Claudia Rowe

More kind words for WARDS OF THE STATE. Thank you, @LarissaMacFarqu and @ABRAMSbooks! WARDS is out on May 20. Book launch info coming soon.

Seattle's last attempt at a therapeutic community (read: addiction) court was a total neo-abolitionist farce, where people diverted to it faced no consequences for not showing up (and most did not), and there were almost no meaningful interventions offered to the few who did. But that doesn't mean that a well conceived and resourced municipal misdemeanor-level therapeutic court isn't a good idea. There are therapeutic courts in suburbs like Auburn and Renton that do really excellent work helping those suffering from addiction regain control over their lives. Seattle could benefit from one too, provided it's done correctly. And King County Drug Court, which I recently had the privilege of visiting and touring, does absolutely incredible work turning around the lives of people arrested for serious crimes after falling deep into the trap of addiction. Which brings me to this very smart must read op ed (link to follow) in @SeaTimesOpinion today from my friend @josephbarsana about how drug court-style therapeutic approaches make a real and positive difference in people's lives. He should know, since he's both a graduate of King County Drug Court and now works there, providing meaningful assistance to those following in his footsteps as they seek to turn their lives around. He writes: "One of the biggest misconceptions today is that compassion and accountability are opposites. They are not. In therapeutic courts, they work together. Compassion does not mean lowering expectations. It means recognizing that people grow through support, not fear... And at the heart of diversion is a simple truth: We meet people where they are, but we do not leave them there. Therapeutic courts understand that people enter the system in crisis, but with the right expectations, support, and structure, they can leave with stability, dignity, and purpose."

Indeed. Who needs journalists, when you’ve got journalism. 👀

"The real issue is a culture of administrative dysfunction and school board passivity that for years has undermined the education of students in Seattle. One place it shows up, over and over, is in the district’s human resources office." seattletimes.com/opinion/editor…

When will we admit it: Between lowered expectations, "equity" grading, and AI we have a very, very serious situation staring right at us.

This photo should be on the front page of every single newspaper in America today.

@skaushik100 @TheAtlantic Very interested to see this piece! When and where?

This @TheAtlantic article is about what happened at charter school systems around the country, but the story it tells - of schools prioritizing anti-racism over academic excellence, leading to lower performance and widening achievement gaps - conforms almost perfectly with the story of what happened with Seattle’s public schools. I am working on a piece now where I attempt to tell the story of what went wrong with Seattle’s public schools over the last decade, and what that teaches us about the state of public education in blue America. It’s a self-inflicted wound.

The state made big cuts in K-12 that target higher-poverty districts and early learning programs (Transition to Kindergarten) -- typically the highest-impact and most cost-effective uses of funds. 2/n

@GeraldoRivera Of course he doesn't, because he believes he is SUPERIOR to Jesus -- richer, smarter, more beloved (in his own mind only, but still) -- and, besides, as is well documented, Trump doesn't like heroes who let themselves be captured, much less crucified.

I don't know if you've noticed, but the guy just rid us from Orbán. You know what it takes to win an election against Orbán? It's not just making a party and campaigning. The rules were massively rigged. Hungary was gerrymandered to oblivion. The regime played dirty.

“Nothing to see here, please move on”

howard dean yelled a little too loud at the 2004 Iowa caucus and was deemed too unhinged to be president just thinking about that for no reason today

@skaushik100 @SeaTimesOpinion Thanks for reading, Sandeep!

Read the entirety of @RoweReport's excellent Sunday @SeaTimesOpinion editorial detailing Shuldiner's assessment of where things stand at SPS here: seattletimes.com/opinion/editor…

After a decade of largely self-inflicted harms, I'm finally hopeful for the future of public education in Seattle. Recently arrived Seattle Public Schools superintendent Ben Shuldiner is saying all the right things about restoring a focus on accountability, outcomes, and results. During the peak woke era in Seattle, SPS leaders bloviated incessantly about their commitments to social justice, which they used to justify adopting a range of trendy progressive pedagogies primarily focused on lowering standards and restricting options in the name of equity. And they privileged performative ideological virtue signaling as they unwound a culture of self-criticism and and self-improvement at SPS. The end result has been declining academic performance, large scale disenrollment, growing safety concerns, administrative bloat and fiscal crisis. Perhaps most galling of all, the district's misguided "soft bigotry of low expectations" racialist approaches to uplifting "those furthest away from educational justice" has actually resulted in worsening achievement gaps. Plus all of this decline has, infuriatingly, come wrapped in ludicrously Orwellian, self-congratulatory propaganda ("well resourced schools" my ass). Seattle is a knowledge economy success story. We are the most educated big city in America, and the third most affluent. We should have excellent public schools here, where we don't let anything - including counterproductive identitarian ideas, recalcitrant bureaucracies or entrenched interest groups - get in the way of giving every child an opportunity to learn to the best of their abilities. No more excuses, no more bullshit spin, no more willful self-deception. Shuldiner clearly gets that. This is Seattle, so the knives will be out for him, but right now I'm cautiously optimistic we've reached an important turning point at SPS. Fingers crossed.

As a college English professor at an “access institution,” I have been watching the demise of literacy in real time. (For some of that time, I have worked under administrators whose answer to the problem was to give us subtle hints that we should allow students to “use“ AI to “help them” with “writing” their papers.) As literacy has declined among my students, so has their curiosity and ability to think. I only teach at one institution, so I don’t know how representative my students are. But my gut tells me that we are heading for something apocalyptic.

Still, there is this.

@jayeskenazi @seattletimes Here's another. seattletimes.com/opinion/editor…

@jayeskenazi @seattletimes We did. Many times. Here's one of them. seattletimes.com/opinion/editor…

Washington's new high-earners income tax will mainly pay for government services, with less than one-third of the funds sent back to residents in tax cuts. ebx.sh/obPHs1

Forever. So great.

Hmm. This was dispiriting. I had a haircut from a young woman, and after she established that I write for a newspaper, she gushed: "That's so interesting! I've never actually read a newspaper."

"I don't think any of us got into [journalism] to be rich, but I thought we'd make a living," Hayes said. "It just feels like quicksand. You're making enough to be here, but you're slowly sinking. You're not able to save. You're not able to pay off your student loans, or even make payments on those. You're here until it's no longer financially feasible." actionnetwork.org/letters/5191b3…