I’ve been concerned about education in my community and state for over 10 years. As a volunteer I’ve been recruiting people for years to speak up. And now at the League of Education Voters I spend most of my time recruiting people to speak up for education.
It is a long, slow process. I find a person here or there, a couple in this community or that. But I find people in ones or twos, not hundreds or thousands. This used to amaze me, now I’m resigned to the fact that fundamentally, we are happy with education. I’m not saying that education is great in Washington State; I’m saying that we, as a general public are happy with it. There are lots and lots of reasons for this.
Just to list a few reasons for our complacency:
Every school district in this state tells its community that it’s doing fine, that they have a great community that their kids are improving. School districts rely on levies for their basic expenses now. Typically about 20% of a school districts operating budget comes from a levy. The school district needs to tell the community that everything is ok, that they should invest in their “good” schools. Who wants to invest in lousy schools? Who wants to pay for schools that have problems? So, districts communicate only positive, “good feeling” messages, regardless of whether it’s true or not.
Parents grew up as a generation of Americans who were educated in one of the top educational systems in the world. As parents, we look at our schools and we see our children receiving basically the same education that we received, and our education was one of the best provided in the world. And, our children’s education is slightly better then what we received, so we fundamentally believe things are ok. What we don’t realize is that other nations looked at us, wanted to have the same opportunities as us and those countries invested in their education systems. We have not moved down the ranks in international test scores, we have stayed the same, it’s just that 20 plus other nations have moved up, surpassing us.
Washington State is very equitable in school funding, but very low in per pupil funding. As a state, we are very proud of how equitable our education funding is. There are pockets of inequity of course, but for the most part, the money is evenly distributed across the state. The trouble is the money is equally low across the state. We don’t know what things we “could” have because no district has them. Just one example, many states have a 7th period day in middle and high school. Our state typically has only a 6th period day. This means that our children in Washington State who are competing for seats in colleges are at a distinct disadvantage. If two students have the same GPA and the same SAT scores, but one had more Advanced Placement offerings because of the 7th period, the student with the most classes will get into the college. Since we don’t even know that it’s possible to have a 7th period, we aren’t unhappy about it.
We haven’t figured out what the new global economy means to us. India and China have billions of people, and even if they only truly educate the top 10% of their population, they are giving an outstanding education to a lot of people, enough people to overwhelm our country. And those billions are now competing with us for jobs. Microsoft says it hires less than 1% of its people from the State of Washington. They are hiring globally. All things being equal, there should be more Washingtonians, but there aren’t, because we don’t have the education to keep up. We are not producing the engineers and scientists that they need.
There are many other reasons why we have grown so complacent. But we need to stop. We are falling behind, test scores are important, and we are falling behind internationally, but what really matters is jobs. And we are importing people for our very best jobs. We need this to stop. The children of Washington deserve better.
Please contact me if you’d like to help speak up for education in the state of Washington Kelly@educationvoters.org
