Dear Senators,
If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.
I have lived the role of all three… at one time a single mom, currently a mother of an 8 year old in 3rd grade, and a 26 year accomplished, award winning educator. George Orwell said,
“The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
I believe we have lost our course in education in our state, as well as nationally. Now is the time to stand up and speak the truth, even if it is unpopular. I’m here representing a growing group of concerned parents and educators across our state. I also spoke on an expert panel in a Senate Hearing hosted by Senator Chase and Senator Roach in April 2015 on common core and the high stakes tests.
Thank you to those who DO Listen
Senators, I have written to many of you. Thank you to those who responded back and showed a willingness to listen and have courageous conversations with me about education. The title of this tour is “Senate Listening Tour”. There are solutions which, from my humble perspective, do address the funding challenges facing our schools today.
Too Much Testing
Our children are being over tested in the name of “accountability”. Our children are being used as experiments through the common core standards in the name of “rigor”. What expense has Washington State undertaken to implement the common core tests? What validity do they have? What inter-rater reliability do they have? Advertisements went out to hire scorers at $11.20 an hour in local newspapers to judge whether our children are proficient at these untested standards. Do you want your own children’s futures based upon a Craigslist Scorer? I appreciate the time Senator Roach and Senator Chase have taken to dig into the history of common core. I encourage each of you to do the same. In order to accept the Federal carrot from RTTT, the expense of common core is costing more than the carrot itself.
Solution #1:
Withdraw from SBAC. Please do not try to convince anyone we can’t. The tests have been trashed like the second half of a rotten apple in various states. PARCC used to include 26 states. It now includes seven, with three showing signs they may drop. Smarter Balanced started out with 31 states (some states joined both groups, so the total is more than 50). It now has 18, with at least three getting wobbly. We are spending millions a year on these tests that do nothing to improve student learning.NOTHING.
Question #1
Are you paying attention to what this Testing Regime is doing to our children? Are you listening to the personal stories? Eight and nine year olds are sitting in computer labs for full days at a time. Is this developmentally appropriate? These young children are taking tests for longer periods of time than college age students on college exams.
Question #2
What has it cost our state thus far? $200 million? $24,000,000 is spent in scoring the test each year, and add the cost of sending out bright colored fliers to every student’s family with the results. Estimates are over a billion, including all the hidden costs. (Computers, Testing Coordinators, Test Prep Programs… more testing programs like Amplify…)
Budget Report from OSPI
Solution # 2:
Senate Bill 6093… A Simple Solution to the School Funding Crisis
Senate Bill 6093, sponsored by Senators Chase and McAuliffe, would repeal the 1997 huge tax exemption to the wealthy and invest $4 billion per year in public schools to restore school funding and lower class sizes. Corporations like Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, etc… would no longer receive tax loopholes.
There is money to fully fund education.
Imagine if we evaluated fireman by how they put fires out and then restricted their water supply and gave them crappy fire trucks… !?
Question # 3:
Can you tell me how much the reforms are costing… all the standardized testing, teacher and principal evaluations (TPEP), the data mining, and the infrastructure to support it all?
Question #4
And lastly, who are all these reforms benefiting? The children? (Nope.)
Who. Is. Profiting?
There is money, Senators. It is time it’s used to authentically benefit children and public schools.
Passionately Submitted,
RAZ ON FIRE
IGNITE! ... Fire is Catching 