Korsmo’s education news roundup for July 30th

(If you are a regular reader, you know that right this very minute my browser is open to training camp updates of my Green Bay Packers. There is a deity somewhere –  the lock out is over. Thank you. Oh, thank you.)

Hope your summer is rolling along in all the right ways. I made the interesting decision to attend my 30^th high school reunion last week, which, if it were a research paper  would have been called something like “the 30 year impact of woodshop; a longitudinal study.” Getting old sucks. (Older, not so much.)

Anywho, on with it.

Nothin’ from Nothin’ Leaves Nothin’: The League of Education Voters, the Washington Education Association, legislators and others filed a lawsuit a week ago begging the constitutional question of Initiative 1053. The initiative required 2/3 votes in the legislature to increase taxes. Our assertion here is that requiring the super majority violates the constitution, which gives legislators latitude to pass laws by a simple majority. In budget constrained years – like say, now – the budget tends to get balanced on the back of education. Initiative 1053 tied legislators’ hands to solve budget problems through a series of cuts – with no real option for increasing revenue.  LEV’s interest in this case comes from our belief that the state is also in violation of its constitutional duty  – its paramount duty – to provide ample funding for education. The supermajority requirement for revenue has translated into additional cuts to an already under-funded system.

Some will say that we can do everything we need to do with the money we have. Some will say that this is just a partisan ploy to raise taxes. Some say “hey, I voted for that.” To which we say; we can definitely do better by the money we have. But we can’t keep cutting and expect us to be able to do better by our kids.  If you think all kids are going to get what they need with  shrinking budgets,  you must think we don’t need to support, compensate or train our teachers and leaders any differently than we do now, that we don’t need to double down on ensuring kids read by third grade through enhancements to quality early learning and that all is well in math and science land. And that transformation is free. As for partisanship, if governing to the tune composed in our constitution is partisan, call me partisan. But be careful which party you associate me with. If you voted for 1053, I’m terribly sorry, but you were mislead. You were told you can change the constitution of the state of Washington without going through the strenuous steps necessary to do so. It’s ok to be upset, I’d just point that upset at the folks who put it forward.

For more info on the case, click here.

You Get What You Pay For: While some in the Edu-sphere ask whether school boards are necessary, or constructive at all, others wonder whether we should pay them. The demands on school board members can be immense, late night meetings, weekend events, budget crises, hiring and firing district leadership. When you consider that they do the job uncompensated and largely untrained, you might wonder whether we are getting what we pay for.  If, like other elected public servants, school board members were compensated, would we get a different group of people interested in the job? What would we have to pay them? What impact would it have on kids? More questions than answers here.

You Actually CAN Get There From Here: For those who want to change the world one kid at a time, becoming a teacher has had a pretty predictable pathway for many years now. First thing you do is get yourself into a four year school with an education department, get your ed degree, yada, yada, yada. But as the narrator in my FMOAT (favorite movie of all time) “Anchorman” says, “The times they are a’changin’.” According to a new survey, four out of ten NEW teachers are coming through alternative pathways. They are also more supportive of changes to the system like compensation reform, eliminating tenure and tying their performance review to student outcomes.

Meanwhile, some folks wonder whether we should train teachers the way we train doctors. This would include such innovative practices as doing “rounds,” visiting classrooms, working collaboratively to find solutions to problems, and  investing more in mentoring.

Speaking of traditional schools of Ed, the National Council on Teacher Quality just wrapped up its review of 134 of them looking for answers to whether we are adequately preparing our  next generation of teachers. Their findings? Well, you’ll have to read them here, but the one that jumped out at me is that the institutions lack clear, rigorous criteria for selecting cooperating teachers. If this piece of the process is half-baked, we are in huge trouble. Like all things that suggest the status quo isn’t enough to move us forward, there is plenty of chatter taking this report to task.

Lead, Please: We’ve had a several years long conversation now about the importance of teaching quality while simultaneously nearly ignoring the importance of building leadership. We’ve  (state and federal level education advocates) put so much attention on changes to tenure, evaluation, preparation, placement and mentoring for teachers that the secret sauce stays just that. Secret. Nearly everyone will tell you that school leadership is critical to great schools. Almost no one has the answer for it. Which leads to rampant worry that our current crop of leaders aren’t up to the task of successfully implementing new evaluation systems. A new report out of Chicago finds that principals, when given both responsibility and authority can and do implement the evaluation systems effectively. More autonomy coupled with higher expectations (and a more rigorous evaluation system for principals) can yield good results.

Shameless Plug: LEV has been working in partnership with Our American Generation exploring the worrisome trends in our education pipeline. That good work has culminated in a podcast series, “ Schools 2 Prison,” which examines the not so hidden reasons behind our opportunity gap, the disproportionality of prison populations and the vast waste of human talent caused by leaving kids behind. Take a listen.

Them’s the news for now, folks. Back from vacation next week when you’ll be subjected to the post-holiday crankiness that only a dedicated subscriber can love.