During his campaign announcement speech, gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna (R) was all about education. The only problem is…he has no way to fund the pricey stuff he proposed:
“Rob McKenna’s $5.76 billion education plan flunks basic math,” said Aaron Ostrom, Executive Director of Fuse Washington, the state’s largest progressive organization. “He’s trying to fool voters with a smoke and mirrors plan that even he himself has labeled ‘hard to fathom.'”
McKenna made two specific and ambitious spending proposals:
- Doubling higher education spending from 8 percent ($2.56 billion) to 16 percent ($5.12 billion) of the state’s $32 billion budget, an increase of $2.56 billion.
- Growing public education’s share of the budget from 41 percent ($13.12 billion) to 51 percent ($16.32 billion), an additional increase of $3.2 billion.
In total, Rob McKenna proposed $5.76 billion in new spending in just one hour – $600 million more than the budget deficit the Legislature spent nearly five months working to close.
To pay for it, McKenna has two modest proposals…. Regardless of the merits or feasibility of either proposal, combined they would pay for just 13 percent of McKenna’s new spending.
McKenna is also relying on revenue assumptions that don’t pass muster, even with himself. When pushed by several reporters after his speech, McKenna admitted he was also relying on the estimated 13 percent growth in government revenue (approximately $4 billion) for the next biennium.
Big talk…zero chance of realizing it—the math just doesn’t pan out. Man…that McKenna sure has difficulties when it comes to mathematics!
But who do educators actually support? Well, it is a little early to say for sure, but Publicola’s Josh Feit made an interesting observation:
Inslee raised nearly $10,000 from teachers and educators—not the union, just individual teachers, about 30 of them. McKenna has raised just $850 from teachers, a low number for a candidate who’s stumping on education issues.
Two hypotheses:
- Educators find Jay Inslee to be the more appealing candidate, and we might expect a roughly similar 10:1 ratio of donations from educators to Inslee:McKenna in the future.
- It’s a one-time anomaly. Inslee’s just received a transient surge of donations from appalled math teachers.
Which one is right? Beats the hell out of me. I report, you decide.
Republicans are people who believe all government is bad, except government that’s free.
Republicans are people who believe all government is bad, and they do everything in their power to make it so.
Remember when Bobbie dropped the DNR – Okanogan PUD lawsuit? Bobbie’s unilateral decision was in effect to give our Common School Trust land to the Okanogan welfare county at the expense of our schools’ income stream.
So how does Bobbie differ from Scott Walker?
Bobbie is not yet governor.
McKenna is lying – he is promising increased funding for education but really he will cut teachers salaries and try to kill the unions. Look at his record on health care – he went completely tea party.
He is a panderer to the far right wing nutcases – any depiction of him as a moderate is an out-and out lie.
I would LOVE to hear a debate between Insley and McKenna on higher education!
Aside form the dollars issues, it would be very cool to ask them how we should deal with the FACT that 1/3 of incoming students at the UW are not able to take college level science because they do not have highs school math.
At the same time, the legislature just approved “WGU” … an online “university” that claims to be able to prepare high school science teachers by sending out lab kits in a bix and with NO instructors to help students with math or science.
Jay’s District is ESPECIALLY “hot” because of the inane fights over creating a much needed state polytechnical college in Everett. The current plan is t create what I call a “Potemkin U” … a faux campus of WSU without the resources to do its job.
I sincerely doubt that Washington’s students or employers will be well served by WGU or by PU!
@5 SJ
You miss the point. The point is that McKenna is lying. WGU is a farce.
So is the undergrad science at UW – 700 in a beginning bio classroom? What kind of learning environment is THAT?
The UW does not even have prereq classes in the sciences that qualify for their own grad/prof schools in science (such at PT, nursing, pharmacy – they are missing a qualifying anatomy and physiology class, for instance).
How pathetic is THAT?
1/3 of students at UW probably don’t even WANT to take science anyways. But I agree that the math in HS these days is pathetic.
There are LOTs of things that need to be done with public education in Washington, especially in the K-12 area. But since it all costs money, Republicans prefer to ignore these, and offer simplistic slogans or bad math, to pretend that they are doing something about it.
In the meantime, we are being passed up – badly – by most of the other industrialized countries in the world.
The short answer to education reform is to never vote for a Republican for public office. That won’t solve all the problems immediatly, but it will remove the first obsticle to progress.
Teacher still remember what Rossi did to them in his last budget in the Senate. They’re not going to vote for a Republican until his stain is wiped clean.
*teachers