Seattle Public Schools is shifting its student achievement goals

Seattle Public Schools hopes to boost second-grade literacy proficiency and graduation rates by 10 percentage points as part of its academic goals for the next five years.  

The board also plans new “guardrails” for the superintendent related to equity, community engagement and student safety and well-being. Both will be used to develop the district’s strategic plan for 2025 to 2030. 

The School Board is expected to vote on the goals and guardrails Wednesday, though the final language could change before then. That’s because the board is still gathering feedback from the community on whether the draft reflects what the community wants. The board also is trying to figure out the best yardstick to assess whether graduating students are set up to succeed after leaving SPS. 

What are the academic expectations? 

The School Board has two goals for 2025 through 2030.

The first calls for increasing the number of second graders who meet or exceed grade-level literacy standards by 10 percentage points by 2030. The district intends to use baseline data from June 2025, so the final target will not be set until spring assessment results are released. 

In a December document, SPS said if the district were to use June 2024 data as a proxy, it would expect the percentage to improve from 56.5% in 2025 to 65.5% in 2030. 

Third-grade literacy is a key indicator of how well students will do during the rest of their K-12 careers. The SPS board argues that focusing on second grade will allow the district to assess students’ performance early and intervene before they get to third grade. 

The second goal calls for boosting the percentage of students who meet state graduation requirements aligned with the students’ “High School and Beyond Plan” — a state graduation requirement — without waivers by 10 percentage points. 

Using 2024 data as a proxy, that number could move from 73% in June 2025 to 83% by June 2030, depending on the final 2025 graduation rate, according to the district. 

Students in SPS’s class of 2024 could apply for several state and district exemptions from graduation requirements, including a state emergency waiver that allowed the district to waive up to one core or flexible credit and/or a graduation pathway requirement for students. The emergency exemption is not available this school year. According to SPS documents, 10.9% of last year’s class used the core credit exemption. 

The document also contains five guardrails for the superintendent. They include directives that the superintendent should not allow inequitable access to educational and instructional opportunities to persist in the school system nor permit learning environments. They also state the superintendent should refrain from taking major decisions to the School Board without first getting input from parents, teachers, students and community members. 

Is Seattle Public Schools aiming high enough? 

School Board Director Liza Rankin, who oversaw the development of the draft goals and guardrails last year when she was the board’s president, doesn’t think so. She wants the goal to increase by at least 15 percentage points, which, she said, is the “minimum we could push for to move the needle for marginalized students.” 

More than 30% of the district’s second graders still would not meet grade-level literacy standards in 2030 under the proposed literacy goal, she said.  

“What I really heard from our community, and what I believe, is that children are very capable,” Rankin said. “And if a full third of our children are not reading at grade level, we need to figure out why. We need to change our approach because we are going to have the same results. What I want to see is a higher target, with strategies that the staff and the superintendent believe will achieve those (goals).”  

It’s a tricky balance to set ambitious but achievable goals, said Board President Gina Topp. 

“We want to push folks, but we also don’t want things to be so far out of reach that you’ll never get there,” Topp said. 

The School Board might also tweak the graduation goal, Topp said. The idea was to ensure that graduation standards were not watered down. 

Focusing on the percentage of students who graduate without waivers might not be the best way to measure postsecondary preparedness, Rankin said. 

In the community sessions last year, families, students and community members said they wanted SPS graduates to be academically prepared and equipped with critical thinking, dual-language and social-emotional skills. They wanted students to have equitable access to educational opportunities, rigorous classes and safe schools. They also sought transparency and community engagement, according to the School Board. 

At a virtual community session earlier this month, some questioned why there wasn’t a goal targeting students’ math performance or one pertaining to students’ performance in middle school. One outstanding question was how the board would hold the superintendent accountable if he violated the guardrails, which some thought were too broad. 

Liz Huizar, the executive director of the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition, an educational advocacy group, said the two goals made sense and reflected what she heard from those who participated in community engagement sessions the organization hosted. 

Huizar said she appreciated the focus on second graders, given the importance of being proficient in third grade. But she is also concerned about the “hyperfocus” on targets and not how much students improve during the school year, she said.  

“I think that would be a good determinant as well,” Huizar said. 

She fears students who appear too far behind might not get the resources to catch up. She would also like to see the connection between SPS’s previous goals — which also emphasized early literacy and high school completion — and the new ones and how the district’s approach would be different this time around.  

As for the graduation goal, Huizar said she is interested in learning about the strategies the district will use to improve the graduation rate and expand opportunities to programs that target college and career readiness. 

What happened with the last set of goals? 

The district met only one of the three goals it set for Black boys from 2019 through 2024. 

The goals included increasing the percentage of Black boys who were proficient or above in third-grade reading from 28% in June 2019 to 70% by June 2024; boosting the seventh-grade math proficiency rate for Black boys from 23% to 45%; and increasing the graduation rate for Black boys who also completed at least one advanced course from 54% to 62%. 

The district met its graduation goal for Black boys but not the others. In spring 2024, 74.1% of Black boys met the graduation goal, according to SPS. Math proficiency fell for Black boys in 2024, to 19.3%. 

While the new goals do not single out Black males, board members said they will continue to track student performance by several demographic markers, including by race, ethnicity and income level. 

What happens next? 

The board is expected to take up the measure for a final vote this week. 

Topp said the board could return to the drawing board if the community says the draft goals and guardrails do not reflect their expectations. While the board sought input from several community organizations and hosted three sessions earlier this month, the community engagement on the draft goals was not “as robust” as she would have liked, Topp said. 

There is a looming deadline. The board wants to approve the goals before deep budget discussions to ensure that money goes toward the district’s priorities, Rankin and Topp said. The goals will be used to develop the district’s strategic plan, which the board wants to adopt in June or July.  

Despite the tight timeline, Topp said it’s important to get it right. 

“I want to leave space for there to be an authentic dialogue with the community about these goals and guardrails,” Topp said.