Brown Center: “Obama’s Preschool Proposal is Not Based on Sound Research”

Obama addressing a crowd with While I’m not sure I agree with the scary headline of this post from the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, I totally agree that we should be thinking carefully about how we implement a major upgrade of our early education program for at-risk kids. (Good headlines drive more readership, hence I quote it in my title…)

You can read their conclusions here, but the following paragraph is a good summary:

When well designed and implemented third-party randomized trials of good preschool programs generate estimates of effects that are orders of magnitude smaller than those being generated using the age-cutoff regression discontinuity design, it raises questions that should motivate a careful examination of the methodology of the age-cutoff research.

You can see that I have exciting reading habits!

Continue reading “Brown Center: “Obama’s Preschool Proposal is Not Based on Sound Research””

The Education Budget

Ardmore Elementary - Bellevue School District
Ardmore Elementary – Bellevue School District

I’m pleased to report that we were able to add just over a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) in new money to education funding in Washington, or about a 12% increase. This is a step towards meeting the obligation to amply provide for the education of all children residing within our borders the constitution calls for and the Supreme Court is requiring us to do in the McCleary decision. My initial proposal was for significantly more. We believe the final bill will be close to $4.5 billion, and we have 5 years to phase into a solution. This budget has 2 years in it, so 2/5 of the eventual problem would require a $1.7 billion increase. We didn’t get there, but what we did do is pretty significant. Continue reading “The Education Budget”

Education wins in final budget

2009-Smily-Headshot-medium.jpgA week has passed since the end of the second (and final) special session this year and I’ve finally put socks and shoes on and shaved. This was an exhausting exercise as the Senate Republicans figured out how they were going to make decisions. I’m pleased we were able to get it done at the end, but would have preferred to have not come so close to the deadline for shutting down most state services.

The final budget addresses most of my priorities:

  • $1 billion in new funding for K-12 education, part of our effort at addressing our constitutional requirement to amply provide for the education of all children. This is not as much as I believe the court is asking us to do, but it’s a significant step. Continue reading “Education wins in final budget”

Washington ranks 30th in total school spending per pupil in 2011

Per-Pupil expenditures 1992-2011 not adjusted for inflation
Per-Pupil expenditures 1992-2011 not adjusted for inflation

Dick Davis at the The Washington Research Council posted about new Census data recently released on school funding.

Washington ranks 30th in total school spending per pupil in 2011

new report from the U.S. Census provides a wealth of data on public school spending. (Links to all the data can be found here.)

A look at state revenues and spending per pupil can be found in this spreadsheet, Table 11 from the report. It shows that Washington spent $9,483 per pupil, ranking the state 30th, slightly below the U.S. average of $10,560.The table also shows that Washington ranks 30th in total revenues per pupil, $11,329. And, as we noted in our comparative analysis of education funding, we rank relatively high in state spending, No. 15, and lower in local funding, No. 36. (Read entire article here...)

The census data is the raw data on school funding. Typically it’s more interesting to look at some nuanced analysis. For example, the costs of hiring professional staff (teachers) varies by state, with highly urban states having higher costs not just for teachers, but for all college-educated workers, so the same dollar buys less education. This kind of analysis will come in over time.

Dick makes a couple of interesting points that are worth thinking (and talking) about:

  1. Washington ranks high in state spending and low in local spending compared to other states.
  2. Many states are dealing with increasing costs of paying off underfunded pension systems.

Washington ranks high in state support because our constitution requires us to do so. The Supreme Court pointed this out quite painfully in the McCleary decision. Depending on local resources for basic education makes it difficult for taxpayers in low-property value areas of the state to give their children a comparable education to those in more affluent areas, a problem that plagues states that mostly depend on local revenue.

Dick is correct to be concerned about the rising costs of paying for unfunded retirement system liabilities. Washington is also in good shape here compared to many states, but these costs are increasing as we pay for decisions made in the 1970s. It’s important to recognize that these costs are real and must be paid, but that they do not increase educational outcomes for children today. (Essentially we’re paying for educational costs incurred 20-30-40 years ago that should have been paid then but were not.) Ensuring that we adequately fund BOTH the actual educational needs of our children and the constitutionally required costs of paying for decisions made 40 years ago is the task in front of the Legislature today.

Senate Budget – Unconstitutional Fund Transfer?

In the Senate Republican budget they transfer $166 million of the “Common School Construction Fund” into the operating budget. The Treasurer does not believe he has the constitutional authority to make this transfer and has said so publicly. The Senate Republicans are waving a letter from their staff attorney that says it’s all right. I’m not a lawyer, but the arguments from the Senate staff sounded like counting angels dancing on the head of pins.

The constitutional language in question is in Article IX, Section 3

There is hereby established the common school construction fund to be used exclusively for the purpose of financing the construction of facilities for the common schools. The sources of said fund shall be: (1) Those proceeds derived from the sale or appropriation of timber and other crops from school and state lands subsequent to June 30, 1965, other than those granted for specific purposes; (2) the interest accruing on said permanent common school fund from and after July 1, 1967, together with all rentals and other revenues derived therefrom and from lands and other property devoted to the permanent common school fund from and after July 1, 1967; and (3) such other sources as the legislature may direct. That portion of the common school construction fund derived from interest on the permanent common school fund may be used to retire such bonds as may be authorized by law for the purpose of financing the construction of facilities for the common schools.

Continue reading “Senate Budget – Unconstitutional Fund Transfer?”

Town Hall Wrap

Town Hall March 2013-1

 

Another town hall meeting. I should go back on the calendar and count how many we’ve done. These have been fun over the years and we keep fiddling with the formula. This time we had a full room so we took questions on index card. I read the cards exactly, and I think I read most of the questions. We get to more questions this way with fewer repeats, and some people like this. (We hear from them afterwards.) Some people would prefer to ask their question directly, and I think we’ll try to allocate more time for that as well. To do this we would have to be less long-winded.

Town Hall March 2013-3

We got questions on a variety of topics. I’d say the top were Education funding, and why are we even considering changing anything about how the system works, Healthcare, particularly the Medicaid expansion, overall budget/tax questions, including the 2/3 vote threshold issue on which Rodney and I disagree. Cyrus seems to be on my side of this. I gave the speech on super-majorities that I’ve done a number of times – referencing the founders of both the US and Washington State, the Federalist Papers, and other historical arguments about why the system outlined in the constitution actually works pretty well and we should stick with it. It’s available to read in the last newsletter I sent out.

You’ll hear more from me on education funding when we roll out our budget in a few weeks. (Secret knowledge: I think the that making “steady and measurable progress” on McCleary as the court has called for will require an additional $1.4 billion in new funds this year. If I can make this work in a budget I will do so.)

Town Hall March 2013-2

We are absolutely doing the Medicaid expansion as well. It saves hundreds of millions and covers hundreds of thousands of new people, most of them the working poor. My favorite example of why people don’t really understand how this impacts people was a moment at my drycleaners a few years ago. I was discussing the bill with one of the owners. She talked clearly about how hard it was to get medical care. They had coverage for the kids through Apple Health, but not for the parents. Another customer was there at the same time and I don’t think she realized until that moment that people can work hard, run a successful small business, and not be able to afford care. The Affordable Care Act will make care available to everyone at reasonable cost, and we’re working hard to bring it to Washington this year.

My most disappointing thing this year is our failure to get the votes to pass HB 1588, the bill requiring background checks for firearms sales. The bill is reasonably written, with exceptions for concealed pistol license holders, etc. I spent an entire day counting votes and came up 1 short to pass a bill that would not have had crippling amendments. This would have required a vote of the people before it was adopted. This policy is supported by over 80% of my constituents. I’ve been buried in mail on the issue – on both sides. I apologize for sending a form response. There are too many emails to address individually.

As always, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions we didn’t address. Thank you for coming and for keeping these civil experiences for 10 years.

Ross sig small

Education Bills and Background

School bus pictureLots has been happening on the education front this year, though the most important thing is happening in closed rooms as the House and Senate work out their budget proposals. I sat on a school funding panel in front of the Washington State School Directors Association today with Sen. Bruce Dammeier (R- Puyallup), Rep. JT Wilcox (R-Yelm), and Sen. Andy Billig (D-Spokane.)

All of us were willing to make substantial investments in K12 education funding, though we all had weird conditions and our numbers were all over the map, ranging from $900 million for the House Republicans to $1.4 billion from me, the amount specified by the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Funding this summer. I take this as a hopeful sign – they’ve all figured out that we have to invest in a quality system in order to get the results that we want.

Continue reading “Education Bills and Background”

Legislative “Progress” – Early March

Cupola of the Legislative Building
Cupola of the Legislative Building

Each Legislative session has a rythym all its own. This one is waiting expectantly for something to happen. I think you’ll see a flurry of activity towards the end of the month as budgets start to get released.

At the beginning of the session I said we had three priorities this year: balancing the budget for both 2013-15 and 2015-17, funding the education improvements required by the McClary decision from the Supreme Court, and implementing the expansion of Medicaid made possible under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as “Obamacare.” I still believe these are the correct items to focus on, though a stretch goal would be to implement a reasonable package of road and transit improvements.

We’re making progress on all three fronts, though I think some new items have raised their heads and required attention.

  • Gun safety, for obvious reasons. Advocates came in with an expansive agenda, but seem to have focused for this year on finally closing the “gun show loophole” that allows people to purchase guns from private sellers without undergoing background checks. HB 1588 is a reasonable response, creating a way for background checks to take place on almost all sales without creating a centralized database of gun ownership, something very concerning to some people. I support the bill and am a co-sponsor.
  • Mental health treatment improvements. We trail the nation in the number of community mental health hospital beds, and don’t have a very strong system of providing support for people who have dangerous mental health issues. The ACA will change some of this, giving many more people access to care in reasonable ways, but we are going to need to strengthen both our civil involuntary committment procedures and our forensic system, closing some awkward gaps. More below.

I’ve also had a lot of questions about the Supreme Court’s ruling the Eyman initiatives requiring a 2/3 vote for tax increases unconstitutional. The ruling was pretty unequivocal – all bills pass with a simple majority in the Legislature, as the constitution intended. I’ve written a response to the many emails on this topic that I include below.

I’m going to write about the education bills in a different post because otherwise this one will get too long.

Continue reading “Legislative “Progress” – Early March”

A Day in the Legislature – Potato Day!

Baked PotatoToday was “Potato Day.” The Potato Farmers of Washington hand out baked potatoes larded with condiments. The line stretches down the stairs of the rotunda and almost out the door. I passed on this opportunity and had a sandwich in my office. I’ll stand in line for the BBQ beef sandwich on “beef day” but not a baked potato, despite how tasty they are.

Tomorrow (2/13/13) is “Gun Day,” with several bills being heard in the Judiciary committee at 8:00 AM. We’re expecting to have, again, random people with assault rifles slung over their back wandering the halls of the capitol. There was a protest last week with several hundred people. This is larger than some protests, but not really all that big. We typically have more people here for PTA focus day, or any of the large lobby days. I’m not involved in these bills in detail, but am a co-sponsor of the bill (HB 1588) requiring background checks for all sales of guns in Washington, including private sales and those at gun shows. This is a pretty rational requirement that is supported by large majorities (over 80%) of the American public and that I’ve supported since my initial run over a decade ago, when only 75% of the people in my district supported it. For more thoughts on gun safety you can read my post from a few weeks ago.

Continue reading “A Day in the Legislature – Potato Day!”

Legislative Update

We’ve gone through the first week. The governor and the state-wide officials have all been inaugurated, I fit into the same tuxedo I got married in 23 years ago for the inaugural ball, the Senate is in uproar about Senator Tom’s defection and the consequent change in partisan control, the sun came out (briefly) in Olympia, and we are back to work. The only real surprise to me was the tuxedo fitting.

The Senate is controlled by Republicans due to Democratic Senators Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon caucusing with them. Sen. Tom is the “majority leader” and Sen. Sheldon has a leadership role. I’m not sure how this will work out in the end but it’s gotten a lot of press. We have successfully negotiated a bipartisan budget for the last two years that I have been budget chairman, and I expect that to continue. The change in control of the Senate does not affect the budget as much as you might expect. It may have a profound effect on issues like women’s healthcare, gun safety and those that have more partisan differences of opinion. I am withholding judgment until the end of the session and we see how things work out.

We have three big tasks this year that we must complete, plus a few additional projects many of us would like to get to if we complete the important work.

  1. Adopt a budget that balances for both 2013-15 and 2015-17 in order to comply with the strongest balanced budget requirement in the country. (It’s interesting to note that the state has adopted balanced budgets every year since 1889 without this requirement so maybe it wasn’t as important as people thought it should be…)
  2. Resolve the supreme court’s requirement in the McCleary case that we live up to the constitutional requirement to “amply provide for the education of all children.” Current estimates are that this will require about $4.5 billion every two years by 2018, and we must make “steady progress” towards meeting this goal.
  3. Work out all the details of the Medicaid expansion enabled by the federal Affordable Care Act (Obamacare.) This will cover nearly 350,000 additional people in Washington and save the state over $100 million a year. The health insurance exchange will cover an additional 400,000 or so people, leaving almost everyone in Washington covered.

I’d like to adopt a transportation package that finishes the funding for the West end of the 520 project and invests in other important transportation infrastructure, but this should come after we address the base budget issues and McCleary. I’d also like us to take reasonable steps forward on gun safety in light of the recent spurt of mass killings, but this will be difficult as there are substantial differences between members on the issue. Perhaps the US Congress will be more functional than the Legislature on this topic, but that would be a real surprise.

This newsletter is made up of several recent blog postings I’ve done. If you’re interested in the topic you should be able to click through to the website to see the rest of the article. I find that if I share everything I write with you that the parts at the end don’t get read. Perhaps I should take this as a sign, but I can’t help myself.

For more posts that didn’t fit into this newsletter, and the stuff I post during session you can read my website.

Budget Outline

The current economic outlook calls for modest growth, but growth in tax revenue slower than our obligations. Our current projections show a shortfall of $904 million in the 2013-15 budget.

2013-15 balance sheet

The cryptic “NGFS + Op PW” title in the spreadsheet stands for “Near General Fund plus Opportunity Pathways” accounts, and is the sum of most state taxes that go into the overall budget. “BSA” stands for “Budget Stabilization Account” or the rainy day fund. We can’t spend this fund without a super-majority vote, so the problem is $904 million, not the $349 million on the bottom line.

Many changes will happen to this budget before we are done, including the addition of the McCleary obligation. Adding all the problems together nets you about a $2.8 billion problem.

Keep reading about the budget… 

What’s the “McCleary Problem?”

In 2012 the Washington State Supreme Court found that Washington State was not funding our education system at anything close to the level the constitution requires. Just before the holidays the court opined again, that

“the overall level of funding remains below the levels that have been declared constitutionally inadequate.” (Washington State Supreme Court, 2012)

On the Legislative side the Joint Task Force on Education Finance report issued in December 2012 detailed an eventual cost of about $4.5 billion dollars per biennium in additional funding needed to meet the court’s definition of “constitutionally adequate.” Arguments that the court isn’t talking about funding are belied by the quote above.

Despite protestations to the contrary, this session the Legislature needs to make steady progress towards completely meeting the court’s requirement by 2018. There are 5 school years between now and 2018, and “steady progress” means we get about 2/5ths of the way to the complete solution, or about $1.7 billion.

I personally do not believe that just adding additional money to the system will resolve all the problems we face, particularly with respect to the achievement gap faced by many low-income students. The funds are necessary, but probably not sufficient to improve matters significantly. The same can be said about the proposed accountability changes. I believe we can do both, and have significant results. There will be much negotiation this year to come to a resolution.

For more information read What’s in McCleary?

Gun Safety

I’ve held off commenting on gun safety because I wanted to think about it for a while after the Sandy Hook incident. Writing new policy in knee-jerk response to a single incident typically is a bad idea. However, there have been enough incidents that I think we need to respond and create a safer place to live.

I have already received a lot of email on this issue and I try to address most of the issues that have come up. These are addressed in the actual blog post – there have been a LOT of issues raised.

Some people think about this issue from a “rights” perspective – “I have a constitutional right to own whatever kind of firearm I want” and some from a public health perspective – “it turns out to be a bad idea to let people with unresolved mental health problems or domestic violence issues, felons, and children own dangerous weapons.” We can balance these two perspectives in reasonable ways.

  • Ensure that people with domestic violence restraining orders, mental health issues, etc. are unable to purchase guns by requiring background checks on all gun purchases, including those at gun shows.
  • Keep guns out of the hands of small children and other unauthorized people by creating some kind of “safe storage” requirement. If you are going to keep a gun in your house or car you should be responsible to ensure that children do not have access to it.
  • Reduce the availability of military capacity guns that can fire many rounds very quickly. This is an extension of the principle we use in banning the private ownership of machine guns, bazookas and tanks and would fall under the supreme court’s definition of “unusual and dangerous” weapons. I believe this is a problem that can best be addressed at the federal level, not at the state level. I have no detailed knowledge of Sen. Feinstein’s bill or President Obama’s proposal and cannot comment on the specifics other than to say that it is an issue in the other Washington, not this one.
  • And, on a more personal note, I would feel more secure if most people (including elected officials, but not the numerous state patrol officers stationed at the capitol) were prohibited from carrying firearms on the floor of the House. A surprisingly large number of people who are not off-duty police officers feel a need to carry concealed pistols in a building filled with children, tour groups and sometimes angry protesters. The likelihood of accidents seems high.

For the much longer post read Gun Safety in Washington.

Education Voters Public Forum – Tuesday Jan 22nd

I’m appearing with Senator Steve Litzow at a forum hosted by the League of Education Voters on Tuesday of this week. I don’t expect the event to be a formal debate, but Steve and I will lay out some differences between the positions our caucuses have, and talk about the possibility of compromise and what that might look like. (I recognize that “compromise” is a word that is vanishing from our political lexicon, but in this Washington we try to maintain a quality vocabulary.)

Formal press release:

The League of Education Voters is hosting a forum to discuss education in Washington state with Rep. Ross Hunter and Sen. Steve Litzow on Tuesday, Jan. 22 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the King County Library Administration Building. (960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah)

The forum will allow residents to learn more about competing visions for funding public education in Washington.

During the event, participants will hear about the current budget shortfall, the costs associated with meeting the McCleary decision by 2018 and a comparison of the different legislative approaches to address the issue.

The forum is free and open to the public. Please register by emailing info@educationvoters.org. There will be more of these events.