There is no more pressing matter impacting the future well-being of Tacoma than the state of our educational system. There is much to be concerned about: achievement and opportunity gaps between white and minority students remain wide; the Tacoma School District continues to face large deficits; and the debate surrounding the evaluation of teachers and schools continues.

The good news for Tacoma is that there is a diverse community of activists, educators and administrators working together to remedy these problems and create an educational system that meets the needs of Tacoma's youth. Recently, the Weekly Volcano facilitated a discussion about the state of education in Tacoma between five local leaders: Pat Erwin, co-principal of Lincoln High School; Jordan Hightower, Humanities teacher at School of the Arts; Tom Hilyard, chair of the Black Collective's Education Committee; Carmetrius Parker, co-chair of the Black Collective‘s Education Committee; and Catherine Ushka-Hall, vice president of the Tacoma School Board.

WEEKLY VOLCANO: The achievement gap between white and minority students in the Tacoma School District is no secret. It has been debated and studied, and policies have come and gone to try to offset it. What has led to this gap and what are some of the fundamental circumstances that contribute to it?

TOM HILYARD: In 1984 the data on Tacoma Public Schools was aggregate. When we began to get some disaggregated data we were finally able to see what was happening with minority students. What we found was a consistent and persistent gap in achievement. That gap in achievement has not narrowed over the years. It's been an issue, a problem and a concern that I've been working on since 1984.

It is an intractable issue because it is, in many respects, a reflection of societal preferences and biases. We spent a number of years in Tacoma Public Schools labeling, which has had interesting results and effects. I'd talk to teachers and they'd say "SES" - social economic status - was used not as a descriptor of the conditions in which a person lived, but rather as a predictor of their capacity and ability to perform. The consequence was that teachers' expectations reflected that. Part of the achievement gap is that expectations, both the system's and the students', are often conferred upon the students by the system.

PAT ERWIN: In addition to the achievement gap based on race we also have a gender gap. Somewhere in this conversation we need to make sure we talk about the fact that our young men in general, and young men of color in particular, are not performing well. I agree with everything Tom said, and also think it's important to note that in the Pacific Northwest we like to think that somehow we are "post racial," or beyond a racist state. We have very polite racism in the Pacific Northwest, but it's racism nonetheless. Many of my peers and I notice that people will say things about a person of color being "surprisingly articulate." First of all, why are they surprisingly articulate? Secondly, a lot people might see that as a compliment, but kids are very savvy and they hear that sort of thing and they notice that it should be a surprise that they are as bright and as articulate as they are. They start to either believe those things or resent the system where people are saying those things. It's all very tricky when it comes down to it, in terms of the impression or the identity the kids have, or the sense they have of what they could or should accomplish.

CATHERINE USHKA-HALL: Economic status is still something that's used as a predictor. Based on zip codes there are attitudes placed on kids' ability to perform, and that's unacceptable. ... As we set the strategic plan for the School Board with (a theme of) "every student, every day" that sounds like a nice trite statement, but we mean it. We mean it so we can actually follow it with data and close those gaps. We've got a long way to go.

ERWIN: On the notion of zip codes, I'd also like to acknowledge that a lot of my kids live in the 98404 zip code. That's the East Side, and when I was the principal at McIlvaigh Middle School there wasn't a grocery store on the East Side of Tacoma that was open. The closest one was up on county property, on 72nd. When you'd go you'd see a Goodwill, a dollar store, a liquor store, a pawn shop, etc. That's very different than the Proctor neighborhood, and it paints a very different picture of what life has to offer you.

JORDAN HIGHTOWER: I think, especially in Tacoma, the perception of each school and its location is something that is still continually trying to be reconciled. The perception of what Lincoln is versus what Stadium is, what Wilson is versus what SOTA is. Kids are coming from different areas and feel like it's very segregated. It's not just district lines but also the culture that really impacts students. When a student says they're from a certain school, there is often an immediate perception from other students in the school district, from other teachers and from community members. I think that's partially based on where (the school is) located.

VOLCANO: What could the Tacoma School District be doing differently to address the achievement gap?

HILYARD: I fundamentally believe you have to invest in the outcome that you want. ... You've got to invest at (the appropriate) level to successfully get from point A to point B. What we don't do (in Tacoma) is the diagnostics to look at what a successful trip is and how we can invest to achieve our goal.

We have students that come to K-12 education in varying conditions - some with excellent vocabularies, some with deficient vocabularies. If you start with those differences, unless you invest to take care of those differences, those kids will always be at a disadvantage. Consequently, if by third grade they have not accumulated the vocabulary and the reading skills to acquire and deal with the information that comes and later is reflected on grades, they stay behind. There is no catch up strategy that I can identify in the district that addresses that problem, so we have to be more sophisticated with our diagnostics and more sophisticated with our investment. We have to invest for the outcome we want to achieve.

CARMETRIUS PARKER: I think one thing Tacoma could be doing is reconstructing the entire culture within the school system. Like Tom mentioned, if by the time you reach third grade your vocabulary and your math skills aren't to a certain level it's assumed you're not going to be able to be productive and you're going to fail. In some cases students are labeled as early as first grade. My reading program works with first - and second-grade students and teachers will say, "I don't know why we're working with that student. Maybe we should put a different student in the program. He's hopeless." That's startling to me and I didn't believe that was possible.

ERWIN: In terms of policy and advancing kids from one grade to another, we've always just moved kids along. They may not be moving along in terms of merit or relative to their peers, but the expectation is that you were in third grade and now you move onto fourth grade because of your age.

Much of the research on pre-K education is profound, saying that's where the difference is made, so when we find there are kids that come in at kindergarten and by first grade or second grade they are behind, we've got to do something different.

We've got a program called Lincoln Center which is an extended day model where kids go to school until 5 o'clock because they come to us behind. Ideally, that should be happening in the elementary schools and the middle schools on the East Side. This year, of our incoming ninth-graders, 62 percent of the kids are at level one at math. That's rock bottom, basic fundamentals in math. Those kids are not going to be successful if we just have them until 2:05 p.m. and then kick ‘em loose. The bottom line is you have to work longer and have you to work harder if you're behind. We have the support to do that at Lincoln, but we have to move it forward to earlier years.

HILYARD: We've committed ourselves to a system of tracking. Tracking was an experiment in New York City schools in the 1970s. They discovered that tracking had no benefit in terms of meeting the educational needs of students, so they took it out of the system. What tracking does is limit access to certain students and does not allow other students to come in. SOTA, AP and International Baccalaureate are all ways of tracking certain students and there are admissions barriers that prevent students from entering into those programs.

The Federal Way school district decided last year to eliminate tracking as an element of the International Baccalaureate Program and open access to that program to all students, so instead of having to fight your way in, you had to fight your way out. That's a significant shift in policy and framework,  which caused a significant shift in the participation of minority students in the International Baccalaureate programs. Those students are now performing well in those programs.

USHKA-HALL: When we talk about policies in Federal Way and the issues that we're seeing in Tacoma, we need to keep in mind these are policy questions that don't just exist in Tacoma. These are questions across the country and we're not as unique as we think we are. One of the things that all of us need to keep our eyes out for is what's working where, how can we implement it and will it work here?

HIGHTOWER: I think it's important to not have different ideas competing against each other, but rather pulling the best from other situations and working to implement it wherever you are. We're all in different places and levels, so instead of saying "what you're doing is working," or "what you're doing isn't working," looking at the best parts and drawing them together.

HILYARD: We are challenged for the right kind of leadership in the situations that we're talking about. I think about the Ford School and the state it was in when they essentially gave up and said anybody who wanted to take it on could do so. A principal came in and began to use the school to respond to the community and the community's needs. The school became a hub of community life, it began to serve the parents‘ educational needs, and as it did so the parents were capacitated. They suddenly had the capacity to work with their children and to help them with their educational needs and problems. It is that kind of leadership that is a rare commodity. We need that kind of leadership here in Tacoma to get lift off.

VOLCANO: A source of hope and excitement throughout the community has been the perceived success of Tacoma's new innovative schools - Lincoln Center, SOTA and Science and Math Institute (SAMI). However, these schools only serve a small number of students. What have we learned from our innovative schools and how should that be applied in future plans?

USHKA-HALL: In terms of innovative schools we've got some cool stuff going on in Tacoma. The problem, or the discussion I'd like to have about innovative schools is that it's an opt-in system. Whenever you have an opt-in system my question is who's not opting in and why? Is it transportation? Is it economics? Is it because they don't feel like they're important enough to be in that school? The answer to all of those questions is yes and no, depending on the individual. Regular schools are a good fit for some students as well, so the question is, what level of innovation is appropriate and at what point do you exclude people who would be best off in the standard, traditional school system.

HIGHTOWER: I think the vice versa is also true, not every student does fit into a traditional school model, and one of the challenges that we (innovative schools) face is the perception that we have in the other Tacoma public high schools. The perception of other teachers or administrations when a student might approach them and say "I'd like to go to a different school, maybe this isn't the right one for me." We need to recognize that not every school is the right fit for every student, and also recognize that SOTA and SAMI aren't right for every student. I think we need to create a model where other schools and students recognize what we can offer them and we need to recognize that not every student can fit in every school.

HILYARD: I think every student in the K-12 experience ought to have an individualized education plan. There ought to be accountability to that plan that shows the plan has a reality - that it can be accomplished with the kinds of resources you devote to it and that you measure it to ensure that the resources are being used to do that.

ERWIN: On innovation, one of the challenges we face is the conversation between the teachers‘ unions and the district. For example, when you start a SOTA or a SAMI you get to pick the teachers you want to start with. If we did that all the time, for example, if we decided we were going to start up an Urban Prep Academy at Willard, and an Academy for Peace and Justice in a building downtown, pretty soon Lincoln High School, which is built to accommodate 1780 students, is going to sit there with 800 students. We can't do that. We have to find ways to house programs in our schools. We could never tell a particular middle school that next year all the kids were going to go to school until 5:30 p.m. because people would (final grievances), it would go to the board and (the process) would be a big hullabaloo. ... You can't simply flip a switch and make that happen, so you've got to find ways to work with the unions so when you do innovative things it's more efficient, responsive and everyone‘s needs are met, especially the kids.     

VOLCANO: By 2013 the state has mandated that every district implement some sort of performance-based teacher evaluation system. This has been a hot-topic in Washington for years and was made hotter last year by the film "Waiting for Superman." What circumstances should be noted as the public considers this issue?

ERWIN: I started as a teacher 18 years ago at Mount Tahoma High School and I found it fascinating that I worked in a school where there was an individual who had one prep (period) and showed movies every day. I was teaching five different classes including AP and had students passing for the first time, but in my second year they had to cut me. I thought to myself, "Why are my peers and I getting cut when someone else is showing movies every day and making 20 grand more a year?"

We didn't have an evaluation system that allowed the principal to do the work that they wanted to do, which was to get the best teachers in and keep the best teachers there. I remember talking to my dad about it at the time and towing the company line, telling him, "That's the way it is in education." My dad, who was a businessman, told me that wasn't fair. He said how they did it in the private sector wasn't fair either, but it was more fair because they gave someone in charge, who is accountable for the results, the ability to have the people they want working for them.

In that respect I don't think the teacher evaluation system, historically, has helped us (principals). You'll hear that we're told by the School Board and district officials that we need to evaluate people out. I've done that, but it takes three years, and those three years become more and more focused on that individual to the determent of your other responsibilities at the school. There has to be an easier, cleaner way to document teacher performance. Also, that must include the population of students they (the teachers) consistently serve.

When you have a mobile population like McCarver Elementary School or Lincoln High School it's hard to ask, "From September to June what gains did you make with your kids?" because of 25 third graders 17 of them might be brand new at the end of the year, meaning they didn't start the year with that teacher. How we do it has to be very specific, but I do think we've got to have some measurements of success to document (progress).

HIGHTOWER: Standardized, definitely standardized. I'm a first year teacher and having done student teaching and subbed in a lot of different schools all over the region, the way different administrations run and work with their teachers can be extremely different, even within a 20-mile radius of here.

One of the biggest things we're not doing, from a teacher's perspective, is offering feedback. I have lots of peers all over the city and the state who say people will come in to watch and evaluate them, but offer no feedback. The only way we can get better, especially young teachers, is to receive feedback. I can put in 12 or 13-hour days, which I do, but until I have someone who has been doing it for years to offer me different perspectives, I may not necessarily improve.

HILYARD: I'm not willing to isolate on teachers on the question of evaluations. It's a systemic evaluation that has to be sophisticated enough to take into account a 125% turnover rate in certain neighborhoods. To not only take that into account but to also have strategies for addressing that, because if you don't have a single child in class at the end of the year that you had in class in the beginning of the year, what are you evaluating?

That's a leadership issue. How do you attack that problem if part of the key in education is time in class and time on task? If you don't have time in class and time on task what are you evaluating? We've got to have a systemic view of what we're talking about. The system has to, as an integrated institution, take responsibility for its outcomes, for its product and for its materials coming in and out.

ERWIN: THA (Tacoma Housing Authority) just came up with a new project in and around McCarver Elementary School where families are getting housing vouchers for a five-year window of time to stabilize the community. That's a great idea that stabilizes a particular community. That's where you see efforts by the city, the school system, and Metro Parks to work together in Tacoma 360 to coordinate resources. Tom talked about reaching out to parents and being responsive to them. That's something that everyone in Tacoma has a responsibility to do, but especially those of us in the education system, people working for the city, people working for the parks and people working for various institutions like THA.

USHKA-HALL: We are going to have to have performance based evaluations by 2013 and we have to make sure that the policies we're working on now allow for that. I've definitely looked at a multitude of "value-added" models and my concerns are always the same as Tom's, and that is it's going to drive good teachers away from the most challenging schools because they're going to find out that no matter what they're going to get marked lower because they have kids who are only in the same school for a month or two who don't make as much progress.

We don't have an adequate answer yet. I'm a believer in individual accountability and also team accountability. Some of the models I have seen that may work are those where there are school goals, essentially team goals. Then the work and the rewards are shared by the entire group.

When we talk about standardization I think we have to be careful that it is not over standardized, because the fact is that schools exist in particular areas with particular groups of individuals and their goals have to be set individual to those needs. A teacher that works at McCarver should be held accountable to different goals than a teacher who works at Mason Middle School. They've got different needs and different particular outcomes.

HIGHTOWER: I think the biggest thing as a teacher is the need to have those needs articulated. I don't feel like the communication is there in articulating what I need to do as a teacher verses somewhere else.

USHKA-HALL: Some of those issues have to do with the way the current performance evaluations are set and policies regulating who can go and talk to teachers and who can't. Right now our performance system is challenged at best. Coming from private sector employment I'm baffled at how that could be considered effective.

PARKER: Teachers need support and I think a new evaluation system needs to be in place. I've heard some talk about having mentors and experienced teachers work with new teachers and I think that could be really valuable. In anything that I've done well I've had someone coach me and mentor me to get me to that level. There are a lot of good teachers that don't have the support they need. There are a lot of teachers that have been there a long time and perhaps with the new evaluation system they can get the support they need or they can be moved out. 

USHKA-HALL: Any progress we're going to make with performance evaluations or anything else is going to have to be done in partnership with the teachers and with the unions. There's a lot of opportunity there and I think we've got a lot of talent in Tacoma and lot of will to improve things, so I've got high hopes.

VOLCANO: In closing, I'm wondering what you all think about the public dialogue Tacoma as a community is having about education?  Are enough people engaged in it? Are we talking about the right things? And, if not, what should we be talking about? 

ERWIN: I think we are, but not enough people are involved, not enough representative parties are involved. At the same time, we just had the debut of the Vibrant Schools Coalition, where we had everyone from Stand for Children to Peace Community Center to Allen Renaissance and all the others that are involved in the conversation (come together). Part of the Vibrant Schools Coalition, which I think is important, is getting the activist voices to the table.

I think Tacoma 360 is recognizing the importance of the parks and the city. Mayor Strickland has the Mayor's Task Force on Education, so she's bringing together everyone from Catherine (Ushka-Hall) to the Union President (Tacoma Education Association) Andy Coons, to past mayors, to other members of the community - trying to get input and support. We've got the Greater Tacoma Schools Foundation, which is trying to pull people in and to build a reserve of money to pay for innovation and support student programming.

I think there are a lot of good things going on and I think it's better than it is in a lot of communities. Bob Craves from the College Success Foundation once said to me that the thing that is attractive about Tacoma is that it is a medium size city with big city problems. We can fix those big city problems in a medium size city, but it's harder to fix big city problems in a big city.

HIGHTOWER: I think you only need to look at the community effort to save Foss (High School) and all the people who came out to support that and get involved. At the same time it is the same people (involved), and the every-day student or parent doesn't know the appropriate venue to go to share their voice. They don't know if they should go to a school board meeting or a big event. They don't know where their voice will actually be heard. Maybe having more conversations like this, where we bring in people from different areas of the community, from different levels of the community, is where we might see the most buy-in from students, parents, teachers and administrators.

PARKER: As a Foss parent who was involved I still keep thinking about access. The way information is, or is not, distributed to students, parents and families - I think that is the issue that is preventing some parents from being at the table. I also think the way we look at parent involvement really needs to change. There are a lot of parents who wrote letters and did other things but didn't show up at Foss that connected with me, but because those parents are not seen it is assumed they are not involved and therefore not invested in education.

HILYARD: I think we're cycling around and around the issues in front of us and we need a path forward. We need to agree on the path forward, and we're not there yet.

USHKA-HALL: I think we're having a more invigorating conversation than I've seen in Tacoma in over a decade. I think the number of people that are involved as reflected by Vibrant Schools and other groups that are staying engaged is an increase from what we've seen before. We have to keep going because there are a lot people who aren't represented yet.

What is the conversation? I agree with Tom's point, the right conversation will be one that moves us forward. As I look at the next year, the budget cuts and all of the areas that need significant change, that's going to be the answer. Can we lead ourselves to it? If we can't then we need to hold ourselves accountable as a community to continuous improvement and change it up.