1 percent state income tax could fix education system

June is a time for graduation and celebration for high school seniors.

But next year graduation may be a little different, because next year seniors will have had to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests – the WASL – to graduate. That means that several thousand high school seniors may end up with no diploma in hand.

Close to 10,000 juniors in high school have not yet passed the WASL tests in writing and reading. We are “on track” for 2008 graduation ceremonies in which one of every eight seniors will leave school with no diploma in hand. Of course, if could have been even worse, if the WASL scores for math had been counted. That would have left two of five students with nothing to show for their high school education. But the Legislature took care of this problem by simply postponing the day of reckoning for math for five years. That is, the Legislature did not lower the bar for expectations for mathematical understanding – it just removed it for several years.

That is one way to deal with the inability of our K-12 system to graduate students who are ready to work and pursue higher education in a technologically savvy society. But it doesn’t do much for those kids, and certainly doesn’t help our place in the global marketplace of innovation and economic prosperity.

The Legislature did get the idea that we have to invest more in K-12 if we are to expect our kids to be adept in writing, reading and math. The state budget includes close to $80 million for remedial work with students who aren’t passing the WASL exams. That’s about $1,300 per student. For those students, our state and local investments in K-12 education will creep up to the national average for per pupil funding.

And that is the root problem with K-12 education – we don’t invest enough, while we expect students to meet rigorous standards. It is a good thing that students are expected to become engaged learners and competent in reading, writing and math. In fact, it is necessary. But it is hard to get the students there when we starve the system of support. Washington is in the bottom third of all the states when it comes to per pupil investments. The average teacher makes about $45,000.

Not much to hang your hat on for a lifetime of work. We don’t pay for full-day kindergarten, when we know that is a foundation for the skills needed for reading, writing and math. The state won’t pay for all six periods in high school, but our students are expected to go to school six periods so that they gain the mandated credits for college.

If we are unwilling to tackle the issue of funding we will just leave more and more thousands of students stranded when they finish 12th grade with no high school diploma. Even to get to the national average in investments in K-12 education, we will need to spend $1,000 more per child. That’s $1 billion a year.

So here is a simple idea. Why don’t we pass a 1 percent flat rate income tax dedicated to education? Everybody would pay it. We could couple it with a penny reduction in the sales tax and still have over $500 million a year to dedicate to education. For a family making $60,000, the income tax would amount to about $450, while the drop in sales tax would be about $250, so the net increase in taxes would be $200. For a family making $75,000, the net new tax would amount to a dollar a day. $500 million by itself would pay for universal full-day kindergarten and full payment for the cost of sixth period in high school, plus 25,000 more slots in our public four-year universities and community colleges for those kids when they do graduate with the WASL tests in hand.

We have shied away from a state income tax over and over again. But if we want our kids to gain a world-class education, rhetoric and delay won’t work. Investment in education will. This is more than a rhetorical question to my readers. What do you think? Let me know.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.