Gregoire's budget proposal - Point Five

A hefty portion of Gregoire's budget proposal literally throws money at education, an effort that has proven in years past to be costly and ineffectual. Education (under the guise of "smaller classrooms" and "Better teacher pay") is the largest single budget item in the state. Somehow, though, student test scores continue to drop statewide...

I come from a family with a 200+-year history in education. I understand the need for better working conditions for our state's teachers and I have a soft spot for them. I do, however, recognize three faults with the way the state legislature writes its budgets, and the education aspect of the governor's budget proposal:

Teachers in Washington State are represented by the second-largest union in the state, the WEA, wich has time and again flexed its collective muscle on behalf of teachers, merely to increase union spending and bargaining power. I think that if the WEA was truly doing what it was established to do, I wouldn't be seeing reports of teacher strikes and walkouts every year (meanwhile, teachers pay more and more dues to the union)... The state, and school districts, BTW, are also funded by the federal government. Where is that money going to?

Students now have the option of taking the WASL (the Washington Assessment of Student Learning) test - used to determine if a student is qualified to graduate from high school - five times to pass. When I was that age, we got one chance to pass the WASL. If we passed, we were more readily accepted to colleges in other states. If we didn't pass, it was our responsibily to convince an out-of-state college that we were worthy of an education leading to a professional degree. The "five chances to win the WASL" experiment was encated last year, and the result of that experiment have not been calculated yet (the current high school sophomore class is is the first to give any hard data on the matter). Meanwhile, "education-minded" lawmakers on both sides of the aisle - instead of waiting for data to confirm or deny the spending they continue to spastically shout to their constituents that even more money needs to be spent on education. The message portrayed by those elected officials is almost like the increased spending encacted in sessions past is either non-existent, or "thanks for your money! We can do it better this time by spending money on the same programs".

Regardless of how much the state has spent taxpayer money to "relieve the burden" on our teachers by providing them with smaller classrooms, etc., statewide classroom comditions have NOT improved. Teachers rely more and more on the bargaining power of unions for state spending outide of what's already provided, and student continue to fail in ever increasing numbers.