Today's Fake News From Olympia, Holiday Edition

"I've never seen a tax cut put out a fire." -- Barney Frank, This Week With Christiane Amanpour, December 18th 2011

HEROIC TAX CUT TURNS AROUND LOW PERFORMING SCHOOL
Anthropomophized Reduction in Business and Occupation Tax Challenges Kids, Solves Poverty, Erases Achievement Gap

Giddy officials in the Spokane Public Schools announced today that HR509 Section 2148 Regarding Certain Deductions to Capital Investments, recently hired to teach math at Rogers High School as part of the School Improvement Grant process, had completely changed the lives of all the kids lucky enough to be in his/her class.

"We were a little reluctant, frankly, to hire a tax cut to teach, but by God it worked!" said Spokane Schools Superintendent Nancy Stowell. "I look forward to many more tax cuts coming in and making all our schools better, forever."

Future moves suggested by Stowell include having a funding cut restore the art program, and starving the beast to make the school lunch program run in the black.

UNION HATING DEMOCRATS RUSH TO DEFEND THEIR VACATION TIME

With their traditional 3 week Christmas vacation being threatened by Governor Gregoire's special session, a long series of Senate Democrats with absolutely no sense of irony or labor history took to the floor to complain.

"We have a God given right to our vacation time!" thundered Senator Rodney Tom (D-Medina). "The very idea of having to work on a holiday is inhumane, and I am clearly the first person to ever think that!"

"The Gentleman from Medina is correct!" shouted an approving Steve Hobbs. "Not only is this unpaid overtime during what historically would be a break, but I submit to you all--has any worker in history ever been asked to put in so much time during the Holiday season for so little recompense?"

Happily, the electrical supply for all of Snohomish County will now be provided by attaching generators to the bodies of those killed in the Everett Massacre as they roll over in their graves.

RYAN'S POPULARITY IN WEA REACHES AMAZING NEW HEIGHTS
Sets a New Personal Best By Going Three Days Without Being Offensive, Condescending Prick

NOBODY BOTHERS TO TELL PAM ROACH THAT LEGISLATURE ADJOURNED
Confused Senator Only One to Show Up For Cancelled Committee Hearing

"I...I guess I kind of figured that Joe (Zarelli) or Mike (Hewitt) would tell her," said Senator Dan Swecker of Rochester. "I mean, things can kind of get by Pam sometimes, but we were all packing our boxes and talking about driving home...it was sort of understood, right?"

Members of the Olympia Press Corp later found Senator Roach sitting alone in a hearing room in the Cherburg Building holding a passionate debate with herself about the rights of adoptive and foster parents.

TEACHERS ANNOUNCE NEW FOUR TIER RATING SYSTEM FOR GOVERNOR GREGOIRE
"It will be clear. Oh yes, it will be clear," say Enthused Educators

A committee of Washington State teachers today rolled out a new 4 tier evaluation system for Governor Gregoire, a logical accompaniment to the Governor's proposal for teachers.

"We embrace what the Governor is proposing for us, and we hope that she'll feel the same way about what we propose for her," said Joseph Hill, a 3rd grade teacher in the Kent School District. "The purpose of the evaluation system is to improve governing. That's the focus of the evaluation system."

The four proposed ratings for the Governor run the gamut from a high of "Hasn't actively screwed up the state today" down to the lowest rating, "Couldn't find her ass with both hands and a map."

"Currently we've got the Governor at our second lowest rating, "Mike Lowry with TBI". Hopefully, these rigorous new measures will help her improve on up to "Comparisons to Bill Plummer coaching the Mariners are mostly unfair."

Read more here, if any.

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.

Profiles in Online Excellence: WAVA of Monroe!

Excellence!

• In 2008-2009 47.6% of their kids passed the 10th grade READING test. The state average was 81.2%. WAVA was 33.6% worse than the state average.
  
• 19.8% of their kids passed the 10th grade MATH test. The state average was 45.4%. WAVA was 25.6% worse than the state average.
  
• 53.3% of their kids passed the 10th grade WRITING test. The state average was 86.7%. WAVA was 33.4% worse than the state average.
  
• 20.5% of their kids passed the SCIENCE test. The state average was 38.8%. WAVA was 18.3% worse than the state average.

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.

There's Good Money in the Ed Reform Racket

The University of Washington's very own Marguerite Roza, an assistant professor at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, made quite a splash recently with a study arguing that states should no longer pay additional money to teachers when they earn Masters degrees. This isn't a new line of thought, but getting a full page write-up in Education Week and a mention in the Education Gadfly in short order isn't a bad month for an education researcher.

I've written about her before as well, here.

Her research is pretty counterintuitive, particularly to a happy union hack such as myself. Recent topics have included the idea that teachers could take a pay-cut to stave off layoffs, that insurance benefits are rather wasted, and now this new bon mot about degrees. It makes one wonder, how comfortable is this professor who has made the thrust of her research an examination on how to take salary and benefits away from teachers?

Turns out, courtesy of the state salary database at the News Tribune, that Dr. Roza is doing quite well indeed--a $10,400 monthly base salary, which works out to a cool $124,800 per year. Not too shabby!

I've ragged on Dan Goldhaber of the UW before, too--he's written about education, and is a very convincing public speaker, but the ideas that he presented during the Basic Ed Finance hearings were waaaaaaaaay out there. According to the Tribune Dr. Goldhaber makes $13,530 a month, or $162,360 a year. Those numbers are provided by the state.

Want to know why teachers are often so cynical about change agents? Because it's usually not the change agent who will be most affected by whatever grand idea is being proposed--it's the teachers.

(For the record, I made $46,341 last year with a Masters degree plus 8 years)

Read more here, if any.