Olympia Business Watch

Meeting High Math Standards Has Real Consequences

Rosemary Bresler makes a strong case for high math standards in The News Tribune. Rosemary is the president of Hobart Machined Products, Inc. and co-chairwoman of AWB's Education and Training Committee. The state board of education has proposed higher math standards for high school graduates beginning in 2013, Bresler reports. And she says folks already want to weaken them. It doesn't work for firms like hers.

We provide design, precision machining and fabrication services to customers in the medical, defense, aerospace and space sectors. ...

These days our competitors are as likely to come from China or Korea as they are to be from California or Kentucky. It’s tough to compete with them on price. But we can be very competitive on the basis of quality, efficiency, innovation and service.

These things matter when you’re talking about the safety of an airplane or functionality of a satellite. They matter when you’re talking about tooling tolerances of less than 0.0005 of an inch, or successfully melding metal and composite materials.

The only way we can deliver that type of quality is through the skills of our employees.

She urges the public to support the board's call for higher standards.

Not because companies like ours need educated and highly skilled workers. But because it is our obligation to prepare students to compete for family-wage jobs and be functioning, contributing members of society.

Read the whole thing. It's an excellent demonstration of the practical consequences of setting and meeting realistic standards in a globally competitive marketplace.

WEA Responds, Poorly, to NMSI

By now, everyone here knows that Washington was the only state to miss out on $13.2 million dollars in grant money from the National Math and Science Institute. (We posted on it here and here.) The teachers' union, appropriately, took some tough hits in the media, with my favorite shot being the Columbian's suggestion that they take the E out of WEA.

WEA president, Mary Lindquist wrote a response letter to the NMSI. It calls to mind the old literary line, "'Shut up,' he explained.

 

WASL Results Get Editorial Praise

As we noted last week, this year's senior class erased a lot of concern about whether the reading and writing WASL standards posed a prohibitive hurdle to graduation. And the editorial pages reflect the relief.

The Spokesman-Review:

Terry Bergeson is rightly proud because the Class of 2008, which is the first to have to meet WASL standards, has shown that students are capable of succeeding when faced with higher goals. That, in turn, means their diplomas are more meaningful to them and potential employers.

The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin:

The high expectations put on the Class of 2008 when education reform was enacted have essentially been met. As the bar is raised higher in the coming years, we expect future classes will meet those expectations.

Our children should never be underestimated. When we expect great things of them, when we hold them to high standards, they usually deliver.

The News Tribune:

So yes, let’s call the first for-real WASL results pretty good. They could be better, and they don’t include math. But 90 percent in reading and writing – a number that will improve before it becomes final – isn’t bad at all.

And give John Laird of the Columbian the last word (h/t Mark Funk):

As founder of Fathers Against Mothers Against WASL, I hereby announce the following FAMAWASL resolution:

“Be it known, that if my kid cannot pass (with multiple retakes, multiple alternative assessments and multiple remediation programs) a test that 91 percent of his classmates passed, I don’t think I’ll be blaming the test.”

90 Percent Meet Reading and Writing Standards ...

Yesterday the Superintendent of Public Instruction announced that 90 percent of this year's high school seniors passed the state's reading and writing standards. That clearly good news, properly celebrated by Terry Bergeson, parents and teachers. Here's Bergeson from the OSPI press release.

"This is a moment we’ve been waiting to celebrate for more than a decade," she said. "Washington’s educators have spent so much time making sure every student is well prepared for college, careers and citizenship, and these results show that hard work has paid off.

And she underscores the key point.

"For the first time ever, we know that the students leaving our high schools have the reading and writing skills they need to succeed in their lives, no matter what paths they choose."

Nothing up yet on the WEA website, but the Seattle PI suggests union critics of the WASL aren't happy.

"There are a huge number of kids who are missing," said Shannon Rasmussen, president of the Federal Way Education Association and the head of a task force that studies education reform. "The presentation today hasn't eased our concerns."

Her gripe is with the exclusion of students who dropped out or were reclassified in other grades. Well, the test is designed to assure that those who graduate have the appropriate skill set. Students who've dropped out (I guess that makes them former students) or are still in school because they've fallen behind would seem to be appropriately excluded.

The Spokesman-Review quotes Bergeson-challenger Randy Dorn, who makes a different point.

"When you have one out of 10 kids not passing, I don't see that as something to celebrate," said Randy Dorn, a former principal and state legislator and current director of the Public School Employees of Washington, who is running against Bergeson.

Sure, you'd like to see everyone met the standards. I'm guessing that unless there are consequences for failure, the motivation to succeed just won't be there for everyone. The students who didn't pass have options (scroll down).

Other stories in the Seattle Times, along with a good editorial, and The News Tribune carries the AP story.

Update Bruce Ramsey provides the graduation rate details in his Seattle Times blog.

2008 AWB Session Review and Voting Record

We've just posted the 2008 Legislative Review and Voting Record to our website. AWB members will soon receive them with the May/June issue of Washington Business, which is in the mail now. Take a minute to review how your legislators voted on business issues in 2007 and 2008.

In the Senate, Republican Senators Jim Honeyford and Linda Parlette scored 100 percent in 2008.

Top ranking House members with 2008 scores of 96 percent were Republican Representatives Larry Crouse, Joel Kretz and Lynn Schindler.

Gov. Chris Gregoire received a 2008 score of 29 percent.

WEA Takes Aim (Yet Again) at Bergeson

The Associated Press reports today that the Washington Education Association has trotted out a new tactic in its ongoing attempt to send Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson to early retirement. Here's how the AP describes it.

A few weeks ago, the Washington Education Association (WEA) sent a confidential memo to each of its local leaders with instructions about how they can play their part in defeating Bergeson, their former president.

In a copy obtained by The Associated Press, local union leaders are told to convene a meeting and get their membership to pass a resolution evaluating Bergeson's job performance.

The AP reporter, Donna Gorden Blankinship, contrasts this with the union's efforts four years ago to defeat Bergeson by recruiting former superintendent Judith Billings to run against her. Blankinship calls this a more subtle strategy. And, I suppose by WEA standards, this looks subtle.

The union has endorsed Rich Semler. Also in the race is former state legislator Randy Dorn, head of the Public School Employees union.

The WEA doesn't like the WASL or Bergeson's promotion of it, as they underscore in their subtle appeal for a vote of no confidence in her performance.

They (union members) say Bergeson focuses too much on the WASL test and that they don't trust her numbers regarding graduation and drop out rates. She can't or won't say how much the WASL costs to administer, and she has been an ineffective advocate for school funding, they argue.

These, of course, are the same folks whose rigid commitment to lock-step compensation cost public schools in the state $13.2 million in grant money for math and science education.

The WASL will also be a factor in the governor's race. Here's the AP frame.

Gov. Chris Gregoire continues to support the reading and writing parts of WASL as a graduation requirement, but has agreed to delay the science requirement and eventually replace the math WASL with end-of-course exams.

Her opponent for re-election, Republican Dino Rossi, "agrees that the WASL is a flawed test, but he supports the need for a standardized test that establishes clear standards and demands accountability," said campaign spokeswoman Jill Strait.

Disagreement on the composition of the test makes sense. There were clearly some problems in math and science testing. But it's hard to avoid concluding that the teachers' union would prefer to scrap accountability measures altogether or, perhaps more accurately, to so water them down with alternatives that the plethora of standards amounts to no standards at all.

MORE Kim Bradford, at The News Tribune's editorial page blog, asks for and receives an explanation from the WEA. It's not very persuasive. Read it here.

Loss of Math & Science Money Decried in the Columbian

By now you know about the lost $13.2 million in grant money to improve math and science education. In his column in tomorrow's Columbian (online today), Don Brunell takes a critical look at what happened.

The NMSI sponsors wanted to pay teachers directly, but Washington’s collective-bargaining laws require that teacher pay be negotiated between the teachers union and school districts.

Since that didn’t work, NMSI pulled the plug, and our teachers and kids got shot in the foot.

Washington Education Association leaders traditionally oppose differential and bonus pay. Instead, WEA continues to pour big bucks into expensive media campaigns to tell voters they just need to pony up more taxes for schools.

Read the whole thing. And if you think that's tough, here's the Columbian's editorial view on it (scroll down to the second item "jeers."

In our state, though, the union wins while students and teachers lose. For sheer accuracy, someone, please, take the “E” out of the WEA.

Yikes.

Graduate Degrees, Education, and Lost Opportunities

Rich Roesler reports on a state study finding that graduate degrees for teachers generally fail to produce better classroom outcomes. (The study does not appear to be on the WSIPP website.)
See pages 20 and 21 of this report.

“Teachers with a graduate degree do not improve student test scores more than teachers with a B.A.,” Steve Aos, assistant director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, told an education task force in Olympia.

But there's an important exception.

The exception, he said, seems to be math and science. Some studies suggest that advanced degrees in those subjects improve learning.

The response from higher education isn't surprising.

... at Central Washington University, which offers master’s degrees for teachers, the interim dean at the school’s Center for Teaching and Learning said graduate degrees clearly help in the classroom.

“We have heard this before,” Connie Lambert said. “And you know, those of us in higher education take total exception to it.”

The Washington Education Association had no response for Roesler. But stiff collective bargaining rules have already had a hand in tubing another effort to improve math education. Based on how that played out, it's unlikely that the union would support differentially higher pay for teachers getting graduate degrees for math and science than those pursuing other grad programs.

More on the Forecast

Friday's late afternoon announcement of the $423 million cut in revenue projections got mixed coverage in the morning papers, along with the predictable partisan differences of opinion on what it all means.

The Seattle PI makes it the front page headline story: State revenue forecast shrinks. The story neatly frames the partisan divide.

Democrats see a strong economy and a forecast that won't much affect the spending plan that they unilaterally passed last year. Republicans see it as a sign that their warnings that the economy cannot support double-digit spending have come true.

Though lawmakers had been predicting a decline in projected revenue for some time, the news came as a blow to Democrats who had hoped to pass a supplemental budget that would leave more than $1 billion unspent.

Most now concede that that level of savings is no longer realistic.

Although the budget is now in the hands of legislative leaders, the governor - who had previously insisted on more than $1 billion in reserves - appears to be rethinking her options.

Though she could leave her spending priorities untouched and still maintain more than $300 million in unrestricted savings, Gregoire said she wouldn't.

"I'm not interested in just taking that and going home. No, I want a reserve," she said.

The Seattle Times relies on David Ammons AP story, which it carries on B4. He quotes one prominent legislator as proposing to address the problem by postponing it.

Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Friday night he hopes lawmakers will be able to save at least $700 million. He said lawmakers may save money by "pausing" the phase-in of new spending, such as daylong kindergarten.

Despite the revenue hiit, the economic picture looks relatively good, as the papers report. Rich Roesler's blog post summarizes it well.

The state's long-term economic growth prospects remain good, Sohn says, and although the national economy seems to have dipped into a shallow recession in the first two quarters, Washington isn't expected to see a recession here. One big reason: Software and aircraft sales and employment remain solid, and those and other state exports are helped by the weak dollar.

In fact, Sohn said, Washington seems to have one of the strongest state economies in America right now.

Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, concurs in The News Tribune.

Sen. Joe Zarelli, top Republican on the Senate budget-writing committee and a council member, also said “our economy is fine” and “the job situation looks good.”

The Legislature should be more concerned with the long term, he said, and should put the brakes on spending given the lower forecast.

There's a lot more. The governor wants to see what the legislature does. Democrats want to stick to their priorities, deferring but not trimming, and Republicans, who warned last year of unsustainable state budgeting want to see discipline and cuts.

Overall, the state appears likely to avoid a recession, employment remains healthy, and yet, we're facing a serious structural deficit. To twist a line from the 1992 Clinton campaign: "It's not the economy. It's the spending."

Olympia Business Review - Episode Two: Health Care and WASL

It might be only the second week of session, but already health care bills are flying everywhere. We are joined today by Donna Steward, governmental affairs director for the Association of Washington Business, who discusses several pieces of on-going legislation concerning health care.

As Steward also handles education issues for AWB, we briefly discuss proposed changes to the WASL.

For more information about this, check out our website at www.awb.org.

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