House Bill 2533 would change the state operating budget process and prioritize K-12 education funding. LEV agrees with the intent and spirit but opposes the legislation. Here’s where we believe the Fund Education First legislation falls short.

LEV looks at the entirety of the public education system, from early learning to higher education. We want to see more integration, more coordination and more shared incentives that support better outcomes for kids across the spectrum of our public investments. By excluding early learning and higher education from this legislation, we are reinforcing barriers between worlds that ought to work closer together. The data and evidence are clear; it no longer makes sense to separate K-12 from our other education investments. It makes even less sense to pit them against each other in budget debates.

We wholeheartedly endorse the intent and spirit of this proposed legislation. Some have characterized this as a partisan effort. We do not agree. The sponsors have the best interest of our students, and our state, in mind. We support prioritizing funding for education as called for in the Washington State Constitution, the recent McCleary ruling and laid out in recent legislation (2261 and 2776).

The Legislature has the Constitution, Supreme Court rulings and legislation already on the books that forcefully establish public education as the state’s most important area of investment. One more piece of legislation will not change the fundamental issue of resources.

Our current tax system, which is bad for business and morally bankrupt in terms of how it treats our low income residents, cannot provide the secure and stable funding required. We are literally billions of dollars short. Funding education first will not add the resources needed, nor provide enough resources to fully fund education. We could shut down all our prisons, and end Apple Health, and still not have the resources for public education our constitution demands. And of course ending those programs would increase other costs dramatically. We cannot cut our way to fully funding education, nor can we simply repurpose current dollars without severely damaging the basic fabric of our state.

Early this morning, parents, activists, and early learning advocates from across the state were in Olympia to testify in favor of HB 2569, also known as QRIS, at the House Early Learning & Human Services Committee. The passage of QRIS is would mean implementing a voluntary quality rating and improvement system for child care centers and early learning programs. Those childcare centers which choose not to participate would not be included in the rating system. The funding would be provided from Washington’s successful application to the Race to the Top: Early Learning Challenge.

Sarah Francis, the founder of MomsRising, spoke on her and other MomsRising member’s difficulties finding affordable high quality care. She cited a story from a member named Leah who wrote, “Quality childcare is difficult to find in Washington state, and affordable quality care is nonexistent.”

April Terry, mother of three, former childcare provider, and our LEV’s early learning organizer, also testified in favor of the bill. In her testimony, she recalled the hardships she went through trying to find childcare for her three children:

“As low income parent, not only was it struggle to find childcare but a high quality one where my children were not only nurtured and safe and provided with an excellent curriculum was even harder.”

She also noted the struggles that many parents continue to go through: “Many parents in today’s economy don’t have the luxury to investigate and interview centers on quality.”

Terry said she support the rating system because “QRIS would stabilize our state’s professional early learning workforce by providing incentives, support and compensation for improving quality of care.”

“QRIS gives parents another tool when deciding where their precious cargo will spend the majority of their time,” she added.

Terry ended her testimony with this question:

“With half of our children ages 9 to 24 months are in childcare or some form of early learning, shouldn’t it be of the highest quality and be easy to find?”

Children’s Alliance has prepared a full QRIS brief which can be accessed here.

Full testimony can be watched below.

Well folks,

It’s that time. You’re preparing to check out for a long weekend or you’ve already checked out for a long weekend or you’re too wiped out to figure out how to check out so you sit at your desk wondering where all the email has gone today. Because it is s-l-o-w… This year’s last round up – short and sweet – starts with a thank you.

To all of you who do something every day to help kids get the education and support they need to succeed and thrive, thank you. Lots of philosophers have philosophized that there is not better investment than our children. They are right, of course, and so are you. Keep it up. A new year is just a smidge away and great things are possible. Or as a friend recently put it, “so much more is possible.” (thanks, J.D.)

To Team LEV, thank you! You make doing this work fun – even when I want to hit my own head with a tack hammer at the slow pace of change, you are an inspiration.

To my son, Max, and all the “Maxes” out there, keep believing that learning is “cool.” Fun. Exciting. We all believe in you. And, frankly, we’re all counting on you.

Shameless plug: I just mentioned the amazing team at LEV – the folks that brought you the lawsuit against Eyman’s 1053, the passage of WaKids, Seattle’s Families and Education Levy – Please consider a year end gift to help support our work in 2012. There are a LOT of exciting things on the horizon. Sure, there are challenges, too. And we’re ramping up to go after it. If you are so inclined, you can donate on line, here. Thanks for your support!

No Pine-ing: In the holiday spirit, I will forego my usual witty banter regarding the sublime, ridiculous and yes, exciting education news this week and simply give you the best reads – without opinion. Judge for yourself.

• Who should run the Seattle School District?
• What do some NEA members really think about the teaching profession?
• Ever wonder who/what is a Millennial?
• Where do South King county and South Seattle (Roadmap Region) stand on educational attainment as of 2010?
• Why should we disaggregate data?
• Why should we put more focus on school districts East of the mountains?
• Will Aaron Rodgers win MVP?

When next we meet, you will be subjected to the usual bad grammar and frank (some say “passionate,” while others say “distracting”) analysis, and, yes, it’s the New Year’s Resolution issue. May your holidays be safe, warm and full of love for our children.

Chris and Team LEV

Washington State is facing another $1.7 billion shortfall, and legislators are now tackling the deficit in a special session. We’ve released a new version of our budget calculator to challenge you to make  the tough decisions in order to eliminate the latest budget deficit. The services and programs you decide to cut or keep will impact the children, families and seniors of our state.

In order to balance the budget, you can choose to cut programs like full-day kindergarten, health care for low-income children, chemical dependency and domestic violence support, and criminal offender supervision. You can also choose to raise revenue by implementing an income tax, eliminating specific tax exemptions, or even taxing marijuana.

Go to our Budget Calculator, then join the conversation here. What did you cut? What did you save? Did you raise revenue? Let us know what you would do to balance Washington’s budget in the comments.

The 2011 results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show mixed results for Washington State. Washington’s fourth and eighth graders continue to perform above the national average in both reading and math. Washington State eighth-graders average score of 288 on the math portion of the test was higher than the average national score of 283. Likewise Washington’s fourth-graders scored an average of 243 on the math assessment, beating the national average by three points, the same margin they bested the national average the last time the test was administered in 2009.

Washington’s fourth- and eighth-graders saw similar success on the reading portion of the test besting the national average in both instances. On this year’s assessment Washington’s fourth graders matched their 2009 average score of 221, one point higher than the national average which remains unchanged from 2009. Washington increased their average score on the 2011 eighth-grade reading assessment to 268, an increase of one point over 2009, to remain ahead of the national average of 264 for 2011. Though Washington remains ahead of the national average in both fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math the only increases in average score occurred in fourth grade math and eighth grade reading, both by one point.

Despite Washington above average performance in all four areas tested a look at the achievement gap reveals mixed results for the 2011 assessment. There were some bright spots in the report as Latino eighth grade students saw slight reductions in the achievement gap for both reading and math. Additionally, Native American and African American students saw a small reduction in the eighth-grade reading assessment gap. These gains, however slight, are welcome, but the achievement gap in these areas remains substantial. While Washington’s eighth-graders showed signs of progress in closing the achievement gap the existing achievement gap remained unchanged or increased for Latino, African American, and Native American fourth-graders on both the reading and math assessments.

For historical data on Washington State’s NAEP scores visit: http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/NAEP/reports.aspx

Over the month of October, we ran a series on our blog called edCored, which featured stories about how dwindling resources are affecting our schools and our children.

Our series may be over, but budget woes are not. A special legislative session after Thanksgiving is scheduled to cut another $2 billion from the state’s budget. As many are saying, we have not hit bottom yet. Our posts defining basic education, exploring school districts’ operating fund balances and explaining levy equalization will remain relevant for the many months ahead.

So unfortunately, our story doesn’t end here; there will be more edCored posts to come. For now, we thought some of you might find this wrap-up information interesting. We’d also like to thank all of our amazing guest bloggers for their time, passion, ideas and expertise. Their voices were key to making our series a success.

edCored: Has Education Funding Been Cut to the Core?

32 blog posts

26 authors

• LEV staff
• Teachers
• Parents
• Legislators
• Administrators
• Policy and education advocates
• School board directors

Three podcasts

• Rob Neu: District budget woes are personal for Federal Way superintendent
• Mary Alice Heuschel: Budget cuts threaten Renton’s academic progress
• Susan Enfield: Working to keep cuts out of the classroom in Seattle

Two events

• Livestream of the documentary Paramount Duty
• Conference call with Rep. Ross Hunter on upcoming budget discussions

edCored video

• House of Budget Horror

Top Posts

1) The F Word: How funding cuts affect one local PTA
Jennifer Harjehausen, PTA member in the Kent School District
As state and district and building and PTA budgets drop year after year, the pressure on our PTA to eliminate the “fun” programs continues. Things like having the Pacific Science Center visit are memories.
2) The day the music died
Laura Kexel, music teacher
Every year that I have taught in the Kent School District, not only have elementary band and orchestra been on the chopping block, but the district has threatened to cut all elementary music to save money.
3) Budget cuts by district
Beth Richer, LEV’s Legislative Liaison
In the absence of formal collection or reporting of district-by-district data, we have used every possible outlet, including regional and local media, school districts, and the Educational Service Districts, to paint as complete a picture of the 2011 Washington State budget cuts as possible.
4) What “basically” is at stake in the K-12 budget
Hannah Lidman, LEV’s Legislative Director
So everyone throws around this term “Basic Education” all the time when talking about K-12 funding in Washington State – and how some of the money we spend on schools is constitutionally protected from cuts and some is not. “But,” you ask, “How can I tell the difference when there are literally hundreds of K-12 line items in the state budget?”
5) Explaining the operating fund balance
Janet Suppes, budget analyst
People just assume that money comes in and goes out in equal portions, and that’s the end of the story. But it isn’t. Schools have what is essentially a savings account: the operating fund balance. It’s what is left over after expenses are paid.
6) How did we get here?
Chris Korsmo, LEV’s CEO
See, this new $2 billion deficit is just the latest challenge – we’ve cut the fat, stretched our pennies, and in higher education, got down to the bone. The question is, whose bones? If you believe that you can’t grow the economy by cutting alone, those bones belong to the next generation of entrepreneurs, investors and teachers.
7) Innovate, create, invent and when you need to reinvent
Catherine Ushka-Hall, Vice President of the Tacoma School District Board of Directors
I will not be silent now as if there is a possibility of $2 billion in reductions not affecting us, or as if this is not a crisis. Whether pitting neighbors against each other or education against corrections, “do it to someone else” is not the answer that we need. In our hearts and minds we know this is true. As a board member I am steward of the educational system, however as a citizen, I am also a steward of our whole community.
8) “Baby, You’re the Greatest”…Chance for long-term economic growth
Hannah Lidman, LEV’s Legislative Director
What all of this really boils down to is that most states in the nation, including Washington state, are spending millions upon millions upon millions of dollars on educational interventions and remediation that come too little too late for most kids and have only modest impacts when they do work.
9) When the levy breaks
Frank Ordway, LEV’s Director of Government Relations
With the upcoming special session focused on filing a nearly 2 billion shortfall, you will start to hear a lot about “LEA”. Typically a fund with broad bipartisan support , it is the largest single item remaining in the state budget that is not protected and will be the center of the upcoming debates about how to close the budget gap.
10) A five-point plan to fund basic education
David Iseminger, president of the Lake Stevens School Board and WSSDA Director
In a struggling economy, people are often more concerned about next month’s mortgage than next year’s initiative. It’s a natural response to immediate challenges: get past this, then worry about what’s next, about the future. But sometimes what’s next depends on what we do today, and how we prepare.

As you may have noticed, LEV has become a little obsessed with Halloween over the last couple of weeks. And given the really gory details of the Governor’s  state budget proposal yesterday, it seems our greatest fears for Washington’s children are coming to life before our eyes.

We’ve shown you a budget fright fest for the peeple. And we are asking you to send a Halloween card to Congress to urge them to protect early learning funding in the federal budget (It is pretty spooky when the majority of early learning funding in Washington comes from the feds and it is under threat by Congress at the same time the Governor is proposing making some pretty drastic cuts to the little the state does contribute to the pot.)

But enough of the Trick or Trick with our children’s futures. I heard about something recently that was a Treat or Treat for parents and kids. And I thought you might enjoy it.

Have you ever heard of the Switch Witch? One of my colleagues recently told me about this new Halloween tradition that is a scream of a good time. And in my unscientific study so far, everyone who I have shared it with LOVES the idea, especially those under age 7.

After a fabulous night of trick-or-treating, you come home with a bag overflowing with candy and a child or children who are bound to be hyped up for days or even weeks. (A few friends of mine have also moaned about getting into long, drawn-out tantrum battles with their young children over the fate of the candy). But instead of hyped up, tantrum-prone kids, you can introduce them to Mathilda, the Switch Witch.

You see  The Switch Witch and the Tooth Fairy are cousins. And they each have a great love in life. The Tooth Fairy loves to collect teeth. And her best friend and cousin Mathilda loves Halloween Candy. She loves candy way more than any little boy or girl and because she is magical she can never get a cavity. That means she can eat as much as she wants. But to get as much as she wants she has to trade for it. So on Halloween night, after they come home from gathering all their treats, little boys and girls take a couple of pieces of candy for themselves and then they hang their bag of candy on the outside of their bedroom doors. During the night, Mathilda the Switch Witch comes and switches out the bag of candy for a toy. The bigger the haul of candy she gets the bigger the toy she leaves.

*It is really important that you hang the candy on the outside of the door because witches can’t enter kids’ bedrooms. Only fairies can. So even though Mathilda is a good witch, she has to abide by the rules. (this was a rule insisted upon by my niece Roslyn who loved the idea but wanted to be sure that the witch did not come into her room).

Now the Switch Witch is a “real” thing. But I made up most of the stuff above when I first told the story to my niece and nephews earlier this week. My internet searches for the “Switch Witch” revealed very little about it and almost no cannon to draw from (there is not even a Wikipedia entry!). So feel free to make up your own, take from mine, or take from this one cute background story I did find on a random blog. You could even make the Witch steal candy without leaving a toy but that is just plain mean and I advise against it.

So if you are a parent who struggles with all the sugar involved in Halloween, or like another friend of mine, have a child who can’t eat a lot of the candy that is given out – the Switch Witch can be a win-win solution for both you and your children.

This might be the only win-win thing LEV will be able to offer Washington’s families for a while. At least the Switch Witch leaves a toy in exchange for things she takes from us. I have strong feeling there won’t be any toys for us at the end of this long budget nightmare.

Happy Halloween.

LEV is part of a coalition of education, business and community-based organizations that work within Washington State to close gaps, increase student achievement and prepare students to be career and college ready. With our forces combined, our super-group is called Excellent Schools Now. Today ESN published its 2012 priorities. Read them below:

Effective Teachers and Leaders
Teacher and principal effectiveness has a greater impact on student learning than any other factor in a school system. To ensure effective educators are in every classroom and every school building, we support the following:

Teacher and Principal Evaluation Pilots (TPEP)
Implement an educator evaluation system that incorporates multiple measures of student growth, and uses this robust evaluation system to determine critical staffing decisions. We will focus on supporting effective implementation through funding for evaluation training and professional development so that educators understand and trust the new evaluation system.

Measuring Student Growth to Inform Instruction
Direct the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop a student growth model. Prioritize High-Impact K-12 Investments In these challenging economic times, it is more critical than ever that we prioritize our resources to those policies that increase student learning and close the achievement gap. We recommend prioritizing the following investments:

• Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (WaKIDS)
• Full-Day Kindergarten
• Common Core State Standards & Assessments
• Washington State Graduation Requirements: Career & College Ready
• Mentor Program for Beginning Teachers (BEST)
• Continued phase-in of Basic Education as defined in ESHB 2261 and SHB 2776

View ESN’s 2012 Policy Priorities as a PDF

SkillUp Washington, an organization dedicated to expanding access to gainful employment to low income adults, will be hosting a community forum on establishing strategies for helping more adult students receive college credit. The forum, which will take place November 3^rd at South Seattle Community College, will discuss issues such as ensuring more adults have access to college courses and comparing Washington state’s policy on “prior learning” with other parts of the country. Amy Sherman, the Associate Vice President for Policy and Strategic Alliances at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), will also present research showing the positive correlation between prior learning and certificate/program completion. In addition to Sherman’s presentation, there will be two panel discussions that will include students, community leaders, and state policymakers Rep. Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney and Sen. Derek Kilmer.

Sound interesting? Be sure to come out to South Seattle Community College on Thursday, November 3^rd and hear some ways Washington state can increase the number of adults with a college education and ultimately, more job skills.

What: SkillUp Washington Community Forum
When: Thursday, November 3^rd, 9am-12pm
Where: South Seattle Community College
More details and registration information can be found here.

Are you a poet? A musician? Perhaps you’re a budding choreographer? LEV is looking for you! We are holding a call for submissions from youth/young adults to perform for our Full Court Press with Kevin Johnson event! The submission must center on the theme: “The Benefit & Need for High Expectations within Schools.” The entry that we feel best represent the theme will win the opportunity to perform at University of Washington Tacoma before our speaker series event featuring Sacramento Mayor and former NBA star Kevin Johnson on Nov. 3rd.

To enter, send a video, YouTube/Internet link, or copy of your art/written work to timmie@educationvoters.org. You may also request a mailing address or drop off location for hard copies. Be sure to include your name, age, address and phone number with each submission. Entries by artists under 18 years old, must include parent contact information. All submissions become property of LEV, and will not be returned.

So get your moves ready, your lyrics tight, or your guitar tuned, and submit your entry by October 25th, 2011.

For more information, contact Timmie Foster at timmie@educationvoters.org or (253) 219-6115.

President Obama has invited students of Aviation High School to attend his re-election fundraiser at the Paramount this weekend. The President wants to highlight the success of Aviation High School, one of the top performing schools in Washington State.

Based in Des Moines, Aviation High School is a national model for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) whose focus is college and career prep through the context of aviation and aerospace.  Aviation High School was also the recipient of two Washington Achievement Awards for the sciences and Overall Excellence earlier this year.

Hello. My name is Hannah Lidman. You care about education. Prepare to sign this petition: http://wachallenge.org/.

As you may have heard, Washington is applying for – and actually has a real shot at winning – a $60 million Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grant from the federal government for our statewide early learning system. But….in order make sure we win we need YOU.

See, all these big federal grant applications require letters of support from the community. LEV is doing one from our organization as are many other organizations across state. But the cherry on top of our application sundae is one REALLY BIG letter of support from the public (parents, teachers, kids, early learning professionals, advocates, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, you).

So we have partnered with our allies across the state to give you that chance. Go to WAChallenge.org and sign on to tell the Feds that Washington is Up to the Challenge.

“So,” you ask, “what exactly is the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge?” Well, when the competition was first announced, I did a big blog post about it (which you can read here if you want). The Feds have since come out with revised requirements for the competition, but really, things have changed only slightly.

Here is a very quick wrap-up of the program and why we are in the running:

A couple of months back, Congress announced new funding for Race to the Top. In total, Congress appropriated $700 million, of which a whopping $500 million is set aside specifically for early learning – the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTTT-ELC). And for those of you who remember Washington’s dismal performance in the previous RTTT, don’t get yourself too down just yet. This is a totally new competition with all new requirements, priorities and selection criteria.

The final guidelines were released in late August and applications are due on October 19th (a maddeningly short time frame for an application of this magnitude). Winners will be announced by the end of the year, and the grants will run through the end of 2015.  The size of the competitive grant amounts depends on the population of low-income children in the state. Washington is eligible for up to $60 million in funding if we win – the range runs from up to $100 million at the high end to a max of $50 million for states with small populations of low-income children.

RTTT-ELC competition is at its core about the systems, coordination and quality of early learning at the state level. According to the summary provided by the Department of Education, the RTTT-ELC is:

A $500 million competitive grant program to support states that commit to improving the quality of their early learning and development programs through five key levers of change:

• Successful State Systems
• High-Quality, Accountable Programs
• Promoting Early Learning and Development Outcomes for Children
• A Great Early Childhood Education Workforce, and
• Measuring Outcomes and Progress

With an overarching goal of:

• Ensuring children enter kindergarten ready to succeed by
• Increasing access to high-quality programs for children with high needs

So how does Washington fare  in relation to the competition’s priorities and selection criteria? Pretty darn well.

• We are currently in the process of redesigning our early learning benchmarks (now called guidelines and stay tuned because a request for public input will come soon).
• We recently moved from the pilot stage to implementation with the WaKIDS kindergarten transition process – with the addition of private funds WaKIDS will serve nearly 25% of kids statewide in the coming school year.
• And while still in its infancy, our state QRIS framework (a rating system for child care that driving quality and supports) is moving beyond pilot stage this year.
• We have a statewide Early Learning Plan.
• The Professional Development Consortium issued its recommendations for our early learning workforce.
• We adopted Core Competencies for both Early Learning Professionals and Child and Youth Development Professionals.
• The Early Learning Advisory Council has some new representation, is revising its role, and was awarded $1.7 million from the Federal State Advisory Council grant
• We have a very active and involved public-private partnership Thrive by Five Washington who along with DEL and OSPI have formed a joint early learning partnership.
• And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the early learning work happening all throughout Washington State at the local and state levels.

If you want a more detailed breakdown of the Challenge details check out what our colleagues over at Ed Week and the First Five Years Fund have put out.

So what are you waiting for? En Garde! Sign the public letter of support at http://www.wachallenge.org/.

A new study by the U.S. Census based on data from 2006-2008 found that the biggest income gap in the country is not based on gender or race, but on education. The study found that over a forty-year career, the variation in annual earnings between the least educated (or those with an eighth grade education or less) and the most educated (those with a doctorate degree) is $72,000. While gaps in earnings between male and female and whites and other races are significant, none are close to the education earning gap.

Not only does education effect life-time earnings, it has significant bearing on employment rate. The study found that a person with less than a high school diploma was 30 percent less likely to have a full time job than a person with a doctorate.

Read more from the Huffington Post here.

House Democrats will be looking for some kind of jobs legislation if there is a special session this summer, and Majority Floor Leader Tami Green has suggested one possibility; bonds for school renovations. The bonds would require approval from the voters. The idea is similar to last year’s rejected referendum, but without the bottled water tax as its funding source. Axing the bottled water tax might help the measure’s prospects according to Green, though she’s not exactly betting on its success.

From the article:

Concerns in the Senate about the state’s debt load could torpedo it, and Green said even if it gets enough votes in the Legislature, it’s not a clear winner on the ballot.

“I kind of feel like we have to do something” to create jobs, Green said. “Maybe we put in on there and it doesn’t pass. At least we can say we tried.”

Read the full post at The News Tribune Political Buzz.

A few months ago, a friend and I were talking about some of the challenges in education, and she gave me this little nugget to chew on: Invest in the jockey, not the horse. At first, I thought she had been watching Seabiscuit. But no; it’s taken from investors who say: Bet on the jockey, not the horse. Put that way, it makes total sense. In education, the person whom almost no one invests in is the principal. To run this little horse racing analogy into the ground, principals are treated more like the stable boy. Clean, feed, soothe, brush.

Making change at a systems level comes down to school-by-school implementation, which comes down to school-building leadership, which takes us back to the jockey. If we invested in principals like the race depended on it, we would do two things: provide excellent leadership training, and give principals far more oversight for the outcomes in their schools. Start by creating a higher standard of accountability for performance. Provide school-based incentives for academic growth. Invest in the jockey by building a leadership academy that works with school leaders and would-be and practicing principals. Highly competent people in the right place, focused on the right things can—and do—get better results.

This piece was written by LEV CEO Chris Korsmo for Seattle Magazine’s “Big Idea” series. You can read more big ideas here.

On Tuesday, September 28^th, all four Seattle school board incumbents will go head to head with their challengers in a debate at Town Hall. The debates, which will be moderated by KIRO’s Dave Ross, will give attendees an idea of where the incumbents and challengers stand on issues like school closures and reassignments, school programs and courses, graduation requirements, busing, and the budget, just in time for the general election.

The event will be divided into timed lightning rounds for all eight candidates followed by four sets of challenger vs. incumbent debates set up as follows:

Peter Maier (incumbent) vs. Sharon Peaslee (challenger)

Sherry Carr (incumbent) vs. Kate Martin Harium(challenger)

Martin-Morris (incumbent) vs. Michelle Buetow (challenger)

Steve Sundquist (incumbent) vs. Marty McLaren (challenger)

Audience members will decide the winners of each debate by text message. Tickets are free, but you can reserve your seats for the debate here.

When: 7:30pm-9pm. September 28^th, 2011

Where: Upstairs, Town Hall

LEV held an online chat recently about public charter schools, and we received a ton of great questions. Below are a few of those questions and their answers. Let us know if you have any additional queries or comments.

We have grouped the questions received by theme and focus. Let’s get to them.

Effectiveness of public charter schools

1. One statistic that keeps coming up from opponents of public charter schools is the 12% statistic of charters being effective. How could Washington State ensure that our charters do better than that 12%? Is there a clear difference between the schools that work (17%) and the ones with decreased scores or no change in student achievement and what is it? (What makes a charter school ‘high-performing?’)
Great questions. That statistic is one reason why LEV is promoting this dialogue about Schools That Work. The goal is to find common links between public schools, be they traditional or charter, that set their students up for success.

Successful schools have three things in common. They pay close attention to who they put in the classroom; they spend a lot of time and resources focusing on results; and they use accurate data when making their decisions.

Failing charters, like failing traditional schools, tend to be in states and districts with little oversight, no focus on results and less financial support. The state law that enables charters is a critical element in determining the quality of public charter schools.

2. If public charter schools do not, on average, perform better than public schools, why should Washington open itself to them? What are the potential benefits and potential drawbacks of opening Washington to charters?
One area where high-performing public charter schools do much better than traditional public schools is in neighborhoods of high poverty. Charters that specialize in working in these areas (KIPP, GreenDot, Rocketship) have shown remarkable returns in short time periods for the kids in those schools.

Washington state is one of the few states where are achievement gap is widening. We need to better able to respond – and quickly – to the needs of our most at-risk students, and some successful public charter schools can point the way. The status quo has no answer, and the state’s current practices will address the achievement gap in 105 years. That is unacceptable.

Another potential benefit to public charter schools is the “ripple effect.” Often charters are allowed to try different approaches to their teaching and curriculum. The relative freedom charters are granted allows them to experiment where traditional public schools are constrained. The successful practices are then implemented at neighboring schools to the benefit of everyone.

We are figuring out what successful schools share in common. There is plenty of data pointing to the shortcomings of traditional public schools as well, though no reasonable person would say we should stop investing in them. Just take a look at the LEV Report Card to see how education in the state of Washington stacks up. It is about time we start experimenting a little more.

3. You mentioned that LEV is focused on the public charter schools that are outperforming traditional public schools. Where can I find more information about those schools and what is the matrix used to compare the two?
Andrew Rotherham, education writer for Time and his own blog, Eduwonk, has a specific list of charter schools he deems successful. He points out the following: KIPP (99 schools in 20 states), Uncommon Schools (24 schools in three states), Achievement First (17 schools in Connecticut and New York) and Aspire Public Schools (30 schools in California). While there are definitely other successful models out there, those are just a few to start researching. You can find short profiles of each of these here on our site.

Effectiveness of charter schools for students of color and low-income students

4. The studies do not support your claim about low-income and minority students. Please post my entire question showing 66% of charter schools do no better than similar demographic public schools.
One of the most comprehensive studies of student performance in public charter schools found that more than 80 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were the same or worse than their traditional public school peers. In the study, 17 percent of public charter schools outperformed, 37 percent performed worse, and 46 percent performed no differently than traditional public schools. However, when looking specifically at performance of low-income students and English language learners, public charter schools were found to outperform traditional public schools.

Further, when data is separated out at the state or local level, certain regions see public charter schools outperforming their traditional public school peers. In Arkansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Denver, and Chicago, public charter schools had significantly higher learning gains for students than traditional public schools. Another study found public charter schools in Boston outperformed their traditional public school peers at the middle and high school level. In other states, however, public charter schools have been found to underperform when compared to traditional public schools, namely in Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas.

Other studies (here and here) have focused on specific charter operators, and found some to be more effective than others. One of the most well-known charter school networks, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), was found to have significant positive impact on its students’ academic achievement. A number of other networks have been found to be high performing, including Achievement First, Uncommon Schools and Aspire Public Schools.

A key element to success is the quality of the charter law in any given state.

5. Would charter schools close the achievement gap for all or a lucky few?
Schools That Work close the achievement gap. Schools that apply the critical elements of hiring the right people, holding them and their students to high standards and relying on good data to help make decisions close the achievement gap. Successful public charter schools, just like successful traditional public schools, close the achievement gap. And as long as their models can be learned from and replicated, their successes would have a ripple effect on education as a whole in our state.

The issue now is one of flexibility to develop effective strategies and implement new programs to address the achievement gap. We have far too many schools serving low-income students in this state that are demonstrably failing, and they have little flexibility to change the way they do business to address the needs of the kids they serve.

Washington charter history

6. Are there charter schools in Washington state?
No.

7. Why is LEV focusing on public charter schools when Washington voters have rejected this use of public funds in three different statewide votes?
We are focusing our conversation on Schools that Work. In much of Washington state, we are doing poorly serving low-income kids of all races. Some public charter schools have shown remarkable results working with similar students. We are always willing to take on difficult conversations if they benefit our kids.

8. What is holding back the decision on moving forward with charters in Washington state?
The voters have rejected public charter schools multiple times, so there is little current political will to move forward with charters. That said, many leaders in education and business and parents are looking at the successful public charter schools in different areas of the country and asking if Washington can learn from those examples.

9. Please describe your efforts thus far for turning a Seattle Public School into a public charter school, specifically South Shore and Cleveland.
We have never engaged in turning any school into a charter school. We do play a role in administering a grant to South Shore Elementary to specifically support a PreK-3rd program there, but it is not a charter effort. We have no role at Cleveland High School.

King County teachers can count themselves among the growing number of people and organizations to receive grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. More than one thousand project requests will be funded on DonorsChoose.org.  This fall, half a million dollars of school supplies and resources will be delivered to classrooms across King County.

Request for funding must be submitted to DonorsChoose.org by October 1^st.  You can read more the the donation and how to apply on the WEA’s website.

It’s bond and levy campaign season again! Are you new to this? Trying to get your head around how to run a campaign? Worried about the economic climate? Want to learn how to use social media?

There are two excellent trainings available to you. These trainings are designed for campaign committees or individuals from committees to learn how to run a successful campaigns.

I’ve been going to these trainings for ten years, and I have found them valuable every single time.

Tonight, the most important question I have to ask will be: Is it appropriate to wear my t-shirt that has hip-hop stars on the side of Mt. Rushmore to the evening for new Upper School students and their parents hosted at the fancy private school Jane will be starting this week? I can’t decide.

Yes, she was accepted to the private school. It was a pretty long admission process as the school wanted to be sure she had at least some idea of what she was in for. She starts this week. We were so lucky to find a way to pay for it – neither the agency with which I am licensed nor I have $22,000 laying around for one year of her education. In fact, when the check came in to the agency to cover the cost, one of the administrators didn’t know what it was for and nearly had a heart attack. It was a letdown for him to realize it was already spent. (when I told a lawyer friend this story he said, “you know, one of the partners I work with said the other day that you can give a non-profit $5 to do $20 worth of work” – but that’s neither here nor there).

Her books cost $525 – and most of them were used. When she saw the pile of them, she immediately took a picture to send to people so that they could be thoroughly impressed. There are TWO math books. The English books are on a wide range of topics, and she has already written a paper on her summer reading book. She didn’t write a single paper all of last year.

What’s more, there is an English teacher from the school who has been  tutoring her this summer on a volunteer basis. She has been to several sessions, and is incorporating his feedback as she goes. We hold regular meetings with the advisor, the learning specialist, Jane’s caseworker, and my friend who works at the school. Tonight is the first of several back to school meetings, all of which include dinner.

It’s a good thing that there’s been so much preparation, because Jane’s got the summer doldrums. She’s been working as a counselor in training for the summer, and it’s not exactly what I hoped. All of the other kids from the Middle – that area of public school where kids get dropped off and left to their own devices — seem to be in this program too. The point of the program seems to be to have youth who are stuck in mediocre programs all through the school year teach and prepare younger kids for that too.

Jane’s interpretation of her job is to make sure the kids cross the street within the lines, that they are quiet, and that they don’t rough house in the pool. None of the activities are memorable, but she has told me numerous times how important it is to not bring peanut in her lunch. There are so many campers that they need some extra help to keep track of them – so they use the Counselors In Training as a second set of eyes to make sure kids aren’t misbehaving. When Jane gets home every day, she’s done so little actual thinking that she is super hyper all evening, asking me a billion questions while I try and push her out the door for a bike ride before the sun goes down.

When I was young, I went to Shakespeare camp. We performed comedies for four summers, and while I was there I learned to juggle, hang a spoon on my nose, and sing Elizabethan songs. After those summers, I worked as a junior counselor in a program that focused on wellness in combination with “fairy tales of the outdoors.” All of the junior counselors wrote clues that were left throughout hiking trails for the kids to follow on an adventure.

The senior counselors in that program were directed to take us under their wing. My counselor gave me The Prophet by Kahil Gibran and Johnathan Livingston Seagull and encouraged me to write short stories and read them a loud on camp overnights.

The summer after my junior year in high school I was sent to math camp at Mt. Holyoke – a rebellious girls-only program aimed at ending the math divide between girls and boys. I made lifelong friends there, and it gave me an opportunity to visit Fenway Park for the first time.

All things are possible. My parents never had a lot, and I honestly don’t know how I managed to get all of those opportunities. Nor should I have. It was their job to figure it out, and now it’s mine for Jane. I screwed this summer up, but have now learned my lesson. I know the kids at her new school aren’t working at keeping younger kids following the rules and only the rules this summer – at least I think they aren’t — I have visions of them serving as crew on sailing trips to Europe and learning to become trapeze artists. Next time, we’ll do a better job at summer – there’s got to be some equivalent of learning to juggle or visiting Fenway Park.

In the meantime, I have Upper School New Student Night, Tenth Grade Outdoor Education Night, and I have to figure out what to wear to each while getting ready to be the youngest parent in the room again. If I had given birth to Jane I would have been 21 when she was born, which is much more common at public school than it is in the private ones I have been around.

Jane’s first day is Wednesday. Two of her teachers have PhDs. One is a retired military veteran who has lived all over the world. She’s hoping to be in the fall play.

“Field trips provide the opportunity to connect abstract classroom learning to real-world experiences. The importance of field trips cannot be underestimated. If students are able to make real-world connections to classroom learning, the learning takes on significance, and directs the student’s attention and engagement. If the students are engaged, meaningful learning can start to take place.”

– The Multi-Literacy Project, a Canadian study dedicated to preparing students to understand, reflect, and evaluate new information in  meaningful, complex ways.

Whether it was to the zoo or the museum, many of us have fond memories surrounding field trips. Not only are field trips fun, but as The Multi-Literacy Project espouses, field trips have real educational value. However, in the wake of a global recession and deep budget cuts, many schools are putting field trips on the chopping block. Understanding the need and importance of field trips, Target launched the Target Field Trips Grant Program which, since its founding in 2007, has provided funding for field trips in all fifty states, equating to 9.76 million dollars.  Target plans to award over 5,000 grants amounting to $700 each in January 2012.

In order to apply, you must be an education professionals who is at least 18 years old and employed by a 501(c)(3) or 509(a)(1) tax-exempt  accredited K-12 public, private, or charter school in the U.S.  The field trip must take place during the 2011-2012 school year (January-May/June).  Applications are due October 3^rd.

Application forms and more information can be found at Target’s website:

Say you are a parent in Washington looking for more information on how well your child’s school performed on the math portion of the MSP (Measurements of Student Progress). Or you’re moving to Lakewood from Seattle and you want to see data regarding the achievement/ opportunity gap concerning black and Latino students in the Clover Park School District compared to the Seattle Public School District. Before last week, parents were often relegated to scholarly, abstract-language-filled websites used mostly by education researchers and policy experts.  Acknowledging this issue and new legislation concerning school performance disclosure, researchers from the University of Washington’s Center for Education and Research created the Washington Achievement Data Explorer, also known as WADE.

WADE answers the aforementioned questions and more by providing an easy to use interface that is also parent-friendly.  One of the easy to use functions will be an Achievement Index map, which will provide school district maps distinguished by color to show how schools are performing. WADE is now the third tool (in addition to the Education Department’s Washington State Report Card and the State Board of Education Achievement Index), that parents have to get information regarding school and school district performance.

WADE will be fully functional in the next month.  It can be found here.