The WEA Comments on Washington Learns

The WEA has issued their formal, written comments on Washington Learns. Charles Hasse, president of the WEA, and Kevin Teeley, president of the Lake Washington EA and a member of the K-12 advisory committee, both made presentations at the public session in Olympia last month, and I’m willing to guess that the union was out in force at the other hearings as well.

The biggest flaw that they’ve identified with the draft report is that it fails to redefine just what a “basic education” is. This is actually a very important question; defining basic education in Kansas and New York (vis-à-vis the Abbott decision) has lead to some staggering price tags that made lawmakers sit up and take notice.

Mr. Teeley raised the point at the hearings, and it’s mentioned in the WEA’s response as well, that the draft report almost completely ignores the work that was done in the Picus and Odden report earlier. It’s a damn shame. The P&O report is loaded with specifics on class sizes, staffing ratios, and dollar amounts for different groups of kids, while the draft report is so general as to be useless.

The final report is due November 13th; that'll be a big day for Washington schools.