Really, WSSDA?

A dues increase? Really? In the worst financial straights we've seen since 1981, when levy equalization is on life support, when the state is in a $4.5 billion dollar hole....really?

That's chutzpah.

Read more here, if any.

The League of "Education" Voters, the Bellevue Teacher's Strike, and School Librarians

Noted a press release put out recently saying that two Bellevue parents have joined the Board of Directors of the League of "Education" Voters.

Noted, too, that the Bellevue School District cut High School Librarians last month in order to save money. The school board says that the principals know best, and that every one of the principals wants to cut library.

Further noted that one of the reasons the L"E"V put forward to support HB2261, the Basic Ed Finance Reform Bill, was that it would protect school libraries. And librarians.

It's pretty obvious that the L"E"V is more interested in the theory of change than they are in the effects of the change. Instead of protesting the library cuts, they almost seem to praise them as "finding savings in creative ways." There's an open letter to all school librarians in the state: The L"E"V is on your side, until the going gets tough.

The final note: Bellevue is either represented by or close to the legislative districts of Representative Ross Hunter and Senator Fred Jarrett, two of the leading voices that guided the final work that came out of the Basic Ed Finance Task Force. The hotbed of ed reform in the state right now, for better or worse, is Bellevue. And the L"E"V won't even stand up for their librarians.

Noted.

Updated 7/8 10:00 PM: I got a message on Facebook from a reader who didn't understand the whole "finding savings in creative ways" criticism from up above; if you follow the link, it now reads "Cutting the basics" instead. Thanks to the miracle of Google's cache, though, you can still see the original, and here's a screen shot to prove it:

I'm glad they've acknowledged that librarians are basic education again. Just wish they had done it the first time.

Read more here, if any.

School Districts In Trouble--I Ask, I Answer

A couple of weeks ago I asked everyone to send me their ideas of the school districts in Washington State that might be circling the drain financially; thanks to everyone who emailed. I did some follow-up poking around on Google and the OSPI Website, and here's who looks like they're in the most dire straits:

• Shoreline, now up to a 6.32% reserve after several years of tough economic times. There could also be a developing story with Arlington, who had a startlingly low 0.39% ending fund balance at the end of the '07-'08 fiscal year, before the new budget crisis.
  
  (Aside: Check out the Arlington link above to see their response. A little jab at the union, a little whinge about administrative cuts....fun! They also have one of the most poorly-designed surveys that you're ever going to hope to see. Again, fun!)
  
  
• Montesano actually links to the Apportionment and Financial Services section of the OSPI website right off of their homepage, which tells you something about where they're at with the budget. At the end of 07-08 they were $50,000 in the red. You can read more about it in their district newsletter.
  
  
• Onalaska got audited in March of 2008 with a finding attached because of their general financial disarray. You won't find that on their district website, but it looks like a pattern that continues to this day. That's not promising, especially with more cuts to come.
  
  
• Evaline is a district of about 50 kids that doesn't have its own district website. They also have the disadvantage of being in the same part of Washington where Vader was; add in the fact that they had a $46,560 deficit at the end of last year ($1000 per student!), and you have to wonder about their long-term future. You can read their audit here.

I'll update as time permits.

Read more here, if any.

Que?

From a recent email I received from the EFF, containing their legislative recommendations for the year:

Require Schools to Have Budgets: State law does not require that any of the more than 2,300 schools in our state have their own operating budget separate from the larger district, making efficient management of resources next to impossible. Following a previous JLARC recommendation, the legislature should insist that management and senior staff at every school be responsible for properly allocating the education resources each receives.

Reading between the lines I'm seeing a call for weighted student funding here, which isn't the best idea ever to come down the pipe. I also reject the underlying premise that schools don't have their own budgets; mine does, and it's something that every teacher in the building is highly cognizant of.

I've asked them to send me more information about the JLARC piece they cite; I'd be curious to see just how it reads.

Read more here, if any.

Negotiating a New Contract When There’s No Money Isn’t Easy

Growing up my mom worked for the local school district, doing a little bit of everything from payroll to personnel to purchase orders. After she left that job she went on to serve 6 years on the school board, which gave her a different perspective that she’s shared with me over the years. I’m labor, she’s management—we have great conversations, her and I.

One of her truisms over the years has been, “Ryan, a budget is a budget. The district only has the money that is has. It can’t spend more than it has.”

Mom’s a very plain-spoken woman, but buried under that confusing tautology is a grain of truth, especially as I sit at the table with my current district negotiating our next 3-year agreement.

Before we went to the table I did a survey of all the members, asking them what areas in the contract they felt needed sprucing up. We received nearly 80 responses, which is a pretty good ratio for a district our size. In our proposal to the district we incorporated the issues that we felt were reasonable (“I want 180 hours of per diem!” would be an example of an unreasonable request), and had them costed out by our district financial man.

Want to increase the stipend for testing coordinators? That’ll be $2000.
Higher personal leave cash-out? $1700.
More per diem? $6,600 an hour on a district-wide basis.
Extra per diem for teachers in combination classes? $17,000.
Caseload limits for special ed teachers? $300,000.
Release time for the president to do local association business? $455.

....and on, and on, and on.

Negotiating is politics, and your average local union is a great reflection of the community at large. I have my contingent that hates the union and doesn’t feel like we should be asking for more from the district; I have another contingent that hates the district and thinks we should bleed them for every penny they have because administrators are overpaid. In the middle lies the majority, those who value the contract and want it to make their lives easier, but not to the point that it hurts the program or the kids.

There’s always a want, too, from the members. It might be more money reimbursed for classroom expenses, it might be an aide to work in the copy room, it might be less meetings, it might be more collaboration, it might be per diem. The challenge is finding out a way to pay for it, and explaining to them why we can’t have it all.

Like the fellow in The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, though, I’m loving every minute of it. Good times.

Read more here, if any.

School Composting Programs and Making Little Changes to Save Money

Does anyone out there have experience with school composting programs? The amount of solid waste produced by our lunchroom is astounding, and if we could do something with the solid food waste instead of tossing it in the dumpster I’ve got to believe that we’d save a couple thousand dollars every year.

I’m thinking that we could do something with our electric bill, too. It annoys me when I walk in on a Sunday evening to do lesson plans and can see computers that have been left on since 3:00 on Friday afternoon with nothing going on. It wouldn’t be a problem if they were set to go to sleep, but they’re usually sitting there with the monitor on and the desktop showing. Some have the screen saver going at least, but it’s still a change that we could make that might save a few dollars.

And sure, in the big scheme of things it’s the heating, cooling, and lighting that make the most impact on the power bill, but I can get to those later.

Is your school making any facilities changes to save money? What do you see in your building that could be done?

Read more here, if any.

First Look: The Teaching Penalty, by the Economic Policy Institute

I like to read academic studies of teacher pay, because they’re totally non-controversial and everyone agrees with them. /sarcasm

The Teaching Penalty is a new book out from the Economic Policy Institute that looks at the most recent trends in teacher pay, and it’s not looking good for educators, especially in the last decade. From the report:

An analysis of trends in weekly earnings shows that public school teachers in 2006 earned 15% lower weekly earnings than comparable workers, a gap 1 percentage point larger than that reported for 2003 in our original study. The teacher disadvantage in weekly earnings relative to comparable workers grew by 13.4 percentage points between 1979 and 2006, with most of the erosion (9.0 percentage points) occurring in the last 10 years (between 1996 and 2006).

I’ll be giving it a full read-through to check the methodology, but if it stands up to scrutiny it’s a great report for teachers. The WEA thinks so, too, though the EFF disagrees.

Read more here, if any.

Crisis on Infinite Districts

The syntax doesn't work, but the comic geek in me can't resist.

The Washington State School Director's Association does a great job with their daily E-Clippings of collecting all the education news from papers around the state. It's my start page, it's in my email box every morning (thanks, JL), and for anyone interested in schools in Washington it's a must-read.

Many of the articles in recent weeks have been highlighting the budgetary problems that districts have been having; taken in the aggregate, it's a pretty bleak picture. Below are links to stories that have appeared in E-Clippings in the past few weeks, from all around the state, on this year's budget woes:

Friday, May 9th:

• The Kitsap Sun: South Kitsap School District Joins Those With Budget Woes
  
• The Bellingham Herald: 3 school boards (Blaine, Ferndale, Meridian) OK staff, program cuts

Thursday, May 8th:

• The Tacoma News-Tribune: Teacher raises put pressure on Bethel district budget
  
• The Aberdeen Daily World: 15.5 fewer teachers in Aberdeen next year

Wednesday, May 7th:

• The Vancouver Columbian: Faced with a projected $2.4 million deficit next year, Vancouver Public Schools may eliminate 26 staff positions and make other cost-saving changes next year.
  
• The Kitsap Sun: Tough Choices Ahead for Bremerton Schools
  
• The Olympian: Olympia School Cuts Draw a Crowd
  
• Peninsula Daily News: Port Angeles Schools Cut Budget, Keep Full Day Kindergarten

Tuesday, May 6th:

• The Everett Herald: Cuts Loom for Schools Across Snohomish County
  
• The Olympian: Olympia parents look to compromise on budget cuts

Monday, May 5th:

• The Spokane Spokesman-Review: Central Valley School Board still mulling budget cuts
  
• The Kitsap Sun: Unexpected expenses force Bremerton Schools to cut back
  
• The Bellingham Herald: 'Perfect storm' batters state, county school budgets
  
• The Aberdeen Daily World: Hoquiam cuts won't be easy

Friday, May 2nd:

• The Peninsual Daily News:Port Angeles school officials tell why they'd forgo pay raises

Thursday, May 1st:

• The Spokane Spokesman-Review: Mead schools face cash shortfall
  
• The Spokane Spokesman-Review: School look to trim budgets
  
• The Walla Walla Union Bulletin: Dayton Schools to cut seven positions

Tuesday, April 29th:

• Tacoma News Tribune: White River Schools forced to make cuts
  
• The Olympian: North Thurston OKs budget cuts

Monday, April 28th:

• The Peninsula Daily News: Port Angeles school leaders offer up pay raises to aid district

Friday, April 25th:

• The Kitsap Sun: As NK schools face $2.8 million shortfall, will pool be closed?
  
• The Walla Walla Union Bulletin: Dayton schools face $300,000 shortfall

Wednesday, April 23rd:

• The Bellingham Herald: Blaine schools face budget cuts

Monday, April 21st:

• The Abderdeen Daily World: Are Harbor schools headed for a “Waterloo”?
  
• The Ellensburg Daily Record: School districts grapple with finances

Olympia, Bremerton, Vancouver, Aberdeen, Bethel, Blaine, Ferndale, Meridian, South Kitsap, Port Angeles, Edmonds, Central Valley, Mead, Dayton, White River, Sumner, Puyallup, North Thurston, Cle Elum, Ellensburg, Central Kitsap, North Kitsap, Medical Lake. North, east, west, south, all in the same house of budgetary horrors. And those are only the named districts; there are many, many more out there in the same boat.

At least we're all in it together. Yay?

Read more here, if any.

The EFF Podcast on Posting Teacher Salary Data Online

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation is in a good groove with their Get Free podcasts. The hosts are entertaining, the topics are worthwhile, and the production value is praiseworthy. Even though I’m a liberal (who still finds their video podcast host very easy on the eyes) I can give credit where it's due.

In their most recent podcast there’s a discussion of the EFF’s habit of posting teacher salary data on-line. Sonya Jones, who really comes off as rather bitchy in her blog posts, had gotten a letter from a teacher who didn’t realize that this was the practice and that it was just one of those things that we teachers have to deal with by virtue of being state employees.

The piece from the podcast that’s interesting is the defense that the hosts put up, offering that it’s not about individual teachers, really, but more about giving the public information on the system as a whole.

I think this defense fails. I can see where they’re trying to go, but I don’t think they quite get there.

The biggest flaw is simply in how their spreadsheets on salary data are constructed. As a union guy I’ll freely admit that I’ve used them on more than a couple of occasions to help various causes, and from that perspective I can tell you that the problem with the spreadsheets is that there is no differentiation between various job classes. You can’t look at any one of them and tell what the average teacher makes in district X, because if you aggregate all of the names and data for any individual school district you’ll also pull in the paraprofessionals (artificially lowering the average) and the administration (raising it up, though not by nearly as much a percentage). Even if you have a rote understanding of what the range of a teacher’s salary is, I’m willing to bet that the consumer at large could look at the raw data and pull in custodians (since most of them work a 240 day year) and paraprofessional supervisory staff.

Last year I looked at the same topic and asked whether this data was usable data, and as constructed I don’t know that it is.

If you've accessed the spreadsheets and used them, what did you use them for?

Read more here, if any.

I ain't sayin', but I'm just sayin'....

Dino Rossi released his transportation plan this week. As can be expected he's getting gleefully savaged several times over by the commentators over at Horse's Ass, where transportation is king.

Transportation is what it is, and for many folks it's The Big Issue. As an education guy my piece is to worry about the effect on the schools if you take $10 billion out of the general fund (COLAs suspended again? Full-day kindergarten delayed? A retreat on standards?), and if Sen. Rossi is going to stick to the line on spending there are going to have to be cuts, or the math doesn't work.

But how can I reconcile that with this from Rossi's website?

Making education our paramount duty

• Today, too many politicians in Olympia do not treat education funding like it is their paramount duty.
  
• As governor, I will make funding education one of my top priorities.

Elsewhere in his education platform he calls for increased salary for math and science teachers (more $), merit pay (more $), new initiatives in the STEM subjects (more $), and alternate routes to certification (more $).

I realize that this is the game that politicians from either side play, but I'm really curious to know--how will Dino pay for it all? How can he criticize Gregoire for her spending habits, when here it really looks like just more of the same?

Read more here, if any.

5 School Districts That You Can Close This Year

Oh yeah, I'm going there.

I’ve written before about the Vader School District, which completely shut down this year after a triple-levy failure last spring. Castle Rock absorbed Vader, the kids were parceled out to other schools, and that was the end of that.

I think, though, that there’s the potential for a trend there. Washington has 295 different school districts spread throughout the state, and it’s worth asking the question whether they’re all needed. Consider that a century ago there were 2,710 school districts (pdf) in the state; it’s been an ongoing process of consolidation and combination that’s eaten the small and turned them large.

So, as sort of a mental exercise, here are 5 school districts in Washington that could easily go away. Some I’m axing for monetary reasons, some just aren’t practical in the realities of the day, and someone would miss each and every single one of them, but it’s for the greater good.

If you want to play at home you can download a map of Washington school districts here.

#1: Rochester School District #401
I’ll go ahead and lead off with my alma mater (class of 1996, w00t!). When I went there Rochester was a sleepy little logging/farming town, unincorporated, best defined by the Dairy Queen off of exit 88 and the Mercantile Store in Rochester proper. Rochester is a hard place to define; it’s not Grand Mound, it’s not the IGA, it’s not Larry’s Chevron…it’s not much of anything, really.

What it has become is a town that’s openly hostile to its schools. Rochester suffered a double levy failure in 2005, necessitating mass layoffs and a complete destruction of the arts at the elementary level, and their most recent levy also failed IN AN ERA WHERE THE SIMPLE MAJORITY IS THE LAW. In this case the majority of the voters judged the school district and again found it wanting, and that’s a pretty damning condemnation. In the last two years Rochester has been sitting on a reserve fund of better than $2.5 million dollars, almost 13% of their total budget—let’s free that money up for a district that can actually use it without having to worry about going under.

Fare thee well, district of my youth. I cede everything west of Little Rock Road to Oakville, everything north of Sargent Road to Tumwater, and the rest of the carcass Tenino and Centralia can fight over.


#2 and #3: East Valley and West Valley of Spokane
Again, these are not small school districts: at the end of the 2007 school year East Valley had almost 4,000 students, while West Valley had 3,500. West Valley’s new high school is incredible—a model that any district looking to build should be happy to follow. East Valley has been deep in the poop the past few years (the financial director took his own life; the reserves were nearly gone; layoffs were a distinct possibility) but they look like they might be getting ready to turn the corner. Maybe.

The trick, though, is that the Central Valley School District, which shares a border with both of them, is experiencing growth at a rate they can’t keep up with. They’re the second largest school district in the Spokane area, with 11,600 kids, and bursting at the seams. If all of the Valley school districts were to unite under one banner you’d create a good-sized district of about 19,000 students that could combine services, have more flexible school zones, save the taxpayers some money, and STILL not be one of the 10 largest school districts in the state. Central Valley gets to drink their milkshakes by virtue of being the largest and best run of the three.

Consider, too, this report from OSPI. The average per pupil cost in Central Valley is $7,658.07; East Valley is $8,294.02 with a 4,168.5 student enrollment; West Valley is $8,436.73 with 3543.71. That makes East Valley $635.95 more expensive per child than CV, creating a potential savings of $2,650,000 (the savings times the number of kids); West Valley is $778.66 more expensive than Central Valley, with a potential $2,760,000 savings. $5.4 million isn’t anything to sneeze at.

Geographically, it’s already hard to tell where one begins and one ends. Let’s eliminate the borders entirely and make the marriage official.


#4: Great Northern
You knew that I’d have to get to the small school districts eventually, and Great Northern is a prime example. Great Northern is a one building, K-8 school near the Northern Quest Casino outside of Airway Heights, along the back road that would lead you into the Shadle neighborhood of Spokane, or out to Spokane Falls CC. Kids who “graduate” from Great Northern can choose to go to Cheney, Spokane, or Reardan-Edwall. I'd send you to their web site, but they don't seem to have one.

And to my mind, that’s the problem. 70 years ago Great Northern to Spokane would have been an intolerable commute along dirt roads; in the winter, it would have been impossible. Today, though, I don’t think that’s the case. If Great Northern were to be fully absorbed into the Cheney School District those kids could attend the Sunset Elementary School in Airway Heights, the HS kids could have the same choices that they’ve always had, and there would be one less school board to monitor or building to take care of. Small schools have their place—-Star or Benge, for instance, won’t make this list because their isolation demands that they be on their own—-but Great Northern isn’t isolated any more. It’s time they become a part of something bigger.


#5: Napavine
In the last few years only a very few school district have experienced double levy failure more than once; Napavine is one of those districts (in 2001 and 2004). A little ways off I-5 just south of Chehalis, Napavine is a truck stop, the Hamilton Farms Uncle Sam sign, a famous landslide, and not much more.

Southwest Washington is a plaid of school districts, most of them defined by the single town that supports them: Winlock, Adna, Pe Ell, Raymond, South Bend, Tenino, La Center, Castle Rock, Wahkiakum, and many more. Napavine is in a unique position where two of its neighbors have also experienced double levy failure this decade (Adna and Onalaska), and the drive from Napavine to Vader is 15 minutes at most. Napavine also borders the Chehalis school district, which could easily absorb Napavine’s 700 students and still be in the same WIAA size classification. It’s quickly becoming a bedroom community for the twin cities of Centralia and Chehalis; let’s make it official and role it into the metro area, as it should be.

----

Looking at the map, other possibilities present themselves. Wishram; Skamania; a number of the island districts; Shoreline. Maybe I'll get to them another day. If we're serious about looking at the overall school finance system, though, I think we need to look at every option--even the nuclear one.

Read more here, if any.

The Adequacy Lawsuit is Dead--Long Live the Adequacy Lawsuit!

One of the things that Education Week is best as is the ongoing dialogue; there was a neat two-month span earlier this year when they went to town on Understanding by Design, and now there's a healthy exchange underway regarding filing suit as a means to get more money for schools.

The genesis was a well-researched opinion piece in the September 12th issue from Alfred Lindseth, who often represents the states as they defend themselves. He laid out a 5-part test for why the lawsuits have been failing (14 of the last 15, by his scoring) and gave a good insight into what "the other side" thinks.

This, in turn, sparked some great letters to Education Week from some of those most familiar with the adequacy wars, including Michael Rebell of Columbia University and Kathryn Firestone, executive director of the Oregon School Funding Defense Foundation.

Why this matters to Washington State is because of our own adequacy lawsuit currently winding its way through the system. The bludgeon that we have that most other states don't is the language from the state constitution regarding education being the paramount duty of the state. We could be the exception that breaks the trend Lindseth describes.

Read more here, if any.

Perforating Picus

Remember the Picus and Odden Report? Perhaps the most impressive work to come out of Governor Gregoire’s Washington Learns commission in 2006, the P&O school finance study was the document that was supposed to help guide school funding decisions in the legislature. If the report said that we need to fund 1000 more counselors to have a good school system, for example, then ideally the money would have been put on the table.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the final Washington Learns report—the Picus and Odden study was buried, never to be seen again, a historical curiosity that only real wonks would remember.

Wonks like Erik Hanushek, for example. Affiliated with The Hoover Institute and Standford University, Hanushek has never met a school finance lawsuit he didn’t like to eviscerate. Cynics would call him a hired gun for legislatures that don’t want to fully fund their schools; supporters would say that he’s a voice of reason and moderation in how we use taxpayer monies. Either way, in the Winter 2007 edition of Education Next has a six page article from Mr. Hanushek wherein he takes a long, critical look at Picus and Odden, and he doesn’t like what he sees.

Why is this important? The next project for Washington Learns is supposed to be to get our school financing system figured out, because (sarcasm!) no committee ever in the history of Washington State has thought to do that before (/sarcasm!). With Picus and Odden out there, along with The Conley Report, there’s voluminous evidence in the past year as to how short we’re falling funding schools here in Washington. On the other side there’s the work of Hanushek, among others.

Hanushek’s rebuttal of Picus was also prominently featured recently in a column from the Washington Roundtable, a business group that frequently comments on school issues, usually conservatively. It's also a good guess that P&O will be brought up in the school funding lawsuit, along with our old friend The Conley Report.

It's a short legislative session this year, but there could still be some neat action going on!

Read more here, if any.

There Is No Funding Crisis!

My state senator is Bob Morton, and I thought this tidbit from his recent mailing was fairly interesting:

We also should have stepped up to the state’s obligation to fully fund student transportation. I supported an amendment to the budget that would have provided school districts with $55 million in immediate relief, but it was rejected by the majority. Student transportation is deemed part of the state’s court-ordered duty to fully fund basic education. Help now awaits the results of a “study” that is not due until December 2008.

One wonders why the Dems didn’t let that piece of funding through, given everything else that did. One also wonders why Senator Morton put the word “study” in quotes like that; the cynicism is easy to detect, but why?

One also wonders if the good Senator has stopped hating democracy as a means to raise more funds for schools.

Read more here, if any.

The WEA Legislative Report Card

The new issue of WE Magazine has the WEA’s take on how the legislature did with various issues during the last session. Their view:

Adequate school funding: C-

Eh. What the legislature provided falls short of the Conley Report and even Governor Gregoire’s own Washington Learns study, but it’s also undeniable that this legislature pumped $13.53 into K-12; see This Week in Olympia from the Washington Association of School Administrators for more details. My complaint about adequate school funding I’ll get to later.

Salaries: B-

A 3.7% COLA this year, a probable 2.8% next year, and an additional .6% each year for teachers in the majority of the districts in the state that weren’t grandfathered in when the state went to a single salary schedule. The complaint that many districts have is that the COLA only covers state-funded employees; if your position is funded by levy or federal funds, the district has to cover your raise through local monies, they say.

K-3 Class Size: D+

Asinine. OK, the legislature not codifying the 17:1 ratio that the WEA has pushed for hurts, but you can’t ignore the good they did in raising the I728 money from $375 to $450 dollars.

Health Benefits: C-

The WEA’s point is that the 3.5% increase to health benefits probably won’t cover the increasing cost of health care, but I think that’s a national problem more than it is a legislative one.

It’s also one of the most sensitive issues out there. Our superintendent has made some preliminary inquiries into looking into the state health plan through the PEBB, but when you even hint at touching the insurance people go nuts, and for cause. I don’t know how to solve this one, but it’s going to be a bigger and bigger issue as time goes on.

All-Day K: B-

The WEA had pushed for a 6 year phase-in instead of 10, but a) that’s a lot of money in a hurry b) the facilities might not be there yet for many districts, so time is a gift and c) let’s get some good evidence about whether Full-Day K works before we sink money into it statewide.

Pensions/Gainsharing: D

Apparently we don’t believe in Fs, because if any one area deserved it this is the one. Lisa Brown might be an economist, but she’s certainly no friend of anyone who wants to retire from teaching.

And let’s be blunt—the WEA gets an F here, too. We went into the session trumpeting a true rule of 85; we’ve come out with the retirement age being lowered to 62 and not much else. New employees can now choose between TRS 2 and TRS 3, but those of us who didn’t get to choose and were placed in TRS3 automatically get nothing....

Two Year Faculty Equity and Increments: A-

....and that’s why I’m going to go teach at Spokane Falls next year.

National Board Bonuses: A-

I’ll give them a little credit for letting a dissenting voice into the magazine, because later in the issue there’s a letter from a Dwayne Brecto of Grandview wondering why the WEA has pushed the National Board program so hard. There’s $5,000 here just for getting the certificate and another $5,000 possible if you teach in a high-need school, but is it worth it for the state? Why is the Union pushing so hard for bonuses that only benefit a select few?

ESA Salary Credit: B+

Math WASL: Incomplete

This one’s already been run through the media pretty thoroughly, with the Governor “refusing to punish kids for the failures of the system” and delaying the graduation requirement for 5 more years. A cynic might suggest that we’ll be fighting this same battle 5 years from now.

ESEA/NCLB: A

The text from the magazine:

Substitute Senate Joint Memorial 8011 urges Congress, the president and Gov. Chris Gregoire to work together to improve and fully fund ESEA, the so-called No Child Left Behind act.

Consider that for a moment. A purely symbolic act that will likely go nowhere gets an A, but raising the I728 money gets a D+. Hooray for fluff, and to hell with substance. That's not a good thing.

Sex Ed: A

You can get the full story on this bill here, here, or here. The rather funny thing is that the magazine put this one under the heading of “Improving Student Achievement.”

Simple Majority: A

Yep! It was a process, and the process isn’t over, but getting the simple majority through to a vote of the people is a big, big deal.

ESP Positions: A

Eh. The state has lowered the funding ratio for paras from 1 for every 60 students to 1:59, at a cost of nearly $26 million dollars, but does it go far enough?

Education Funding Review: B

Oh, hell no. F, F, a 1000 times F. I can’t remember the name of the legislator who listed the name of all the different funding studies that had come and gone in the years he’d been in the legislature (Schoesler, maybe, out of Ritzville?), but the idea that we need another funding study is just insane. How will this one be any different than the last one, or the one before, or the one before?

Four Year Colleges and Universities: B
Apprenticeships: A

Union Free Speech: A

House Bill 2079 clarifies an ambiguous law governing the free-speech rights of educators. The bill defines “use,” clarifying that when labor organizations spend money on elections, the revenues from other sources beyond agency fees collected must exceed the cost of those political expenditures.

If that’s the clarification, I’d hate to see the confusion. Oy vey.

Read more here, if any.