Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Entire Board Must Vote No on the Science Adoption

Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Entire Board Must Vote No on the Science Adoption

The Entire Board Must Vote No on the Science Adoption

You'll note the use of the word "must" in the headline for this post.  I have gone from "should" to "must" based on new information I received today via public disclosure documents from the district.

I had put in a request weeks ago and received a message that there were over 900 emails between the head of Science, Mary Margaret Welch, and Amplify.   I'm not surprised that there were some but that is quite a volume for less than two years.

However, there were 25 other emails between Welch and several other people that I asked the good folks in the Public Disclosure area to send as soon as they could.  They were kind enough to get them to me yesterday.

They reveal that Welch entered into an agreement in early August 2017 with Lawrence Hall at UC Berkeley (who had a grant from IES - a federal agency, Institute of Education Sciences) and SRI International (who is the entity carrying out the research for the grant).  The grant was to study the efficacy of Amplify Science for first graders around literacy and science.  

If funded, districts would receive the full curriculum package along with teacher professional development and support over the two years of implementation at no cost to the participating districts.  Districts also receive a stipend to partner with us to CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Entire Board Must Vote No on the Science Adoption