September 2007

New School Superintendent Ready to Make
Tough Decisions for Seattle Schools


By Linda Thomas

For a moment I thought the sun had appeared on a rainy, gray Seattle summer day. Instead, it was the Seattle School District’s new superintendent emerging from her office for an interview wearing an orange jacket, matching orange blouse and tan slacks.

Maria Goodloe-Johnson’s attire and smile brightened up a cloudy day. Could she be a ray of hope for our Seattle Schools, too?

After talking with her for an hour – about everything from student achievement gaps, funding inequities, and racial diversity, to the school board’s role, parental involvement and teachers’ challenges – I’d say yes.

I also discovered what her favorite activity is when she’s away from work (it’s one of mine too; more about that later.) And I elicited a one word answer to a question about whether her 2-year-old daughter Maya will go to Seattle Public Schools when she turns 5.

“Absolutely,” says Goodloe-Johnson, 49, who is renting a house with her husband Bruce Johnson in the Magnolia area.

Goodloe-Johnson is a data-driven, research-reliant educator. She holds a bachelor’s degree in special education and a master’s in teaching educationally handicapped K-12 students. A Nebraska native, her career has taken her to Colorado, Texas and Charleston, South Carolina.

She became the first African-American and the first woman to head the Charleston County School District. During her four years there, she standardized the district’s curriculum, created a system of checks and balances to fix budget problems, and narrowed the achievement gap between white and black students.

Now she’s Superintendent of Seattle Schools with a three-year contract, earning $240,000 annually. She is the district’s first female superintendent, and the second African-American in charge of schools.

On the job since July, Goodloe-Johnson is aware of the problems here.

“Seattle is like most urban districts in that they have pockets of excellence,” she says. “We have schools, programs, options and alternatives that we’re very proud of, and we also have areas of weaknesses. We have to fortify our schools so that no matter where you live, you feel comfortable sending your kids to your neighborhood school.”

She has already made a change at one Seattle school that a consultant deemed “ineffective and unsafe.” The district removed longtime Principal Joseph Drake from John Marshall High School. The alternative school offers classes to 185 students in grades six through 12 who have been suspended or expelled from other Seattle Public Schools. It also has programs for pregnant teens and students who are parents.

Complaints about the school – from parents, teachers and even some students – go back at least a decade. Placing the principal on administrative leave and not allowing the school to accept new students was a decision Goodloe-Johnson made within a month of taking over.

Changing leadership, closing schools and financial challenges over the past couple of years have almost paralyzed Seattle School administrators. Not Goodloe-Johnson.

“For me it’s easy. I just look at Maya’s face and equate that to 46,000 kids, and say if a school is not good enough for my child, it’s not good enough for someone else’s child,” she says. “I
will not write off kids.”

She plans to visit each of Seattle’s 97 schools during the 2007-2008 year. The visits will likely reinforce what is obvious to many teachers and parents. We have a significant achievement gap between the district’s strongest and weakest schools.

Based on the 2006 Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) results, 67 percent of students at Roosevelt High School passed all three portions of the state assessment test. Roosevelt is one of Seattle’s highest testing schools – yes, even higher than Garfield. At Rainer Beach High School, the WASL passing rate is 23 percent, and at Cleveland High School it drops to 17 percent. At Lowell Elementary 91 percent of the fifth graders passed all three portions of the test, while at Dearborn Park only 1.9 percent passed.

That’s a heck of a gap.

“If we have high-poverty, high-needs schools, then we need to have a protocol based on research that tells us how to respond to the needs,” Goodloe-Johnson says. The protocol could include additional tutoring, after-school programs, smaller class sizes and high quality teachers.

“When you have a huge achievement gap, you can’t close it by having quality instruction eight hours a day. You have to add tutoring at some point during the day and after school,” she adds.

Admittedly, there will be a cost to closing the gap. She’s ordered a financial audit to determine how the district is spending its money and whether it’s getting good results from programs it funds. If not, she’ll “end the money-wasting” and “become more effective and equitable in the way we allocate resources for students.”

It’s her job and her challenge. Fortunately for us, it’s also her passion.

During the small fraction of her day she spends away from work, she likes to explore area parks with her daughter. Her husband, whom she describes as a “laid back, calm person,” was a career UPS driver. He takes care of Maya and is taking seminary classes.

Besides reading, Goodloe-Johnson’s other personal interest is …

“Shopping. I love to shop,” she says. (Me, too!)

And she has good taste, judging from her bright orange, well-accessorized outfit. Not everyone can wear orange. It’s a bold color. Someone with a daring, confident personality can pull it off. She does.

Linda Thomas is a Seattle-based freelance journalist and parent of two students in Seattle Public Schools. If you have a Seattle education issue you’d like her to investigate, email her at linda@lindathomas.com.

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Seattle's Child, a publication of the Washington Post Company
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