MoneyGrabber!

One of the Big Idea school reform bills to get attention early in the session was Senate Bill 5237, prime sponsored by Senator Bruce Dammeier of Puyallup.  He said that it was all about "the critical juncture" between 3rd and 4th grade.  He said it was about dropout prevention and improving the graduation rate.  He said it was about closing the achievement gap and putting kids on a successful path for life.  He had an ally in Stand for Children, who had to commit a classic Lie of Omission to justify their support, but Stand has proven this year more than any other that they don't really care what the reform does, as long as it's something they can call reform.

Everyone else said that this bill was absolute nonsense.  That making the MSP a high stakes test, when we're getting ready to roll out new standards related to the Common Core and the new tests that will follow, was the absolute antithesis of what kids need.  That retaining a kid who was struggling in reading, but OK in every other subject, was pedagogically unsound, and that retention in general is linked to higher drop-out rates.  The bill summary gives a nice, tidy overview of both sides of the discussion.

The result was a complete re-do, which you can see in the substitute bill that was heard in the Ways and Means Committee.  The retention piece was moved from the 3rd grade test to the 4th grade test, which isn't any better, but there's also a lot of pieces about intervention and professional development, which looked great until the financial guys came back with an $80 million dollar price tag that had the Ways and Means Committee clutching their pearls at the shock of actually having to fund stuff.

A similar bout of apoplexy occurred in the Senate K-12 Committee on Friday morning during a hearing on Senate Bill 5242, which would provide 10% bonuses for math and science teachers.....

(Secondary math and science teachers, who have at least 50% of their day as math and science, and who are deemed excellent under criteria that hasn't been written yet by the Professional Educator Standards Board.  So if you're a 5th grade science teacher, or only teach two periods a day of math, or don't meet whatever standard the PESB comes up with--sucks for you!)


....when the GOP members of the committee didn't like the cost estimate that OSPI came up with for what those bonuses would cost ($70m every two years).  Crosscut did a short story on the meeting as well.

So the Senate K-12 Committee, the new Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight, with Crazy Stevie as the chair, not only can't pass the ideas that they do like (grading schools!), they can't find the money to pay for the bonus program they want either, and those bills that do make it over to the House will be given the mercy of a quick death unless they have some sort of blessing from Sen. McAuliffe.

I've said before that Senator Litzow may not be good at his job, but I take it back--for guys like me who want to snark about education politics, he's an answered prayer.

Read more here, if any.

Yet Another Reason Why Average Daily Attendance Funding is a Really Lousy Idea

Are you listening, Senator McAuliffe?

Read more here, if any.

The Poison Pill That Could Kill HB2261

....can be found here, via the Political Buzz blog from the News Tribune.

Senators McAuliffe and Oemig are holding a statewide listening tour to get teacher input on the bill. Good for them, I guess--better now than never, which is where we were at. The trick is that the cratering state budget won't be ready to accomodate all the new spending on all the new programs 2261 mandates any time soon, so if this nascent idea to speed up the pace at which 2261 was implemented were to take hold, much of it would have to end up on the cutting room floor out of economic necessity.

Consider that the Governor has already vetoed two sections of the bill dealing with access to preschool and gifted ed programs, which was a definite slap to the "2261 will make everything better!" crowd. If this were to become a trend, it's very easy to see a path to what the WEA feared all along--the good that made people like the bill will evaporate away a section at a time, and what we'll all have left is onerous new certification requirements and more bureaucracy.

Hooray.

Read more here, if any.

Senator Eric Oemig: Small School Districts are PARASITES!

Last week the annual WASA/AWSP Conference was here in Spokane, and since I'm still an intern member I headed down to learn some more, check out the exhibits, and see what was shaking.

In the afternoon there was a legislative town hall meeting about education, which was both an unexpected surprise and right up my alley. From the Senate came Curtis King, K-12 Education chair Rosemary McAuliffe, and vice-chair Eric Oemig. The House was represented by their education chair, Dave Quall, and committee member Tim Probst.

The first 20 minute or so were nothing special. Rep. Quall gave shout-outs to some friends in the audience, Senator McAuliffe talked about.....stuff. I struggle with the good Senator sometimes, but such is life.

It's about 23 minutes in that things got interesting, when a question came from the audience about levy equalization (LEA) and how important it is for small school districts. Senator King (who is out of the Yakima area, mind you, so he knows his small schools), offers that he's glad that bill died, while Rep. Probst says that saving LEA was almost "an accident" of the legislative process and talks about the importance of skills centers and career education.

Then there's Senator Oemig:

"I want to take a stab at this LEA question, too, just because I'm a money numbers guy, I'm a fiscal conservative. And there's a lot of energy around that issue. And I was just talking to my school board, and they were talking about how this is so important, levy equalization. Not because they receive any--they don't. This subsidy goes out to smaller districts. And the problem that I see is that we see large districts that are subsidizing small districts advocating for that equity.

"But we're not seeing a symbiotic relationship. It's actually kind of parasitic."

"I don't hear small districts saying hey, raise those levies in those larger districts where they're able to collect the money. We've got to figure out how to solve the funding of education and get revenue where it can be gotten."

"I think we've got to equalize, then, that money statewide. And there's nobody that I've met in the legislature that doesn't think levy equalization is important. But we have to understand the dual role that we see with levies in the districts that are raising them--we have to let them raise those, and we have to equalize them."

"I really want you to think about that after this--that's something that I want you to take away from here."

Being in the room I can tell you his comments caused quite a bit of tut-tutting; the first speaker after him pointed out that levy equalization isn't about big and small, it's about rich and poor--that's why Spokane and Evergreen of Vancouver, two of the largest districts in the state, are also two power-consumers of LEA dollars.

The heart of Senator Oemig's strawman argument, though, is that small school districts aren't advocating hard enough for large school districts, and that's an argument that sort of beggars imagination. The reason people on my side of the state were so against HB1776 was because of the cut to levy equalization--it had nothing at all to do with the fact that it also would have raised the levy lid for affluent school districts. If they get more money, good for them--just leave my damn budget alone.

Remember, too, that back in April Senator McAuliffe was defending LEA cuts because she felt that the stimulus money coming in was an equitable replacement.

It's going to be a big issue in the coming session. If you're in a district that receives LEA money, start prepping NOW. A parent or a teacher? Start talking to your school board and central office admins about the State School Directors Association Legislative Conference in September. WEA members, talk with your Uniserv leadership and your WEA board members and let them know what you think. Legislative Assembly Days are in Olympia in October, and that'll be a good chance to talk with your Representatives about this issue, or any other.

Man the ramparts, folks. It's needed.

Read more here, if any.

Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe is So Full of Crap She Cries Brown Tears

The big thing that I noticed when the conference budget came out on Friday was the $60,000,000 cut to levy equalization, which was certainly better than what the Senate had initially proposed, but still worse than the House, which had been giving good indications that they were going to leave LEA alone. It's levy equalization money that allows our property-poor school districts to have a shot at offering anything even comparable to what a Mercer Island, Bellevue, or other districts with high tax bases can provide. It's a lifeline to poor districts in a way that class size reduction isn't, and let's be perfectly clear: when you cut LEA, you are cutting the districts that can least afford the hit.

So an amendment came up during the Senate debate last night; you can watch it here, and I'm pulling the quotes out of the closed captioning transcript. Sen. Mark Schoesler from the 9th LD, an area of the state (southeast Washington) where levy equalization really matters, lead off with this:

This measure restores levy equalization payments by increasing funding through a variety of sources. We take one learning improvement day, we reform bilingual education and manage to achieve the savings. I think this is important in that it's the property-poor districts that have levy equalization needs. They're not necessarily in northeast Washington, they may be in federal way, they may be in north central Washington, they may be a property-poor district with students of color and of need in the Yakima valley, but they all share one thing in common:
A levy dollar doesn't buy very much.

In a property-rich district, a dollar buys a lot. To get the same earning potential in a property-poor district, you might need six or seven dollars. This restores that.
This puts school districts on a level playing field whether they're in eastern Washington, west, north or south, it puts them on a level playing field and it has the means to pay for itself. I urge your support.

Maybe, maybe Sen. Schoesler over-reached when his caucus added in the piece about bilingual education, which is a hot-button issue that gets a lot of hackles raised. The point remains, though--levy equalization matters.

Then Senator McAuliffe made her response:

I ask the body to reject this amendment. When these - this levy equalization is being cut about 15%. With the federal dollars for title one and special education, these districts are almost whole. In fact, let me just cite one, which is Aberdeen. The levy equalization payment is $480,000. And they receive in special education money $768,000. So many of these districts will have those dollars restored through the federal stimulus dollars.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that I can't find the document that she's citing anywhere, and it seems like if she's going to read figures into the public record that the public should be able to see those figures for themself.

We'll also ignore the fact that her home district, Northshore, will be absolutely uneffected by this cut because they already don't receive any levy equalization money.

And maybe later we'll talk about the fact that lowering levy equalization at the same time as the Senate has passed a bill to lift the levy lid for districts that take in excess money means that the gap between the rich districts and poor districts will get that much wider.

For now, let's focus on one key fact: levy equalization money can be used for ANYTHING. Programs, teachers, salary, transportation--anything. It's a great source of money that way in that it can fill in any hole in the district budget.

Title I money and Special Education money, on the other hand, can only be used for NARROW, LIMITED PURPOSES. You can't take sped money and use it to pay for an activity bus, or to reduce class size in kindergarten, or for a boost to the ASB.

So the money that Sen. McAuliffe is treating as equal is anything but. It's a nice comparison to make if you're trying to make it look like you didn't really cut anything, but it's an awful long ways from reality.

The reason that this particularly pisses me off is in light of the Basic Education Reform Bill that passed both the House and Senate and is now on its way to the Governor's desk for a signature. I fought against it because I hate what it could do to certification and the salary schedule, but such is life and now the battle turns to mitigating the impact of a bad, misguided bill. Senator McAuliffe took note of the divisiveness of the bill when she released her open letter to the education community, wherein you'll find this gem:

I have heard that this is the wrong bill and the wrong message at the wrong time. I have heard that it is an insult to our hard-working teachers and educators that come to work every day and are committed to providing every child with the opportunity to learn. I want to be clear – teachers are the single most important part of our educational system. This bill is not a commentary in any way about a failure of our teachers. It is a recognition that our teachers deserve better and a recognition that our state's definition of basic education has failed to keep pace with the evolving expectations of society and has failed our teachers.

Senator, YOU ARE THE STATE. You voted to take away money THIS YEAR from districts that are already teetering. You refused to look at bilingual education with a serious eye. You refused to cut the other LID day. You refused to freeze the salary schedule, or take additional money from the rainy day fund. Your caucus chickened out on sending a revenue package to the voters.

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Millions of dollars will be funneled off to OSPI and their ilk to study changes to the system, changes that the state isn't bloody well likely to be able to afford until 2012 at the earliest. The idea of looking at school district consolidation to save money went away, probably because it's politically unpopular.

Where there's a will, there's a way. This education budget is the triumph of no-will.

Read more here, if any.