Seattle Public Schools and Seattle Education Association entered into a shared commitment to close the achievement gap and to make necessary systemic changes required to accomplish this. Strategies include:

Identify a subsets of schools in greatest need of extraordinary measures to close the achievement gap;
Provide those schools with resources to make these changes;
Provide teachers and other building staff in those schools with tangible incentives to do the work and make the changes required;

Currently two subsets of schools (Flight One and Flight Two) have been identified.

Schools in Flight I : Rainier Beach, Aki Kurose, African American Academy, Rainier View, Emerson, Dunlap, Brighton, Wing Luke, and The New School.

Schools in Flight II: Chief Sealth, Denny, Arbor Heights, Concord, Gatewood, Highland Park, Roxhill, Sanislo.

Goals of this project are to provide concentrated resources and professional development at designated schools in order to close the achievement gap. The focus of these efforts will include:

Work with school staff in each school and across the flight to build professional learning communities as a research based means for professional development;
Engage in a concentrated effort to improve family and community partnerships;
Improve instructional strategies for all students through curriculum alignment to promote consistent standards based expectations across the flight.

Flight Schools Contact Information: