Don’t raid education funds when we need them most

Last week we got our first inkling of the WASL scores for 10th-graders. While more than 85 percent of kids passed the reading and writing tests, 45 percent did not make the grade in math.

In order to graduate from high school, each child must pass all three tests. That means that as of today, every other kid in 10th grade has the credentials to graduate, and every other kid doesn’t. High school students can retake the tests, in fact, several times. And in anticipation of these results, the Legislature ponied up $28.5 million this year to assist struggling students and help them make the grade.

But the truth is that the horse has already left the barn for a lot of these kids. The fundamentals that they could have and should have learned in elementary school are hard to make up on the run. Part of the reason that they are missing these fundamentals is because as a state we have defaulted on our constitutional mandate to provide high-quality basic education.

More than a decade ago business leaders successfully lobbied to get the Legislature to adopt education reform. The intent was to make sure that all students would read, write and communicate effectively by high school graduation; that they would know the core concepts of math, sciences and history; and that they would think creatively and logically.

This was a bold vision, and the Washington Assessment of Student Learning was designed to measure if our kids were making the grade. But vision and tests are one thing, and funding is another. So while we raised the bar, we made it more difficult for kids to meet it by reducing funding for K-12 education.

Now our state spends $500 less per student, adjusted for inflation, than we did before education reform was put into place. We have dropped to 46th out of 50 states in K-12 spending per $1,000 of personal income.

While we provide a friendly and comfortable environment for the state’s millionaires, we are letting them off the hook for helping to pay for the state’s public services, most important of which is K-12 education. The wealthiest 1 percent of Washington taxpayers pay 3.3 percent of their income for state and local taxes, while middle-income families pay more than 11 percent and low-income families pay almost 18 percent.

Now a handful of those wealthy people want to pay even less by depriving the Education Legacy Trust of more than $100 million each year from the state estate tax. Repealing the estate tax would be a direct hit on public education. The money generated by the estate tax pays for the learning assistance program for struggling students, just what these kids need to be able to pass the WASL. The trust fund also pays to keep down class sizes and finances 7,900 public higher education enrollment slots.

The estate tax doesn’t even kick in unless an estate has $2 million in assets. The tax applies only to large fortunes after death. It exempts family farms and small businesses.

So who would benefit from the repeal of the state estate tax? The children of about 210 of the very wealthiest parents in the state. These adult kids won’t get as big an inheritance as they may have hoped for.

For example, if their parents’ estate is valued at $50 million, after paying the state estate tax, they would be left with more than $41 million. They can deduct the state tax they pay from their federal estate tax. The resulting marginal tax rate for the state estate tax is in the single digits, less than what people who work for their living pay in payroll taxes.

Petition gatherers who urge you to sign the initiative to repeal the estate tax should be asked why they want to allow the wealthiest adult children in our state who inherit millions of dollars of assets to skimp even further on paying their already disproportionately small share of taxes. If they are honest, they will simply say they are getting paid for each signature they gather.

So it is up to us to just say “no.” Wouldn’t we rather give the children of our state a chance of passing the WASL rather than give the children of the very few another silver spoon?

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.