Why Ed Reform in Washington State is Completely Full of Crap Right Now

From the most recent Quality Education Council meeting, the League of Education Voters summarizes:

Concerns about growing budget deficits and lack of funding to implement bold reforms. Ms. Ryan vehemently pushed back saying she hears the budget concerns, but now more than ever is the time to step up and put forward a strong vision for the state — our kids deserve it. Dr. Bette Hyde agreed “125 percent.”

I watched the segment (it's about 2.5 hours in), and I'd say the LEV transcribed it accurately.

I'd also say that Ms. Ryan, of the State Board of Education, and Ms. Hyde, of the Department of Early Learning, are both talking out of their ass, which seems to be the pattern right now.

Exhibit A, right here at the Quality Education Council. Ms. Hyde had anothe quote later on about how people are looking to the QEC for hope (hope of what, who knows?), and that meant they needed to fulfill their charge. Sorry, Bette, but from where I stand in the classroom I'm not looking to you for jack-squat. I'd just as soon you left me alone instead of creating work to justify your existence.

Exhibit B would be Ms. Ryan's very own State Board of Education, which just passed new graduation requirements despite there being absolutely no way to pay for those requirements. But the reasoning goes that, hey, things will get better, and the State Board of Education has to do something, so why not.

You've also got the Professional Educator Standards Board screwing around with cultural competency requirements, the Superintendent of Public Instruction signing on to the common core standards even though we didn't get the Race to the Top money, the Center for the Improvement of Student learning doing who-the-hell-knows what, the Local Levy Workgroup just had a meeting, too, and the districts involved in the Evaluation Pilot Project are also clicking along, and I assume the Department of Early Learning and the Higher Education Coordinating Board are also putting out the paperwork, too.

Right now ed reform in Washington is a sad, expensive Dilbert cartoon with board after board, committee after committee working on scores of different projects and none of them possessed of the moral fibre to admit that we're in a budget crisis and maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be re-arranging the furniture when the house in on fire. The first rule of being in a hole, the one about stop digging? That's not going to happen as long as the Big Shovel lobby that makes up all these commissions keeps thinking that their work trumps the reality that everyone else in the state is having to live with.

If you put them together, the packets from the last Quality Education Council and State Board of Education meetings come up to exactly 800 pages. Not 800 pages of how to preserve what we have, not 800 pages of acknowledgement that we're in the worst budget crisis since the Great Depression--800 pages of change that we just can't afford. And to put it bluntly, if the bureaucracy can't figure that out for themselves, then Lord let the legislature defund them and use the money for something worth a damn. There may well come a time where what Hyde and Ryan want can be--this is absolutely not that time.

And that's my rant.

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.

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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.

Randy Dorn: "We're so screwed."

That's the gist of what I get from this press release, anyhow.

I can't help but note that he calls out levy equalization as a program that isn't considered basic education, which always makes my sphincter clench even though it is true.

It's going to be a hell of a year.

Read more here, if any.

The Top Washington Education Stories to Watch in 2010 (A WEW Special Edition)

If we were to label the aughts, education wise, I think it would have to be the No Child Left Behind Decade. Education reform took on a tone we've not seen before with the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and that new-found emphasis on testing, gaps, and school-level accountability was certainly the defining story.

(Aside: We're sadly left to only imagine what a decade-end Bracey Report would have looked like. Dig him or dislike him, the guy was a hell of a writer.)

This decade for the schools is lining up to be every bit as breakneck as the last was, given that we're starting out with a Secretary of Education in Arne Duncan who has more authority than we've ever seen before and we have a financial crisis hovering over the state budget that has the potential to be absolutely transformative, but quite possibly not in a good way.

Here, then, are my top things to watch in the coming year. Come back next Christmas and give me a grade!

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#10: Funding Administrative Fiddling While Rome Burns. I get that I'm just about the only person in the state whining about this, but I'll be damned if the principle isn't the most important thing. When we're talking about cutting kids health care and laying off teachers while AT THE SAME TIME funding internships for principals and leadership camps for superintendents, something has gone seriously wrong in our priorities. If you want to know why I'm so cynical about the Governor's budget boo-hooing, there it is in a nutshell.

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#9: Election 2010. Come the end of the legislative session in March, this is where the action will be.

On the Federal level, Brian Baird stepping aside in the 3rd CD opens up a seat in the House of Representatives, and that has started a stampede. You've got Republican State Sen. Joe Zarelli thinking about it, along with Republican State Representative Richard Debolt and Democratic State Senator Craig Pridemore and a cast of at least 9 others.

It'll be really intersting to see how things shake out, particularly on the GOP side. If Debolt and Zarelli both decided to run (along with Republican State Representative Jaime Hererra, you could have a ton of open seats suddenly appear in Southwest Washington. Zarelli particularly has been the Republican voice on state budget issues for quite some time; losing him wouldn't necessarily be devastating (there's always a replacement to be found), but it would certainly leave a void until the next perosn came along.

Also at the state level you'll have every House seat and half of the Senate seats open this coming November. The general theme seems to be of a Republican resurgence and Democratic downswing, but with the Tea Party Movement saying some fairly provocative things about RINO Republicans, there's potential for some normally-staid primary campaigns to turn bloody--hell, it's already starting with Herrera.

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#8: College Tuitions--Up! The United Faculty of Washington State run a great blog where they talk about higher education issues; one of the writers, Bill Lyne of Western Washington U, is about as well-informed on education issues as you'll ever hope to find, and a dynamic speaker to boot.

In this post they looked at how the Governor's budget would impact higher education. Put that side-by-each with what's going on in California where students are taking over buildings and forming torch-wielding mobs, which is only OK if Frankenstein's monster is on the loose.

So the trick is that, given the proper legislative authority, the colleges can raise tuition enough to ameliorate the impact of state budget cuts. That cost is then borne by the students, many of whom (particularly at the community college level) are struggling with the mortgage and unemployment problems that are effecting society writ large. Having permission to collect the money isn't the same as having the ability to collect the money, and that's what we're seeing in Cali.

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#7: The WEA vs. The LEV: I'm not a fan of the League of Education Voters; as an organization, I think they're far more interested in change for change's sake than they are in actual school reform. The debate over HB2261 proved this to my satisfaction; some of their comments this past summer drive the point home even more clearly.

The two groups came together briefly to beat down Tim Eyman's most recent initiative, but I think that the changes required to qualify for the Race to the Top money are going to open a whole new can of worms. Throw the Washington State PTA, Stand for Children, the PSE, and all the other groups into the mix as well, and this'll be a Battle Royale.

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#6: Financially Failing School Districts: One of the refrains oft-heard this past year was that there were 5 or 6 school district statewide in serious financial straits. If you believe Randy Dorn, that may only get worse. With pension costs set to spike and the future of levy equalization uncertain, I predict that this is the year that you'll see a school district--I'm guessing a mid-size one--drown in its own red ink. And that leads us nicely into.....

#5: School District Consolidation. When the Governor's budget came out I actually breathed a small sigh of relief, because school district consolidation wasn't nearly as promoted as it had been last year. Trick is, I was looking in the wrong place.

The place to look, oddly enough, is in the work of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC), which has on its agenda for this year a "study of the relationship between the cost and size" of school districts around the state. On a per pupil basis, those kinds of evaluations never favor small schools; it's $60,000 a year to educate a kid in Benge, versus an average of $9,700 in districts like Seattle, Kent, Puyallup, and Spokane. I've got Republican legislators telling audiences that the purge is coming; what that will look like has yet to be determined.

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#4: The Battle Over Levy Equalization. For the districts that I work with here in Eastern Washington, this is the #1 issue with a bullet. For my own local, it's about a $1.4 million dollar impact. Conceivably, that could be 20 teaching positions. 220 of Washington's 295 school districts receive levy equalization money, but the trouble is where those districts are--when the bulk of the state's legislators are in the Seattle metro area, and those districts don't need the LEA funds to get by, I'm not sure they "get it." I think that's why we sometimes see attitudes like this.

(More levy equalization talk here)

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#3: Randy Dorn on Standards--Does He or Doesn't He? When Randy Dorn went to the State School Directors Association meeting last month and called for yet another delay in our math and science mandates, the press, parents, and politicos all took turns beating him like a rented mule. His proposal to the legislature sounds like it's dead on arrival, but the larger issue isn't going to go away: how can we demand that kids pass a test that is constantly changing, with standards that are as ephemeral as if we had written them with our finger in the sand at the seashore?

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#2: The Quality Education Council, McAuliffe and Oemig, and HB2261. The QEC was born out of HB2261, which Senators McAuliffe and Oemig have been traveling the state relentlessly pimping for the past 5 months. The final report from the QEC is due in a couple of weeks, and then we'll see if it's worth anything more than Washington Learns or the Basic Ed Finance Task Force were.

The pro-reform crowd will always say that it's never a bad time to do the right thing, but at the end of the day there really isn't any money--if we were still doing priorities of government, could we really justify spending millions of dollars to reform a system that's being beaten senseless by budget cuts? Right now it feels like we're piling the QEC on top of the changes from the State Board of Education and the Race to the Top, and given all that it's no wonder that teachers feel like they're under siege.

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#1: The Race to the Top. So, how far are we going to go for $150,000,000 and 30 pieces of silver?

In at least one respect Washington is well positioned to cash in on some of Obama's Dash for the Cash--data analysis--but pieces like authorizing charter schools, linking teacher evaluation to student test data, and merit pay are going to be far more problematic. Each of them is going to be its own giant legislative battle, and each is going to expose some fascinating divides within the Democratic party, the school advocacy community, and the legislature writ large.

This is going to be particularly interesting in the run-up to the 2010 election, because these are going to be the kind of votes that many legislators would have much rather taken last year, so they could put some distance between the debate and the upcoming campaign. That could be the poison pill that stalls many of these changes in their tracks, because rushing through a reform is a sure way to get the reform wrong.

Take merit pay. We have models across the nation for how merit pay is being done, but we also have models for how merit pay has fallen apart. The bottom line is that there is no national consensus on what merit pay for teachers should, could, or would look like, and the message that I tend to get from looking at what's been done is that it would be nigh-on impossible to create one system of merit pay that would work for every school in Washington.

Look at TRI Pay, particularly what Dan Grimm wrote in his minority report coming out of the Basic Ed Finance Task Force in 2008. It's perfectly fine to say that it creates an inequitable system, but I'll argue the point until I'm blue in the face that districts NEED that flexibility to meet their needs on the ground. Now expand that out to merit pay--is excellent teaching in Bellevue the same as excellent teaching in Benge? What about our Native American students--is the work that their teachers do fully comparible to the work of teachers in other districts? Or, the extreme example, our juvenile institutions--what would merit look like for them?

And that's only merit pay. Getting everything done that Race to the Top requires by March 11th, the end of the session, will require a ramrod that won't serve the system, the students, or the process. The predictable result is that certain groups will react as their conditioned response dictates, blaming the union and the Governor, while others will again be put on the defensive. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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But that's not the bottom of the list....

#0: The State Budget Crisis and the Public Schools. It's #0, because we have $0. That's the problem in more ways than one.

I was the lead negotiator the last time our contract with my district was up, and there's an adage that goes like this: if you can't get money, get language. With the schools in line to potentially take a $400 million dollar hit, we're not going to get money. The trouble is the language we might get instead. I think that's a big part of the reason we got stuck with HB2261 last year--the legislature couldn't cough up any money, but they could deliver this 111-page behemoth that made an awful lot of promises about how we would raise and spend money in the future. You can also look at the QEC and see how some timelines are getting moved up; my suspicion is that's mainly to give the appearance of doing something, but that the flailing around to be seen could hurt our schools in the near term.

The budget woes tie everything else together. We're being told that we have to go after Race to the Top money because of the budget crisis. School districts are being pushed to the brink because of the budget crisis. HB2261 and the QEC gain new urgency because of the budget crisis. School district consolidation started getting a fresh look because of the budget crisis. Levy equalization is at risk because of the budget crisis.

By mid-March we'll have a better idea of where we're at, but the reverbations of the budget will echo for a long time to come.

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Thanks for reading! Please come back as the year goes on for new editions of the Washington Education Week newsletter, as well as the other fun stuff that makes a blog a blog. Happy New Year!

Read more here, if any.

Washington Education Week #3: Thanksgiving Turkeys Edition

The Race to the Top: With the lull between budget announcements and Legislative Assembly Days, most of the blog chatter this past week has been looking at how Washington State measures up in the federal Dash for the Cash Race to the Top grant program. The League of "Education" Voters has done a 6 part series on their blog that's worth your time to read; also with several blog posts that boil down to "Teachers suck, change everything" are the Partnership for Learning, here. And, just to clear out my RSS reader: Publicola.

I'm working on my own posts on each of the impacted areas, but one thing I do have to chuckle at is just how earnest some of the folks on the pro-RttT side are. "We have to allow the state to just take over failing schools!" they'll protest, without seeming to make the connection that we have laws regarding school boards and local control that are every bit as ingrained in the people of this state as dams and snowy mountain passes.

You can get an inkling of the fight if you go and look at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's School Report Cards. Using their metrics, the worst high schools in the state are in places like Toppenish, Walla Walla, Pasco, Aberdeen, Puyallup, and Coulee City--all represented by Republicans, all places where the community will revolt if you try to send in a bunch of "outsiders" from Olympia to run their schools. "It's for the kids!" needs to be overwhelmingly supported by the evidence to make school takeovers work, and I'm not convinced in the slightest that plan that the State Board of Education has in place gets us where the LEV and SFC want to go.

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Randy Dorn Cares for Children/Randy Dorn Hates All Children: The reaction to the recent proposal by Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn to delay the math and science graduation requirements is still bringing in a ton of reaction. Dorn tried to get out in front of the storm, and a hell of a storm it is: when papers like the Walla-Walla Union-Bulletin are saying that you "continue to undercut the effort to reform — and improve — education", you've got a publicity problem.

Personally, I think that the best, most sensible reaction came from Cliff Mass, a meteorologist of some note at the University of Washington. Keeping science and math as graduation requirements punishes the kids for the failures of adults to get the system right, whether it's the 20 different iterations of testing that we've had in the last decade or trying to define exactly what standards we want to hold them to. The failure of the kids is also the failure of the system, and right now we certainly don't have the system in place to get them all where we want them to be. This thread from the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession is also quite well written and on point. Check out Crosscut as well.

Also not really working in Dorn's favor: President Obama came out this week with a new initiative on expanding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. When the Department of Education is saying higher standards, and the President is saying higher standards, it's pretty clear that Dorn is going against the tide.

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The State Budget: Amber Gunn of the EFF stirred up a hornet's nest over on Crosscut when she echoed Sen. Zarelli's call for a special session to start cutting into the state budget right now. You've got some elected officials in the thread saying pretty incendiary things, and that's always fun!

(Personal aside: You don't hear anyone from any of the professional school organizations talking about a special session, because in a special session there's absolutely nothing good that could happen for schools.)

Publicola has a link to a video that Governor Gregoire put out talking about just how bad things are; consider it the anesthesia before the emergency appendectomy come January. The Capital Record also has the video and some pull-out quotes, here.

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"Merit" Pay in Action, and Inaction: The Superintendent of the Seattle Public Schools, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, met 4 of her 20 performance goals last year. That's a bad batting average, a really bad spelling test, and not exactly anything to write home about on the job.

That's also $5,280 more in her pocket, according to the Seattle Times.

The way that Goodloe-Johnson's contract is strucutred she can earn up to 10% on top of her base salary for meeting her 20 goals; that means that each goal met is worth $1,320. Under the goose/gander school of thought, if the state designed a plan to allow every teacher to earn up to 10% of their salary in incentives, the legislature would have to allocate about another $250,000,000 just to cover the costs.

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Other bits of note from the week:

• Joanne Jacobs on Why Arts Education Isn't a Luxury. The half-time art teacher in my district already knows that she's at risk of getting cut in the budget crunch to come; hopefully, I can use this to help mount a good defense.
  
  
• I love this and want to marry it.
  
  
• The United Faculty of Washington State has put together a great blog on higher education issues here in Washington; you can check it out here.
  
  
• People are flocking to community colleges, which isn't a surprise given high unemployment and a down economy.
  
  
• This commentary on what happens when school levies fail is important, particularly given the current state budget realities.
  
  
• When the teachers take over the schools.

Read more here, if any.

Chatter, Part 2

Randy Dorn was over here in Spokane last week talking at First Presbyterian church. I wasn't able to attend--I teach, every now and again--but a friend who went said that Dorn talked directly about school district consolidation, mentioning specifically "little districts within larger districts", which makes one think of places like Griffin, Orchard Prairie, Great Northern, Benge, Damman, Onion Creek, Mount Pleasent, and College Place.

It's going to be a fun 60 days.

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1/6th of school districts on the brink of bankruptcy?

No direct link available, but this is from the email that the Spokane Library Moms send out to their supporters via the Washington State Library Coalition listserv:

The library issue really symbolizes the failure on the part of
the state to fully fund basic education – but as we all know,
this goes far beyond school libraries. How bad is it? Yesterday
at a hearing in Olympia, State Spdt. Randy Dorn testified that
"42 school districts (14% of districts statewide) are on the
brink of insolvency."

I have a hard time believing that. Can anyone point me to the source material?

Email to the right if you'd rather.

Read more here, if any.

Randy Dorn on the WASL: KILL IT WITH FIRE!

The News Tribune sez it is so, and thus it will be so. I particularly like this comment from "jcathall", who may have been Randy's campaign manager because I don't know who was:

Can you give me one example of how Randy can add origniality and creativity to the process?

Personally I don't think Randy is competant to do the job. I only hope that he is incompetant enough not to hurt anything effectivly before my children graduate highschool.

People accuse Obama of having a Cult of Personality around him, but the Google shows us a lot about what people think Randy is going to do. From a search for "Randy Dorn will":

• ...be a forceful advocate for school funding
  
• ...replace the WASL with a simpler, fairer test
  
• ...replace the WASL with a better, fairer test
  
• ...replace the WASL with a fair and useful exam that is diagnostic
  
• ...correct this waste of taxpayer dollars by replacing WASL
  
• ...replace the WASL with a cheaper, fairer, less time-consuming, test
  
• ...Provide Leadership for School Funding

...et cetera, et cetera.

The take-home, then, is that Randy has a hell of an agenda facing him, but there's also a ton of pressure coming from the Legislature via the Basic Ed Finance Taskforce, as well as the various special interest groups like my own WEA.

Good luck and God speed, Superintendent Dorn. You're going to need it.

Read more here, if any.

I'd Like to Welcome Randy Dorn to the I Thought a Think Family

Item, from the News Tribune:

This from News Tribune columnist Peter Callaghan:

One interesting revelation from Thursday's debate between Randy Dorn and Terry Bergeson is that Dorn, the challenger, said he would support a constitutional amendment to eliminate the school superintendent as an elected office.

Dorn said the top schools job should be appointed, perhaps by the governor.

Bergeson, the 12-year-incumbent, said she thinks it should continue to be elected by the voters.

Me, in July:

On a mailing list I’m on someone recently shared a conversation that they had with a state senator. He echoed what I’ve heard other legislators say during my lobbying trips—Terry Bergeson is ineffective and something needs to change over at OSPI—but then went a step further and said he was considering legislation for this next session that would change the SPI position from an elected one to an appointed one.

That’s an interesting idea. I don’t know that it’s a good idea, but it’s one that merits some conversation.

OK, so he probably got the idea from the same guy I did, and he's probably not a raging ITAT fan who waits with bated breath for the next post, and he might not be getting an I Thought a Think tattoo even as we speak. I think it shows you, though, that there could be more legs to this idea than I initially thought.

Read more here, if any.

What if.....? Superintendent of Public Instruction Edition

It's an idea that I've been playing with for a bit now, and a conversation I had at lunch today helped to spur it along even farther: what would the possible governor/SPI matchups mean for the future of education in Washington State?

There's a great post up at the News Tribune right now comparing the differences between Terry Bergeson and Randy Dorn based on a debate that happened today. You can get the education platforms for Rossi and Gregoire off of their respective websites.

(An aside: Rossi's is much more fully developed. C'mon, Chris)

So let's dream about the future, shall we?

Scenario 1: The incumbents both win. What changes? Very little. The work of the Basic Education Finance Task Force is finished and promptly ignored, much like Washington Learns. Some version of the WASL remains in place, because there's no way in hell that Terry can back away from that test now. The biggest name in education in Washington State turns out not to be either Gregoire or Bergeson, but rather Rep. Dave Quall and Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, because the legislature has already shown an alarming disregard for our Superintendent and I see no reason why that would change. In that environment your committee heads become that much more important. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Results: A WASL, but a different WASL. We keep on keepin' on.

Scenario 2: Same Governor, New OSPI. Fun one to consider. Gregoire has come out in support of the WASL in past years, though that support has become noticably more tepid (especially towards math) as the test becomes a bigger and bigger target for the public. Randy Dorn has come out pretty strongly against the WASL and for ditching the entire system:

For over a decade, OSPI has clung to the test it created—the WASL—which is currently a bureaucratic, exorbitant waste of taxpayer dollars providing no useful information to teachers, students or parents. I will overhaul the assessment system to make it cost effective, less wasteful of precious class time, and capable of providing timely results that aid effective instruction and provide a national comparison of our students' performance. The new system will focus first on improving student learning and the money saved will be put back into the classrooms where it belongs.

Remember that piece about saving money, because it's a Dino plank as well.

A Dorn administration would give Gregoire cover. Don't like the system? Give our new OSPI time to fix it. Hate the WASL? Randy's working on that, too. Randy has some other views (notably merit pay) that would put him at odds with teachers, and it could create an odd dichotomy between the Governor, the WEA, and the OSPI.

In short: the pace of change slows as Dorn tries to shape OSPI in his own image. Governor Gregoire gets more cover. Eventually a new testing system has a chance to grow out of the relationship, but not immediately.

Scenario 3: New Governor, Same OSPI. Pick one to be Felix and the other to be Oscar:

Bergeson: “We’ve changed the culture of learning in our state and we’re on a journey that’s not over,” she said. “It’s well worth the time it’s taken to do it.” (1)

Vs.

The first step in improving our education system is to replace the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) with a new test that has clear standards and a proven track record of success. (2)

I have a very, very hard time seeing how the two of them could work together. Bergeson has been pounding the podium for more school funding; Dino refuses to raise taxes. Bergeson would accept changing the periphery of the test; Dino proposes throwing the whole thing out entirely. In a Rossi administration you'd suppose that many of the categorical programs that contribute to the bloat of OSPI could be at risk, and that's not change Terry can believe in.

Rossi points out correctly that ditching the WASL could have the potential to save tens of millions of dollars, money which could be re-invested into the system, but he has his own designs on that money that don't match up with Terry's. Further, if you believe that Dino's transportation plan would siphon money out of the general fund and hurt education spending by making the pie smaller, then Terry's slice also gets smaller by default.

Results: dysfunction junction.

Scenario 4: New OSPI, New Governor. The hardest to predict. Randy and Dino seem to be the most compatible when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts of how to change the testing system. Randy's made some noise about merit pay, which dovetails nicely with Dino.

With a $2.7 billion dollar deficit revenue shortfall staring us in the face, though, ideas are going to be hard to fund. Would this dynamic duo be able to get anything accomplished?

Results: Division of Yalta.

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It's going to be an interesting November.

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The Way Forward for Randy Dorn

As I sit here Sunday morning Randy Dorn trails Terry Bergeson by about 6.2% in their contest for OSPI here in Washington State, which is a pretty dramatic narrowing from the 11% lead Bergeson had on Election Night. A couple of thoughts:

1) About 27% of the votes went to the other candidates (Blomstrom, Blair, Duncan, and Hansler). If this is a "change" election, that could be trouble for the incumbent.

2) On the other hand, if you go back to the 2004 primary Bergeson only garnered 36% of the primary vote to Judith Billings' 35%, but she blitzed Billings in the general election by more than 11%.

3) Comparatively, then, a 6%+ lead now is a better starting point than a 1% lead in 2004. Consider, too, than in the 2004 primary she didn't take Thurston and Snohomish counties, but this time she did, a comparison that might not be valid because of the change to the top 2 primary.

4) Dorn's campaign only really took flight in May, and in a scant three months he was able to get within 6 points. That could bode well for him in the general.

Were I advising Randy Dorn, here's what I'd suggest:

1) He got absolutely blitzed in some of the smaller counties: 23% in Pacific, 25% in Skamania, 18% in Wahkiakum, 23% in Cowlitz, etc. I think he needs to prompt the network he has (the PSE, the WEA, Where's the Math?, etc.) to write letters to some of those small-town newspapers pointing out the deficiencies in the Bergeson administration. In Ferry County they might not bother with the Spokane Spokesman-Review, but everybody takes the Republic News-Miner. Talk to those folks about the cost of the WASL and the rising cost of transportation, and you'll get their attention.

2) Sort of building off of the above point, putting out a stronger position statement on the struggles of small schools and what he would do about it would get attention. Send it in a press release to every small-town paper, or write it as a guest editorial, and see what happens.

3) All of that said, no one has ever ridden into state office on the strength of winning the 1,300 voters of Garfield County. He has to pound Pierce, capture King, and snatch Snohomish to win.

4)....which is why the WASL results this year could be the dealbreaker for Bergeson's campaign. If a large portion of the I-5 districts see more schools falling into AYP, and if the parents start being told that their children are attending failing schools, that could get bloody. Then the status quo becomes the enemy, and Terry Bergeson is the status quo.

I'm not convinced that Dorn is the guy, but it's a conversation that we need to have.

Read more here, if any.

Ryan Goes Undercover at the AWSP/WASA Summer Conference

For the last two days I’ve been attending the joint AWSP/WASA conference right here in Spokane. Longtime readers will know that I was recently thrown out of my administrative program, but I had already registered for the conference and paid the fee, and I still don’t know where my career path will lead, so why not go and learn what I can?

The fools! Little do they know that a union operative has infiltrated their so-called “conference” looking for counterintelligence on what our enemies in administration are up to. What I learn from this conclave will be passed on to my brothers and sisters in the politburo so that we can proceed with our master protocol to turn the schools into liberal indoctrination centers—FOREVER!

The first day, Monday, was excellent. The keynote speaker for the morning breakfast was Dr. Tim Waters of McREL, who used a pretty neat aircraft controller metaphor to talk about what teachers do. He had some other thoughts on inter-class and inter-school variance that I’ll be exploring in a post another day. Good guy to listen to.

I clad myself in the style of one of the oppressors—a collared shirt made from a 60/40 polyester/cotton blend, dress shorts, and black socks with white shoes. As I entered their secret wing of the Spokane Convention Center I noticed some of the men wearing jackets, which made me briefly afraid that I was underdressed and my cover would be blown, but my mind was set back at ease when I noticed men walking around wearing socks with sandals. I mean, really, who does that?

In the interim I stepped into the hallway, where Randy Dorn and Terry Bergeson had tables right next to one another. Both were there mingling with the crowd, which was decidedly pro-Bergeson. It’ll be an interesting race.

I was pleased to see that Comrade Dorn had established a base of operations within the convention hall. We traded the secret unionist greeting (“May Shanker guide your hand from the teachers’ wallets to our WEAPAC fund!”) and then parted ways before we drew attention to ourselves.

For my morning session I attended a talk by John Hellwich of the Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession on how to best use teacher leaders in the schools. I think the idea of the teacher as leader is one of the most important ones that has come along, and it could go a long ways towards strengthening the professionalism of the profession. You can find more information at their website above.

My handlers in the WEA had prepared me well with code phrases that would help me blend in with the adminis-traitors: “That’s what DuFour said!”, “How was the golf tournament?”, and “Are you going to the wine tasting?” I was also given a briefing on the research of Marzano and Reeves and told when speaking to relate whatever I could to them, because it would sound authentic. Sure enough, it worked.

It was then time for the lunch break, which ran 2 and a half hours from 11:15 to 1:45. A big part of that was the association luncheon where they installed the new officers in AWSP for the year, but for someone who doesn’t have the experience or contacts that they do, it wasn't time well spent. After wolfing down the lunch and chatting with the administrative team from Moses Lake I took the time to walk over to Auntie’s Book Store and do some browsing. Bookstores rock.

The corpulent bourgeoisie found it necessary to take more than two hours for their overly-rich midday gorging. I worked the crowd as best I could, then snuck to a local bookstore where I hid my early report in the bottom copy of a stack of “The Audacity of Hope” for my handler to pick up later. I also purchased the McSweeney Joke Book of Book Jokes. John Hodgman is a funny man!

After that, back to work. The first afternoon session I sat in on was presented by Dr. Larry Nyland of Marysville on the changing nature of math instruction in Washington State. There I chatted with some administrators from Blaine and Battle Ground, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives from their own districts.

Despite what Ian Fleming and John LeCarre would lead you to believe, not everything about clandestine work is glamorous. This was one of those times.

The final session of the day was a presentation on the joint WASA/AWSP/PSE/WEA/WSSDA school funding proposal that was presented to the Basic Ed Finance Taskforce early in June. It’s an aggressive, impressive plan for re-doing school budgets here in Washington State, but with the budget the way it is I think it’s all wasted effort. I ended up leaving this session early so I could come home and attend to my daughter. For more information, check out the BETF website, or one of the association homepages over in the side menu.

This is the session where I finally lost my nerve. I had fit in relatively well for most of the day, but with the leaders of the opposition in the room all together I was sure that they would be able to smell the union label on me no matter how hard I tried to cover it up under a veneer of false bravado and vague knowledge. After distracting the illuminati with a complex, layered question about the interrelation between local school levies and the cost basis imposed by local collective bargaining agreements, I ran for my life. My understanding is that Barbara Mertens and Gary Kipp once killed a union member just to watch him die, and I’ve still got a lot to live for.

I’ll talk more about day 2 in a different post. My overall impression of my first AWSP conference, though, is incredibly positive—they did a spectacular job, and I look forward to going again next year!

I have never been more terrified, but exhilarated. I feel like that guy from Into the Wild, and while I never did make it to the end of the movie things seemed to be going OK. The comrades will be pleased with the intel that I have gathered. Solidarity forever!

Read more here, if any.

Thoughts on the OSPI Race

Well, that happened.

Many were looking for a Gandolf to coming riding over the horizon and save the day, but that person never materialized. The six declared candidates are Terry Bergeson, Randy Dorn of the Public School Employees, and four perennial also-rans. At this point Bergeson has to be considered a lead-pipe cinch to win, buoyed as she is by positive WASL articles and the lack of any serious competition. The biggest name in the field after her is Randy Dorn, but when you haven’t even managed to get a decent campaign website up with two months to go until the primary, you’re not giving your campaign a fair chance.

What does Terry going back to Olympia mean? The WASL keeps the strongest supporter it has, though the legislature has taken some of the starch out. Interest groups like the WEA and Where’s the Math? take a licking, because they have been outspoken in their distaste for the incumbent. Strong standards remain the order of the day, though with frequent refinements.

Anyway you slice it, my summer just got a lot less busy. I wonder if the OSPI candidates will debate at all?

Read more here, if any.

Statcounter says....

...this is going to be an interesting OSPI race.

Looking at the recent keyword activity here on the blog, three of the top five searches are Terry Bergeson (#1), Rich Semler (#2), and Randy Dorn (#5). This, and we're still three months away from the primary. I'd expect to see a spike in the coming days in Semler searches; the key will be to see if Dorn starts picking up more attention.

It'll be an interesting summer.

Read more here, if any.

Terry Bergeson and the WSLC: Big Deal, Little Deal, or No Deal?

An email received today that raised my eyebrows:

Thanks to Seattle Education Association who worked with their colleagues, the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 609, who represent Seattle School District ESP's. Local 609 delivered a rousing speech on the floor of Saturday's endorsement convention of the State Labor Council regarding Terry Bergeson's anti union support of charter schools and convinced the Labor Council, who had endorsed her in previous elections, to deny Terry Bergeson their endorsement this year.

It seems odd to me that an old stance on charter schools, which is a dead-as-a-doornail issue here in Washington State, would have any resonance. I would have expected criticism for underfunding the skills centers, or championing practices that have made it harder for kids to pursue a career in the trades, but charter schools?

A quick check of the Washington State Labor Council's website shows that they didn't endorse anybody for the OSPI race, which is a mild surprise to me when you consider that PSE Executive Director Randy Dorn has declared for the office; I maybe would have expected some inter-union synergy.

The crowd I hang with is decidedly in the "ditch the bitch" camp, so it's not a surprise that I hear a lot of anti-Bergeson buzz; it's just odd to me to see so little positive momentum, either. She's a 12 year incumbent, after all.

Read more here, if any.

A New Hat in the Ring

Randy Dorn, the executive director of the state Public School Employees Union (PSE), has announced his candidacy for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The water gets muddied again; it had been looking like a two-horse race between Terry Bergeson and Richard Semler (sorry, David Blomstrom), since Skip Priest and Jim Kastama had both passed on running. There's a couple different ways to look at this:

• It's a positive for Richard Semler. The concern with the primary as it was shaping up was that Terry Bergeson could get 50%+ in the August election and thus negate the need for a general election in November. If Dorn can siphon more support from Bergeson and keep her below that 50% threshhold, it benefits Semler. On the other hand...
  
  
• It could be a strong negative for Semler and great for Terry Bergeson. The WEA just endorsed Semler, which now creates a WEA v. PSE dynamic as they each push their guy. Dorn has more statewide experience than Semler does, via his work with the PSE, but Semler's going to have the full force of WEA-PAC acting on his behalf. Ideally they'd both beat on Terry Bergeson, but I think her incumbancy gives her some powerful advantages--it could be that Semler and Dorn split the anti-Bergeson vote, which is great for her.
  
  
• The PSE benefits no matter what. The concerns of the classified staff are often the hardest to hear. The WEA has tried with their living wage campaign, but if Randy Dorn can speak to the needs of his membership during the course of the campaign, that's a plus.

It should be a fun summer to watch.

Read more here, if any.