Locally elected school board members have a responsibility to consider all pertinent information before casting their votes. This is the issue at hand in Seattle regarding their high school math adoption. Rather than considering all of the information available to them at the time, a slim majority of School Board members followed the ill-conceived recommendation of the district's administration and recommended a math series that is ineffective. I've summarized recent events below, but if you would like read the entire back story, go to Seattle Math Group. Martha McLaren has done a great job of keeping us all up to date! I believe this is a very important case! Elected School Boards should be held responsible for making good decisions based on all available pertinent information.
Please consider contributing, even a small amount, to the Seattle Math Group legal fund!
Back in February, the Court found that there was "insufficient evidence for any reasonable Board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series"
The Washington State School Director's Association filed an Amicus Brief recently which is simply wrong!
Their argument fails apart on p. 4 where they claim that “By determining that there was insufficient evidence for any reasonable board member to approve the selection of the Discovering series math curriculum, the trial court threw its weight behind the competing ‘direct instruction’ curriculum.” There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE to support that statement.
On p. 9 they affirm that “Although RCW 28A.645 provides for judicial review of school board decisions, review of school board legislative or quasi-legislative acts is limited to determining whether the board acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner or contrary to the law.”
Which is EXACTLY what Judge Spector found!!
And on p. 10 they state that “Agency action is arbitrary and capricious only if it is willful and unreasoning in disregard of facts and circumstances”
Which (AGAIN) is EXACTLY what the Judge found because they did not consider all of the information that was provided.
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