students. Carol Smith of Cerritos e-mailed me about her kindergarten grandson, who is in school from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., then has three or four pages of homework each night.

"I cannot understand why, when he's been involved in academic pursuits all day, they expect an hour of homework also," she said. "His solution is to rush through his work so he can play." He brings a full lunch box back home each day because he'd rather spend lunchtime on the playground than eat.

In the Orange Unified School District, Jim Stephens runs 23 early morning and after-school programs and keeps them free of academics, even though that sometimes means battling parents and teachers. He observes the fruits of our homework obsession in overweight and unhealthy kids.

"If I told you my child sat and spent three hours doing homework today, you probably wouldn't think that was awful," he said. "But if I told you my child had sat and watched TV for three hours, you'd probably be appalled. What's the difference physically?"

But not everyone feels buried by homework. An eighth-grader at Huntington Middle School -- the San Marino campus Mason's daughter attends — said she was "shocked" at the assertion that homework intrudes on family time. "I find it simple to get my homework done within an hour and a half (and I'm getting good grades) . . . and still have time to drive to Canyon Country most weekends to see my grandmother," e-mailed Maggie Moreton. When she read the column, "I thought GET OVER IT LADY. . . . The kid will get used to it."

And an engineer named Richard said Mason came off as "a typical brainless 'soccer mom' who would rather have her kids watch American Idle or some other brain-dead program than to teach them the importance of excelling in education." I'll presume his misspelling was an intentional dig at the television program. If not, Richard needs some spelling homework.

But most parents I heard from were like Susan Colletta, trying to make the best of the inevitable.She recalled a spring break when she took time off from work so she could spend it with her twins, high school students in Pasadena. "We had dreams of a trip to Disneyland, playing board games, working on a project or jigsaw puzzles. . . . Relaxing would be a word that comes to mind."

Instead, they spent spring break doing research for a 14-page biology assignment. Then, last summer: seven books to read, seven essays to write and 535 vocabulary words to study. Then came September: Two teachers announced they would each assign two chapters to be studied during the winter vacation. "My daughter came home in tears," Colletta said. "September 20-something, and the anticipation of Christmas was over."

As a mom who has watched her own children do math work sheets on a crowded plane headed for Thanksgiving in Ohio, diagram sentences on the beach during a Hawaiian vacation, and make note cards for essays while everyone else was clearing the Christmas dinner dishes, here's one Christmas miracle I'd like to see.No homework this holiday. Please.

sandy.banks@latimes.com

Chronic Truancy in SFUSD

Kim Knox posted a review of a recent meeting: 2nd Annual "Back to School" Institute for Caregivers and Parents of African-American Students. In her report she presents a table showing the incidence of chronic truancy by grade, including the percentage of those truants who are African American and Hispanic. Being a numbers guy (and an HTML guy) I decided to clean up the table to make it more readable, and to add to the table the total population of each grade and the AA and Hispanic demographics of each grade. A "Chronic Truant" is a student who misses 20 days or more of school.

Here is the resulting table:

Grade	Total Students	Chronic Truants	AA% of Total	AA% of Truants	Hispanic% of Total	Hispanic% of Truants
K	4209	176	12%	45%	26%	25%
01	4074	148	13%	57%	25%	21%
02	4115	115	11%	57%	26%	21%
03	3869	100	12%	62%	25%	19%
04	3900	105	12%	50%	24%	25%
05	4003	81	12%	52%	24%	27%
06	3866	76	13%	53%	22%	21%
07	3986	85	14%	41%	22%	23%
08	4017	87	13%	29%	22%	33%
09	5527	507	14%	33%	26%	38%
10	5225	323	12%	35%	21%	33%
11	4449	211	13%	25%	19%	34%
12	3840	139	9%	24%	15%	27%

The results are pretty startling. At all ages, "chronic truants" are inordinately African American. For Hispanics the truancy problem gets worse in the upper grades. Note that we are not talking about a large group of students, nor a large portion of the AA or Hispanic student body. But the disparity in these numbers is significant, and requires our attention.

This blog has taken note when the Mayor Superintendent and the DA speak out on the truancy problem, or when the DA rolls out an anti-truancy program. It is always encouraging to see the issue discussed by our school leaders and law enforcement officials. But the daunting question remains unanswered: what can we do about it?

[Boots] Chapter 2: Headbanging at the Elections Department

The second installment of the Boots Whitmer BOE campaign diary:

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On Wednesday before the Friday deadline, I walked into the Elections Department and asked for the paperwork. I had to fill out an intention-to-run form and then I was given about 3 inches of paperwork to read and fill out. The nice lady at the Elections Department pointed out some of the highlights of things I needed to fill out. One of these was a page which required the signatures of 25 registered voters. One was a demand for ALL my personal financial information. This last form was a deal-breaker for me. It was outrageous that my personal financial information was required for a position I considered volunteer and which would have virtually no bearing on the position! And I told the nice lady so.

She responded that the Elections Department didn't make up the rules and that if I didn't like it, I should take it up with the California Fair Political Practices Commission. (FPPC) She gave me the number and I said I would.

I drove home and plunked the pile on the kitchen table. I started to skim it. It was as depressing a mound of gobbledygook as you will ever see. I decided to call the FPPC to see if I really had to divulge such personal information. It was a shock to have a real human being answer the phone in a state governmental agency. I explained my concerns to the knowledgeable lady who answered the phone and she said, "The financial disclosure stuff doesn't apply to Boards of Education! San Francisco always gets this messed up. I will call them and straighten them out." She did. I decided it paid to question authority.

That hurdle cleared, and with less than 48 hours before the filing deadline, I outlined what needed to be accomplished and it was beginning to look quite formidable. Besides the numerous forms, the 25 signatures, there was the 100 word essay which would appear in the voter handbook, not to mention all the general information I needed to absorb from the huge stack. No one in my immediate circle of friends or family had ever run for political office. I was feeling a little overwhelmed. The phone rang. It was Deep Ballot. I knew Deep Ballot casually. He was a political activist of sorts, very knowledgeable and connected. He said, "So you're running for Board of Education!" Only an hour and a half had passed since I had left the Board of Elections! "Geez, word travels fast."

Deep Ballot was POLITICS, POLITICS, POLITICS and I was POLICY, POLICY, POLICY. He wasn't interested in hearing my ideas on education at all, although I forced him to listen briefly. "The good news", I said to him, cheerfully, "Is that the SFUSD is the highest performing urban district in California!" Then I said, "But the bad news is, urban school districts are the worst performing in the state." "I get it" said Deep Ballot dismissively, "We're the cream of the crap."

I burst out laughing. For a fleeting second I thought about making that a campaign slogan: "Vote for Boots...she'll move the SFUSD from the cream of the cr*p to the cr*p of the cream." Not only was Deep Ballot not interested in education policy, he had other irritating and irrational ideas. "After you win the Board of Education, you can run for Supervisor!" In his mind, I was already governor. I said, "Look, DB, I'm not interested. I'm furious about this Prop H mess and I'm only interested in public education. No one on the Board of Education has been watching the money issues. It's a mess." DB got pretty sarcastic, "I know...it's for ....the CHILDREN." I didn't appreciate the sarcasm, because doggone it, YES. I'm tired of our kids getting ripped off. It IS for the children! And I told DB so in no uncertain terms.

DB was very generous in his offers of advice, but I wasn't really sure from whom I needed help. I wanted to talk with former candidates, but my immediate project was filling out paperwork and getting those signatures in time to meet Friday's deadline. That evening and the next I ran around to relatives, friends and neighbors. It was tricky because most of them work by day and the evening hours are short and everyone was surprised to learn I was considering running for BOE and wanted to chat. I didn't have chatting time! I confided to one of these friends that I was concerned about the paperwork getting done and she said, "Aren't your handlers doing that?" Handlers?!? What Handlers? I didn't have no stinkin' handlers! It was strictly a do-it-yourself project in my case.

DB called me the next morning, Thursday. He said he was going to collect signatures for me and that he wanted me to run my candidate's statement by him. I thought it was nice that he wanted to help me, so I accepted his two offers. Although DB would eventually prove helpful, in these two aspects, I didn't need his help. His edit of my candidate's statement removed my passion and made the statement bland. I plowed through the paperwork and presented myself and the paperwork to the Elections Department on Friday, where DB insisted on meeting me. I had learned that the deadline had been extended to the following week, but I just wanted to get this stuff out of the way asap. DB happily presented signatures he had had collected on my behalf. His were all rejected: a new rule, of which he was unaware, disqualified them. All signatures had to be collected by the candidate herself. Of the 27 I collected, only two were disqualified (friends who forgot to change their address.) But I had just enough.

--Boots Whitmer

Next Installment: Head banging continues....

School Photoblogging: Tenderloin Community

Tenderloin Community sidewalk art

Schools, especially elementary schools, really should be unassuming places. They really should blend into a community and create a space for the kids and the families that live there. In that respect I'm really intrigued by the architecture of the Tenderloin Community ES. I'm sure many people commute right past the school on Turk Street without even seeing it. But walk up to it, and it feels very warm, alive and inviting. I have no idea if the architect had this in mind, but the sidewalk art, the use of tile, and the windows all feel like some sort of membrane that both separates the bustling neighborhood from the students inside, but also invites some sort of osmosis, some sort of exchange with the people on the sidewalk.

It is a funny thing about this photoblogging series that I'm never inside the school, never there with the kids. It is about the architecture. But with good modern school architecture, its hard to capture the building without the kids that are integral to its design. But I have fun with it anyway.

[Boots] You, too, can run for BOE!

Here is the first installment in the Boots Whitmer BOE campaign diary series:

---

It was my first campaign appearance: District 3 Democrats, at a North Beach community center, where the only other living creature in attendance was a pigeon. I had been invited, but the pigeon had not. The center's caretaker and I had shooed it out once, but the minute the caretaker left the "feathered rat" returned. I debated whether to practice my platform on the pigeon, but in the end I spent quite a bit of time racing around after it and succeeded in running it out. Now I was really alone….no audience and no one from the hosting entity.

Was THIS what the campaign trail was like?

I owe this report to you, my friends and supporters on SFSchools who voted me into the top three candidate slots of its straw poll during the last BOE election cycle. Have you ever wondered what REALLY goes on when you are a BOE candidate? Why the weird "occupations" in the voter handbook? Why the disjointed "candidates statement"? What does it cost, in time, money and energy? What can be done to improve the process, from this candidate's standpoint? And last but not least, why did I do it if I couldn't guarantee winning?

This is part instruction, part diary. I have had to change the names of the innocent and guilty, for reasons which will probably be obvious. I want to give credit to those who helped me and I want to answer the questions I saw raised after the campaign. I want to make suggestions on how to improve the BOE campaign (and all campaigns, for that matter). I am sick of people who use this position--- which has a direct effect on our children's well-being---- primarily as a stepping stone for higher office. I really hope that more parents and concerned individuals WHO DO NOT COVET HIGHER OFFICE will decide to run for the Board of Education. If this helps those individuals do it, then I will have accomplished a goal.

It's important to start at the beginning.

At the beginning of 2006 I was leading a happy, peaceful life, except for the Prop H fiasco, which was consuming my spare time over and above what I was spending on the George Washington High School Site Council. As my younger child would be graduating and going somewhere for college that fall, I was already lining up empty nest projects. First, with my best friend, Barbara Stewart, a very gifted photographer, I had decided to document architecturally significant SFUSD schools. Barbara and I had already had one meeting with the San Francisco Historical Society about the parameters and we had settled on a pilot project focusing on Presidio Middle School. The Historical Society was happy to have some volunteers to take on a project which had long been on their "to do" list. My husband and I had booked and paid for a trip to Italy for the fall, where we would be spending time in obscure central villages looking at obscure masterworks.

As the year progressed, the history project was shelved because of the ups and downs of Barbara's husband's pancreatic cancer; the Prop H issue heated up, consuming more of my time. Two spots on the Board of Education had opened up due to resignations. We parents began to worry about who might run for those openings. In my circle, there was one parent in particular we hoped would run. We begged that parent to consider a run. I even went down to the Board of Elections and picked up whatever the Board of Elections would allow me to take and delivered it to our hoped-for-candidate's home. All to no avail.

The deadline to file to run for office was a Friday, in mid-August. On the Monday before the deadline, I called the prospective candidate, leaving a voicemail saying, "If you won't run, I might have to!" It was meant as a joke. I didn't get a return call. There are a lot of competent, qualified parents in the SFUSD. I was disappointed that none of them would step up. In the end, I had to ask myself why I was expecting others to step up and run, if I myself was not willing to do so. And although I didn't think my chances of winning were good, I felt that running would allow me to highlight the misuse of Prop H funds in the hope that they would be properly applied. [By the way…WHERE IS THAT LONG–PROMISED PROP H AUDIT????]

Monday night we had a family pow-wow. My husband and children thought I should run, but there were questions. First, how much money were we willing to commit to this dubious project? It turned out I did not have my information quite right, but I said that the candidate was limited to spending $20,000 of his or her own funds. We did not have that much discretionary money, so we set a budget of $6,000, which I picked because it was also the amount a BOE Commissioner earns in a year. [In fact, $20,000 was the limit of a candidate's personal loans to a campaign; a candidate can actually spend as much of her personal money as she can tolerate.] I did not plan to raise or spend more than I could finance from my own pocket because I did not wish to be accused of having been funded by special interests of any ilk. I wasn't sure for what I would need money. Personally, I have never voted for anyone on the basis of a sign or a brochure. Nor have I voted for someone just because I shook the candidate's hand. I usually try to read what they have to say about themselves if it is something of depth and sometimes I vote on the basis of a candidate's presentation at a forum. When I cannot get adequate information on given candidates, I rely on knowledgeable friends and in exchange I am often asked for recommendations for judge or BOE. Rather than brochures or signs, I wanted to set up a website and expected to spend some money doing that.

The next question, which was posed by my husband, was whether I was willing to change my voter registration. I was not. This precipitated the only argument he and I had over my campaign. He wanted me to win! He demanded that I change my voter registration or he would not agree to spending money on the campaign. I tried to point out to him that the BOE run was a non-partisan election, so my voter registration was, or should be, irrelevant. I said that I felt changing my registration was like asking me to change my principles. My husband suggested that I re-register as a decline-to-state voter. I thought this was wimping out. I believe in lower taxes, limited government, free markets and many other issues which make me what I am. I stuck to my guns and my husband threw up his hands and that was the end of the issue.

--Boots Whitmer

Next Installment: Banging my head at the Elections Department

Boots Whitmer's BOE Campaign Diary

Boots Whitmer ran unsuccessfully for one of the BOE commissioner seats in the 2006 election cycle. She has given me permission to republish a series of messages she wrote on the SfSchools list chronicling her campgaign which will appear here in the coming days. I have no idea where this might lead, but I'm sure it will be very interesting and provocative.

Enjoy!

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The KIPP sun-n-surf scandal

The New York press is all over the KIPP Caribbean trips. The New York Sun coverage includes info that came from this very blog about a previous similar incident.

Ed Jew's kids need not apply

I've heard old stories of families hiring private investigators to flush out cheaters that falsified their residences and ethnic identities in their SFUSD applications to get into certain prized elementary schools. More recently I've head of people falsifying the demographic data that goes into the diversity index. But I've never heard of the district investigating cheaters like this:

SfGate: S.F. school district cracks down on residence cheaters

San Francisco education officials are increasingly going after families who lie about where they live to get into the city's choicest schools, with the school district going so far as to hire private investigators to follow a student home from Lowell High School.

Really, there is not that much to gain from cheating in most cases. I think the Lowell application -- and to a lesser extent SOTA too -- are unique in that regard.

N.Y. officials ding KIPP's financial practices

Is anyone minding this store in San Francisco?

Press release from the office of Thomas P. DiNapoli,
New York State Comptroller, Dec. 6, 2007
DiNAPOLI: KIPP IMPLEMENTS ADDITIONAL INTERNAL CONTROLS
AS A RESULT OF AUDIT
School Paid for Staff Retreats to the Caribbean

Kipp Academy Charter School in the Bronx paid $67,951 for staff trips to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, according to an audit released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. While the school had an operating surplus in 2006, the audit also found several deficiencies in the school’s internal controls.

"Having surplus funds is no excuse to spend taxpayer dollars on trips to the Caribbean," DiNapoli said. "Money intended for education should be spent on education. Staff retreats are an important tool that can lead to enhanced educational settings for students. But there are lots of places for retreats right here in New York State that are closer to the Bronx than the Bahamas."

Auditors discovered the school paid $67,951 to send 21 staff members to the Dominican Republic in June 2005 for five days and 49 staff members to the Bahamas in June 2006 for five days. Auditors could not determine if the trips were educational in nature because there was little documentation supporting this claim and no documentation of Board’s approval for the trips. The trips cost about $1,119 and $907 per person respectively and included airfare, hotel, meals and other amenities such as alcoholic beverages.

Under the state law that authorized the creation of charter schools, all funds provided to charter schools by the state should be reasonable, necessary and directly related to school operations. School officials contend that donated funds were used to finance the trips. However, auditors could not determine if this was the case because donated funds were not accounted for separately from state aid.

The audit found the school had accumulated a $4.1 million operating surplus as of June 30, 2006 but also identified several weaknesses in its internal controls including:

• lack of documentation of criminal background checks for seven employees at the school;
• an unclear policy regarding the competitive bidding process that resulted in the awarding of four contracts totaling in $181,584 without the benefit of competition;
• no written policies and procedures to determine and approve salary increases;
• missing or incomplete overtime records;
• no system to track employees’ sick or personal leave accruals; and
• no written policies and procedures or Board approval for employee bonus and stipend pay.

The audit recommends that school officials:

• develop a system to separately account for state and donated funds;
• fully document the educational nature of off-site staff retreats and conferences;
• obtain written Board approval for staff retreats and conferences;
• ensure all new employees have the required criminal background check;
• include in procurement guidelines the dollar levels that require competitive bidding;
• develop written policies and procedures for authorizing salary increases;
• ensure overtime payments are documented and processed correctly; and
• maintain accurate records of employees’ leave accruals.

While school officials implemented several of the audit’s recommendations to strengthen internal controls and hired a human resources manager, school officials indicated they intended to plan future staff retreats overseas but would better document the educational purposes of the trips.

To view the audit, visit: http://www.osc.state.ny.us/audits/allaudits/093008/06n15.pdf.

School District Accountability
In order to improve accountability of the state’s schools, State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s office will audit all of New York’s 832 school districts, Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and charter schools by 2010. The State Comptroller’s office has completed more than 310 school audits and approximately 220 audits are currently underway.

NCLB Progressivity?

Over at the Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey makes an unexpected point in President Bush's Secret $5 Billion Anti-Poverty Program

And while President Bush, to his discredit, vetoed the recent education and labor appropriations bill that would have provided the first major increase in Title I funding since 2003, both his proposed budget, that bill, and all the other funding proposals from Democrats and Republicans alike have stuck to principle of focusing new federal education resources on the districts with the most poor students. If you believe school funding levels matter, this has made a significant difference in the lives of the most disadvantaged children. In a time when such consensus is hard to come by, this deserves more attention.

Has NCLB really established a new progressivity to federal education spending? Will that unexpected budgetary resolve continue?

SFUSD Enrollment Guide online

Another sign that the district web site is improving and the EPC is providing better customer service is the fact that this year's enrollment guide is available for download:

SFUSD Enrollment Guide 2008-2009 (94 page, 10.5MB, PDF)

Translations are available in Spanish and Chinese. The guide was freely available to anyone attending the Enrollment Fair, and undoubtedly available at schools and other places. I don't remember seeing anything with the breadth and depth of enrollment information in prior years -- though this year is the first time in three years that I've been in the hunt.

Two minor quibbles:

• The guide is pretty hard to find on the enrollment page. Not impossible if you know it is there, but not obvious to people browsing the EPC home page.
• The district has a penchant for publishing PDFs that cannot be searched or converted to text. They've made the same mistake with the budgets they publish. In this case there seems to be some simple encoding mixup rather than an attempt to secure the document.

Minor points. The guide is well organized and very user friendly. Kudos to everyone inovlved in producing it.

The Times gets catty about USNews High School rankings

Here's a fairly catty article from the NYT discussing the new High School rankings published by US News and World Report. If you visit the article's web page you'll notice that the Times went out of their way to avoid providing a link to the USNews site. If you're curious, it is here: USNews: Best High Schools

Lowell came in at #69 on the list. No other SF schools, public or private, were listed.

Putting a Curious Eye on a High School Ranking System By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

That venerable sage, the funk musician Rick James, once said, "R&B stands for rhythm and business." His aphorism is worth remembering while paging through this week’s issue of U.S. News & World Report, which includes the magazine’s first ranking of high schools.

Whatever this list represents in terms of journalism or public service, it must be understood also as an exercise in business, in extending the U.S. News brand, in helping it survive in a financial and technological climate hostile to news magazines. Having devoted annual issues to ranking colleges, graduate schools and hospitals, U.S. News has now brought the same approach to secondary education.

The magazine’s executives frankly acknowledge their economic motivations. In a recent interview, the publisher, Kerry F. Dyer, and the editor, Brian Kelly, referred to the high school ranking as part of a "franchise."

[...]"I thought it’s admirable the way the rankings were done," said David F. Labaree, the associate dean of the Stanford University School of Education. "But if U.S. News’s niche is rankings, that’s a little disquieting. It’s in the magazine’s interest to push rankings into every sector to expand its niche. And that exacerbates the rankings mania that’s harming education at all levels."

I find it curious that 23 of the "Top 100" high schools are from California. That one datum makes me suspicious of their methodology. Either CA ed policy somehow enables greater stratification among schools -- enabling super achievers in an otherwise mediocre landscape, or more likely the USNews researchers were comparing variables that were not consistently reported accross different states. I have no specific basis for my suspicions other than the apparent imbalance in favor of CA schools. In fact, their methodology seems pretty good -- and the lack of SF private schools in the list suggests that they successfully focus on schools that serve not just the college bound high achievers, but identify schools that serve all kids well.

More categories: Enrollment and Politics

The category pages that I added a while back have proven to be useful and popular. So I added a few more. The SFUSD Politics page will track news about the BOE, SFUSD administration and unions, as well as state and national politics. The Enrollment page will track news of the enrollment process, calendar, web resources, and information on specific school sites of interest to all you school shoppers.

TMAO in the spotlight

Let me fill in a slow spell here at SfSchools with some props for one of my favorite ed bloggers, Teaching in the 408 I've been reading TMAO's blog for years now. He combines a clear passion for his work with some really excellent writing. It is a potent combo. I think I'd be reading his blog even if I weren't in the ed blogging world. He's just a great storyteller. And now he's been nominated for a Best teacher blog award on the The Edublog Awards site (whoever they are).

A really good example of TMAO's writing is his most recent post, The Ledge where he comes on strong in favor of performance based pay:

So you’re up on that ledge. On one side is the descent into mediocrity and professional stagnation. On the other is leaving, that mythical path out of the classroom. You’re up there, and like Dan, you call me while the car’s getting some new oil, some behind the ears scratching that will enable the 120 mile commute. You call and say, talk me down.

I can’t talk anyone down.

You can’t get down.

All you can do is pitch a tent.

I live up on that ledge, man, live there in the tightrope narrow space where you need to struggle against the constraints of the system in which you work. It’s in that space where you know you do it for the kids, where everything is for the kids, where you get paid in appreciations and handslaps and end-of-the-year surveys from the kids, and you love doing it for the kids, and you want to do it for the kids, but why can’t you do it for any of the other myriad reasons available to other professionals? Why must you be limited, less? You f-ing love the kids, but you want to also work for the things that everyone else gets to work for. You want the opportunity to put your best out there and see it rewarded by something that comes out of the other side of the Venn Diagram, the side that doesn’t have anything to do with the kids. You want to be pushed and challenged, and when you rise to the challenge you want to receive some form of acknolwedgement that does not, and must not, arrive in the shape of an apple.

He's also a hoops nut. Of course I like him! Check out this post about his girl's bball team: From Ashes Rise

[...]
Then four players, three of them starters, two of them captains – including the monstrous center and the athletic, game-changing point guard – acquired some drugs and smoked them at lunch.

Goodbye season.

I began mentally chalking up the losses, thinking about filling the now-vacant roster spots with raw 6th graders and just playing for next year. Having lost four close games with all those players, there’s no way we’re going to do anything in league play without them. Let’s go ahead and get this over with: another let-down and disappointment, another season of untouched potential. The only problem with all this is that someone forgot to tell my girls.

I only wish I could write as well... Go vote for this guy. Gotta give him some props for the work he's doing up on that ledge.

What teachers face in real life

The Oakland Tribune article New Instructor Struggles in Oakland School that I posted here the other day prompted quite a discussion on the Tribune's Inside Bay Area blog.

Posters want to know why teachers aren't more aggressive about taking away students' distracting electronics — cellphones, iPods and such.

An anonymous teacher posted comments in response, and I'm reprinting them with his/her permission. As usual, it all sounds so easy.

Simple prescriptions sound great. Practice is more complicated.

• Many children want to be thrown out and look for a “soft” confrontation in order to do so. We want them in class so they can hopefully learn something; a blind eye is thus turned to some minor infractions (i.e., having ear plug cords dripping out of a backpack.)
• Many children don’t care about grades and aren’t afraid of suspensions, so it is hard to gain leverage. Since public schools are committed to teaching EVERY child, expulsions only shift the problem kids around.
• Some kids are mainstreamed who have what amounts to oppositional disorder and other behavioral disabilities. Special ed folks are usually overwhelmed and can’t be in every room..
• Teachers will be dinged if they send too many kids to a swamped office. We are told that if we can’t control our class without referrals, we are not doing our job well. Teach better and we will have no problems is the message.
• Schools and administrators are punished by the system if they have a high rate of suspensions and expulsions. The pressure is thus systemic to lower the rate of both, whether the behavior of the students improves or not. Many Oakland schools have seen their rates drop, which is then trumpeted as improvement whether it was warranted or not.
• Parents are often extremely enabling, and sometimes have more pull with administrators than teachers do.
• Some teachers are afraid of their students. Direct confrontations over valuable electronics in front of peers is a serious escalation which can eat half a period. Security is often not available to remove a student who refuses to comply OR leave. If the student only receives a warning from the school, the teacher now looks weak in front of the whole class, which can damage the whole year.
• If you send a kid out in the middle of class, there is no guarantee they will go to the office. Now you have a troubled kid wandering the school — or leaving school to face other dangers. If you walk them to the office, your class will go off the rails while you are gone — and you will be breaking the rules by not monitoring them.

I’m not saying any of these are VALID excuses for laxity. Successful teachers generally are pretty strict but fair. Some teachers run their own afterschool detentions and find every parent who can help. But giving advice from the cheap seats is pretty easy and not really that helpful. The situation is a lot more messy and at its root is a basic fact: Unless they committ a serious crime and are locked up, children over 5 are REQUIRED to be at school all day.

A parent's comment on private school

The fantastic new blog TheSFKFiles chronicles a parent's intensive search for schools and has attracted amazingly lively and thoughtful readers — most of them terrific writers, too. There has been a lot of discussion of the morality and values involved in choosing private school over public (these mostly being parents in the demographic that's likely to consider private). One anonymous poster who has been looking at both public and private made this comment, which just awed me. I'm reposting it with permission:

Instead of looking at what is right in front of us right now, I hit the fast-forward button and tried to think about what I wanted my children to learn from their childhood — when the tumultuous teen years and the invincible college years are over, what will they say about the lessons and the values that they learned as children? And then it was crystal clear: What I care about most is instilling a sense of justice, fairness and a commitment to bettering society. Yes, my children may be the most important people in the world to me, but let us not confuse that with thinking that they are the most important people in the world. And with that, we wiped the private schools off the table as inherently inconsistent with our core values.

This blog presumably has a short lifespan. But the interest and passion it's attracting — mostly from parents also looking at schools, along with veterans like me who are finding it addictive — signals that there should be a dedicated forum every year for parents looking at schools. Maybe Parents for Public Schools can create and oversee a listserve.

Since KC and I are doing a college admissions blog, it makes me wish I could go into that kind of detail about the college search. Unfortunately, my 17-year-old is not willing to have his mom blogging away exposing his personal life — you can do that when the kid is 5.