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The third week of the 2010 Legislative Session is
unofficially being declared as “Education Reform Week”
and several bills will be heard with a focus on the
implementation of last session’s HB 2261 (Basic
Education Reform) or enhancing the state’s eligibility
for federal Race To The Top funds. The first
action was a hearing in the Senate Early Learning & K-12
Education Committee.
This afternoon, the Committee held a public hearing
on
SB 6696. This is the legislation we’ve
discussed in previous Updates which has come from Gov.
Gregoire, Superintendent Dorn and State Board of
Education Chair Mary Jean Ryan. In brief, the bill
would do the following:
- Establish a new teacher and principal evaluation
system, with an emphasis on student learning.
- Extend of the provisional period for new
teachers from two to three years, and provide
additional teacher support.
- Strengthen parent involvement and feedback.
- Expand alternative certification providers for
teachers and principals.
- Implement a new system of district and school
performance accountability, including authority for
school turnarounds, known as “required action.”
- Authorize movement to national common core
standards.
- Add “innovation” to teacher “TRI” pay, aimed at
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) and the achievement gap.
Numerous organizations were on-hand to
enthusiastically support SB 6696 including the
Washington Roundtable, the League of Education Voters,
Stand for Children, the Washington Technology Industry
Association, the Black Education Strategy Roundtable,
the Washington State PTA and other members of a group
called the Excellent Schools Now Coalition. The
Coalition was formed to “achieve meaningful education
reform.” WSSDA, WASA and the Association of
Washington School Principals also testified in general
support of the bill; however, each of us also expressed
concerns. WSSDA focused on our concerns about the
State Board’s Accountability plan included in the bill.
We reminded Committee members that we helped drive
discussions on the need for an education accountability
system in 1993 when HB 1209 was adopted. HB 1209,
broadly, had three steps: (1) establish high standards
and assessments; (2) provide districts with additional
flexibility and financial resources; and (3) hold
districts and school accountable for student
achievement. The first step has been accomplished
and the second step has been consistently neglected, yet
the Legislature continues to want to move to the
accountability step. While we supported
accountability in 1993 and continue to support
accountability now, we reiterated our concern that
schools and districts should not be held accountable
when they are not given the opportunity to succeed.
With that as a backdrop, we outlined some of our
concerns with the new accountability system, as outlined
in the bill. Given the time constraints during the
hearing, we limited our comments to three specific
concerns:
- Academic Performance Audits – We stressed that
these audits need to be conducted by “experts” who
understand the school system (specifically,
Washington’s education system) and who understand
local communities and local issues. Elected
school directors, as leaders in local communities,
should be a part of these audit teams.
- Required Action Plans – We stated our concern
that plans must be submitted to OSPI to ensure
consistency with federal guidelines, and then must
be submitted to the State Board for its acceptance
or rejection. We suggested that the plans
should only be required to “fit in the federal box”
and SBE should not have veto authority over the
plans. In additional to having an unnecessary
extra step in the process, we mentioned that for the
last few years, the State Board has consistently
argued that the agency doesn’t have the time, the
resources or staff to meet all its legislatively
mandated requirements — and this just adds to the
Board’s responsibilities.
- Title I funds – The SBE originally discussed the
withholding of Title I funds if a required action
plan was not accepted. They backed off that
idea and adopted a recommendation that SBE direct
OSPI to redirect a district’s Title I funds, if a
required action plan is not in place. We noted
that local school boards make local decisions on
behalf of its local constituents and federal funds
due them should not be redirected by someone else.
We stated our concern about the SBE having the
authority to redirect Title I funds — and also
questioned whether SBE should have the authority to
direct another agency, OSPI, to redirect funds.
The Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee
also moved to executive session and adopted the three
levy bills they addressed last week:
SB 6502 (levy base restoration);
SB 6488 (Gov. Gregoire’s request to increase levy
lids to 36 percent and increase LEA to 18 percent, but
only for the most property poor districts); and
SB 6518 (levy lid increase by 4 percent and increase
LEA by 2 percent for all eligible districts).
These three bills have been referred to the Senate Ways
& Means Committee and are scheduled to be heard in that
Committee later this week.
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