Category: Education

Answers to Popular Education Emails

I’ve been swamped with email on education issues and want to consolidate my responses to a number of popular questions as I think it’ll give a better sense of what my positions are on your issues. I’m hearing about:

  • Basic Education funding, including ensuring that we adequately fund our McCleary obligation.
  • Funding and implementation of Initiative 1351
  • The “waiver”, or making use of state-wide assessments for evaluations of teachers.
  • Senate cuts to teacher retiree benefits. In particular, a 27% cut to the Medicare subsidy, a flat dollar amount that’s part of the retirement benefit for teachers.
  • Testing and our graduation requirements. There are a number of proposals to change (reduce) the amount of testing we do. I address this in a different post.

Continue reading “Answers to Popular Education Emails”

Budget Update and Thoughts on Teacher Compensation and Levy Reform

4th Graders Visiting the Capitol
4th Graders Visiting the Capitol

I write this on Tuesday April 21st. At this point I do not expect that the Legislature will agree on a budget before the regular session ends on Sunday April 26th. The Seattle Times published a lot of articles this weekend about the budget, and I’m structuring this newsletter around them. The first article in the collection discusses in detail all the press conferences that the two sides had all week. We’ve had a number of meetings between the two negotiating teams to try to set up the framework for talks, but we’re not making much progress.

I think it’s mostly about the different approaches the two sides take to the budget. The House Democrats look at the various categories of spending and make recommendations about what we think the state should invest in, then work back to figure out how much revenue we need based on that. This is a balancing decision, and lots of desired spending doesn’t get done in the budget proposal. The Senate Republicans make a decision that they won’t vote for taxes (except for roads) and try to deal with the huge increase in required K12 spending by cutting everything else and using a lot of one-time gimmicks. This results in many bad outcomes.

I made a proposal that both sides work through all the areas where we have significant differences and resolve the details of what we want to purchase. The Senate suggested we set a dollar limit (theirs) and work within that. The limit was low enough that it prevents making reasonable decisions. We are at a temporary impasse.

Education funding stuff after the break. Continue reading “Budget Update and Thoughts on Teacher Compensation and Levy Reform”

House and Senate Budget Differences on K12

I’ll be posting a handful of high-level summaries of budget differences with the Senate over the next few days. As usual, K12 is my first post in this sequence.

House Democrats are investing $3.2 billion more in K-12 education with this budget over the amount we spent in the last biennium, a 21% increase. People have asked me what the difference is between the House and Senate budgets for K-12 spending. This chart has the highlights.

K12 Funding Differences

There are lots of other places I have concerns, like the Senate requirement that districts reduce their levies if they accept the constitutionally required operating cost money, even though the Senate budget doesn’t address the costs those local levies pay for.

For more thoughts on education funding, click here.

 

High-Quality Early Learning Rocks

Low quality childcare is actually bad for children. Not “less good.” On the other hand, high quality opportunities can improve school readiness in low-income children by two years and make significant improvements in all kinds of non-academic indicators like incarceration rates, family income, etc.

There is a ton of research in this area, and it all points to the conclusion that only high quality programs move the school readiness needle in the right direction. A good, readable summary of the research can be found here.

Early Learning 1-7 inforgraphicWhy does our state fund childcare for about 60,000 low-income children every year? Almost 20 years ago President Bill Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich struck a deal on welfare reform. They required single parents (mostly moms) to hold down jobs, and in return the government committed to subsidize childcare for those families. This prevented a disastrous scenario for low-income kids. Today the state provides vouchers for very low-income parents to get childcare so that they can go to work. However, this system is wildly inadequate – in the quality of care it affords and the quantity of families it covers.

Continue reading “High-Quality Early Learning Rocks”

State budget battles and Cougar culture in Seattle at Civic Cocktail, Feb. 4

SeattleChannelIconCivicCocktailIcon

SEATTLE CHANNEL FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 22, 2015 Contact: Lori Patrick, Seattle Channel Communications (206) 733-9764, lori.patrick@seattle.gov

State budget battles and Cougar culture in Seattle at Civic Cocktail, Feb. 4 WSU President Elson Floyd and state legislators Ross Hunter and Steve Litzow join the conversation

SEATTLE –A contentious state legislative session and a conversation about higher education with Washington State University President Elson Floyd are on the bill for Civic Cocktail, 5:30 p.m., Wed., Feb. 4 at the Palace Ballroom, 2100 Fifth Ave.

From meeting the McCleary mandate to opening the state’s second publicly-funded medical school, education will lead the discussion at the first Civic Cocktail event of the year.

The first half of the program will feature State Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48th) and Sen. Steve Litzow (R-41st) discussing issues the divided Legislature in Olympia will tackle this session, including meeting a State Supreme Court mandate to fund K-12 education, making sense of medical-marijuana laws, and moving forward with a state transportation funding package. And what about the stalled Seattle tunnel project, which has led to tensions between state and city officials?

Hunter is chair of the House Appropriations Committee (responsible for the state budget). Litzow chairs the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee.

During the second half of the program, Floyd will join host Joni Balter to talk about the role of WSU in helping to solve the critical problems that face our state, nation and world and the research university’s legislative priorities, which include building a new academic center at Everett University Center, which WSU assumed management of last summer. WSU recently announced its support of a state measure that would direct new revenue to education, including early learning and higher education and is exploring a partnership with Bellevue College to offer a bachelor’s degree at the Eastside college. Floyd will also discuss WSU’s plans to open the state’s second fully accredited, publicly-funded medical school in Spokane to address the state’s physician shortage, particularly in underserved rural areas.

A journalist panel, including Essex Porter who covers government and politics for KIRO TV and Crosscut’s Managing Editor Berit Anderson, will weigh in on the discussions.

Civic Cocktail offers an evening of networking, civic conversation, Tom Douglas appetizers and a no-host bar. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. The program begins at 6 p.m. Advance registration is recommended as these events sometimes sell out. Register at SeattleCityClub.org or call 206-682-7395. Advance ticket prices are $20 for CityClub and Crosscut members and $25 for non-members and at the door.

Seattle Channel presents Civic Cocktail in partnership with Seattle CityClub and Crosscut. The conversation is rebroadcast on Seattle Channel cable 21 and is available online at seattlechannel.org/civiccocktail.

Seattle Channel is a local TV station that reflects, informs and inspires the community it serves. Seattle Channel presents programs on cable television – channel 21 on Comcast (321 HD) and Wave (721 HD) – and via the Internet to help residents connect with their city. Programming includes series and special features highlighting the diverse civic and cultural landscape of the Pacific Northwest’s premier city.

Lawmakers seek community input on state budget

Posted on January 5, 2015
Rep. Ross Hunter

How would you solve Washington state’s $4.4 billion budget problem?

That’s the central question Senator-elect Cyrus Habib (D-Kirkland) and Representative Ross Hunter (D-Medina) will be asking their constituents at a town hall meeting this Saturday, 10 a.m. at Redmond City Hall. Representative-elect Joan McBride (D-Kirkland) will also be participating in the discussion.

The eastside lawmakers want to hear from 48th district residents on what issues are important to them. They will provide a brief overview of the challenges and opportunities facing the state in the upcoming legislative session at the town hall.

“As I move from the State House of Representatives to the State Senate, I am keenly aware of the challenges before the Legislature: the need to address income inequality, the opportunity gap in education, and climate change,” said Habib who was recently selected to join Leadership of the Senate Democrats. “I look forward to discussing these and other issues with my Eastside constituents on Saturday.”

“We’re facing a large budget problem this session,” said Hunter, the chair of the committee responsible for writing the state budget in the House. “In addition to the constitutional education funding problem pointed out in the McCleary decision, the voters approved an expensive initiative lowering class sizes. Representative-elect McBride, Senator Habib and I are looking for feedback from constituents on the right mix of new revenue and program reductions in other areas necessary to fund these obligations.”

The 105-day legislative session convenes on January 12.

48th Legislative District Town Hall
Redmond City Hall
15670 NE 85th St.
10 a.m. – noon
Saturday, January 10, 2015

Dire Future for State Budgets?

Graph showing state and local health care costs vs. payroll costs over timeThe Washington Post has an article today (or some recent day – I only read online) about the long-term pressures faced by state and local governments.  The article compares growth in key revenue sources with growth in costs and projects a dire future. The title is “GAO: Without draconian cuts, states face decades-long fiscal crisis“.

Key concerns they have include

  • The sales tax continues to decline as a fraction of GDP. This means that over time people buy less stuff (as a percentage of their income) that is taxed.
  • Tax revenue in general will not return to pre-recession levels, as a percentage of GDP, until 2058.
  • State and local healthcare costs for employees and retirees, as well as Medicaid costs, will grow from 3.9% of GDP to 7.4% of GDP by 2060.

Continue reading “Dire Future for State Budgets?”

WA Budget 2015-17: High Degree of Difficulty

Recession Job Recovery graphWhen writing about the budget it’s important to share good news as well as bad. First the good: (it’s short) the revenue forecast picked up a little bit. The bad is that we face one of the most difficult budget cycles of my time in the Legislature, and perhaps worse than we’ve seen in many decades.

The budget is showing strains from the slow recovery from the recession, we are seeing a slew of court cases that require us to spend significant amounts of money, and we are going to have to make significant progress in meeting our constitutional responsibility to fund public education.

Continue reading “WA Budget 2015-17: High Degree of Difficulty”

Golden Crayon Award

Golden CrayonsThe Early Learning Action Alliance gave me a “Golden Crayon” award for my efforts last session to pass the “Early Start” bill. The bill had a lot of moving parts, but the main idea was to focus on improving the quality of the childcare we have now so that we reap the benefits down the road in improved outcomes for at-risk youngsters.

Somewhere there are a lot of children who have boxes of crayons with no gold ones.  This is the sad part of an otherwise lovely award. It came with a nice plaque too:

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Common Core Education Standards

This week I got a campaign questionnaire from a group I hadn’t heard of before about the common core standards and a few other educational issues, wanting my answers to a set of questions they posed.

The group is Washington State Against Common Core so you can probably predict the direction they would like the answers to go. In general it’s better if I don’t answer questionnaires where I categorically disagree with the entire premise of the group as it doesn’t improve world harmony. In this case I thought it would be useful to talk about this topic as it has kicked up some dust lately.

Here are the questions:

  1. Please state your position on Race to the Top reforms, including the Common Core Standards, student data collection, and high-stakes testing.
  1. Please explain your support of or opposition to charter schools as established in Washington state by I-1240.
  1. If elected, would you sponsor or support legislation to withdraw Washington state from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and repeal the Common Core State Standards?

Continue reading “Common Core Education Standards”