Because Research is Haaaaaaaaaard

In August I did a post about some terribly slanted research from the Washington Policy Center.  I never really expected to hear anything about it again, but lo and behold the inimitable Mrs. Finne has provided an update:

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction contacted me today, November 21, 2013, with additional information about Duty Root 61. The staff  explain that, in addition to public employees who are paid to work for unions, Duty Root 61 could include teachers on paid administrative leave because they are under investigation.  Here is the official definition:  "Duty Root 061:  Certificated on Leave - An individual on paid certificated leave from the district other than normal vacation leave or normal paid sick leave. Includes union representatives."

OSPI staff say they do not know how many employees are on paid certificated leave because they are working for unions or because they are under investigation, so a breakdown of the 60 people I report here is not possible without contacting each individual on the list.

Yeah, I'm calling shenanigans.

When that post first showed up in my Facebook feed it didn't take me 10 minutes to Google some of the most obvious discrepancies on the list (Mabton with a full time president? Really?) and find out that Liv's initial assertion--"New research by Washington Policy Center shows public education funds are being diverted from school budgets to pay the salaries and benefits of executives at private labor union"--was being built on a foundation of shifting sands.  She's at least amended the web page--but not the printed report--to show that there's more than a little gray here, but the whole "is not possible without contacting each individual on the list" is just silly when you consider that this whole contretemps began with data that was reported by the school districts to OSPI....

....so why not just ask the school districts?  There's only 39 of them, and they're all listed in the school directory, so why not take the research to the obvious conclusion?  This isn't a difficult bit of action research to do, and it could be interesting data to have what with the legislative session three short weeks way--go for it, Liv.  It might be edifying.

Read more here, if any.

Liv Finne Shames Herself Again; Facebook Doesn't Care

What frustrates me about Liv is that she is purposefully lazy in what she does, but at the end of the day she knows she doesn't really have to be accurate because accuracy doesn't really matter to what she's trying to accomplish.

Her newest "research" with the Washington Policy Center's name attached to it is prima facie ridiculous, but I've seen at least three conservative people on Facebook--people that I have an awful lot of respect for--repeat it as a verifiable truth, and that's maddening.  I think, unfortunately, that it gives some of them a conclusion that they really want to believe, but this isn't research, and the fact that it's given any sort of credence is a pretty powerful statement about just how dishonest the debate around school reform has gotten.  I'm not going to bother to fisk the whole diatribe, but here's the money paragraph:

In 2012-13, Washington school districts report they paid salaries and benefits to private outside labor organizations for the equivalent of 60 full-time positions, enough to provide full teaching staff for two elementary schools. The funds were diverted through a budgeted account called “Duty Code 61, Suffix 0, Certificated on Leave.” Union executives received an average of $68,783 each per year in public education funds, or about $7,000 more than the average pay of teachers who worked in Washington public school classrooms during the 2012-13 school year.

 That would certainly be a scandal.  That would also be a clear violation of state law as a gift of public funds, so if this is real (spoiler: it isn't), Liv should be filing formal complaints against every single one of those school districts for violating state law.  She's got them dead to rights!

Here's why Liv isn't beating a path to the courthouse door:  she herself knows that she's full of shit, because she made this same mistake three years ago in an attack against Mary Lindquist.  It was pointed out to her nicely in the comments section (lost, unfortunately, when the blog moved over) and far less nicely by me here on this blog that the money that school districts pay out for full-time release union presidents is reimbursed by the unions they're elected to lead.  There is no giveaway of tax dollars here--that would be illegal, and do you really think that school district superintendents would allow it to happen?

I was polite enough to call it a lie of omission back then, but when the lie has been pointed out and is repeated again it's more than appropriate to just call it intentional.  Liv repeats it because it scores the points that she wants to score, which is perfectly fine, but it certainly isn't "research" in any acceptable sense of the word.

Then there's the chart at the bottom of her post, where Liv names names and calls out those 60 full-time union positions.  Let's talk about some of those names:

*She says that Mabton, with less than 900 students, has a full time union president.  The guy on her list was arrested in May of 2012 for theft, and resigned in September.  Liv should know better than to use the preliminary S275 data to make a chart like this, but research is haaaaaaaard.
*Kirstin Nicholson is, in fact, the president of the Central Kitsap EA, but given that she's one (1) person I doubt that she's really released as three (3) FTE employees.  For Christ's sake, Liv, you didn't notice that when you published the chart?
*Tacoma must have one hell of a union, because they apparently have 11 different union officers on full time release, which would be a neat trick when places like Seattle, Spokane, and Kent only have 1.
*And one of those 11 is a principal, who is by definition not a WEA member.  The $115,000 salary is a bit of a tell in that regard, something I would expect an education expert like Liv to pick up on.  Through the magic of Google here's an article about when she got in trouble for cussing at kids.

So we don't really know how many of the people on that list are union leave.  Because Liv couldn't be arsed to do the basic fundamentals of fact checking and proof reading, her entire "research" is flawed.  This would fail most college classes, but apparently it's A-OK for the Washington Policy Center, and that's regrettable.

I may disagree on policy with the Freedom Foundation, but they're at least thorough.  We may have different conclusions, but I can at least look at the material they put out and see how they got there.  Plus, I respect Trent England's beard.

The Washington Policy Center, though, is a joke on education reform. This is an absolute, provable certainty, and it's never going to get any better.

Read more here, if any.

Oh, Liv

It was a single parent, which is a tad embarrassing since Stand for Children had put out an all-call for people to come down and testify, and when Stand's own lead guy (Dave Powell) couldn't be arsed to testify on behalf of the bill, and when even rock-solid reformers like Rep. Magendanz are asking tough questions about the bill, the bill's a dead parrot.

Read more here, if any.

Poor Form, Liv

No, I'm not talking about the wonderful planted article in the Washington State Wire where they didn't note that you had applied for the Charter Commission and not been selected, which seems like it would have been a relevant fact to know about someone who was then slagging on people who had been selected.

Nor am I talking about this one where you yourself failed to mention that, like me, you weren't selected for the Charter School Commission.

I'm just rather surprised that someone who dislikes teacher unionism wouldn't have picked up on the fact that Springdale/Mary Walker is one of the largest unorganized locals in all of Eastern Washington.  There is no WEA presence there.  Hasn't been in quite some time.  Springdale also has this beautifully incestuous relationship with Valley through their Padeia High School co-op, and Valley has been exploiting every fucking loophole in the book one of the leaders in on-line education for years now.  They're also mostly unorganized.

I think you're raging against your own people.

Read more here, if any.

The Worst Education Analyst In the State Strikes Again!

So Liv Finne wandered over to the LEAP website looking for info, and she used it to turn out yet another one of her talking points:

In 2010-11, schools added an additional 235 employees to school payrolls, increasing from 101,675 employees in 2009-10 to 101,910 employees in 2010-11.

"See, there's more employees! Funding's great! Ignore all those lying assholes who actually work in the schools, they don't know how to use the internet the way I do!"

But there's two things Liv isn't telling you, and I'm not really sure that she understands either of them:

1) That same LEAP website shows that enrollment in the state went up by about 6,000 students; in tight financial times this makes sense, as parents can't afford private tuition any longer and pull their kids into the public schools instead.

The state funds high schools at a ratio of 1 teacher for every 28.7 students; in grades K-3, it's 25.23:1. Even if you use the higher number--hell, let's round it to 29 for fun--you would still have an increase of about 207 FTE, and that's only the teachers. If I played around with the formulas for bus drivers, paraprofessionals, etc., I'm willing to bet I'd get pretty close to 235.

The point: when Liv makes a deal out of there being more employees without noting that there are also more kids, it's a lie of omission.

2) The most important thing on the LEAP webpage is the little disclaimer at the top of the far righthand column: "District Budgeted". The figures that she's playing with are from the district BUDGETS for 2010-2011 (the F195 form) and not the ACTUAL for 2010-2011 (the F196 forms, which will start rolling out soon enough).

What's the difference? Most all of those budgets were built with $200+ millions dollars of stimulus act jobs money figured in, money which was later clawed back by the state to plug last year's worst budget hole ever. Take out that money--hey, the state did--and spending is just about the same.

I'll fisk the rest of her column a different day. Right now, it's time to go do report cards for my 28 students.

Read more here, if any.

Liv Finne: Knows All, Sees All

I really wanted to call this post "Liv Finne: Knows Fuck-All, Sees Fuck-All", but blogger doesn't like the strike tag in the header of a post. Which is kind of ironic, considering the topic.

The Tacoma Education Association ended their strike this week (yes, the one I was wrong about), and that gave Liv some brief cause for joy:

The final agreement represents an important victory for students. By gaining flexibility in work assignments district officials will be better able to place the best teachers in the classroom, not just the ones with the most seniority. But the entire conflict could have been avoided.

Note that this was posted on Thursday at about 5:30 in the morning, according to the tagging on Google Reader. Later that day The News Tribune offered that they didn't have any details to share yet, meaning that the paper of record for Tacoma was either scooped by Liv Finne or that Liv was talking out of her ass.

Later on Thursday the teachers of Tacoma voted to ratify the contract by a margin of 1,683 yes to 15 no, so either 99%+ of the members of the TEA voted for a contract that isn't in their best interests, or Liv was talking out of her ass.

King 5 TV provided the final piece of the puzzle Thursday evening:

The way the district reassigns teachers, which was the main point of contention for many teachers, will not change in the current school year. But starting this year a committee of teachers and school district officials will look at potential changes for next year. The union originally wanted to maintain the current system based on a teacher’s seniority. Under the contract, any changes in the policy would need a two-thirds majority.

So that flexibility, that important victory? It's in a committee that needs a super-super-majority to effect change. Liv's post makes no sense, unless you look at it through the lens of "Anything to make teachers look bad".

This isn't a first for Liv. It was about this time last year that we talked about her being lead around by the nose by the since-disgraced Maria Goodloe-Johnson during the negotiations between the Seattle Schools and their teachers. Liv loves her administrators; the teachers in the classrooms, not so much.

Read more here, if any.

I Kinda Suspected

From the August 1st edition of The Nation Magazine, in an article titled Starving Public Schools:

ALEC's real motivation for dismantling the public education system is ideological--creating a system where schools do not provide for everyone--and profit-driven. The corporate members on its education task force include the Friedman Foundation, Goldwater Institute, Washington Policy Center, National Association of Charter School Authorizers and corporations providing education services, such as Sylvan Learning and the Connections Academy.

Liv's got a posse, and they're both well funded and in the game for their own purposes.

Read more here, if any.

An Education. It's a Recent Movie. Just Sayin'.

Read more here, if any.

The Weekly Liv

Some more ed reform groupthink, courtesy of the echo chamber that is Liv Finne:

Last week Bill Gates and Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education, spoke in favor of re-examining the extra bump in salary states give to teachers who hold a masters degree. This bump amounts to $11,000 per teacher in Washington, totaling $330 million. The University of Washington's Center for Reinventing Public Education has convincingly shown that these masters degrees (90% of which are masters in education)confer no benefit on student learning. See Stretching the School Dollar, edited by Frederick Hess and Eric Osberg.

Oddly enough, I've read the book. It's a rehash of everything that's been said about education reform in the past few years, but let's go right to the section that Liv is talking about.

It's in Chapter 3, on page 90. It was written by Marguerite Roza, who interestingly also wrote the report about Masters degrees that Liv cites. To bolster the study, she sends you to read a chapter from a book written by the same person who wrote the study. Later on, the Roza study is cited again (chapter 5, page 145) and again in chapter 10 (page 273).

So cite the study, then cite the book that cites the study, then refer to a newspaper article that cites the study, too. Echo....echo....echo....

For good measure later on, Liv does her usual and takes things a bridge too far:

I wonder how many great teachers have left public education for private schools because of this demeaning and disrespectful pay scale.

Public school teachers deserve better treatment. They should get what private school teachers take for granted: pay based on their ability to increase student learning, as judged by someone who knows them best ---their school principal.

Yes, Liv, I'm sure that the private schools are rife with former public school teachers who just got so damned sick of the disrespect heaped on them by the salary schedule. By the way, what are those average salaries again?

AVERAGE TEACHER BASE SALARY:

Public School: $49,630
Private School: $39,690
(source)

That darn salary schedule is really holding the public school teachers down, innit?

Read more here, if any.

The Weekly Liv

I was going to do a full fisking of this column from Liv Finne of the Washington Policy Center, but after a year of pointing out that she tells the same half-truths over and over again, it's getting repetitive.

She sets up the Harlem Children's Zone as a cure-all; the research is mixed.

She praises charter schools; their results are mixed, too.

She complains about all the things that she presupposes principals can't do, but never has all that much to say about what they can do.

She points out correctly that the public has voted down charter schools, and says that we should vote again. I welcome that challenge, because when the proponents are people as bad at reading research as Liv is then I'm more than happy to have the debate. Seriously, this is trite:

The research is solid that high-quality charter schools outperform traditional public schools.

...and the sort of framing of the argument that won't stand up to any serious examination.

Where have the capable conservative commentators on education in Washington State gone?

Read more here, if any.

It's Takes Character to Admit When You're Wrong

So kudos for that, Liv, even if the "hidden from public view" clause is fairly funny when you consider that one of your commenters was right along with me in pointing it out.  It's hard to make the argument it's hidden when people are talking about it on the internet, iznit?  And that pay raise would roughly correlate to the changes in the state salary schedule in 2007 and 2008, if I'm doing the math right.

And on we go.

Read more here, if any.

If You Only Have One Note, Play It With All Your Might

It's your daily dose of Liv Finne:

This week, the Washington Education Association's president Mary Lindquist released talking points against Waiting for Superman, spinning the facts by saying Washington state has the equivalent to charter schools in its alternative schools. This spin fails miserably. First, charter schools are banned in Washington state. This union has seen to that.

Here, as usual, Liv chooses to ignore the fact that it's the voters who have repeatedly turned back charter schools. I'm sad that Liv and the Washington Policy Center hate democracy, but there it is.

Second, the 5 alternative schools Ms. Lindquist cites include Aviation High, Delta High, TAF Academy and a couple of others which are allowed some autonomy from union and district rules. These schools only operate because of the vision of their school leaders, who have managed to overcome union and district opposition through sheer grit and determination, and with the help of infusions of cash from the private sector.

Liv, do you really want to put words in the mouths of the leaders of those schools and say that they "only operate" because they've overcome their respective school districts?

Really? 'Cuz that could get awfully uncomfortable, awfully fast. Further, it's humorous to me when those who demand more innovation in the public schools then procede to crap all over the innovation that we currently have.

And having 5 schools out of Washington's total of 2,250 schools free to operate from union rules is like saying all the inmates in the prison are free because 5 out of 2,250 are allowed to visit their families.

Well, there's those five schools. And Valley, Springdale, Steptoe, Benge, Orchard Prairie, Almira, St. John, Sprague, Lamont, Queets, and a couple others I'm forgetting that don't have collective bargaining agreements in place.

The conceit that Liv operates under is that if the teachers are organized, then the district is somehow being restrained. This has no basis in either practice or reality, but if it gives her a guiding light, so be it.

We taxpayers fund this spin machine. Mary Lindquist draws a salary of $66,123 from the state of Washington as a Certificated On Leave employee of the Mercer Island School District. In addition, as president of the WEA, her salary is $163,479 plus $14,925 in pension benefits.

This is a lie of omission; the WEA reimburses Mercer Island for those costs.

School districts automatically deduct union dues from the salaries of teachers across the state, and this union receives well in excess of $70 million a year in this way. Automatic deduction of union dues by school districts could be made illegal by our lawmakers, but they are afraid to take on this powerful union, as they use this huge fund to go after lawmakers who don't toe the line.

I always have to chuckle when I see those who would feign being powerless, like Liv Finne, talk about the big bad union setting the agenda for what will happen in Washington State. The tenure laws just changed, our two LID days went away (that's a pay cut), and the last ed reform bill (even without the Race to the Top money!) is still the law of the land.

If we're getting everything we want, and we've gotten a series of turds, then where the hell did our Christmas lists get crossed up?

Death, taxes, and Liv. I like the constants in life.

Read more here, if any.

Maria Goodloe-Johnson to Liv Finne: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

The players? Maria Goodloe-Johnson, superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools, and Liv Finne, Education Analyst for the Washington Policy Center, a conservative-trending think tank.

The timeframe? August, when Goodloe-Johnson tossed a molotov cocktail into the SPS/SEA negotiations with her SERVE proposal for student achievement.

On August 2nd, at the height of the negotiations, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson talks with Liv and gets some publicity:

Last week Seattle Schools Superintendent Dr. Marie Goodloe-Johnson told me the District’s collaborative negotiating process with the teachers union (the Seattle Education Association), in place since April, had broken down. The Seattle School District is in the midst of a lengthy collective bargaining process on a new teacher contract that will determine the personnel costs taxpayers will have to pay in the years ahead.

With the failure of the collaborative approach, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson said the District will now be engaged in classic, and contentious, union/management negotiations, a process that will likely take many months. She declined to specify what contract provisions had led to the break-down.

I asked whether the District was preparing for a possible strike. Her answer was, “Yes, but I’m not at liberty to give out details.”

There's the feed: negotiations are breaking down, collaboration has failed, and we (the district) are getting ready for a strike. Scary!

A few weeks later, on August 27th, Liv carries some more water:

Seattle students return to school in about two weeks. Their teachers should be ready and eager to greet them. A strike would deny students access to education, and teacher strikes are illegal under state law. Our research shows the Superintendent's initiative is reasonable, will help children learn, and deserves widespread community support.

And then on August 30th, in a post titled "Children Who Can't Read or Do Math OK By Seattle Teachers Union":

The most important factor for student learning is the quality of the teacher. The Seattle teachers union, by clinging to past practices, is being unfair to Seattle's students.

So we're be-bopping right along in the attack role, singing the Goodloe-Johnson siren song in the key of F, but then the SEA and the SPS reached an agreement, and you can see the tone start to change. From September 1st, and this is literally the entire post:

Everyone is awaiting release of the new contract agreement between the Seattle School District and the teachers' union, the Seattle Education Association. All indications are that it may be an historic agreement to improve the quality of education for Seattle schoolchildren. Teachers will vote on the agreement tomorrow. More on this later....

"Hey guys! How's that agreement coming along? I hear you got a good one! Happy to have helped! Guys! Guys?"

Move along to September 2nd, when the WPC is still trying hard but dawning recognition is starting to sink in:

Seattle Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and Seattle School Board members deserve credit for this negotiating this ground-breaking contract, reached after four months of difficult and arduous negotiations.

...............

Unfortunately, School Board members are providing no funding for the agreement. Apparently they plan to ask voters this fall for a special tax increase to pay for rewarding good teachers in public schools. This is disappointing. The signal policy improvement for Seattle school children is left unfunded. School Board members have placed their most important education reform at the bottom of their funding priorities.

A couple of weeks pass. Liv talks about innovation schools and charter schools. She got back around to Seattle on September 17th, and apparently they lost her number:

On September 1st, the District reached a closed-door agreement with its teachers union. The teachers ratified the agreement September 2, but it has not yet been made public.

I wanted to see the exact language of the agreement, to see which portions of the new evaluation and reward system for teachers depend on a tax increase. So I called the district to get a copy of the agreement. I was told the agreement would not be revealed until the week of September 13th, because specific “language was still being hashed out.”

This should worry taxpayers and parents. Platoons of district and union lawyers are working behind the scenes on this agreement. They are fighting over the language, and whatever they are fighting over is not trivial. They are fighting over substance.

I am worried. I don’t like the fact that district and union officials are operating in this clandestine fashion.

A week passed. Today I called the district again. Yet again, I was told that the agreement was not available. And that the public can’t see it for at least another week.

This is uncommonly strange. What is being added and deleted after the fact?

For what it's worth, the Seattle EA has the contract posted on their website under the collective bargaining tab. They also posted a 34 page document detailing the differences. It's kind of silly to say that "union officials" are being "clandestine" when all the information is right there for anyone--even the Washington Policy Center--to see.

It's been said that Goodloe-Johnson would like to be considered in the same echelon of urban superintendents that Michelle Rhee lives in and that Arne Duncan came from. It's a critique that follows Broad graduates all over the country, and to some in the ed reform movement it's taken as a sign of strength--you've got to break a few eggs, and all.

What's pretty apparent, though, is that there's a difference between being on the boat and being pulled along by the bow wave, and in this metaphor it's pretty obvious who the dinghy is.

Read more here, if any.

Mythbusting: We Didn't Win Race to the Top Because We Don't Have Charter Schools

It's everyone's favorite theory of the day!

Randy Dorn:

Dorn said in a telephone interview that he believed Washington was not chosen as a finalist because its application did not include a plan for allowing charter schools in the state.

Josh Feit:

While the education reform bill that passed in Olympia this session did gesture toward some of the Race to the Top goals like giving the state authority to intervene in failing schools; approving of alternative paths to teacher certification; extending teacher tenure from two years to three; and creating a new teacher and principal evaluation systems (like a four-tiered rating system instead of simply good or bad—and lowering the legal standard for getting rid of delinquent principles), it did not radically alter the teacher evaluation system—as Obama wants—by tracking evaluations to student data. Nor did it embrace charter schools, another Obama standard.

The Association of Washington Business:

Washington was not included as a Round 2 Finalist. One of the key reasons is Washington does not allow charter Schools.

The Seattle Times:

The fact that Washington wasn't a finalist didn't come as a surprise. From the beginning, many voiced concerns that Washington wasn't making the kinds of changes that would earn a high score in the competition, given the federal government's criteria.

Washington lost about 40 points off the bat, for example, because it doesn't allow the creation of charter schools.

The Politics Northwest Blog at the Seattle Times:

Washington state on Tuesday failed to advance in the competition for $3.4 billion in education grants under Race to the Top, a performance that could not been helped by voters' rejection of charter schools that are a key -- albeit not mandatory -- part of the Obama administration's reform agenda.

And first out of the gate to lay this at Governor's feet, Liv Finne of the Washington Policy Center. She brings up the charters thing, too.

---

This is all well and good, but how about we ask someone who really knows: The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Finds Eight Race to the Top Finalists Supportive of Charter Schools

Well, that's interesting, since there's 19 finalists. Let's skip ahead in their press release, but I'd encourage you to read the whole thing:

Unfortunately, three finalists fail to meet at least one Race to the Top guideline because they continue to block charter school growth. They are: Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio. Despite education reform efforts that may exist in these states, they are keeping high-quality charter schools from bringing parents another public school option. Kentucky, in particular, has yet to pass a charter school law.

Three more states with no charter schools, and yet they made it through to round 2. If it killed us, how come it didn't kill them?

Maryland, also a finalist, was shown to have the worst charter school law in the country according to our rankings.

The worst charter school law in the country. The absolute worst. They're a finalist, too.

For more evidence, go look at the detailed scores from the first round of the Race to the Top grants. Remember there that 41 states had applied and only two (Delaware and Tennessee) were awareded the grants. Given that, you'd think from all the sturm und drang above that it must have been the charter school points that set them apart, right?

Not really. Out of 40 points, Delaware scored 31, Tennessee scored 30. 14 states scored higher than both of them. The two places that got perfect scores for charters, Colorado and DC, were only in the middle of the pack for overall score.

We won't really know what impact our lack-of charter schools law had until they release the scores at the beginning of September. I'd suspect it'll probably be a lower score than most, but we don't know what the overall impact of our "innovation schools" gambit will be until then (innovation schools like Aviation High, which Secretary Duncan visited two weeks ago. Given that, and based on the available evidence so far, it's intellectually dishonest to say that charter schools killed Washington State's application.

Read more here, if any.

Your Weekly Liv Finne

Watch it here. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a statewide policy about promotion or retention--that's why you see policies diverge so widely from district to district. Additionally, the research base on retention says that it doesn't work, so it's an unfortunate viewpoint to put forward.

I've retained kids. If you think that a test on a day can or should determine whether a child should be in the next grade or not, you don't know kids.

There's also her slam of Head Start as a "daycare program", which is uncalled for.

Read more here, if any.

Liv Finne Jumps the Shark

I've had my fun these past few months taking potshots at Liv Finne, the education expert on the staff of the Washington Policy Center. She and I don't agree on much when it comes to school improvement, but the debate is every bit as important as the result, and I'm glad that we have voices like hers in the chorus.

That said, her most recent post over at the Washington Policy Center's blog is one of the silliest that you're ever going to chance to read on education. Wrong on the objective facts, made up out of whole cloth in places, this is education analysis at its worst. Let's document the attrocities:

Governor Gregoire announced last week that she would not seek the $250 million that would likely be Washington’s share in federal Race to the Top funds.

No, she didn't. From the Governor's press release:

Gov. Chris Gregoire today announced that Washington state will submit an application in phase two of the Race to the Top grant application process.

"Submit an application in phase two" is not anything like "announced last week that she would not seek the $250 million." Further, $250 is the high end of the dollar amount that we'd qualify for, and that money is still there in Round 2.

President Obama designed the program so states can use what they learn in the first round of applications to succeed in getting grants in the second round.

No, he didn't. First round losers are invited to reapply, but it's the same principle as when you're taking the GREs: if you suck at analogies, you don't need to take the test and fail to see that you suck at analogies, you study the damned analogies and take the test when you can pass. If we suck at school reform and need legislative action to qualify for this money, then it makes sense to take that action first then apply. What Liv is asking the state to do here is take on a project that is doomed to failure in round 1, and that's a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Washington lags significantly behind other states in enacting important education reforms.

I can't argue with this, only because it's one of those wonderfully general statements that can be taken to mean almost anything. It's the next part, where Liv names specifics, that the fun really begins.

Here are a few examples of Washington’s outdated education policy:

- A ban on charter schools

Why aren't there any charter schools in Washington? Because the voters rejected a charter school law in 2004 by a 58%-42% margin; this, even though the anti-charter crowd was outspent by 3-to-1. It was the third time in 8 years that charter schools failed. If Liv hates the voters of Washington that's her prerogative, but saying that we don't have charter schools without getting into the reason why is just silly.

- A ban on merit pay for teachers

If anyone can show me, either in the WACs or the RCWs, a ban on "merit pay" for teachers, I'd love to see it, because I don't think any such ban exists.

- A ban on hiring any qualified profressional as a teacher

To offer a counterpoint here, I'd like to bring in a different perspective: Liv Finne from April of this year.

Last week, Peter Callahan of the Tacoma News Tribune pointed out to me---thanks Peter--that the provision in the new basic education bill, HB 2261, allowing public school administrators to hire teachers of "unusual competence" without certification already exists in law: RCW 28A.150. 260.

I hope that April Liv and December Liv never meet each other, because those two gals just wouldn't get along.

- Tight restrictions on how principals can run their own schools

Note the implied helplessness here--principals would love to turn their schools around, if only it wasn't for the bureaucracy. Never mind that the Race to the Top money is going to come with strings attached; that's an unfortunate fact that disagrees with the narrative that Liv is trying to get going here, so we're going to ignore it.

- Lower academic standards in math and science

No, they aren't. Randy Dorn may have made a proposal, but it sounds like it's DOA before it even gets to the legislature. Now, if she's trying to get at what external evaluations of our standards have said, fine, but if so, she failed to make the point.

- The majority of public school employees are not teachers

I've already debunked this talking point, and if it's the best ammo that the Washington Policy Center has to make the case for school change, then we can officially say that they are out of ideas.

Did you know that the majority of radio station employees are not DJs? Scandalous!
Did you know that, when the Sonics left Seattle, the majority of team employees weren't even basketball players? No wonder they failed!
Did you know that the majority of airline employees aren't pilots? Ridiculous!

And don't forget: Liv thinks that counselors, librarians, and nurses don't matter, because they're not classroom teachers. That's the slander hidden in her argument.

- Centralized curriculum that stifles teachers’ creativity in class

So two bullet points back Liv was railing against our low standards, and yet here there's something wrong with centralized curriculum. You can't have it both ways: if every child in the state is supposed to achieve at a certain level on a certain set of learnings, then of course the curriculum is going to be standardized.

- Union seniority, not classroom performance, determines teacher assignments.

There's also the whole "teacher choice" thing, too, and while Liv often talks about classroom performance, I've not seen her talk about how exactly that performance would be measured in a reasonable way. It's a fun exercise to make the union the boogeyman in the system, but again--what are the facts?

While school funding is at an all-time high, Washington spends more than $10,200 per year on each student, only 59 cents of every education dollar reaches the classroom.

First, consider the disconnect--how is it possible that less than half of school employees are classroom teachers, and yet nearly 60% of the money is reaching the classroom? The answer is because teachers make more that support staff, which is why this is yet another meaningless statistic.

And does that $10,000 per student figure grab you? It should, because it's crap. Playing around over at the OFM website shows that the two-year K-12 budget is about $15,700,000,000. That means that this year the state will spend $7.85 billion dollars on K-12. Divide that by the 986,000 FTE we have in the state, and you get $7,961 per student. That's what Washington spends.

(Note: I could have easily shaved another $300 off of that by using headcount instead of FTE.)

Like any good writer, though, the best has been saved for last, and this is a doozy:

Research shows that leaders of the state’s powerful teachers union remain the primary obstacle to reform. In January legislative leaders will consider ways of changing the state’s education regulations to make Washington eligible to receive the added assistance being offered by President Obama, but immovable union opposition is the main underlying reason Washington will not receive Race to the Top funds.

Consider that first sentence on it's own:

Research shows that leaders of the state’s powerful teachers union remain the primary obstacle to reform.

"Research shows"? Really, Liv? If this is the casual relationship that you have with research, that explains an awful lot about the other mistakes you've made in your writings.

That's just lazy. "Research shows"? Show me the research on how the WEA has blocked all of your "reforms" above, and I'll show you screed from people with an agenda. That's a poor, ridiculous shortcut--"research shows", my heiny. If that's how you're going to use the term, then you can't be trusted with any research, ever, that you bring to the table, because you clearly don't understand what research is.

I may not agree with the Evergreen Freedom Foundation when it comes to education, but they at least spend the time on projects that add to the overall discussion. Similarly, I'm not a supporter of the League of "Education" Voters, but damned if they haven't been making more headway in Olympia lately than any other education group.

Liv hits more wrong notes than Florence Foster Jenkins. It's regretable, because the debate deserves better.

Read more here, if any.

What is National Board Certification, Anyhow?

Education expert Liv Finne doesn't really seem to know what National Board Certification is:

The Seattle Times article also reveals that, in order to qualify for these funds, the state will be attempting to describe its National Board Certification for teachers as a performance pay system. This program does not involve evaluating the individual performance of teachers for their effectiveness in the classroom. Rather, National Board Certification gives bonuses to teachers willing to take another set of classes and/or willing to work in inner-city classrooms.

"Gives bonuses to teachers willing to take another set of classes" is a real slap at the work that National Board Certified teachers have to do to get the certificate. It's not the Masters degree, Liv, it's something far beyond that. I talk pretty regularly with the teachers in my district who have gotten their certification and who are working towards it, and it's not an easy thing.

I'll be interested to see where the state's gambit on this goes, though. Remember that the HB2261, the big education reform bill from the last session, created a new definition of a master teacher that requires attaining National Certification to get to the top of the pay scale, an action that predates all of the clamor around Race to the Top, so the state could be slightly ahead of the curve.

Remember, too, that in his remarks to the NEA Representative Assembly earlier this year Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke highly of both the National Board program:

We also increased the number of National Board Certified teachers in Chicago to about 1,200—from about a dozen when I started. We partnered with the union and with the Chicago Public Education Fund, which is a group of business leaders. Together we grew NBC teachers faster than anywhere else in the nation.

....but he also indicated that collaboration matters:

The president and I have both said repeatedly that we are not going to impose reform but rather work with teachers, principals, and unions to find what works.

Here in Washington State you've got a system where the teachers and the WEA are working very strongly together on promoting and expanding National Certification in Washington State. If Secretary Duncan believes in the program, and if he wants to encourage that collaboration, why not have what we do count towards Race to the Top?

Read more here, if any.

Liv Finne Goes Looking for a Boogeyman, Finds the Same One She Always Does, Life Goes On

Liv, dear, if WEA President Mary Lindquist could ashcan the whole Race to the Top nonsense just by making one comment on TV Washington, then either the process itself is built on a foundation of quicksand, or we're not going to get the money and people (like, say, Liv Finne) are already looking to get the scapegoat lined up.

Liv's one of those happy hypocrites who I can't understand, the ones who'll pound the table saying that schools are amply funded, and then talk out the other side of their mouth about how we need to make wholesale changes so that we can please maybe get some of Obama's Dash to the Cash money. Note that money isn't guaranteed, and it isn't forever, but in Liv's world we need to start writing laws all the same.

Read more here, if any.

Liv Finne's War On Librarians Continues

Read all about it here.

Tomorrow, during the TVW special on education, I fully expect her to say that the state spends a bazillion dollars per student, then punch a music teacher, then argue that schools would be pristine if only principals had more power.

Read more here, if any.

It's All Your Fault

In the Kent strike, as with any strike, the teacher's beef is with administration.

Meanwhile, the Kent School District is part of the NEWS lawsuit seeking more funding from the state, thus putting the blame on the legislators.

Senator Claudia Kauffman, of both Kent and the Senate Education Committee, puts the blame back on the district.

Humorless hack Mike Antonucci blames the color orange. The News Tribune blames the economy. Liv Finne, who makes being a blogger quite easy, blames everybody but taxpayers. Publicola finds a way to blame PETA.

Personally, I blame Greg Nickels. That seems to be the thing to do.

Read more here, if any.