SEATTLE — A Washington state task force charged with finding a way to adequately pay for state education is spending a few days this week listening to proposals to improve the way Washington teaches its children, but the ideas carry an expensive price tag.
Among the ideas presented Monday in Olympia were a plan to help students struggling academically that would cost almost four times as much as the current program, and a new way to pay teachers that would increase starting salaries and teacher hours and provide more incentives for specific training.
The Legislature told the Basic Education Finance Joint Task Force to find the best way to pay for education that improves student achievement and graduation rates.
The task force has until early 2009 to make its recommendations, in part because that’s when a state court plans to hear arguments in an education funding lawsuit brought by school districts and education organizations across the state.
The state uses sales, business and property taxes to pay 84.3 percent of what it costs to educate Washington’s 1 million school children. The other 15.7 percent comes from local levies and some federal money, primarily for education of special-needs children.
Most state dollars go to teacher salaries. The state also matches local bond money for school construction.
On Monday, state schools chief Terry Bergeson and members of her staff presented plans for teacher salaries, teacher training, class sizes and help for struggling students and immigrant children learning English as their second language. On Tuesday, nonprofit organizations planned to testify about the needs of students in special education, gifted programs and preschool.
The proposal for English language learners would modify the amount the state sends to a district based on the number of kids who need extra help learning English.
A model including more teachers and better materials that are more academically challenging would cost about twice as much as the state is currently spending on English as a second language programs, because money for these programs has not kept up with the growing population of immigrant children.
The proposal for students struggling academically would support smaller class sizes in schools where there are a lot of poor kids as well as students who need extra help. Extra money would pay for small group tutoring.
The teacher pay proposal offers a complicated new system, including a new level of pay for experienced teachers who take leadership roles mentoring those new to the classroom. More detail was expected after the state Board of Education finishes its salary study.
The proposal also called on the state to pay teachers for an extra 10 hours of training focused on improving their work in the classroom, not on first aid or other nonacademic topics.
Lawmakers listening to the proposals grilled Bergeson and her colleagues on the cost of the programs and asked for evidence that these ideas will lead to more academic success. Education officials provided piles of reports on related studies and talked about successful demonstration projects at school districts.
When she was asked to prioritize her proposals, Bergeson said the most important ideas involve teacher training and compensation, followed by help for struggling students and English language learners.
“This is clearly a work in progress,” she emphasized, adding that she was presenting “proposals that we know work.”
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