The headline in the Seattle Times sounds awfully hopeful, “Wash. lawmakers take next step toward ed reform.” So what exactly is that next step?
They haven’t found a single new dollar to pay for their ideas, but state lawmakers and education officials are pushing ahead with plans to start implementing education reform.
A new education reform committee recently held its first meeting. It is chaired by the superintendent of public instruction and counts among its members the speaker of the House and the chair of the Senate Education Committee, so the political will to move on is there.
No money to pay for their ideas, or any idea how to raise the money, but at least they started a new committee. Can’t get much bolder than that.
But some of the faces around the table have sat at similar meetings, battling similar issues for years.
Oh. That’s not an encouraging sign.
First came the governor’s Washington Learns task force that published an ambitious plan to improve education in 2006. That report led to the state’s new Early Learning Department, but the Legislature could not find the money to implement most of the other ideas.
There’s that pesky money problem again.
Then came the reinvented State Board of Education, which moved ahead on some related ideas, including new high school math requirements and a proposal to require high school students to earn 24 credits instead of 19 to graduate.
Next, the Basic Education Finance Task Force, wrote a road map last summer for completely changing the way the state distributes its education dollars. The task force’s ambitious plans would cost an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion a year, on top of the $7 billion a year the state already spends on education.
And the money…?
The 2009 Legislature adopted some of the task force’s ideas and put a new group, the Quality Education Council, in charge of implementing the plan, but with a new twist. This time, the task force is also in charge of finding the money to pay for the changes.
Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way, has sat around many education reform tables, including Washington Learns and the Basic Education Finance Task Force.
“I think it’s time we have a sense of urgency about this issue,” Priest said after the Quality Education Council held its first meeting at the end of August.
No shit, Sherlock.
Honestly, there is no substantive education reform without the money to pay for it, and all the committees and commissions in the world won’t change that. So in a state facing its deepest fiscal crisis perhaps ever, and a long term structural revenue deficit as far as the eye can see, the real “next step” to education reform in Washington state is an honest debate about tax restructuring, and unless Republicans like Skip Priest are willing to push for that debate, they really aren’t approaching education reform with any sense of urgency at all.
I’m just sayin’.
There will be no substantive reform in education until they bust the stranglehold of the WEA.
It’s a safe bet to predict a stalemate until after the 2010 elections, at least. No money is available in the budget for even the smallest changes, and the system is starved already, trying to make-do with patchwork school closings and mergers, and passing more costs on to students (school sports are becoming pay-as-you-go, music and art programs are gradually being dropped, etc.).
In the meantime, Washington State students aren’t doing much better than those in the rest of the U.S. – dropout rates of about 20%, most students who do graduate have barely manageable English reading and writing skills, foreign language skills which are minimal at best, and math skills barely above Algebra I level.
In the meantime, the AVERAGE student in Japan or Korea are graduating high school with about six years of English and two or more of another foreign language; a second year of calculus and a year of trigonomitry, and at least two years of chemestry plus other sciences. Their general level of education is about what we expect of a junior in college in this country.
Global companies such as Microsoft are still trying to import workers because, they argue, there aren’t enough “qualified” workers in the U.S. It seems workers in India are better educated than U.S. workers, and work for less, as well.
Today the news reported that according to one study, the U.S. slipped behind Switzerland in global economic competitiveness, in large part because of the disparity in education (and the soundness of our financial institutions).
So yes, we need a sense of urgency. We are like a frog content to sit in the pot of water as the temperature gradually boils us to death, at which point we will wonder “what happened????”
By the way, it’s been 30 years or so since the big “Why Johnie Can’t Read” scandel about the public education system. And we are still arguing over the same things over and over again.
Gee Goldy–
Gregoire’s Chief Economist told us last week the Recession is over.
This are YOUR PEEPS in charge that you are whining about Goldy. Tell them all the Recession is over and the timing is perfect for a major tax increase. I can’t wait to see the reaction.
Is money really the problem?
Why do some people in the very same school district do so well while others are dropping out at record rates?
Since I live in la… why does el camino high school win academic decathlons while jefferson and other schools struggle to graduate students. The problem isn’t money, it’s the lack of value some parents put on education.
An article in the alanta paper talks about 4 students getting 2400 on their SATs.
I don’t know the kids, nor did the article mention it, but I am willing to bet that their friends and families don’t call them white or a sellout for getting an education.
And japan spends less per student than america.
Why are they getting more bang for the buck?
What is different? Well, besides the parents and the culture.
Of course, we couldn’t use the 140 million a year from the tribes that Ms. Gregoire pissed away for a quid pro quo now could we?
@4. Once of the topics where I agree somewhat with marvin. The schools cannot do it all, the parents need to step up.
Yup. The culture has to change too.
I found this to be amusing. The seattle times article regarding Obama pep rally.
Followed later by…
Um, I think Julie needs a refresher course in what does and does not constitute playing “politics”.
@1 So you think “education reform” consists of paying teachers $35,000 a year?
@3 Washington’s tax system is so bad it can’t raise needed funds even when the economy is booming. But why do you care? You live in Montana now, where the only thing needing education is your goats.
@6 That 140 million a year was a trade. The tribes gave up expanded slots in exchange for that tax break. Would you rather have an Indian casino on every street corner?
But if you want to talk about tax breaks, let’s talk about the trillion dollars that your boy Bush gave to billionaires in exchange for absolutely nothing except huge deficits and massive debts to China.
Any Republican who whines about tax concessions or tax breaks, like you just did, is a fucking hypocrite.
Sorry to hear you agree with me. The left-wingnuts are going to start calling you names.
First change the culture. It’s not going to be easy.
Until then, more money is a stupid plan.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I said quid pro quo. The funds the state loses out on are instead doled out to the State DNC for her next election campaign.
@9:
Yes, $35,000 for 9 months’s work sounds pretty good to me.
My brother in law makes almost 3 times that teaching at garfield high school (the school in the movie stand and deliver).
I think a lot of things need to change. Just enough from every side that everyone would be very unhappy with any proposals I made, and therefore they would never be adopted.
The teacher’s wouldn’t like my insistence on standardized testing and promotion/pay based upon results. Most parents wouldn’t like the amount of parent involvement I would insist upon, as well as them agreeing to an increased level of discipline at the school, even when it applies to their little angel. School administrators wouldn’t like my emphisis on classroom spending over headquarters programs. And the students would have their head spinning over the amount of additional work I would require of them. Republicans certainly wouldn’t like the amount of money I would want added to the education budgets.
But starving the schools in the meantime isn’t the answer, either. Lower class sizes help alleviate a lot of problems, which gives us time to work on the other issues.
But one problem which we need to address: there is a rather new and disturbing crisis, the lack of motivation among many students who don’t see any connection between education and their economic well-being. They grew up seeing their parents struggle with layoffs and stagnant or reduced wages in the early 1990’s (Bush I rescession), the early 2000’s (post 9/11 rescession), and again in the later 2000’s (Bush II rescession). They have been subject to years of news reports of declining job opportunities, the end of manufacturing in the U.S., outsourcing to foreign countries, workers with decades of experience being reduced to part-time temp status, and executives shrugging their shoulders and telling everyone to “get used to it, it’s the new competative world economy, you can’t compete if you don’t have salaries of two bucks a day or less”. If they see their parents, who spent years investing in their own education and toiled as loyal employees lose their jobs with only a few weeks notice (or less), how can they be persuaded to invest in education for their own future?
I agree and disagree.
In high performing schools, it works well. In schools where the parents are AWOL those teachers are screwed. What teacher would work in a underperforming school if their $ is tied to results.
How would you force them to do the right thing?
Maybe just take the troublemakers out of the classroom for the benefit of the students that want to learn but the kids of fucked up parents cause so much distraction that teachers can’t teach. (my fiancee worked last year at jackson elementary in pasadena. She spent most of her time trying to control a couple kids that the office kept sending back to the class when she would send them to behavior counselor.)
What is the use of more money?
Roger Rabbit spews:
“So you think “education reform” consists of paying teachers $35,000 a year?”
Roger, you are never one to let facts get in the way of your bluster.
http://www.teachersalaryinfo.c.....ngton.html
Salary range: $32,746 – $61,720
Average teacher salary: $45,724
Average beginning teacher salary: $30,159
Median household income: $53,439
The average teacher (who works only 75% of the year) has a salary much greater than 75% of the median household income for the state. Of course the median household income for the state also includes many two income families. So a household with two teacher incomes would be far above the median household income, and get the entire summer off. Not a bad life.
Marvin Stamn spews:
“My brother in law makes almost 3 times that teaching at garfield high school (the school in the movie stand and deliver).”
I think you are making this up. That would mean he makes close to (or over) $100,000 per year.
Here’s a link to the 2008-2009 salary schedule for teachers. There’s no pay classification that makes “nearly 3 times $35,000”.
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/hr/sal/cert.pdf
How we doing on teacher quality here in Washington? Improving that would be a big start. How many physical ed major teaching math, or history in the state?
Or maybe not…
The average teacher salary in California for the 2004-05 school year was $57,604, up 2.1 percent from the previous year.
!00K for a teacher at Garfield is absurd
Marvin is a liar. Who knew?
He takes off-track jobs (ala summer school, etc.), has multiple degrees and tutors after school.
So he does more than show up at 8am, teach for 6 hours and goes home. It’s more like a real job, 8 hours a day and 12 months a year.
Prove I’m a liar.
Or once again, you spew your shit and refuse to back it up.
Have you noticed how many times I ask you to prove your words and you can’t? What does that tell you?
@23 “Prove I’m a liar.”
That’s easy. You claimed you’re not.
@20 Empty Suit Obama spews:
“Or maybe not…
The average teacher salary in California for the 2004-05 school year was $57,604, up 2.1 percent from the previous year.”
Marvin’s claim was 3 times $35K per year, which is a lot more than $57,604.
@22
“He takes off-track jobs (ala summer school, etc.), has multiple degrees and tutors after school.
So he does more than show up at 8am, teach for 6 hours and goes home. It’s more like a real job, 8 hours a day and 12 months a year.”
So what does he make in just salary for teaching?
While I agree with your sentiment that teachers can make quite a good wage. The tutoring after school isn’t part of his job. So your statement that he makes “almost 3 times that teaching at garfield high school”, is quite misleading.
PROVE your incredible statement that your brother in law makes 100K at Garfield
And what do you want me to back up? That you’re an idiot?
THAT you prove by yourself.
@18 “Not a bad life.”
Thanks to their union. The pertinent question, though, is how much would they earn without the union?
Your turn rabbit…
Prove I claimed I’m not.
@12, 7
I hate to be the barer of bad news, but we’re going to have to invest money in all sorts of things to educate parents and chage the culture. On the plus side, we’ll be getting that money back down the road.
I do agree that there are cultural changes that need to be made.
@18 (continued) Teaching requires a college degree, so to make a true apples-to-apples comparison, you should compare teacher salaries to the median income of all college graduates. The top scale may look comfortable, but it takes 20 years to get there. You should look at the total career earnings of teachers versus other occupations requiring a degree.
The school pays for tutoring.
He’s also been teaching around 20 years.
A couple masters degrees ups his salary.
I was shocked he made that much.
@31 Advanced degrees up salaries in any profession. But getting them costs money and you also lose earnings for the time you spend in graduate school.
It’s not going to do any good to throw money at it as long as parents think that their job is to be as permissive as the law will allow. And blame everything on the school system, which the wingers do, while taking NO responsibility (not that the liberals do either) for the conduct and performance of their children.
@27 Roger Rabbit spews
A question that can’t be answered objectively hardly seems “pertinent”. So what is the answer in your mind? $25,000? $15,000? $150,000?
@28 You just did.
The next step to education reform would be to can Bellevue Superintendent Amalia Cudeiro.
http://slog.thestranger.com/sl.....we-did-zer
@34 A reasonable inference is they would earn less without the union.
@36 When the superintendent shoots from the lip without doing any research, what can we expect from the students?
I feel sorry for the next generation of employers. They’ll have to run their businesses with employees who grew up being indoctrinated with rightwing bullshit. Whenever they’re asked to solve a problem, they’ll whip out their Bibles and start praying.
I can prove lil’ marv is a liar.
29. Marvin Stamn spews:
26. worf spews:
Funny how when the blood soaked history of the right is brought up, (Oklahoma City, Birmingham, countless murders of doctors, Alan Berg, Centralia Massacre, thousands of lynchings, etc. etc. etc.) the only thing the fascists can counter with is “ayers!”
The difference being “(Oklahoma City, Birmingham, countless murders of doctors, Alan Berg, etc.” weren’t hanging out with the president.
Ayers is a close friend of the president.
Why is one anti-american terrorist different from the others if not political affiliation.
p.s. If you meant kkk thousands of lynchings, ask robert byrd which party he was and still is a member of.
http://horsesass.org/?p=16935=1#comment-924189
So, here we have two lies:
1) That Bill Ayers is guilty of murder.
2) That Ayers is a “close friend” of the President
But more interesting is the fact that Marvin clearly states here that it is OK to kill people, providing one has no personal connection to the president. Whether he means the current president or all presidents past and present is unclear.
Conclusion? I guess if anyone here wants to off lil’ marv, and they have no personal connection to President Obama, well, go ahead.
@38
…a room full of cynicals, marvins, puddys, ESOs…
Roger Rabbit spews:
@34 A reasonable inference is they would earn less without the union.
A reasonable inference is that they might make more, as well. The real answer is you don’t know, and neither do I. So the question isn’t really that pertinent.
The bottom line is that the average teacher makes a lot more than $35K a year.
The ability for teachers to supplement their income over the summer break also makes the arugment about comparison with graduate education incomes moot.
We just gave our fluffy cat a haircut, I’ve spent half the day dealing with software politics and the other other half reading about game design. So I’m croaking unusually loudly this evening.
“…tax restructuring…” The Washington flat-tax structure is so regressive that it will have to be reformed to improve matters. Washington has an awesomely small-business-hostile, consumer-hostile, and worker-hostile tax system. Someone voted for it. I wonder who that would be.
We could start teaching students rather than teaching subjects and running tests. Wait, I know! Get every student an OLPC, just like they’re trying to do in really poor countries. Naw…
BTW, just because the Japanese graduate HS with six years of study in English doesn’t mean they have actually learned to speak the language. At least 15 years ago, that instruction usually didn’t include interaction with native speakers. On the other hand, Mexican literacy rates are around 90%.
Wow, I knew Roadkill’s grip on reality was tenuous at best, but now he’s slipped into full blown mind bending lunacy with that comment. The indoctrination is coming from the left, Roadkill, not the right. But you already knew that.
As a retired professor of education (more than familiar with CA education) the issues mentioned above: money, culture, parental involvement, religion, local economies, etc., are not the core problem. That is philosophical. Why do we want to provide education for the masses at the expense of the masses. Capitalists (and parents who have the means and time to be engaged with their students because they have wealth) argue we need to “educate” future working classes of upper middle class employees (the idiotic international comparison bullshit), while insuring that there continue to be millions of wages slaves in service sector roles to pay for it. Liberals want all students to be educated equally and given the same opportunities and chances through identical national standards but don’t really know what that means, since they can’t begin to propose the philosophical underpinning of what those standards would represent. Libertarians and fundamentalists want only home schooling and no public funding for education, thus insuring that the wealthy can impose all power over the poor.
Nowhere in any of this debate has any of those above put forth a hermeneutically sound proposition on the real purpose of public education in the 21st century. It is ironic, in some sense, that the founders of public education (especially beyond 8th grade), were able to clearly articulate the need to train future workers for industry, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, etc. Education beyond high school was reserved for the few (top 10%) who would lead through development of self-actualized awareness of the world around them. We don’t live in that world anymore, nor is any of that appropriate. We have little to no manufacturing or industry; agricultural is technologically advanced; we import transportation infrastructures; we offer everyone higher education but solely to “improve” the productivity (and thus much less employment) of the service sectors. We are a nation with no clear vision of how to move into the 21st century. So we offer useless ideas and pablum (international standards, teach to tests, demand higher test scores, etc.) hoping that living in the status quo will be sufficient. It clearly isn’t.
Puddy can prove worf is a liar… watch and learn
Bill Ayers founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Guess who the co-chairs of the board for five years? Barack H. Obama and William Ayers!
The Woods family founded the Woods Fund. Barack H. Obama was on the BoD from 1993-2002. Bill Ayers joined the BoD in 1999.
When Barack H. Obama decided to run for the Illinois Senate, he did it at Bill Ayers home to meet the powerful Illinois Dummocrapts.
So worf ol pal… you are a liar!!!!!
Regarding the murder charge…you decide
I trust that Marvy and Puddy are ripe for the Obama Death Panel. They don’t seem worried to me.
They probably are relying on Saint Sarah to save them.
(Snort, snicker)
Mmm, yes, Marianne Faithfull had something to say about that system.
Whole changes in who and why “education” education wanted, or needed, do not happen on their own. More money, different tests to measure the results of methods designed to produce workers is pretty much running in place (though it does cut down on civil wars).
As long as the answer to the question, why are we here, is to work then we will keep those systems going.
The integration of professionals that learned for a reason into the educational system would be a good start. Having large scale transformative goals would be a good end, and changing the goals and the systems that form around them on a regular basis would be even better.
Pelletizer@39…
US Colleges are left-wing indoctrination zones
Pelletizer you can order this from Amazon
Or you can watch YouTube
And you can visit this site too.
X’ad@47,
You are the one who claimed you are retiring and heading to Asia. Hmmm… you must be speaking about yourself.
Pelletizer, you know the WEA is still pressuring teachers to give their dues for political causes they don’t support even after the SCOTUS judgement and WA COA judgment?
saint sarah? Oh, sarah palin. Damn, she sure does scare you left-wingnuts the way you can’t stop obsessing about her.
I am relying on doctors to save me. That’s why I buy my own health insurance. Pretty simple concept. So simple even I can do it.
Typical democrat… wanting someone else to do for him.
Thanks.
I clean forgot about
“It was a success,” he said, “but it’s a shame when someone like Bernardine has to make all the plans, make the bomb, and then place it herself. She should have to do only the planning
Marvin@54,
No problem dude. Puddy seldoms forgets facts. Glad to show worf his moronic ways.
Wait for it… clusterfucked cinderblock or spongebob wondermoron will make some circle jerk comment.
He doesn’t have to with you two idiots filling the joint with shit.
So much for Marvin being on welfare,
But how DO you pay for your insurance?
Excellent prediction.
56. X’ad spews:
He doesn’t have to with you two idiots filling the joint with shit
Next time we should make a pool which one proves your point first.
You thought I was on welfare? Talk about truthers and birthers being loons.
I only said that to make gbs feel good about himself. Some people take pleasure in the bad fortune/luck of others.
Are you disappointed I’m not on welfare? Does it make you a little sad knowing that I’m not struggling in life?
I couldn’t give a shit less what you do for money, but you heavily implied you were on welfare. Which is inconsistent with your paying for insurance, dolt.
I thought so.
you wanted to think I was on welfare. You’re one of those kind of people.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Marvin @ 17 said that pay for performance is a problem:
“In high performing schools, it works well. In schools where the parents are AWOL those teachers are screwed. What teacher would work in a underperforming school if their $ is tied to results.”
Actually, that was my mother’s complaint. She taught English in Jr. High and High School betwen 1964 and 1984 (the year she died). She was pretty good with the students most teachers didn’t want, so she was assigned to teach those classes. She was afraid that in a pay-for-performance system, she would be penalized for that.
But I don’t see how we can’t come up with a reasonable way of measuring a teacher’s performance, based upon their student’s PROGRESS from the beginning to the end of the year.
Ouch. That much hurt a bit knowing your mom agreed with me. (joking)
Were these kids learning disabled? If so, they can still make progress with a good teacher. If the students are outright disruptive in class the teacher is screwed. The teacher spends more time trying to keep control than teaching. I’m sure you know, the conditions in public schools are much much worse than when your mom (and mine) were teaching.
You’re a stupid person making a stupid comment. Teaching is a profession that requires a degree and license. It should pay enough to provide teachers with a middle-class standard of living. Teachers shouldn’t have to work an after-hours or weekend job to make ends meet. They shouldn’t have to spend summers doing laborer work on road crews or watching their families go hungry if they can’t find an employer willing to hire someone for only two months at the same time everyone else is also looking for temporary seasonal work. You clearly have no respect for teachers or their contribution to society. Fuck you. You’re not worth arguing with. So, my only response to you is: Fuck you.
“39. Roger Rabbit spews:
I feel sorry for the next generation of employers. They’ll have to run their businesses with employees who grew up being indoctrinated with right wing bullshit.”
I hardly think the US educational system can be described as “right wing.” I’m sure most people would describe educators from being left-leaning moderates to mad-dog liberal extremists. After all, Bill Ayers is hardly a right wing extremist, and he’s a prominent education proff at the University of Chicago. He’s just one example. rodent, do you think Ward Churchill is a right wing extremist? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest he’s not really very conservative. I know, I’m taking a chance, but what’s life without a little risk?