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KJ Does a Crossover Dribble on Ed Reform
The League of Education Voters is sponsoring a speaker series on public education. The first event features Kevin Johnson, former NBA star and currently mayor of Sacramento, talking about ed reform. He’s the chair of a task force of big city mayors appointed by Arne Duncan to improve education in the inner city. The event…
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Tracking the Economy…
On Thursday of last week, Governor Gregoire asked all her agencies to prepare for budget cuts of between $300 and $500 million. She is planning to take action on October 1st, immediately following the revenue forecast that will be released in late September. In her address she suggests that she and the legislature work together…
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Wondering about the square signs over 520?
WSDOT sent me an interesting email this morning. “Smarter Highways” is a federal program that the feds are actually paying for. It’s supposed to make the system work more smoothly. I understand the State Patrol will actually enforce the speed limit on the signs, so it’s worth figuring out how they work. ————————- WSDOT will…
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Good News on the Budget
This morning the US Senate approved legislation extending the “enhanced” federal match for Medicaid for another 6 months, starting in January. This is good news for Washington state. The Senate paid for this change with other adjustments in the federal budget, so it doesn’t have an impact on the federal budget deficit, also a good…
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Sales Tax Exemption for Canadian Residents?
British Columbia is making a minor change in their sales tax today that for some incomprehensible technical reasons winds up exempting all of their residents from paying sales tax in Washington. The City of Bellingham and Whatcom county will be heavily impacted by this and have sued the Department of Revenue to get them to…
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Interesting Study on Charter Schools
The US Dept of Education just released a study on charter middle schools that’s worth reading. Click Here for the report. I’ve supported charter schools in the past as a way to experiment with new ways of building schools, but not as a panacea for all students. Just like regular schools, charter schools vary significantly…
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Education Data
For a number of years we’ve been working on improving the collection of data about education. This has been painful – there are 17 different data systems across K-12, plus different systems in each of the higher ed silos and no data collection at all in early learning. We’re trying to make sure we understand…
