The Conley Report, Part V (Section 1.2.1 and 1.2.2): Demands on Washington Schools—Changes in Enrollment and Increased Accountability

5th in a series looking at the Conley Report on school financing in Washington State

Schools have almost as many as statistics as baseball. If some enterprising computer programmer ever got access to the numbers he could put together a great rotisserie teaching league pitting states against states, districts against districts, and even schools against schools.

Anyhow, this is the stats section of the Conley Report, and some of those stats are amazing. Consider:

• The enrollment in the state has risen by 46,000 students since the 1996-1997 school year (p.3).
  
  (Aside: given this, it’s interesting that Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane are all having school closure debates)
  
  
• Our student to teacher ratio is 19.2 to 1, 5th-highest in a country where the national average is 15.8 to 1 (p.3).
  
  
• The percentage of special ed students in the state rose from 10.9% in 1996-1997 to 12.3% in 2004-2005, which meant 19,357 more special ed kids. Part of that is better identification of things like autism, and part of it is specific learning disabilities in areas like math and reading.
  
  
• “The cost of providing special education services may be almost double the cost of providing services for a regular education student,” says the report, citing a 2002 study by the League of Education Voters (p. 4).
  
  
• ELL students grew from 4.7% to 7.1% of enrollment, a 26,686-student growth. For a look at what that might look like in one district, see here.
  
  
• Similarly, the percentage of students taking free or reduced price lunch grew from 31.2% to 35.9%.

You can go back to what the state constitution says about providing education for all children within our borders, and we know that it costs more to educate ELL and IEP students. That’s the whole point of the special ed lawsuit, and I think that’s the point Conley is driving at here.

Section 1.2.2 (pages 7 though 10 of the report) is a review of the brief history of the WASL. Here they touch on the problems we’re having with 10th grade math, including a section on the changes that happened just last fall, so this is a pretty current document.

At the end of the day the undeniable truth is that we do expect more of kids than we did 20 years ago, but the resource base isn't there to make it happen.

Next section: An overview of the history of school funding in Washington. It's really a lot more interesting than it sounds!