{"id":2235,"date":"2019-05-16T18:53:21","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T18:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/?p=2235"},"modified":"2024-10-15T22:02:13","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T22:02:13","slug":"students-and-parents-badly-hurt-by-the-legislature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/05\/16\/students-and-parents-badly-hurt-by-the-legislature\/","title":{"rendered":"Students and Parents Badly Hurt by the Legislature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 2019 legislature missed out on a big opportunity this\nyear. Instead of working to reform how our schools operate, the legislature\ntook a step backwards by undoing much of the good work that was done in\nresponse to the McCleary <\/em>court ruling\njust two years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Democrats and Republicans approved a bi-partisan\nschool funding bill, reforming state and local property taxes to ensure that\nthe state met its constitutional obligation to fully fund K-12 education. \nThe law reduced inequities by capping local property taxes, so wealthy areas\nwould not have an imbalanced benefit, by providing equitable state funding to\nall schools on a per-student basis. All parties, including Governor Inslee, lauded\nand moved forward with the agreement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this session, lawmakers went back on their word in an\nattempt to \u201cremedy\u201d the already remedied McCleary<\/em>\ndecision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only two years after the sensible school funding bill had passed, the legislature took steps to once again lift the lid on local taxation, risking a future in which the legislature is once again brought back into court over school funding inequities. These tactics are quixotic. They hurt the most vulnerable and under-sourced in our community, they also fail to deal with the inadequacies of the system itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schools today are teaching students outdated skills designed for\nthe industrial era. Students come to school and are lumped together by their\nage group, credits are offered based off of the amount of time spent in a seat,\nand students are reminded to go to the next class by a factory bell system. The\nsystem fails as it refuses to acknowledge that students have vastly different\nattentiveness, learning styles and readiness, inspirations, and home settings.\nBy operating as a production line, we expect every child to have the same\nresult once done with school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last 70 years, our entire society has changed, but our\nschools are still organized as they were in the early part of the 20th<\/sup>\nCentury. Too often, educational leaders sidestep the true crux of our\neducational crisis: the system itself. This system has become obsolete in the\ninformation age. Many suggest that money is the problem, that funding is never\nenough. This is false. The system is the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issues within our education system do not come from the lack\nof money, they come from the lack of leadership. Legislators cannot continue\navoiding telling districts to manage their money better and to quit kowtowing\nto union demands. It is hurting our children and hurting hard working citizens\nof Washington. A newly updated book,\nEvery School: One Citizen\u2019s Guide to Transforming Education<\/em>,\nhowever, proposes a promising opportunity to do something about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Seattle School Board President and author of Every School<\/em>, Donald P. Nielsen, offers practical advice for a state legislature to actually fix the system. In his \u201cgame plan\u201d he provides policy prescriptions that a state legislature should adopt: \u201cMuch of the money received by a district, from the state, comes with restrictions on how they money is to be spent. This is the result of decades of mistrust, at the legislative level, because of the mismanagement of money by superintendents and school boards.\u201d This is why Nielsen offers legislation proposals for \u201cleadership institutes\u201d and appointed school boards because \u201cSchool leaders, whether they are principals or superintendents, are not trained to lead their school\/district. They are trained to manage their school\/district.\u201d Effective leadership would allow for, “a system where money follows the child, and also takes into account both the cost of living where the child lives and the cost to educate the child,\u201d where it is most needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without systemic change, the system will continue put teachers over student interests, promote distrust between stakeholders at all levels, and disallow the individuality required for students to thrive. Maybe it is time for Washington State to stop peering into the pockets of its citizens and take a long look at what it means to lead. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2019 legislature missed out on a big opportunity this year. Instead of working to reform how our schools operate, the legislature took a step backwards by undoing much of the good work that was done in response to the McCleary court ruling just two years ago. In 2017, Democrats and Republicans approved a bi-partisan school funding bill, reforming state and local property taxes to ensure that the state met its constitutional obligation to fully fund K-12 education.  The law reduced inequities by capping local property taxes, so wealthy areas would not have an imbalanced benefit, by providing equitable state funding to all schools on a per-student basis. All parties, including Governor Inslee, lauded and moved forward with the agreement. Read More ›<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":2237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1062],"class_list":["post-2235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-policy"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Bailey Takacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2235"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/2235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}