James Newell

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.

It's another Python sketch

Saturday.