I pointed her to the results of a study we did in 2008 – the Basic Education Financing Joint Task Force. We used the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to examine the research in education, try to weed out the questionable work, and quantify what we proposed and how it would affect student learning. I warn people that reading too much into the details here can lead to absurd results, but I think they did a good job.

The results for our proposal, which is about a 40% increase in spending are below. More detail on their methodology is available in the actual report, available here. See appendix B.

run effects of the Task Force portfolio on high school graduation rates in Washington.21

Like most judicial opinions that require the state to do something, rather than an opinion ruling some action of the state unconstitutional, there is a lot of deference given to the legislature in how to carry out the ruling. For example, when the US Supreme Court ruled in the Brown vs. Board of Education case the ruling phrase was that we should use “all deliberate speed” in eliminating segregation in schools. This was pretty ambiguous, but served as the basis for many actions, including federal protection of children attending previously forbidden schools and much court supervision over desegregation plans.

Judge Erlick ruled that the plan we passed last year (HB 2261, the result of our Basic Education Financing Task Force) was an acceptable framework for clearly stating what basic education entails and determining the cost. I’m pleased that the plan we produced meets the court’s approval, but now we will have to both close down the details of it AND determine a funding plan.

Our approach to determining the right amount of funding for K12 is called the “model schools” approach. We lay out the resources needed per building, and scale them based on the number of children in the school, and the number of children in the school that require special ed, gifted, or english langauge help, and the overall level of poverty in the school’s population. We adoped the basic structure of this approach last year, did a lot of detail work in the interim, and will adopt the final values for class size and other critical values this session.

Of course, this will be very contentious. In light of this ruling, determining the end goals in the definition of basic education will, in fact, require the state to fund them. This will necessarily result in less being spent on other priorities.

This interim we will have to address the financing plan – not how to spend it, but how to ensure that there is enough money available. I think we need to discuss many things about local and state property taxes and the right mix between them, including ways to make school funding more consistent and reliable.

I organized many of my collegues to sign a letter to the governor and the attorney general asking them to not appeal this case. I think Judge Erlich only pointed what is obvious to anyone who looks at our school system and compares it to the guarantee in our constitution, that school funding “is not ample, is not stable, and is not dependable.”

The Judge continues “Accordingly, the State is directed to determine the cost of amply providing for basic education and a basic program of education for all children resident in the State of Washington. The State must also comply with the Constitutional mandate to provide stable and dependable funding for such costs of basic education. Funding must be based as closely as reasonably practicable on the actual costs of providing such programs of basic education. The means of fulfilling this Constitutional mandate properly fall within the prerogative of the Legislature.”

We have work to do. I see a long summer working out the details of our approach.

For details you can read the actual opinion. 99 pages.

http://www.kingcounty.gov/courts/SuperiorCourt/~/media/courts/SuperiorCourt/Docs/McCleary.ashx

Statement from Rep. Ross Hunter on King County Superior Court’s school funding ruling

“Today’s court ruling doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know – the Legislature is not giving schools the money they need to provide the quality of education we want. This issue is why I ran for the Legislature in 2002 and it remains my top priority to this day.”

“We took an historic step forward last session when we passed House Bill 2261. We expanded the definition of basic education and committed ourselves to reworking the funding formula to make sure lawmakers pay for it. We made students and student success the basis of our new funding approach. I’ve said all along that when our children graduate from high school they should be prepared for jobs that don’t require paper hats. Clearly the courts agree.”

“I don’t think the state should waste money appealing this decision. It lights a much-needed fire under legislators to put education funding first.”

I still like the live events, and will mostly do those, but I’ll try to do 2 of these a year. They’re expensive, so I won’t do many.

People asked about spending money in smart ways on K-12 and I said I’d re-post my documents from last year. here they are:

Basic-Ed Funding Proposal 10-1

Basic Ed Finance 4 Page Overview

I also mentioned a chart I included in my newsletter about the growth in the state budget over time. I’ve included that here as well.

Growth of state revenues 9and budget) since 1981

I look forward to returning the phone calls from people who left messages, and of, the rest of you as well.

2009-12-15 Newsletter

I expect to produce much more regular newsletters now that we are approaching the session. Please let me know if there is something you would like me to address. I’ll try to address popular questions that we get in email as well as the stuff I’m working on.

2010 will be a pivotal one for education in Washington at all levels. There are a handful of key issues:

1. Funding. The overall budget is a disaster, with precipitous revenue declines threatening our ability to provide children with an adequate, let alone an ample education. Last year we made substantial cuts in K12 funding, though much lower as a percentage of the budget than any other area. I expect we will have to make additional cuts again this year.
2. Local levies.  There is a structural problem with local levies that is exacerbated when the state cuts its contribution. We need to take corrective action, preferably at a one-day special session in December.
3. Race to the Top. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have created a very large ($5.4 billion) fund to incent states to implement school improvement strategies. Washington is not currently in the running for this given the policies we have in place. There is an effort I’m helping with this year to improve our chances of winning some of this money.
4. Math/Science standards. I’ve worked successfully  over the past few years to make improvements  in our math and science standards. Unfortunately the Superintendent of Public Instruction has proposed a set of changes to graduation  requirements that would result in serious reductions in the level of preparedness of our students. I will oppose these changes.

The amount districts get resulting from initiative 728 and 732 is substantial – it could be as much as $750 or more per student. We’ve had to suspend these initiatives this year, which means that the levy base for the district goes down. If the levy base goes down, the amount that a district can collect in local property taxes goes down, even though voters have already voted to approve the higher amount. It’s like the voters wrote a check that the districts are being prohibited from cashing.

HB 1776 allows districts to compute their levy base as if they were still getting the 728 and 732 money. This doesn’t cost the state money and allows local voters control over what they do.

We tried to pass this bill last year right at the end of the session but it got hung up in the budget discussions. We had it up for a vote on the last day but did not have time to finish the debate. There are complex timing issues about school levy planning that make it important to pass in December for districts that have levies on the ballot this year.  To make this happen the governor needs to call a special session. We are in Olympia for a few days in December anyway and this would therefore cost very little money and should be relatively non-controversial. For her to do this she will need to be convinced that the House and Senate are willing to pass only this bill and not get sidetracked doing other stuff that can wait for January.

Waiting for January will needlessly complicate the lives of districts that have local levies in front of voters in February.

1. Standards and Assessments
2. Data Systems to Support Instruction
3. Great Teachers and Leaders
4. Turning Around Struggling Schools

We have real work to do in order to have even a remote chance of winning any of this money. There are two absolute requirements: 1) approval of state applications in Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, and 2) no statutory or regulatory barriers to linking data about student achievement to teachers and principals for the purposes of evaluation.

Governor Gregoire has decided to not spend the time necessary to prepare an application for round 1, as we are assured of not winning. Winning in Round 2 will require the legislature to pass some changes. Fortunately we have met the absolute requirements. I inserted an amendment to a bill 2 years ago that requires school districts to report data linking students to teachers, classes taken, and principals. It’s taking a while to collect this, but we are getting there piece by piece.

To get any of this money we believe that we will have to make the following changes:

• Allow the Superintendent of Public Instruction to intervene in schools that are chronic failures. If a particular school fails children for generations, the state should be able to take action, relieving the local district of control if necessary. This has been blocked by state law for more than a decade.
• Make changes to how teachers are assigned to schools to ensure that there is equitable distribution of highly-qualified teachers to low-performing schools. The opposite tends to be true. Marguerite Roza at the University of Washington has done interesting work in this area.
• Report on the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs. I expect this to be difficult, as there isn’t much data available. A lot of the data about teacher certification is still stored on microfiche in the basement of the OSPI building, making it difficult to link the student achievement data together with the information about which school a teacher went to.
• Differentiate teacher and principal effectiveness based on student growth and use that data for compensation, evaluation, and tenure decisions. This sounds like a no-brainer, but is really, really difficult to implement in a fair way. I was part of a group of legislators made a proposal on this last year as part of a comprehensive plan to revamp our compensation system. We may have reached further than people were willing to go, but to get this money I believe we will need significant effort here.
• Promote charter schools. This won’t happen. I am hopeful that the scoring system doesn’t depend totally on this, but after the defeat at the polls in 2004 I don’t expect any significant change here.

I’m not particularly hopeful that we’ll get any of the money, but agree with most of the proposals, or at least in their direction. We are still working out how these changes will be proposed in legislation. More as we work out the details.

Last year we passed HB2261, the start of a long-term process to re-write how our state funds public education. As is typical, I am willing to make changes more rapidly than many of my co-workers, and much more rapidly than the many, many vested interests in the existing system. I’m learning to be more patient, though it’s very painful. In reality, getting it right is pretty important. Last year we approved the outline for about half of the changes that need to happen, and set up a process to get the other parts closer to decisions.

First, the legislature agreed that we would adopt the “model school proposal” for laying out how much money is necessary to fund a school. I wrote about this extensively last year, and would urge you to review the proposal by reading one of the two following links:

4-page Overview: http://rosshunter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/basic-ed-funding-4-page-overview_final.pdf

Entire Report: http://rosshunter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Basic-Ed-Funding-Proposal-10-1.pdf

A task force was created to implement the model schools part, with a report due in December. This leaves enough time to work out the details in legislation before the session so we can get it done this year. I’m a little nervous about what will happen – the process gets resolved this week. I’ll write about what they do next week.

Compensation, in particular any changes to the current seniority and education-based system that might make it more based on demonstrated performance are the work of a task force that starts this spring. We may want to accelerate this in response to the race to the top funding proposal.

The balance between local levies and state funding is also outstanding, and the subject of a workgroup this summer. This is particularly complex, with significant differences of opinion based on where in the state you live.

All of this is almost made moot by the dramatic decline in revenue the state is experiencing. Last year we cut $1.5 billion from the K-12 budget, and I can see further cuts coming this year given the dramatic decline we are experiencing in revenue overall. Trying to do the planning on how we will come out of this recession in a smart way is critical, and that will be the result of the entire project. I’m hopefully optimistic.

More and more this requires education after high school. The superintendent of public instruction (SPI) Randy Dorn just came out with a proposal in this area I find to be a significant step backwards. For example, he thinks we should require kids to only have two years of mathematics to graduate.  http://k12.wa.us/Communications/PressReleases2009/WSSDAConference.aspx

I disagree, and will work hard to implement what the state board of education has been working on – “Core 24,” a significant increase in the level of rigor we require as a state. (http://www.sbe.wa.gov/mhsd.htm) I do not believe that lowering our requirements is a good strategy for improving outcomes for our children. Furthermore, I believe it will do significant harm to the most vulnerable kids – those without strong parental pressure at home, strong community supports, and all the other elements that more well-to-do  families often have and that less well off families struggle to provide. Lowing standards does a serious disservice to our most at-risk children, and will make the achievement gap worse.