Oh, Liv
Read more here, if any.
Labels: charter schools, If it had been a snake, Liv Finne, Washington Policy Center
Labels: Freedom Foundation, health care, Rodney Tom
Labels: Freedom Foundation, League of Education Voters, School board elections
Labels: Austin Jenkins, charter schools, Shannon Campion, Stand for Children

Labels: Legislative Session 2013, This Week in Olympia
Labels: Bruce Dammeier, K-12 Education Committee, Legislative Session 2013, retention, Rosemary McAuliffe, Stand for Children, Steve Litzow
Labels: Cathy Dahlquist, Chad Magendanz, House Education Committee, Monica Stonier, no backsies
"School day" means a minimum of six instructional hours as defined in RCW 28A.150.205 each day of the school year on which pupils enrolled in the common schools of a school district are engaged in academic and career and technical instruction planned by and under the direction of the school. Late start, early release of students, or partial days resulting in less than six instructional hours is prohibited unless the release is for a full school day.
Labels: Legislative Session 2013, reform, Steve Litzow
When you travel in my district, and when you sit with job creators that are hanging on by a thread....they're worried. When consumers don't know what tomorrow holds, in terms of what's coming down from us, they worry. It impacts decisions in families. -- Rep. Norma SmithI agree with the good representative from the 10th Legislative District, and I would encourage her and everyone else involved in governance to understand that teachers feel that uncertainty, too. When the Senate is looking to throw on more, new accountability, to change an evaluation system that was just changed last year after being introduced in 2010, when they want to make the new 3rd grade Common Core-aligned test a high-stakes test where one bad hour for a kid could mean one year of their life--that's uncertainty.
Labels: Legislative Session 2013, Norma Smith, uncertainty
(b) An alternative school may choose to receive a school or a school improvement rating(ibid, by the way--it's an absolutely terrible cut and paste job)
2. An alternative school may choose to receive a school grade under this section or a school improvement rating under s. 1008.341.....and makes an awful lot more sense, given that there really isn't a context for the idea of a "school improvement rating" for Washington State schools. My guess is that when Senator Litzow had the bill written for him, he didn't bother to make sure it was really written to match what we do here.
Labels: ALEC, borrowing, plagiarism, Steve Litzow
(3) Each school that has students who are tested using the assessments administered statewide in reading, writing, mathematics, and science required under RCW 28A.655.061, 28A.655.066, and 28A.655.070 shall earn a school grade, except as follows:There is absolutely no legitimate excuse for this.
(a) To protect the privacy of students, schools, and district testing fewer than ten students in a grade level;
(b) An alternative school may choose to receive a school or a school improvement rating;
(c) Charter schools, unless the charter school governing board chooses to earn a school grade;
Labels: accountability, charter schools, Legislative Session 2013, SBE, Steve Litzow
On Friday, billionaire Bill Gates took aim at school budgets and the master's degree bonus.Also picking up the lede were KOMO TV in Seattle, along with the Seattle Times.
"My own state of Washington has an average salary bump of nearly $11,000 for a master's degree - and more than half of our teachers get it. That's more than $300 million every year that doesn't help kids," he said.
"And that's one state," said Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at a speech Friday in Louisville to the Council of Chief State School Officers. Gates also took aim at pensions and seniority.
This analysis used data from two sources. The 2003-‐04 Schools and Staffing Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics provided state-by-state figures for both the percentage of teachers with masters degrees, and the average salary of teachers at each degree level—bachelor’s or below, master’s, to name a few—for given years of longevity. This analysis used these data to compute the average percentage salary increase awarded for education credits earned beyond a bachelor’s degree. The analysis then applied the percentage increases to the more recent state-by-state average salary figures and total number of teachers from the National Educators Association’s 2008-‐09 Salary Survey, in order to compute the dollar value of the master’s bump in each state.(Personal aside: National Educators Association? You're an expert on reforming public schools, and you can't even get the name of the frackin' teacher's union right?)
Funding for this work was provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.Money well spent, Bill.
Labels: colleges, Gary Alexander, Guaranteed Education Tuition, Legislative Session 2013, Rodney Tom, tuition
Labels: Appropriations Committee, Higher Education, Ross Hunter, Timm Ormsby, WSSDA
Labels: Achievement G, PESB, WEST-B

Labels: Achievement Gap, Huffington Post, PESB
One big potential cut could be $605 million by eliminating the state's education levy equalization program, an idea has never gained traction in the Legislatures. The program helps districts with lower property tax revenues; those districts are often in struggling communities......I get nervous, especially with the profile that the local levy swap idea gained towards the end of the Gubernatorial election.
Labels: Crosscut, Levy Equalization
Labels: Clint Didier, Dino Rossi, Election 2016, Jay Inslee, Matt Shea, Michael Baumgartner, Rob McKenna