Despite crisis, move forward
Published 11:56 am Saturday, January 2, 2010
When state lawmakers convene eight days from now, they should immediately get to work on public education funding.
That may seem like a hopeless goal, given the massive, $2.6 billion budget hole legislators face. But the Obama administration is holding out a financial carrot in the form of Race to the Top education grants for states that show they’re making significant progress in improving student achievement. More than $4 billion is available, and at least two major changes must be made in Olympia if Washington is to qualify for any of it.
The state skipped the first round of applications, knowing it had no chance under guidelines put forth by Obama and his assertive education secretary, Arne Duncan. To be eligible for second-round funding, by June 1 Washington must have in place systems for including student achievement data as part of the teacher-evaluation process, and for mandating state intervention to improve the lowest-performing 5 percent of public schools.
These represent relatively low-hanging fruit, and stakeholders across the education spectrum should support them. Broader conversations about other Obama/Duncan goals, such as charter schools and merit pay for teachers, will take more time but should be pursued. There’s no reason Washington shouldn’t be experimenting on the cutting edge of education improvement.
Making the changes required to compete for Race to the Top money will mark at least a minimally good follow-up to last year’s passage of an expanded — but unfunded — definition of basic education. The funding needed to implement House Bill 2261 won’t come during the current budget crisis, which is all the more reason to aggressively pursue federal money.
Figuring out how to fully fund basic education, a state constitutional requirement, has been a protracted and largely frustrating exercise for years in Washington. On that front, a Lake Stevens School Board member, David Iseminger, has proposed a detailed plan that recently won the unanimous endorsement of the Washington State School Directors’ Association board of directors.
Iseminger’s ideas hold much promise, and should be used as a foundation for the action that is so overdue: Having the state finally take full responsibility for fully educating all its children. A time of difficult budget cuts, when government’s key priorities must come into focus, is the time to move toward deciding how those priorities will be funded over the long haul.
Providing for public education is the state’s paramount duty. It’s time to move forward with a plan for meeting it. This session, doing what’s necessary to secure Race to the Top funds will help.
