Hope Teague-Bowling is a National Board Certified teacher at Clover Park High School in Lakewood, WA and a member of the LEV Foundation Board of Directors.

In order to understand my perspective on the issue, it’s important to understand a few premises for my thoughts.

1. What’s best for students should be at the center of education conversations.
2. What’s best for adults is usually the driving force for policy debate.
3. All children have the right to a quality education, regardless of race, sex, socioeconomic factors, special needs, etc.
4. High-performing schools rely on three things: a) strong leadership, b) sound instruction, and c) common culture of high expectations.
5. Privatization makes a few things better but NEVER a) education, b) health care, c) police services/military.
6. Change needs both internal systemic reform and external revolution.
7. All charters are not created equal.
8. Strong charter laws can protect children from being the victims of bad charter schools and the replication of current status quo practices.

I have come to these beliefs over the course of my life experiences — a product of homeschooling by two public school teachers, an undergraduate degree from a private college, a master’s in teaching from a liberal grad school, a year of working as a para in an alternative school, six years of public school teaching in both rural and urban communities, and years of reading, hearing, and living the debates about education in the United States.

Since I believe that all children deserve the right to learn in a safe environment with access to rigorous courses and high expectations, it is essential to me that schools provide this. However, the reality is that we are more segregated in public schools than ever. More children (particularly the poor, people of color, and urban – I’ve read a few things too about inequalities in very rural communities) are being tossed to the wayside by adults. Sadly, there are too few schools truly addressing the instructional needs of these students which now encompasses social and emotional factors unheard of fifty years ago. With the current economic crisis, schools are are ill-equipped financially, but most importantly school boards, district officials, and often teachers are culturally incompetent and untrained instructionally to handle the increasing diversity of student needs in their communities. To complicate matters, most districts have an insane amount of rules and regulations established to protect themselves against lawsuits. In reaction, union contracts are written to protect teachers against an unfair district. This lose-lose approach creates the biggest losers — the students. Both groups of adults are so busy worrying about their own butts, they are reluctant, often outright closed, to new ideas, particularly “non-traditional” approaches to meeting student needs. We (public education institutions) are doing the same things we’ve done for decades when our society, communities, and students’ needs have changed (quite drastically in my opinion). You cannot do the same things over and over again with the same bad methods and see improvement. It doesn’t work. If I eat crap and never work out, I will continue to get fatter and fatter. Why am I shocked when I hop on the scale? I have to change something.

In my experience, adults are the most reluctant to change, especially adults in positions of power or those benefiting from the current structure. I am heavily involved in my local union and WEA as a whole. I’m on my exec board and attend events, conferences, meetings, etc – all with the idea that I want my union to represent my beliefs about education, and more importantly, I want it improve the teaching profession. In the last three years of union activism, I almost daily encounter teachers, district employees, and others (all adults) who are threatened by anything new. You ask them to try a new food, a new strategy for teaching content, anything, it doesn’t matter. They are reluctant to even engage in possibilities.

I work in a school with what I would say are some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever worked with. We just received a state award for innovation because we are a STEM school that has a robotics program, our math team teaches to standards, and we collaborate regularly. Most of the teachers in my building are a pedagogically sound, no-excuses-mentality bunch dedicated to success of all students. That is until you start to watch classroom instruction. Or talk about how to reach the unmotivated ELL kid who is struggling to survive in an English class. Or ask build an interdisciplinary course with another teacher. Or ask a hard question about their grade book. Or discuss what real innovation might look like. This is when the status quo appears. This is when a tiny vision of learning becomes clear. Folks only want to do what makes them comfortable, what fits in an eight-hour work day schedule. Administrators and teachers are only open to creativity when it fits in a neat little package.

The last six years, I’ve obsessively read up on the subject of public charters. I’ve worked in a middle class rural-ish school, an alternative school, and a high poverty/urban school. For “fun” on my days off, I visit other schools to see what they are doing to meet their students’ needs and change their communities. I regularly kick it with teachers who teach in the Lincoln Center – a school within a school who’ve modeled their program off of high-performing charter school strategies. In the last six months, I’ve had the privilege of attending two different field trips – one to Houston and one to New York City to see an array of public charters in action. I saw KIPP, YES Prep, Green Dot (a national charter network that is unionized), Harlem Success Academy, Apollo 20 (public school that was converted, still works within district contract), and several others. After confirming my belief that high performing schools don’t have to look the same, it dawned on me that there are three consistent elements that these schools have in common. These three characteristics of high performing schools functions like a three-legged stool. Their success relies on 1) Leadership, 2) Instruction 3) Culture.

The leadership at these schools is amazing. It is shared – teachers and administrators (who often are called team leaders or some other name that changes the power structure of the relationship) and parents are teams. They actually work together. They fight for the same causes, together. They function under a social contract that all parties sign – usually to the effect of “we will work our hardest to ensure your child excels, etc.” It’s not just lip service, they do it. Together. This leadership model is the foundation for their philosophy about instruction. They utilize high-yield strategies. They differentiate for each kid. They expect all kids to achieve. They help all kids achieve. Together. Teachers watch other teachers. They have time to plan interdisciplinary instruction. They make time to address the social and emotional needs of their students. Building leaders are in the rooms of their teachers daily. When a teacher is off track, they call them out – in a straightforward, yet loving way. Why? Because it’s about the kids. Not them. Not their comfort level. Not a contract that says everything must be written down and only certain things can be said to a teacher. This brings me to the last leg of this stool – culture. The culture of these schools is insane. There isn’t a “gotta” culture amongst the leadership (teachers and principals). The buildings (in some cases schools are in one hallway or trailers!) radiate with positive messages about student achievement. Each policy, disciplinary practice, lunch schedule, extended day model, extended year model, and all the other boring stuff in a school that often gets blown off, is intentional. Every adult in that school has agreed to support that culture. My building is a classic example of lip service and limited action. I’m stressed out, overworked, and fighting for change within a system that pretends to care. There are caring, hard working adults just like me in my building, but we are all spinning our plates alone. We meet as a team and try to problem solve, but at the end of the day, few of us are carrying the load for the entire team. We are balancing a child’s future on a one-legged stool. This is unsustainable and prevents true progress.

So back to the essential question I hear often – why can’t this be done in a traditional public school? It can. But it takes all three of those elements in full force to make it happen. It takes adults who buy and promote a common culture. It takes parents, teachers, and building leaders to work as a team. It takes hard work, a desire to improve, a determination to grow, a willingness to push buttons, and uncomfortable conversations about measurements of learning.

This brings me to premise #6, how change works. Generally, people who want to improve a system work for reform from within. You organize, team with others, try to get involved in all kinds of committees/power structures, etc. But what happens? You beat your head against the same damn walls that aren’t going anywhere. So the next option is to go outside the system and try to bring actual revolution. Break the Egypt analogy or anarchist comparison or whatever. What happens there? Sometimes true change happens, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it goes back to the way it was.
In all cases, to bring true reform or revolution there must be a catalyst to start this change. Revolutions begin as a festering wound, an unsatisfying reform; the failed promises of leaders who pacify the masses with trite freedoms — the Band Aids for this wound. I see high performing charters as a catalyst. I view charters as approaching change internally and externally. It’s working “in the system” in terms of educating students, hiring quality teachers, using external measures (state tests, etc) to determine success. It also works “outside the system” by shining the light on the district, parents, and teachers who are in it for their summer vacations. It forces other people to go stop and go, “Hey, what are they doing over there? Can we do that here?” It allows teachers who actually want to make a difference make a significant difference!

When it comes to a charter law in WA state, here’s what I won’t support:

1. More segregation of marginalized populations.
2. Middle class/upper class kids getting more resources and fancy schools where they can be artsy (“boutique” schools as my husband call them).
3. The working class/poor, etc being left with the dregs in public schools – institutionally and financially.
4. Privatization of education.
5. No accountability to state/federal education mandates (think for second language learners, special education, etc).
6. No option for unionization if staff wants it.
7. Gate-keeping applications (I hate the idea of a lottery but it seems more equitable).
8. More mediocre schools that are failing to meet the emotional, social, and mental needs of children and youth.

And probably a couple other things I’m forgetting. I’ve seen the charter bill that is being proposed. It takes care of the above concerns I have. Is it perfect? Is there no way for anyone to manipulate it? Nothing is perfect. There are always holes that someone will find, but does that mean we shouldn’t examine it with a critical eye or accept it with reservations? Not to me.

In case you are interested in another perspective, here is a veteran teacher who agreed to travel to New York City to entertain the idea of innovative ways of doing things in education. Check back in his blog history – he was extremely against charters a few years ago, and I think he offers some unique experience/perspective.

Let’s be real – some of the research comes from think-tanks is questionably biased and funded by for-profit entities. However, their points are thought provoking and much of their research actual research. Robin Lake from the Center for Reinventing Public Education looks at the issue from a variety of angles. Additionally, this report focuses on the issue at the federal level.

If you’ve made it this far, congrats and thanks for reading. This is a hot button issue and I’m not out there to change minds. I’m more interested in open dialogue and hashing through issues than making it a for/against debate. Bottom line, I’m tired of adults making excuses at the expense of kids.

Yesterday, Gov. Chris Gregoire proposed $1.7 billion in cuts to state government, while suggesting a temporary sales tax increase to prevent some of the more severe reductions, which include shortening the school year. We wrote that cutting education is the wrong solution for our ailing economy. The Legislature will tackle the budget deficit in a special session beginning on Nov. 28th.

We know that all of these numbers can be difficult to visualize, so our policy team created these budget charts from the governor’s proposal.

You can also view them as higher-quality images: Early Learning | K-12 | Higher Ed

Scott Markowitz, is a 4th grade teacher at Christensen Elementary School in Franklin Pierce School District in Tacoma who became interested in the idea of using developmental assets in his teaching. Developmental assets are individual resources that young people have available to them that help them have positive experiences and become successful adults.  Having caring adults supporting them and feeling safe in their schools and neighborhoods are examples. On a mission, he discovered the non-profit Kids at Hope already had a way to bring these assets to teaching. “It’s a paradigm, not a program,” Markowitz says. He says using Kids at Hope has changed his vision of his students and changed the culture of his school. Markowitz feels it is his job to look for students’ assets as a foundation for their learning, incorporating their future visions of themselves and teaching perseverance that supports their dreams.

The Excellent Schools Now coalition (of which we are a member) has released a new vision for our state A+ Washington: A Way Forward for All Students. The vision focuses on bringing the input of a wide range of stakeholders to provide solutions for the challenges that face our education system today. This effort is more valuable than ever, as our state faces a deep recession with more difficult economic times looming. As we note, now is the time to focus on improving education and eliminating opportunity gaps. We know that these investments will yield a skilled, knowledgeable workforce and can help create the jobs that we need to boost our economy.

A+ Washington proposes five strategies to achieve the results we need to create a workforce ready for success:

1. Expand access to high-quality pre-kindergarten through 3^rd grade education
2. Provide all students with access to excellent teachers and leaders
3. Position the state’s students for career and college readiness
4. Implement flexible and transformative approaches to K-12 education
5. Develop effective data and accountability systems

The coalition will measure the success of these strategies by tracking specific outcomes. The outcomes include eliminating the opportunity gap between all groups of students and making sure all students enter kindergarten prepared for success. Additionally, because we are focused on students’ futures, outcomes like graduating from high school career and college ready, making sure students are internationally competitive in math and science, and increasing the number of students who achieve post-secondary degrees, like living wage certificates, associate’s degrees, industry certificates, and bachelor’s degrees are important.

A+ Washington came together after a lot of hard work with stakeholders all across education. This is a living document, where the best thinking and balanced feedback from all stakeholders can be continually incorporated.

Read the full, PDF version of the plan here.

Beth Sigall, attorney, special education advocate, and mother of three children, (including one with autism), believes the aim of the school district should be to put every special education advocate out of business. She was inspired to become an advocate when she saw the distress of another parent trying to decipher the special education law in front of her. After ten years of advocating for hers and others’ children, Beth has seen how beneficial the individual education plan process is for students in special education. She says that all students deserve that level of attention and focus on outcomes.  This means knowing what each student’s goals are and how effectively they’ve met them over the year, and putting less emphasis on inputs, like seat time and credits taken. You can read Beth’s blog at http://schoolhousewonk.wordpress.com.

Today Governor Gregoire released her “draft” supplemental budget and proposed that the state make major cuts to schools, colleges and universities for the fifth year in a row. The Governor proposes cutting $378 million in state support for schools and $174 million from colleges and universities.

Cutting education jobs is the wrong solution for our ailing economy. This will only make the problem worse.

Already, thousands of good jobs go unfilled because we aren’t educating enough skilled workers. Larger class sizes, fewer courses, and ever-increasing tuition hikes will hurt our students’ chances to contribute to the economy for decades to come.

The Governor’s draft budget proposes increasing class sizes by two students in grades 4-12, and eliminating programs that help struggling students and programs that prepare students for college.

We as citizens must confront deep structural issues that are contributing to today’s economic problems and will slow Washington’s recovery. Our state relies too much on sales taxes. We voters pass conflicting ballot measures that require legislators to fund education, on the one hand, and then I-1053, which prevents lawmakers from fixing our broken tax code, on the other.

We’ll be paying attention and waiting for Gov. Gregoire’s Nov. 17^th proposal. In the meantime, you can learn more about what education cuts would mean to our kids and our state’s future by checking out our edCored series.

At the end of the 2011 Legislative session, Washington adopted the Common Core State Standards as its very own. The standards, which aim to bring consistency and rigor to every state’s education, will be brought on in Washington over the next three years. As we transition to these standards, OSPI is looking for feedback from stakeholders on them. In order to let educators, advocates, parents and students know more about what adopting these standards will look like, they’re holding two public forums. The forums will focus on two main topics: first, letting folks know what the standards consist of in their current form and what that means for college and career readiness; and second, asking for recommendations for enhancing the standards and what the timeline for those enhancements would look like.

The forums are coming soon to a location near you!

If you can’t make it to either event, you can also give your feedback online via OSPI’s survey. Answer fun questions like “Where does communication about Common Core State Standards and implementation of the standards fit in your current list of priorities for the 2011-12 school year?” in multiple choice form, while also giving your own narrative feedback. The survey is available online until Nov. 23^rd.

And if your answer to “How would you describe your knowledge of Washington’s Common Core State Standards?” is “What standards?” (yes, that actually is an option) be sure to read our 2011 session primer on the topic.

Dee Klem, a parent of two in the Kent School District who runs the district’s elementary Communities in Schools’ program, wrote this blog post for our edCored series on education funding. If you want to be notified when new content is published in this month-long series, please subscribe to the LEV Blog’s RSS feed or once-a-day email digest.

For schools to succeed, students need to be ready to learn. For children to be ready to learn, they need to eat a healthy meal, get a good night sleep and have the supplies they need. Is this the responsibility of the school? Most would say no, it is not; however the reality is that this responsibility is falling to schools as government services and other social programs are being cut back or eliminated altogether.

When cuts come around to education funding, administrators face tough choices and often these outreach services end up on the chopping block – at a time when they are needed the most. What does these mean for our students? For our education system? It means we have students coming to school who are not ready to learn. It means we have teachers in classrooms with multiple students not ready to learn; it means we have lunchrooms crowded with students who need a good meal. Imagine a school that used to have a part-time family advocate and a full-time counselor, and now it has neither. Let’s add to that the fact that the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch has climbed by double digits. It means more kids “on the bubble” are now falling behind.

Communities In Schools operates programs in 12 Washington schools districts all reaching OUT into the community to bring these critical services IN to the schools. These programs are innovative/creative, and for many students, they are the critical piece that is making a difference. It is these kinds of partnerships and services that will help to shape how we enable those students who are falling through the cracks to be ready to learn and to succeed. Education is not going to receive a funding windfall any time soon, so developing and growing these types of programs will be a critical piece of how we grow out of the crisis.

While researching our edCored series on education funding, we stumbled upon…well, this guy. He asks a great question: Parents, what are you paying for out of pocket that you didn’t used to pay for? Field trips, printer paper, lab fees, textbooks, tissues…the list goes on. Leave us a note in the comments for some of the things you pay for during the course of the school year.

And well, thanks, Malcolm.

Washington State revenues will come in $1.4 billion lower than budgeted through next June, according to Arun Raha, Executive Director of the State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council. The shortfall will put the current budget $1.27 billion in the red. Lawmakers are expecting a special session to implement a plan for the budget before January. This comes after last session’s $4.6 billion cuts, which hit higher education and K-12 salaries hard, among other things. According to the Seattle Times, higher education funding is a more vulnerable part of the budget, but notes the resistance to making deeper cuts:

Most of the budget is difficult to cut because of federal strings attached to programs, and state constitutional protection for the bulk of K-12 spending.

…

With a $2 billion shortfall, “if you were to do across-the-board cuts, you’d wind up taking about 30 percent of our higher-ed investment,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Ross Hunter, D-Medina. “I just don’t think we’re going to do that.”

For more, read articles at Publicola, TNT and the Seattle Times

Warren Smith, Sr., has 27 years experience in policy positions as former school board and State Board of Education director. Warren believes we can close the education opportunity gap simply by believing all children can succeed, a common belief among Teachers of the Year. Warren says the education opportunity gap does not exist because some children are “ignorant, can’t learn, and unteachable. They’re down there because there’s a system that doesn’t recognize their learning style, their learning rate. They start out behind in kindergarten – the system doesn’t allow that [catch-up] time, and that’s the problem.”

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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.

Lynn Lentz, second grade teacher at Delong Elementary in Tacoma, is the teacher who helped Felicia Reeve’s second grade granddaughter improve in reading. With 30 years teaching experience, Lynn believes we can improve kids’ academic performance by:

1) Delaying entrance to kindergarten until kids are intellectually mature enough
2) Not insisting that all kids be at the same spot at the same time
3) Reallocating resources into the classrooms to help kids get up to grade level
4) Enforcing discipline
5) Having nurturing parents who know exactly how their children are doing in school

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Read the press release for more information on the merger.

I attended my 5-year-old daughter’s graduation last night. That’s right, graduation. She successfully finished pre-school and is prepared to succeed in Kindergarten.

Now many of you might feel that that such a ceremony is cute and all, but has little meaning. Are not all 5 year olds ready for kindergarten? Isn’t that when school starts? Unfortunately, many 5 year olds are not ready, and when they are not they start out behind. The data is not pretty of what happens to kids who start behind. They are more likely to stay behind, eventually drop out and end up in low paying jobs or worse.

Back to my daughter and her graduation and what it meant. She attended a pre-school that focused on the whole child, is very intentional on preparation for success in her next chapter in school. They actively seek connections with the local public schools to ensure the transition for the kids is as easy and successful as possible. They focus on reading, writing, math and basic concepts of science. They focus on building confidence and providing a loving, supportive environment. As I watched her walk in her cap and gown, I could not have been prouder. I also felt a pang of sorrow to know how many 5 year old kids just like her in our state are not going to start their K-12 experience prepared to succeed.

For the past 10 years, the New School Foundation has been focused on providing high-quality early learning opportunities for students at South Shore elementary and advocating for more access for students across Seattle. In particular they have focused on creating intentional and meaningful connections between the PreK programs and the K-8 classrooms at the school.

LEVF has been committed to increasing access to high quality early learning for all kids as a means to address the achievement gap and to better prepare all kids for success in school. We have a long history of legislative success in securing funding, establishing new connections between early learning and the K-12 system and helping establish Washington as a leader on early learning policy at the national level.

By merging with NSF, we have created an organization that spans the continuum from policy work in Olympia to implementation assistance in districts across the state to direct services for kids at a particular school. Spanning this entire continuum will position us to ensure more kids get the resources and services my daughter received and that those services are as effective as possible. All kids in Washington deserve what my daughter was fortunate to receive, and this merger will help ensure they get it.

I know many of you worry about my growing weary of the NFL lockout. You don’t mention it. But I can tell.  Thank you for caring. No, really.  Here now, the news;

Geeked Out: Last night’s speaker series event, “Innovations in Learning” was a huge hit. If you were one of the fortunate few hundred in the room, you couldn’t help but come away inspired by the possibilities of blended learning. We were joined by Shantanu Sinha, President and COO of Khan Academy, John Danner, Co-Founder and CEO of Rocketship Education and Tom Vander Ark, CEO of OpenEd Solutions. The insider look at how technology is transforming student outcomes was a real eye opener. Most of us feel that there isn’t nearly enough utilization of technology in our schools, but we get stuck when we try to insert technology on top of traditional systems – without looking at the opportunities for different ways to utilize teachers and other staff. Rocketship’s elementary school teachers are content specific – teachers don’t teach all subjects. Many schools and classrooms are now supplementing their curricula with Khan Academy lessons – giving kids more flexibility in how they learn math and science. For every parent who’s wondered about the 4,123 pounds of text books in our kids’ backpacks, last night was a breath of fresh air. BTW, anybody else notice the wicked resemblance between Tom Vander Ark and Tony Robbins? Like they were separated at birth.

Hard Wired: The success of integrating Pre-School to elementary grades is getting a deeper look. The impact of high quality early learning that is purposeful in aligning to expectations of kindergarten and beyond can be transformative – particularly for kids coming from low income families and children of color. As Arthur Reynolds, Professor of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin puts it, “When you plan and design a coordinated intervention from pre-school to third grade, those transition experiences…You’re altering all the elements of the educational process that make a difference to kids.” The impact locally is getting noticed by journalists and policy makers.  (HT to Laura Kohn for these sources – and shout out to New School Foundation for their work at South Shore – mentioned in the Hechinger piece.

Source Code: This week Microsoft announced intentions to focus on K-12 improvements. Brad Smith, Chief Legal Counsel announced this week Microsoft’s $25 M contribution to a state wide endowment for college scholarships and discussed interest in K-12 improvements. Governor Gregoire tasked Smith with spearheading a the higher ed task force last year and he is looking to build on that work.

Circuit Breaker: This guest op-ed by Tom Stritikus, Dean of Education at UW, in Crosscut reads innocuously enough. UW is working to provide alternative certification pathways to teaching, in particular, looking to provide the university backing for the Teach for America (TFA) corps coming to the Puget Sound next fall. A welcome effort in bringing this nationally regarded teaching corps to our ‘hood. But if you read the comments, you’d  realize that Stritikus hates puppies, laughed inappropriately during  “Steel Magnolias” and eats small chicks for breakfast. He is probably a Cincinnati Bengals fan. When historians record the fall of our current civilization, they’ll track back to the painfully personal way that comment threads kept a lot of people with intellectual prowess out of the public realm. (Aren’t you lucky, you didn’t have to wait for the collapse of civilization to get at its underpinnings.)

The Backend:

• What do highly effective principals look for in doing teacher evaluation and effectiveness?’ Expert Noticing.  It’s interesting.
• What’s a college degree worth? More than some think.
• We all know that a high school diploma doesn’t mean you’re ready for college, but the Army?
• How do you bridge the divide between what businesses want and what the workforce is trained for?  The POTUS speaks.
• When is good news not good news? When it’s high school graduation rates.

Tom Vander Ark (l.) of OpenEd Solutions moderated a panel with Shantanu Sinha of Khan Academy and John Danner of Rocketship Education.

Last night, LEV hosted three education innovators at UW’s Kane Hall as part of our Voices from the Education Revolution Speaker Series. They gave the audience of more than 200 graduate students, parents and educators a glimpse of how technology will revolutionize education.

Tom Vander Ark, CEO of OpenEd Solutions, described the potential of ed-tech to advance education in much the same way as bio-tech and clean-tech have done for those fields. He predicted that a dramatic shift to personal digital learning would occur this decade, especially since tablets and netbooks have dropped below $100 per year in cost.

Shantanu Sinha (l.) talked about the potential to deliver a free world-class education to anyone anywhere through online tools such as the Khan Academy.

Shantanu Sinha, President and COO of Khan Academy, described how the Los Altos School District in Silicon Valley is using Khan’s online lessons to pilot a hybrid-learning model in their math classes. Students watch 10 to 15 minute video segments to learn math concepts followed by practice exercises and tutorials. Teachers can then view data about each student’s progress in order to provide targeted math instruction to fill knowledge gaps.

John Danner, co-founder and CEO of Rocketship Education, runs a network of public K-5 charter schools in San Jose, CA and surrounding cities. Students at Rocketship spend a portion of the school day learning basic skills and concepts on computers in the Learning Lab (watch this video to learn more). This frees up time for teachers in the classroom to focus on critical thinking and social-emotional learning.

The Rocketship model has been extremely successful. Recent scores have shown their students are the highest performing among low-income elementary schools in San Jose and Santa Clara County in California.

Vander Ark concluded the event with a message of optimism about the positive impact personal digital learning will have on student achievement. He believes that a majority of US students will benefit from learning online by the end of the decade.

Last night, state lawmakers in the House voted on legislation to provide funding to lower K-3 class sizes. Although the vote was 52-42 for House Bill 2078, the bill failed because it did not receive a two-thirds supermajority.

The vote came one day after a joint op-ed was published in the Seattle Times by LEV and the Washington Education Association in support of HB 2078. The op-ed urged lawmakers to vote in favor of the bill to lower K-3 class sizes by eliminating the tax break on interest earned on first mortgages by the largest, national, out-of-state banks.

For more information on how the vote might be used to challenge the two-thirds supermajority requirement in court, read Brad Shannon’s blog post on the Olympian website.

Are you an educator, youth coordinator, coach, parent or volunteer looking to share and learn new ways to support the future success of our youth?

School’s Out Washington is hosting its ninth annual Bridge from School to Afterschool and Back Conference in Seattle on October 17-18. The Seattle-based non-profit organization is dedicated to building community systems to support quality out-of-school time programs for Washington’s 5-18 year olds through training, advocacy and leadership.

The theme of this year’s conference, “Connect. Act. Transform.,” will inspire participants to feel a part of a vital larger movement impacting young people both in and out of school. The goal of the conference is to provide a professional development experience where participants return to their programs with tools and knowledge to provide high-quality services to youth generated by strong and healthy partnerships between schools and afterschool and youth development programs.

Regionally and nationally-known speakers and presenters will inspire and inform conference participants. The topics will include:

• Youth voice & engagement
• Racial equity
• Global competencies
• Education transformation
• STEM
• Social emotional learning
• Sustainability

Visit School’s Out Washington’s website to learn more or register for this conference.

House and Senate budget leaders announced their bi-partisan budget agreement one day before time runs out on the 30-day special session. The biggest shock was House budget leaders agreeing  to a 1.9% across-the-board salary reduction for teachers and 3% for principals and administrators. The Senate had proposed 3% for all educators while the House had proposed a freeze of the salary schedule for teachers.

Now the question for districts across the state will be how to carry out these cuts, especially if they have  already negotiated multi-year contracts. Some districts will avoid cutting salaries by raiding their fund balances or eliminating programs. Other districts others will have to reopen negotiations which will open the door to unpaid furloughs for teachers and fewer school days for students. Some districts may strike. The League of Education Voters believes the Legislature cannot sidestep the State’s constitutional duty to fund basic education by forcing districts to make the decisions about how to take cuts. Whether a 3% or 1.9% cut, it is a cut to basic education.

This looming issue aside, in most areas of the budget, House and Senate budget negotiators met in the middle, particularly in education.

K-12 Education

Including major cuts to K-3 class size ($136 million) and the continued suspension of 728 ($860 million) and 732 ($260 million), reductions to schools statewide will total more than $1.8 billion. The State will have to defend these cuts before the Supreme Court when oral arguments are heard in McCLeary v. Washington on June 26th.

Here are some examples where the House and the Senate met in the middle:

• K-3 Class Size: $33.6 million for K-3 class size reduction in high-poverty schools – House had originally proposed $25 million and the Senate $64 million.
• Fully Day Kindergarten: $5 million to continue roll-out of FDK beginning with high-poverty schools – The Senate proposal did not include any increase unlike the House which added $6.4 million.
• Alternative Learning Experience (ALE) funding: reduction of $41 million – The House had proposed a $53 million cut to ALE in contrast to the Senate’s smaller reduction of $26 million.

Early Learning and Higher Education

Very little changed in the final budget with regards to early learning, with one notable exception. Funding for the state’s high-quality PreK program (ECEAP) was increased slightly with the addition of some federal funds. WaKIDS received full state funding while regretablly, the proven Career and Wage Ladder for early learning teachers was eliminated.

In Higher Education, the budget carries out the plan to make sharp cuts to four-year institutions and then offsets the reductions  in other ways. The budget gives institutions the authority to raise tuition, increases the financial aid to offset the tuition increases, and requires that institutions further increase financial aid if tuition is raised higher than what was assumed in the budget. Two-year institutions will also see cuts and tuition increases.

LEV 2011-13 Budget Priorities (Click here for a PDF version of our budget chart.)

Click here for a PDF version of our budget chart.

What makes a great educator? Is it a science? Is it a secret ingredient?

Last week, Nick Brossoit, superintendent of Edmonds School District, sent the email below to his staff about his view of what great educators bring to the classroom.

After 27 years in public education, I have visited thousands of classrooms and observed a variety of events. There are extraordinary moments when I wish I could have recorded some of the best teaching and learning interactions so as to share with others.  It is fantastic to see the art and science of student engagement, teacher effectiveness, academic rigor, communication, humor, and compassion blended into a meaningful whole and taking into full consideration all the relevant variables.  Sadly, at times too, I have seen situations that were almost surreal in how they reflected ineffective practices.  One time in a pre-student teaching observation many years ago, I actually saw a teacher sitting at his desk reading a newspaper and then making a personal phone call during the middle of class, while students were expected to complete a packet of “busy work” papers.  It was heart breaking.  His advice to me was to not go into teaching. I was appalled and had to suppress my reaction towards him. I felt so sorry for the students who had to endure that classroom.  Fortunately for the best, much has changed in public education.

There is an intangible in all of this, that for student learning becomes perhaps the most significant and tangible aspect of their schooling.  It transcends all of the issues, those real and perceived.  It transcends a lack of knowledge or skills in places, and seems to overcome personalities, inadequate resources, and the long list of the conditions we all prefer to have and use in public schools to maximize or optimize learning.  All of which are helpful and valuable; yet, none of which can bridge this particular aspect, this one dimension that only the teacher can bring to the classroom.  It is, simply but profoundly, “a sense of urgency” that all students regardless of where they start, who they are or what other issues are happening, “a sense of urgency” that all student can and will learn and at progressively high levels!  Where this exists; it happens.  Where this does not exist; it does not happen, or student learning is rather incremental at best and inconsistent most of the time.

How do we ensure this “sense of urgency?”  We need it in every classroom.  It is so person dependent.  Some people have it and it is as bright and enduring as the warmth of the sunshine coming out of cold winter months.  It brings light, peace, hope and positive energy to the students, staff, and classrooms where it lives in everyone.  It is real and tangible and evident in students learning!  It does not take paragraphs to explain or justify; it is not the practice of articulate excuse; it just happens and students perform, and it results in all students learning!  And right next door at times, there is a classroom with this cave like feeling about students and learning.  The difference of a few steps can be a mile difference in perspective that happens or not, depending on who is teaching the class, what they believe, and how they approach students and learning.

The greatest gift any student can have is a teacher who loves and accepts them for who they are and who works with a healthy sense of urgency for who they will become in their presence, and translates this into students learning.  Students perform, up to or down to the expectations we have for them, and when they feel in us a sense of urgency for their success; they most often respond in kind on their own behalf.  Still, if they feel that their success is just an option we provide, then for too many, they infer their value as somehow diminished as a result.  The teacher’s view of them impacts their view of themselves.

If you have a sense of urgency for student learning; thank you and please keep it up.  We will get through the fiscal challenges and keep on keeping on for student learning.  If you don’t have a sense of urgency for all students learning or find yourself getting distracted and not tending to it directly, then get some help – reach out for it!  Each of us and the students we serve deserve the best we can be. Thank you for being here for students in this way, or taking clear and intentional steps to get to this place.

LEV and the Washington Education Association have teamed up to fight for funding for our schools. Together, we co-authored the op-ed below in today’s Seattle Times urging lawmakers to support House Bill 2078, which would provide $115 million over the next two years to reduce K-3 class sizes.

Fund smaller K-3 class sizes by eliminating large-bank tax exemptions (published in today’s Seattle Times)

WHICH is more important for families across Washington state — tax breaks for highly profitable, national banks or smaller classes for children learning to read? That is the stark policy choice facing legislators in the final days of the special session.

The League of Education Voters and the Washington Education Association don’t always see eye-to-eye, but when it comes to doing everything we can to ensure that our children learn to read, we are of one mind. That’s why we are urging legislators to vote yes on House Bill 2078.

The bill would help preserve our state’s longtime commitment to smaller K-3 class sizes by eliminating the tax break on interest earned on first mortgages by the largest, national, out-of-state banks and dedicating the funding to K-3 class-size reduction. Locally based banks, those that operate in 10 states or fewer, would not be affected. Capping this exemption generates $115 million per two-year budget enabling the Legislature to begin to live up to its promises to fund lower class sizes in the K-3 grades.

Teaching children to read is, unarguably, our state’s single most important educational objective. Reading is the foundation for all learning. Students who don’t master reading by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. Smaller class sizes in kindergarten through third grade are a proven strategy that enables primary-school teachers to focus on the individual development needs of every child.

The Washington state constitution could not be clearer: Providing ample funding for education is the paramount duty of the state. Yet both the Senate and House budgets propose slashing funding for smaller class sizes in the primary grades. This is not just a temporary setback. This is leaving behind a generation of children who will struggle all their lives because they did not get the extra help they need in their most formative years. It’s a tragic mistake for whole communities and a costly mistake for our state.

Washington state spends several billion dollars in public funds on tax breaks every year. Typically, tax exemptions are designed to achieve important state goals such as creating jobs or encouraging research and development, but many linger far beyond any useful public purpose because they are protected by special interests. Worse, special interests circle their wagons to protect each other’s exemptions.

In fact, most tax breaks never get reviewed to see if they actually produce the public benefit that was promised. So once tax breaks are passed, they rarely get taken off the books, even when our state has to ax priorities the public, our elected officials and our state constitution all deem essential.

Two of these priorities, the class-size initiative (Initiative 728) and the cost-of-living adjustment for teachers and school employees (I-732), are being suspended by the Legislature again. Voters overwhelmingly approved these initiatives but funding constraints have caused the Legislature to suspend them multiple times over the past decade. Have the voters overwhelmingly agreed to give that money in tax breaks to national banks and other corporations?

Simply put, we believe teaching children to read by third grade is a higher priority for Washington than giving public funds away to large, national banks for nothing in return. There is no evidence that this tax break for the nation’s largest banks has resulted in lower mortgage rates for Washington’s homebuyers. On the contrary, this tax exemption simply translates into higher profits for the same banks the federal government spent billions to bail out.

Our state can ill afford to continue this generous tax break for out-of-state banks when we aren’t able to fund our most basic educational priority, teaching our children to read.

Chris Korsmo, left, is CEO of the League of Education Voters, a grass-roots citizens’ group whose mission is to improve public education. Mary Lindquist is president of the Washington Education Association, representing 82,000 teachers and educators.

Bellevue PTSA Council, League of Education Voters and Bellevue Stand for Children have joined together to encourage the community to speak up on behalf of our children’s education.

A group of Bellevue School District parents developed a community values statement affirming what they believe to be important and relevant to the education of our children to be shared with their school district and teachers’ union.

Please visit the Bellevue Leads website to learn more and view the values statement. While on the website, you can show your support for the final statement via the online endorsement.

If you have any questions, please email info@bellevueleads.org.

Bellevue Leads will be presenting the Community Values Statement twice on Tuesday, May 24th:

Presentation to the Public
May 24th at 10:30 a.m.
Downtown Bellevue Public Library
1111 110th Avenue Northeast, Bellevue

Presentation to the Bellevue School Board
May 24th at 7:00 p.m.
Wilburton Instructional Service Center
12241 Main Street, Bellevue

We hope you can attend one or both of the presentations!