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Great Seattle Times Article on Racial Disproportionality in Education
The Seattle Times has a great article in today’s paper on racial disproportionality in outcomes for kids in the Seattle School District. The article talks about efforts to change things and makes a point that well-meaning approaches if not carried out with rigor and consistency over time don’t have much impact. The data series in…
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Hard to imagine…
In the Chronicle of Social Change Jerry Milner, Donald Trump’s appointment to the federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees federal child welfare funding and policy, speaks about his priorities in running the agency and improving outcomes for kids. The hard to imagine part is that I agree with almost…
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McCleary Almost Done
The latest decision from the court is available here. The slide deck this particular image is from is available here. This was used in the November 16, 2017 House Appropriations Committee meeting and is another excellent product from Jessica Harrell, the education expert serving Appropriations – someone I depended on for many years. It’s pretty…
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Dosage Matters for Washington’s Preschool Kids!
Our goal as an agency is to get 90% of Washington’s children to be “ready for kindergarten,” and to have race and family income not be predictors of readiness. About 20% of Washington’s children are in families at or below 110% of the federal poverty level (FPL,) or about $24,000 for a family of four. …
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McCleary Resources
The League of Education Voters recently published a page of resources for understanding the McCleary decision and how it impacts school funding. It’s a reasonable collection of items. http://educationvoters.org/2016/07/22/mccleary-resources/ In addition, I would recommend that you look at some of the posts I’ve done over the past few years on school funding and the Supreme…
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Ross lobbying for budget
I worked hard to lobby Sen. Joe Fain for the Department of Early learning’s budget last week at a reception honoring the ten years since the creation of both the Department and Thrive Washington, our non-profit partner. Someone took a video which Sen. Fain was kind enough to share on YouTube. He may have a…
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A Different Approach to Breaking the Cycle of Poverty
This is a super-interesting story from The Atlantic Monthly (driven by anecdotes) that raises a lot of interesting questions about how states administer federal childcare money, including how we set up the eligibility requirements in a world of scarce financial resources. (This is the world I live in.) If you think about what we do…
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McCleary Phase II
The Legislature has made significant progress toward fully funding basic education. In the last three years, we’ve reduced K-3 class sizes, funded all-day kindergarten, and provided kids adequate materials and supplies for their classrooms. But there’s one critical and final component we must deal with – teacher compensation and local levies. The chart below should…
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Ross’ Statement on August McCleary Order
The Supreme Court released a new order in the McCleary case this morning, holding the state in contempt and fining it $100,000 per day (to pay for basic education) until it resolves the remaining issues, including both the unconstitutional dependence on local levies to pay for basic education personnel costs and the cost of construction…
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Capital Budget – Building Stuff
The capital budget is the fund we use to make long-term investments in (mostly) physical things that are going to be around for a while. School construction, new buildings for colleges and universities, park acquisition, stuff like that. Just like your home mortgage, some of these investments are done on borrowed money. The state constitution…