Seattle Schools Community Forum: Guest Post - HCC and SPS

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Guest Post - HCC and SPS

Guest Post - HCC and SPS

Editor’s note: I’m happy to publish any essays about SPS or public education in general. This one is from Megan Hazen who has three children in Seattle Schools.

Last Tuesday the Seattle School board passed an amendment to board policy 2190, which governs how Highly Capable (HC) students are served in Seattle. These students have demonstrated an atypical cognitive capacity to learn academic subjects quickly and deeply. State law says that basic education for these students includes specific adaptations from general education programming. The foundation of the state law is research and scientific understanding about the variance in human learning as well as recognition that students who learn atypically must be specifically served atypically in order to be served at all.

The changes to policy 2190 reflect a multi-year effort on the part of SPS to change the HC service model, but this specific step (which removes the guarantees of the old policy) is highly contentious. The proponents will claim that they need these changes to address the racism visible in the current service model, while the opponents claim that they need to retain the current model in order to get any service at all. Watching the debate is like watching two trains speeding towards each other, but on different tracks. There is no hope they will ever meet in the middle because they are holding different arguments.

The proponent side of the argument recognizes visible racist inequity. They appear to believe that they can solve the problems by treating the symptoms - take away the current model and you will take away the problem. The arguments for the changes all focus on historical barriers to access, not on the CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Guest Post - HCC and SPS

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Advanced Learning to Change

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Advanced Learning to Change

Advanced Learning to Change

The Seattle School Board and the district are poised to change the Advanced Learning program in a major way. Interestingly, the BAR (Board Action Report) on this change has a fairly bland title - Rename and Amend Highly Capable Services and Advanced Learning.

I am NOT advocating for anyone to write to the Board because this was a done deal a long time ago. 

The district is going to have a new enactment of Highly Capable Services (kicking out the wording “Advanced Learning”) and having “building-based services” in General Education classrooms rather than separate cohort groupings. There may or may not be other eligible students in the class. There is a carve-out for “upper edge” students. (See below.)

To note, the wording “highly capable” comes from the state and it is a state mandate that comes to districts complete with funding for transportation.  

The district plans to enact this new programming over the next six years, to school year 2026-2027. They are currently piloting the program at one elementary school. Students in the current program will stay with their cohort until then 2026-2027. 

The district is paying at least three consultants to plan how to enact the new HCC. 

The district claims that the current program is “inaccessible” without explaining why. In the past, some schools with minority majority CONTINUE READING: Seattle Schools Community Forum: Advanced Learning to Change