Battle Lines Defined

This morning, at the Washington State Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee meeting, State Board of Education Chair Mary Jean Ryan reported on the board's work on meaningful high school diplomas. One of the preliminary recommendations from the board is to have "alignment with post secondary education minimum entry requirements." When questioned by Senator Steve Hobbs, D - 44th Distirct, Mary Jean explained that the post secondary education requirement would look at all options after a student graduates from high school. Besides the option of attending a four-year institution, some of the other possibilities included: apprenticeships, two-year colleges and military service. However, at the SBE meeting last week in Wenatchee, board member Eric Liu strongly argued that the post secondary education minimum requirements really meant the Higher Education Coordinating Board entry requirements. Those requirements include:

• Four years of English
• Three years of math
• Two years of science including two lab sciences
• Three years of social studies
• Two years of world language
• One year of art

This one recommendation has huge implications for all schools and school districts in Washington about what all students need to know in order to graduate from high school. For example, the area of world language has a number of implementation issues, not the least of which is finding an adequate number of teachers. The SBE expects to have a schedule out within the next week of places in the state where they will take public comments about high school requirements. Schedules will be posted on the SBE Web site. Click here to go to the SBE home page to find the dates of the public hearings and also see a PowerPoint presentation shown at the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee meeting.

Shift Happens

This morning, the Washington State Legislature Information Technology Work Group met to deal with the $664.4 million in funding for IT investment in Washington state agencies for the 2007-9 biennium. Co-chairing the work group is Rep. Larry Crouse and Sen. Dan Swecker. While sitting in that meeting, I found myself thinking about the State Board of Education (SBE) meeting on Sept. 19 where the board was focusing on the Meaningful High School Diploma project.

As part of that meeting, a video was shown entitled, Shift Happens. (Click here to watch the video). The six-minute video presents a number of statistics about the technological changes taking place in the world. For example, the One Laptop Per Child project is expecting to ship between 50 to 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries. The video has been viewed by the SBE as well Governor Gregoire's policy advisers.

Technology has a dramatic impact not only on state government, but also on the school buildings principals lead. With the shift that is taking place in Washington and the world, having a working knowledge of current technology is now a required skill of all principals.

P-20 Council - Possibilities and Challenges

What would happen if all of the education players met in the room to attack the problems of education in Washington State? We are about to find out. The P-20 Council is chaired by Governor Gregoire and has 13 other members, including representatives of early learning, K-12 education, community colleges and four year colleges and universities. This group will attempt to put address the "seamless" portion of "world-class, learner focused, seamless education," the tag line of Washington Learns. The council is to make sure the ten-year goals of Washington Learns are accomplished. Five of those goals tie directly to the work of principals of the Evergreen State. Goals, member information and meeting times and agendas can be found here.

THREE CHALLENGES

One challenge for this group will be to have the frank conversations that need to happen to address issues in an open forum. It is hard to imagine colleges and universities representatives being pushed on the number of math, science, special education and ELL teachers their institutions are producing each year in a public meeting and reporting back how they are going to address the issue by the next meeting.

That leads to another challenge the committee will have in providing timely responses to the issues that are raised. The performance review process the P-20 Council is modeled after Government Management Accountability and Performance, GMAP calls for agencies to accountable for results quickly. The example used dealt with the response time of DSHS in responding to calls about child abuse and neglect. All regions in the state dramatically improved the 24 hour response rate from just over 73% to over 94 % in less than two years. In education to increase the number of math teachers will take years, not quarters to accomplish.

The final challenge and one the governor spoke to was getting the measurements right. In fact, she said that measurement of the success of the education system is the big question that has to be addressed before anything else can be done. A draft list of 18 proposed indicators included at least 6 related directly to K-12 education. They are:

• 3rd graders reading at 3rd grade level


• 8th graders participating in Navigation 101-type programs


• 10th grade WASL results


• High school graduation rates


• College attendance within 1, 2, and 3 years(s) of high school graduation


• Rate of remedial course-taking by college students

A major focus of the first meeting, as well as the next meeting, December 21, was English Language Learners. As part of her report to the council, Judy Hartmann, K-12 policy advisor to the governor made reference to AWSP's involvement in the ELL task force. Gary Kipp, executive director of the principals association served as a part of that group. She also made highlighted the leadership camp for Hispanic students sponsored by AWSP.

Whether the P-20 Council creates a seamless education system in Washington state will be determined over time, but AWSP will continue to follow this new work of some of the education leaders in Washington.

What? A Legislative Score Card Based on Kids?

The Children's Alliance has published its first score card based on votes taken by state legislators on 13 bills that passed during the 2007 legislative session. Although the score card does not take into account many of the bills affecting K-12 education, the votes are instructive to see how your state elected officials vote on issues affecting your students. A sample of the bills appearing on this year's list include: Health coverage for all children, children's mental health, after school programs, and the 2007-9 operating budget. The scoring guide is based on the percentage of votes cast. Children with five stars equals a perfect score and one star represents 0-39 percent yes votes.

There are 53 members of the House of Representatives and 26 senators who had perfect scores. One of those is Representative Pat Sullivan who will be attending the AWSP Legislative Committee Meeting on Oct. 3rd. At the other end of the scale there are 29 representatives and 12 senators who scores less than 60 percent and earning themselves two stars or less. To see the complete report and how your elected official voted, click here.

Stakeholders Want the Work Done Now

On Monday morning, the Joint Task Force on Basic Education Finance held its first public hearing. The 14 members heard testimony from the whole education family about the need for them to complete their work within the timeline set forth by the Legislature. (E2SSB 5627) AWSP,WASA,WEA, WSSDA, and PSE presented a joint letter to the committee expressing their united concerns that funding needs to be addressed here and now.

Throughout the public comment, person after person expressed hope that this would be the funding task force that will provide stable and adequate funding for schools that align with the basic education provision in current law. Many of those who testified, as well as some of those on the committee, are frustrated because Washington Learns was supposed to address the funding issue, but they did not.

The thorniest issue the task force will address is instructional staff compensation. Among other elements that are required to look at are: pay for performance, knowledge and skill, cost-of-living issues, recognition of difficult assignments, recognition of professional level certificate.
To follow the work of the task force, bookmark: http://www.leg.wa.gov/Joint/Committees/BEF/

The first report is due by the end of 2007. There will be four meetings between now and then which should prove to be interesting.

Articles Miss Key Point

On Thursday, August 30th, OSPI Superintendent Terry Bergeson presented the results of student success on the Spring 2007 WASL. Virtually all of the major papers in the state reported not only the state findings, but also the scores of their local schools. Lost in the reporting was the result of a four-district sample of over 5,000 students of the class of 2008 and their readiness to graduate from high school in the spring.

Many have focused on the students who have enough credits to graduate in 2008 but have not passed the WASL. There has not been the same concern for students who have passed the WASL but have not earned enough credits to be on track for graduation as they enter their senior year. Yet, there are over four times as many students who will not graduate because they have not earned credits (22.6%) compared to those who have not passed the WASL but are on track earning credits (4.3%). Click here to view that chart used at the press conference to illustrate that results of the survey completed during the summer.

This year's seniors are more likely not to graduate because they are behind in credits rather than not having passed the WASL. That point needs to be understood not only by principals, teachers and students, but also the policy makers at the district level, Olympia and beyond.