Student-centered education legislation heading to Senate

Dropout prevention, STEM education, and closing the opportunity gap took center stage in the state House Friday as a package of education bills was approved and sent to the Senate.

“Our priorities are clearly best for all kids and our public schools,” said Rep. Marcie Maxwell, the Deputy Majority Leader for Education and Opportunity. “The House is focused on support for quality teaching and learning.  We’re working on strategic policy and budget decisions that make significant investments in education funding and ensure successful implementation of the real reforms we’ve recently enacted."

Here's the press release for the whole package, which includes these key bills:

HB 1276 creates a pilot program with school districts and community organizations, like food banks and small farms to target at-risk youth.

HB 1424aims to close the opportunity gap by providing families, schools, and communities with the tools they need to increase the number of on-time graduations. This bill will give local communities additional resources to detect early warning signs of a potential and intervene with appropriate measures.

HB 1872, creates a STEM Education Innovation Alliance made up of leaders from business and education fields. The alliance will align STEM education initiatives in early learning, K-12, and post-secondary education and is a key piece of Governor Inslee’s Working Washington agenda.

HB 1252 will create an online framework for professional development opportunities for educators in Washington.

HB 1283  will lower the age for compulsory school attendance from age eight to six. Washington is only one of two states where children are not required to be enrolled in an education program until age 8.

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Homeless student population now over 27,000

As of yesterday, there are 1,397 more reasons the “fund education first” plan isn’t as great as it may sound.

Washington state now has 1,397 more homeless students bringing the total to 27,390.

Those numbers come from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), who says homeless students increased by 5.1% increase compared to the 2010-11 school year.

Why the increase? Job loss, unforeseen illness, increased housing prices and foreclosures.

Here’s an excerpt from the OSPI news release:

Districts cite many reasons for the increase. The overall job market is still struggling, in addition to local economic factors, such as the closing of a paper mill in Everett and the decline of the logging industry in Shelton and elsewhere. More students are living on their own. And funding for services that help prevent homelessness is being cut.

In the proposed Fund Education First plan, how much funding would go towards:

• Job creation and worker retraining: $0
• Health care for low and middle-income families: $0
• Housing assistance: $0

Sick, hungry or homeless kids can’t learn.

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Who’s behind the reform agenda?

Fmr. Gov. Jeb Bush
(photo courtesy ThinkProgress.org)

Over the last several years, House Democrats have championed legislation to reform our public schools. The status quo wasn't working and changes were necessary.

Two of the biggest reforms were passed a few years ago- HB 2776 and HB 2261. These measures redefined "basic education" and provided a road map for fully funding basic education by the year 2018. Full compliance with these two measures will get us back on the right track with keeping our promise to fully fund our public schools- an opinion reaffirmed by the state Supreme Court in the McCleary decision.

We also haven't been shy to enact additional reforms to other parts of public education when problems emerged that needed fixing. We enacted a new Teacher/Principal Evaluation Program that will ensure a great teacher is in front of every student in every school. We adopted Common Core Standards that will ensure our students are learning what they need to know so they can be successful in life after high school.

But despite adopting these sweeping reforms, some lawmakers are looking to take our public schools in another direction.

An article from the Washington Post today may shine a little more light on that new direction and where those directives are coming from.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

A nonprofit group released thousands of e-mails today and said they show how a foundation begun by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and national education reform leader, is working with public officials in states to write education laws that could benefit some of its corporate funders.

A call to the foundation has not been returned.

The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bush's agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who can't read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores.[...]

Washington state is not referenced in the Washington Post piece, although bills have been introduced in our Legislature that would hold back third-graders, make changes to our newly-reformed teacher/principal evaluation program, and give schools an A-F grade.

Here is the entire Washington Post piece.

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Does the Times know the difference between a phone survey and election day results?

This issue of authorizing charter schools in Washington state continues to be a contentious one. Passionate advocates on both sides want to provide the best education possible for our children.

When engaging in these debates, it’s important to have the correct facts so that people can form opinions based on solid information. Unfortunately, the op-ed written by the Friedman Foundation and the Freedom Foundation published in the Seattle Times this morning leaves out some pretty key facts.

Let’s start with the headline.

If voters favor charter schools, why can't state lawmakers?

FACT: Voters in Washington have rejected charter schools at the polls three times since 1996. The headline and the premise of the op-ed are based off a phone survey of registered voters conducted by the two conservative foundations. A phone survey of registered voters and actual election results are completely different things. As demonstrated multiple times at the polls on election day, voters do not favor charter schools.

Now let’s look at the survey itself, which you can read here. On the question regarding support for charter schools, the organizations boast “Washington voters favor charter schools by an overwhelming margin of 60 percent in support.” Let’s look at this claim with additional poll data they conveniently left out of the Times op-ed.

Respondents were asked how familiar they are with charter schools. The results:

•    11% - Very familiar
•    35% - Somewhat familiar
•    40% - Not that familiar
•    14% - Never heard of/don’t know

Over half of the respondents have very little or no knowledge at all about charter schools. And depending on the definition of “somewhat familiar,” an argument can be made that 9 of 10 respondents have limited or no knowledge on the topic. That’s a key observation given how the specific question about charter schools was phrased:

You don’t have to be a professional pollster to see the inherent bias and influence in this phrasing. Given that the majority of respondents are admittedly unfamiliar with charter schools, the first part of this question could influence the responses. Using phrases like “have more control” and “exempt from regulations” are loaded phrases purposely designed to influence the results, especially among those unfamiliar with the issue.

A pollster would get equally biased results in the other direction if the question was phrased:

A recent study by Stanford University found only 17 percent of charter students performed better than their peers in public schools while half performed the same and 37 percent of charter students received an education that was significantly worse than traditional public schools. In general, do you favor or oppose charter schools?

Pro-charter advocates want the best for their children. So do those who favor the traditional public school model. As the debate continues, let’s make sure we have the correct facts and unbiased information on the table.

On a side note, the Friedman/Freedom poll also found nearly half of all respondents favored raising state taxes to fund public schools, but that’s a topic for another day.

To read this story in Spanish, click here.