Today, Gov. Chris Gregoire presented a bleak “all cuts” budget proposal on top of the more than $4 billion already slashed this year. With almost two-thirds of the budget untouchable by state and federal requirements, that leaves education and human services most vulnerable. Her budget proposal cuts education by more than $470 million in early learning, K-12 and higher education.
Even in these bleak economic times, we challenge the governor and lawmakers to invest in what works. We can’t abandon the most vulnerable children and families.
So what works? We believe these programs have demonstrated the proven track record that deserve continued investment.
- Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP): Thousands of young children attend an early childhood education program that helps them start kindergarten ready to succeed.
- Home visitation: At-risk families receive home visiting services from a registered nurse.
- All-day kindergarten: The most at-risk kids in our state attend an all-day kindergarten program.
- State Need Grant for higher education: Financial aid ensures that low and middle income students aren’t shut out of an opportunity to attend a college or university.
- K-4 class size reduction: Young kids benefit the most academically from small class sizes in kindergarten through 4th grade.
Also, we must make Washington competitive for federal Race to the Top funds and the Early Learning Challenge grant. These federal funds are the only additional dollars that will be available for Washington school kids for the foreseeable future. Race to the Top will provide federal grants to select states who demonstrate a commitment to reform and innovation in their public schools. The Early Learning Challenge Grant will provide select states a grant to build a comprehensive early learning system from birth to age five.
Although the demand for quality educational opportunities continues to grow, our state has even fewer resources to meet the needs of young children, students and adults seeking workforce education. Due to a decline in revenue and rising costs, lawmakers will return to Olympia next month to close a $2.6 billion shortfall in order to balance the state budget. This is not trivial matter. Even if lawmakers emptied prisons, closed state parks and cut student financial aid entirely, it would not be enough.
Here’s what a $470 million cut in education means for children and schools:
- Fewer young children will start school ready to succeed: Cuts to the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program were spared early this year. But now, a $10.5 million cut is proposed to ECEAP that would deny 1,500 three year old kids the opportunity to attend a high quality preschool program.
- Going backwards on all-day kindergarten: The budget cut $33.6 million for state-subsidized all-day kindergarten for the 2010-11 school year. This impacts 16,000 students in the poorest schools in our state.
- Less one-on-one time with teachers: Funding for Initiative 728 was reduced from $458 to $131 per student this school year. Now, I-728 would be entirely suspended. The loss of $78.5 million will mean schools will have to lay off almost 1,000 of their most young and energetic teachers-and class sizes will get even larger.
- Major cut to more than half of school districts: A $143 million cut in levy equalization would mean fewer teachers, specialists, counselors and programs that support student achievement in more than half of the state’s school districts.
- Doors to college shut for more low-income and middle-class students: Although tuition has skyrocketed by up to 14 percent per year at 4-year universities and 7 percent at community and technical colleges, a $146 million cut to financial aid will mean 12,300 students will not receive the support they need to attend a community college or university. This represents more than a 50 percent cut to our state’s historic commitment to help low- and middle-income students attend college. In addition, our state’s Work Study program was entirely cut which affects 11,000 students.
Schools, colleges and universities are bracing for yet another round of cuts to the state education budget. This is on top of the $1.6 billion net cut after the inclusion of federal stimulus dollars.
In addition, the governor’s supplemental budget cut these human services programs:
- Basic Health Plan (BHP): The entire BHP was eliminated, which means 65,000 Washingtonians will lose their health care.
- General Assistance Unemployable (GAU): The GAU program was eliminated. 29,210 adults who are unable to secure a living-wage job due to a mental or physical disability will no longer receive support.
What can you do? Tell the governor and lawmakers to keep the programs that work and to aggressively pursue Race to the Top and the Early Learning Challenge grant.
These times are tough – both here in Washington state and around the world. The future depends upon how we approach managing this crisis – will we invest wisely and take advantage of new funding opportunities, or will we go down the same worn path? The choice is ours.
Chris, you wrote “Also, we must make Washington competitive for federal Race to the Top funds and the Early Learning Challenge grant. These federal funds are the only additional dollars that will be available for Washington school kids for the foreseeable future. Race to the Top will provide federal grants to select states who demonstrate a commitment to reform and innovation in their public schools..”
Chris, have you read the RTT Final Program Guidelines in the Federal Register, and, in particulare, the Application Form with Guidance to Reveiwers at the end of the 148 p. program announcement?
Do you understand how little money is $250M (the most our state can “win” from RTT) compared to the annual state K-12 budget ($8B). Do you understand that the reforms that Arne Duncan wants from our state will affect our schools for decades to come, and that therefore it is appropriate to compare this one time infusion of at most $0.25 billion is compared to the cumulative state spending over decades to come? Do you know that whatever amount the state might win must be to start up new programs that will be sustainable, which means, that the state will incur an additional ongoing spending obligation if the programs will ened state spending to be sustained?
If you have thoroughly studied the part of the RTT Final Program announcement that I mention, and
if understand how harmful are school turnarounds for affected students and familes (A.Duncan appears to pefer that States be willing to “turnaround at least 5% of its schools every year, and that in larger districts, the least disruptive turnaround model may NOT be used in more than 50% of targetted schools), and
if you understand what an absolutely trivial amount of money that we will be able to get at most from RTT,
then I don’t know how you could be supporting this state going after RTT.
Would you please explain what you like about school turnarounds? About the State giving itself the right to take control of individual schools that under NCLB are determined to be failing? About deprofessionalization of the teaching profession, about teaching to the test? about high stakes testing? BOTA makes absolutely clear that high stakes testing is discredited as a basis for making decisions about student promotion and graduation, and teacher pay/placement/promotion/tenure/retention.
Chris – Please do me the favor or giving thorough responses to the valid, relevant, important points I raised in this reply
Chris, Joan’s comments are absolutely accurate and cogent. The relatively few dollars the “Race to the Top” competition (between states scrabbling for money) NOT worth succumbing to the demands of Arne Duncan to change our state’s public schools to the sorts of schools he seems to think work.
As Joan points out, even if we “won” (what, we should compete with other school districts around the country, we win they lose?) ths most we would get would only fund 2.5% of our states budget for a year, the money would then be gone, and any programs started with it would either go away or demand additional money from the state to continue…NOT a good investment.
Arne Duncan worked for an investment firm’s “foundation,” Ariel School, in Chicago before he became the head of the Ed Dept. Ariel School, a charter school, was themed around “investment” (what a surprise! An investment firm creating more little investors!) and young children, ages 6-13, were exposed to a curriculum centered around this investment (because investment firms are so smart! They really didn’t help bring about the greatest financial crash of the last 70 years…) which, of course, precludes ths study of history, art, music, cultures….you know, everything that makes a REAL education?
Do you think an “investment” school would teach about the benefits of socialism? About the culpability of investment firms in this year’s crash or the one of 1929? Nah, I don’t think so.
Is this what we want for education? Arne Duncan’s vision of little worker-factories, pumping out little worker bees? Are we willing to change our state’s public schools into this for a mere 2.5% of the state’s annual education budget?
I’m not, and I would hope that the LEV would foster a more balanced perspective. It is apparent where you, Chris, would like this state to go, pedagogically, and its following in the footsteps of the charter companies, educational “consultants” from Gates and Broad foundtation, and other “reformers” who seem to think we can measure and produce education with little data sets and white papers that assign mere numbers to the rich lessons students recieve in public schools. You would have us charter off the schools, make teachers compete with each other for their pay, foist mere “Math/Reading?Writing/Science off as a deep and rich education, and reduce teaching and learning to just whatever it takes to provide fodder for the economy.
Many aren’t on board with this perversion, and certainly not for just 2.5%
Thanks for your comments and questions. Here are a couple of thoughts. First, yes, I’ve read the final guidelines. Do I love all of it? no. Is $250M a ton of money? When you’re bleeding money, $250 is something to talk about, let alone $250 M. But it’s not only about the money. Our schools have to do better by our kids. I’m pretty clear about this. I’m not suggesting we put a pot of money on the table and have teachers “compete” for it. But is it financially – and otherwise – rewarding for teachers to rely on COLA’s as the only raise in income? No matter how you perform, or how much you spend to put additional resources in your classroom or how much extra time you spend preparing to lead a classroom?
You ask whether I love turnaround programs for schools. What I don’t love is leaving kids to wander in the wilderness in schools that don’t help them find (let alone achieve) their potential. If you have a suggestion for what we should do with chronically underpeforming schools, let’s have it. Status quo here kills kids.
Why the hate for charters? Granted, there have been some programs over time that have not worked, have sucked public dollars and not done any better for kids. But so do a lot of public schools. If the charters we are talking about are public schools, and their students come to them from a lottery or other random assignment type system, and they can get better results for kids, why should we fight them? Because they allow for flexibility that threatens long-standing tradition (i.e. bargaining)? I’d take student achievment over tradition any day. .
Look, I have one goal. You can call it pedagogy or perversion or purple rain for all that matters. Are we getting kids ready for life? By that, I specifically mean, are we preparing kids for post-secondary degree attainment. Because without a degree, family sustaining jobs are hard – if not impossible – to come by. It can be a certificate, a B.A., a Masters, but that piece of paper is more important now than ever.
So, while I don’t think $250 M is a great amount of money and while I wish we did have more evidence on what works for turn around schools and while I’m not spending my free time doing calculus, I do believe that the changes you are talking about are necessary. Our future depends on it.
Thanks again for writing in. I know we agree on the need to do the best we can by our kids and look forward to your continued engagement on this page.
Chris – Please do me the favor of giving pertinent, well-reasoned, data-based responses to the valid, relevant, important points that Seattle Citizen and I raised in this reply to your blog post.
If you can’t do this, then would you see that LEV’s stance on RTT, high-stakes testing, school turnarounds, and Arne-Duncan/Eli Broad/Bill Gates’ model for merit pay is REFORMED?
With respect to merit pay, for example, there IS a way to reward teachers for good performance that is NOT DEprofessionalizing, and that does NOT require teachers to align all instructional efforts to preparing students to do well on district and state standardized exams. Remember that the data is REALLY CLEAR that closing the achievement gap (CAG) on high stakes tests – as the heavily Broad-Foundation influenced New York City Schools under Bloomberg has been very successful at- is uncorrelated to student performance by racial group on the gold standard National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).
[[NYC school district is a recent winner of the "prestigious" (HAH!) Broad Prize in Urban Education-- see http://www.broadurbanprize.org. New York City school district was used one of the model's for the MGJ's "Excellence For All" Strategic Plan. I say, it should be called "Mediocrity for most, and disaster for some." ]
If you are unaware of the data that shows this, then just ask me to send you the links. THE DATA IS SO CLEAR. If you aren’t interested in the data that doesn’t fit your ideological view, then this proves that you and your organization and your ally organizations are not interested in genuine, effective CAG programs, i.e., programs that achieve CAG WITHOUT using artificial means.
These are examples of artifical means: charter schools (the artificial means that charter schools use to achieve CAG are well-documented), focusing on “bubble” students, “bringing down the top”, and Supplementary Educational Services for Title I students.
I don’t see how you can say with a straight face that LEV’s agenda is not, first and foremost, a public school privatization agenda. If it weren’t, then your organization and benefactors (mainly the Foundations of Nick and Leslie Hanauer, Bill Gates, and Microsoft Corporation — see LEV’s recently released 2008 Annual report for the documentation), would be making a GENUINE effort to figure out how to GENUINELY promote the GENUINE life achievement of disadvantaged P-20 public school students (of which scores on state standardized measurements are not a valid measure), without resorting to charter schools. There are SO many problems with charter schools, such as I have already mentioned.
I say, let us look to past results from CHARTER schools, to learn from these models and encourage NON-CHARTER public schools to implement the GENUINELY EFFECTIVE innovations WITHIN the non-charter public schools!
Why can LEV not support such an IDEA?
From KIPP, for example, we can learn that talented disadvantaged students, with strong family support, can be very successful. The KIPP middle school program APPEARS to be effective with this subpopulation of kids. [I use the word "appears", because KIPP refuses to release all the data that is needed to make a valid assessment of its success of lack-thereof.] Kids without strong family support are least likely to be successful in a KIPP-style program. (KIPP will not release data on program drop-out rates, on graduation and college entrance rates of drop-outs, and on within-program grade retention rates, etc, but the indications nevertheless are as I suggest here.)
So maybe an argument can be made for a KIPP-like middle school program established in SPS as a bonafide public school program (not as a charter school.), and then promote this program to the families of the kids who have a profile that pre-ordains them with a high chance of being successful in the program. If you say
“KIPPS success cannot be replicated outside of public schools, because the public school system has too much bureaucracy, innertia, entrenched intersest,” etc.,
then I will say
If the KIPP program can only succeed with the cost savings that come from having non-unionized, overworked teachers with high rates of staff turnover due to burn-out, then I say that this is NOT a model that I would call a SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION. I would NOT favor trying to replicate it within SPS as a non-charter program.
Is LEV against such an experiment? If so, then how else can such position be interpreted except as a bias toward charter schools, de-unionized teaching, and de-professionalized teaching?
I think it is very interesting that Nick Hanueur was the biggest contributor to the 2007 elections of Carr, Sundquist, Maier, and Martin-Moriss. The first three especially, with DeBell and Chow, have made the School Board a rubberstamping school Board for the Broad-Foundation sponsored superintendent. The DATA IS VERY CLEAR that this 2007 School Board has given over the District to the Broad Foundation.
Nick Hanauer is clearly supportive of the Broad Foundation take-over of SPS. His extraordinary contributions, together with those of Steve Ballmer, Stuart Sloan, another Microsoft executive, Costco CEO, the wives of all of these men, and a number of other very wealthy men (and their wives), wireless technology executives, along with a couple women brought us this impotent, Broad-agenda-compliant, Board. Don Nielson’s (pro-charter, Teach First founder) large contributions to Kay Smith-Blum’s campaign enabled anti-privatization incumbent Mary Bass to lose here re-election bid. Mary had some $8K in contributions to Kay’s large coffer (don’t remember just now how much, but I think it was over $50K). So the 2009-2011 Board remains pro-reform (in the worst sense of reform.
I predict that this reply will be screened from the LEV website, unles you are able write a credible response. (I don’t see how you can!)
Anticipating this, I will post this to the SSS blog, so that others may see it, and check for themselves whether this has indeed been filtered out of the LEV blog.
Joan Sias
Alias “Joan NE” on blogs.
joan@mathascent.org
6532 42nd Ave. NE
Seattle WA 98115
206 523 2122.
SSS Blog, also known as Seattle Public Schools Community Blog.
http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/
Dora Taylor and Sue Peter’s blog:
Seattle Education 2010: http://seattle-ed.blogspot.com/
We don’t need charter schools. There are many examples in this state of “alternative” schools that allow the same flexibility you suggest is the benefit of charter schools (along with charters threatening “tradition”, as you call it, “i.e. [collective]bargaining.”
The state (and Seattle) could add support to its existing (and new) alternative schools (“option” schools, they’re called in Seattle) and not have to write charters, which, by nature and contract, delegate onto various and sundry organizations and corporations the authority, accountability and policy we have democratically established in our public school systems.
Seriously, can you tell me ONE thing a charter can do differently (or “better”) than a regular alternative or option school? If the districts were interested in providing options, providing choice, they could study the alternatives they already offer students: STEM, democratic decision-making, themed schools, themed academies…all these already exist in the PUBLIC realm.
As you indicate in your comments about teachers being “limited” by pay steps, the main focus again becomes apparent: Busting the union. The sole reason for a charter school would be to do away with collective bargaining, as we’ve seen across the nation.
But teachers and educators overwhelmingly support each other, in schools and at the bargaining table. They collaborate in classrooms, they collaborate in decision-making regarding pay and benefits, and they share their student successes in both: Seattle’s superintendent, Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson, just received a $5000 bonus based on faulty metrics and NOT shared with her colleagues in classrooms, who, IF success was had, should absolutely get most of the credit because they work with the students. Is THIS the model we want, each teacher competing for the cash?
You don’t respond to the point about the tiny little amount of the education budget 250 million represents. WHY would you propose we make changes to our state’s public schools merely to prostitute ourselves to the federal government’s grand plans? WHY should Washington compete for money, maybe at the expense of Oregon or Idaho? Would we feel good about ourselves if we won? Would we feel good that we had bowed down to D.C., taken their little pile of cash, made changes to our system that we would have to pay for later when the D.C. money runs out, and meanwhile left other states out in the cold?
The “race to the top” is wrong in so many ways: It’ foists policy change on states for a pittance, and it makes us compete with other states for money needed to serve students. Would you have us deprive Oregon’s kids of funding so we could have some?
Finally, the “data” used to drive all this is narrow and misused, Dr. G-J’s “bonus” was predicated on WASL increases that have been shown to be false. When you look at the SAME COHORT of students and follow them from 4th through 6th, you see that they actually declined in WASL scores, yet the 6th grade increase (between separate cohorts) was slightly improved, so she got a bonus.
This “race for data” is killing education, and the narrowing of educational goals to a mere basic benchmark is disasterous. Teachers do so much more than “instruct” in Read/Write/Math/Sciene, yet these are the metrics that have been foisted off on a gullible public as the be-all and end-all of education. Civics? Not tested. Art? Not tested. Deep and inquiry-based learning? Not important. Flexible educators able to move on a moments notice to address the many and varied needs of a classroom.
Yes, our kids need the best. Most teachers are already giving the students the very, very best, and have no desire to dis their colleagues by competing with them. Change will happen when society takes care of the needs of students who are hundry, abused, living with parent (or just one parent) who is unemployed, evicted, or otherwsie unable to help their child…
The obvious inequities are between students who have parent/guardians who can provide enrichment, who have a culture of learning and understand the system and how to work it, who have time and less stress to help out; and those parents who can’t provide enrichment, have no books in the home, are of a different color and suffer the ongoing racism of that, have language barriers (do you know a new immigrant from Somalia is expected to pass the WASL, even though they have only been exposed to English for maybe two years, and have no English-speaking parents at home? Ridiculous!
Grow good schools through the public system. Charters take away public responsibility (and tax dollars: MY tax dollars are NOT going to any pseudo-[ublic or for-profit school, not in my lifetime)
Chris, you write that:
“I have one goal….Are we getting kids ready for life? By that, I specifically mean are we preparing kids for post-secondary degree attainment. Because without a degree, family sustaining jobs are hard – if not impossible – to come by. It can be a certificate, a B.A., a Masters, but that piece of paper is more important now than ever. ”
But you’re working for EDUCATION goals that include much more than this – they include civics (are we preparing our children to be citizens? Are we teaching them about the pros and cons of various economic and social systems? Are we preparing them to he artists who don’t CARE about “career” (heck, everybody knows we change careers often in this country…) are we teaching them about history and art and music and trees and cultures…
Your focus, as is common amongst “reformers,” is on “career.” There are other purposes for education that you omit entirely. Your “one goal” is work preparation. That is NOT healthy for our children.
The worst thing, Chris, is that I see by your experience that you’ve been an advocate for those who suffer. You seem to think that children are suffering, so we should drink the Koolaid to reform the whole system to help them. To you, it appears that this means “college and work.” So wealthier kids, students who have enrichment at home, who grow up in cultures of education and know how to work the system, will continue to get full and rich curriculums while the stuff you’re advocating, the “basics” (like those measured by WASL, for example, and often measured incorrectly) become the be-all and end-all. Talk about inequality!
Is it fair to students who come from poverty, who face struggles under oppressive racism, classism etc, to have their education become this overly simplified pap that reformers are selling us?
Is it fair to say, “We benevolent overseers will provide you with just the tools to get a job, but none of the tools that make life lively and glorious, or tools to change the systems that make them beholden to college and work, while those students over there, those wealthier, more connected school in that other public school get to lead rich educational lives”?
Can you imagine turning, say, Roosevelt into a charter? Can you imagine the uproar as connected and savvy parents saw their kid’s education being narrowed to such a mean and shallow focus as “job preparation”? They’d be in the streets revolting. Can you imagine Lakeside preparing every student just for “college and work” and using merely WASL scores or some such shallow quantitative tool to assess student ability? No.
So why should wealthier kids get rich educations while those who are poor get limited to “what’s on the WASL test”?
That’s criminal.