More than two hundred teachers, parents, and support staff are down in Olympia right now to deliver a resolution to state lawmakers asking them to put a stop to overcrowded classrooms.
Washington Education Association spokesperson Rich Wood said that the group would be delivering the resolution—signed by more than 12,000 Washington residents—at noon in Senate Hearing Room 1, the same time the House budget proposal is expected to be released. They will then meet with state legislators to talk about their concerns.
Washington already ranks third in terms of most overcrowded classrooms in the United States. Wood said that the $2 billion education cuts in the proposed state budget would only make things worse.
“Almost everything is going to be cut,” said Rich, who is down in Olympia right now. “And our kids will be the ones who will suffer.” The Legislature has already cut $2.3 billion in education funding and slashed the budget for more than 5,000 K-12 teachers and support staff in the current budget.
The group is asking legislators to suspend the high school state assessment as a graduation requirement, arguing that it has failed to improve graduation rates or increase student achievement. The group says that suspending the high school state assessment would save nearly $50 million which could be used toward protecting an additional 600 teaching jobs that are in danger of being eliminated next year.
But we have enough to build both the 520 bridge and the 99 tunnel?
Hmmm.
Maybe they shouldn’t have killed the Legalize MJ bill on Friday. The revenue from that alone could have paid for education for all those kids.
I have a friend who is a teacher in King County, classroom sizes is the least of her worries, just having a job right now is far more important than work load.
Didn’t the voters of this state approve an initiative to decrease classroom sizes?
Where’s Tim Eyman and the “respect the will of the voters” crowd? Why aren’t they demanding that funding be provided to enforce that initiative, and who were the hypocrites in the Legislature who voted to suspend it?
Way to plan for the future, Olympia! All these under-educated students you’re packing into classrooms will surely be the engine of change that will turn this economy around! Cut! Cut! Cut! Cut until Social Darwinism is literally survival of the fittest and high school dropouts die of hunger in the streets.
Again, this is what Democrats do when they’re in charge, act just like Republicans on anything where a lot of money is at stake.
don’t see how the underlying issues can be solved (and course can be reversed) until the whole state feels the pain of the economic decisions it has been making for the past decade & a half or so. to this point, the state government has done everything it could to shield as much of the voting population as possible from the obvious effects of the cuts they have been making. as such, i for one am fully in support of 60 or hell, even 80 kids in a classroom. make people live w/ the government they have chosen. maybe those eyman initiatives will start looking less attractive when people start to see the ‘benefits’ of less government first hand and esp. how it affects their children.
If they believed in the 80 percent of the voters who backed 728 and 732 they would just “suspend” the corporate tax exemptions for the duration of the fiscal emergency.
But that would take “guts”.
Oh, and kill the Tunnel of Debt. We obviously can’t afford that boondoggle.
@2: Has it occurred to you that there’s a relationship between class size and teacher employment?
More kids per classroom = fewer teachers needed
We know two things:
1. The greatest contributor to educational outcomes is teacher quality. Skilled instructors make a difference that is measured in years of learning and hundreds of thousands of dollars in future income.
2. With the exception of some early grade results in really small classrooms, it is difficult to detect any effect of class size on student achievement.
Now, if you assume that schools lay off the least competent instructors, every one of these layoffs will go to increase the average skill of the remaining instructors. The consequence will be that more children get to enjoy the substantial benefits of the best instructors, with little or no effect on learning.
If your highest priority is academic achievement, in this economic climate, your strategy has to be identifying the least competent instructors and getting rid of them.
If you hold other objectives higher, like easily managed classrooms, or total teacher employment, you will advocate a different strategy.
@8: Can you link to some data that show that “teacher quality” is a greater contributor to student success than, say, family income level or home life (# of parents, exposure to drugs/alcohol, truancy, etc.)?
And can you tell me why expensive, private schools tout their 9 or 12 to 1 student/teacher ratios? Do only rich children need such individualized attention?
“Now, if you assume that schools lay off the least competent instructors, every one of these layoffs will go to increase the average skill of the remaining instructors.”
Huge and untrue assumption. Right now layoffs are based on seniority. (Sorry) Also, there is a limit to how many students ANY great teacher can handle in a class.
Teacher quality is the greatest IN-SCHOOL factor to student learning. Outside the classroom, it’s home environment. But you can control what happens in the classroom and not at home (but teachers are still expected to be miracle workers).
We DID pass an initiative (I-728) to lower class size but big surprise, districts used it for everything but lowering class size.
Yes, Bill Gates’ children do need their small classes and that’s why he would never dream of a big class for HIS children (nor one taught by a Teach for America drone).
The difference between 27 kids and 32 kids in a classroom is not the biggest problem in the budget this year. That prize goes to less health care, less food, and less low-income housing. There are at least 20,000 homeless kids going to Washington schools. Whether they’re one of 27 or one of 32 isn’t going to make much difference to them.
Keep funding the welfare state, allow more sloths to pass on their degenerative genes at the taxpayers expense.
Look at ANY private school’s promotional material and what do they stress over anything else? Teacher quality? Nope. Test scores? Nope. Emphasis on Reading, writing, Math above all? Nope.
CLASS SIZE. And, a fully rounded curriculum: the arts, vocational, social studies, science, experiential learning. If that’s good enough for the children of the top 1%, then it’s good enough for the rest of us, too.