The Washington Supreme Court ordered the legislature to come up with a plan to fund the state’s public schools fairly. The legislature has taken a few steps but has failed to comply with the court’s order. The state asked the coutrt to cancel the fines. The court said no.
“No hammer will come down this year as a result of the Legislature’s ongoing failure to come up with plan to fully fund public schools, the state Supreme Court said Thursday.
“Instead, the high court said it will continue fining Washington state $100,000 per day, but will wait to see what progress lawmakers make in the 2017 legislative session before imposing additional sanctions.
“The court’s ruling is the the latest development in the school-funding case known as McCleary, in which the court ruled in 2012 that Washington state was failing to meet its constitutional duty to amply fund basic education.
“In its order, the court directed the state to correct school-funding problems by 2018.
“While lawmakers have added about $2.3 billion to address parts of the McCleary ruling — including funding for all-day kindergarten, school supplies and class size reductions in lower grades — they have yet to come up with a way to fix the unconstitutional way teachers and other school employees are paid, which many lawmakers view as the most complicated part of the decision.
“The court has said school employee salaries are basic education costs that should be borne by the state, and not paid through local school district property tax levies.
“In its majority ruling Thursday, the court criticized lawmakers for not specifying how they plan to take on those costs next year.
“In its latest report, the State continues to provide a promise — ‘we’ll get there next year’ — rather than a concrete plan for how it will meet its paramount duty,” wrote Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, whose opinion was signed by seven of the court’s nine justices.”
Washington State contains some of the richest people in the nation and the world. Why aren’t they leading the fight for higher taxes to fund the schools instead of fighting for charters?
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/politics-government/article106406507.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Please consider this follow-up reading:
OSPI candidate Chris Reykdal’s statement on the recent charter school grant to Washington State
OSPI candidate Erin Jones’ statement on the recent charter school grant to Washington State
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Interesting how charters were such a high priority in Washington that everyone in power pulled out all the stops to get them, and yet none of them can be bothered with the public schools in the state.
The unfashionable public school sector is clearly a very low priority. Dead last on the to-do list.
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If we have so many paid ed reform activists and orgs, why are so many public school districts in such bad shape?
Are they lousy advocates or do they just not bother with the unfashionable public sector schools?
“Bryan Steinberg loves his job teaching social studies in Philadelphia, but he’s seriously contemplating quitting to become a bartender.
Bryan Steinberg, a social studies teacher at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School in Northeast Philadelphia, has taught in the Philadelphia School District without a contract for four years and his salary is frozen. hiladelphia School District speech therapist. She’s moving to Vietnam.
And Megan and Bryan McGlynn, married city teachers with a new baby, wonder how much longer they can keep going with two incomes tied to a school system that has kept them without a contract for three years and without a raise for four.”
Weird, huh? The more “public education advocates” there are the worse things get for public schools.
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Your post points out the huge hypocrisy of “reform.” It is not about improvement of anything. Instead, it is about privatization of a public service to take advantage of the poor. It is all about access to public funds that will provide less for the typical person while making corporate profits on the back of poor, minority students. If they get away with it, they will continue their anti-democratic conversion of education into a for profit corporate enterprise. They is why they are committed to under funding public education, test and punish and trying to enact anti-democratic legislation. If the public sleeps, corporations will steal the public’s right to a free public education.
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This is exactly right in terms of the objective. The deeper question is why such an attack on public schools from the private sector. It is not mere greed. As I have said before, the fault lies in the fundamental devotion to socialism of most of the public teaching cohort. Why should anyone support a public school system in which the majority of the public servants espouse a governmental philosophy fundamentally opposed to the constitution and capitalism? Can you deny that you and all your professional colleagues are socialists?
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REFORM here is just DEFORM and getting rich off the backs of kids, teachers, and the general public. So SICK.
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Here’s Fordham. Paid “public education advocates”.
The only mention you’ll find of Ohio public schools is an analysis of their test scores and attendance.
I think I should tell my fellow public school parents that the one and only reason anyone in ed reform turns their attention to our kids is to track their test scores.
As long as my 8th grader sits for the Common Core test 3 days a year he’s fulfilled his purpose as far as “ed reformers” are concerned. They should have to compensate him for the time and effort he puts in every year on behalf of this adult “movement”. They’re sure as heck not his advocates.
https://edexcellence.net/gadfly-weeklys/ohio-education-gadfly-biweekly-volume-10-number-20
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And, Fordham makes unsupportable claims, citing non-existent research. Figlio produced no research about competitive effect, in his recent Northwestern University paper about vouchers. Yet, Fordham claimed to the media, that there was a “finding” about it.
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The solution for the Gates’ colony, is a state income tax. As it is, the poor people in Washington pay at a rate, of up to 7 times more, than the rich. Washington has the most regressive tax in the nation. Gates’ factors of production cost money and, the middle class and poor pay those costs, while Gates gorges on the benefits. Compounding the problem, is his concentrated wealth, which is based on excessive patent protection time frames. He and his politically-active cronies strangle economic opportunity.
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