Blog

Moving ahead with education reform despite state budget challenges

Last Friday, I noted that education reform dominated the first week of the legislative session. A good op-ed by Dean Allen, CEO of McKinstry Co. and current chair of the Washington Roundtable, explains the urgency. By 2018, two out of three family-wage jobs in our state will require post-secondary education or training. Yet, on average, […]

Education reforms top first week of legislative session

The first week of the 2012 legislature draws to a close this cool Friday the 13th of January. Encouragingly, education reform has found substantial bipartisan support. In the Seattle Times, Brian Rosenthal has a good overview of yesterday’s action. Declaring that traditional methods have failed, a bipartisan group of lawmakers formally introduced a pair of […]

Microsoft & Boeing announce $50 million scholarship fund

Today, coincident with the governor’s signing higher education bills, Boeing and Microsoft pledge $25 million each to fund scholarships for students in high-demand fields. This is very good news, as the governor points out. …our colleges and universities must have the resources to educate and train the next generation of engineers, scientists and workers. Tuition […]

Update on Higher Education Tuition

Last week, we posted a policy brief comparing the House and Senate budgets’ treatments of higher education. Both budgets propose significant tuition hikes on state-resident undergraduate students, with the increases in the Senate budget somewhat greater than those in the House budget (11–16 percent vs. 11–13 percent). These proposals are now irrelevant, however. Early this […]

New Brief on Higher Education in the 2011-13 Budgets

We have posted a new policy brief on higher education in the House and Senate budgets, titled “Higher Education: State Funding Down, Tuition Up.” It is available through this link. Briefly: Under the House budget, NGFS+ funding for higher education would be $2.81 billion, while under the Senate budget it would be  $2.84 billion. Either […]

New Brief on How Public Schools Fare in 2011-13 Budgets

Following last week’s brief on proposed 2011-13 expenditures in the human services budget area, today we take a look at public schools.  (See also this brief for an overview of the House and Senate budget plans.) Spending on public schools would increase over 2009-11 levels in both the House- and Senate-passed budgets.  Maintenance level changes […]

Keeping the best teachers in the classroom when it's necessary to downsize

That’s my subject in today’s Everett Herald column. Right now, layoffs are handled by seniority — last hired, first fired, with no regard for teacher performance. A pair of bills (HB 1609 and SB 5399) would create a performance-based system for staff reductions. The legislation calls for making layoff decisions based on teachers’ average evaluation […]

An Oscar miss on an education breakthrough

As I rarely go to movies and don't own a TV, my thoughts on the Academy Awards are not worth sharing. So I'll just refer you to AWB president Don Brunell's post on Waiting for Superman.  

Tuition Transfer Update

As I discussed in an earlier post, the Senate version of the early action supplemental budget cut general fund–state funding to the higher education coordinating board (HEC Board) for the state need grant by $25.4 million. The Senate supplemental budget backfilled this loss in two steps. The first step was an appropriation of $25.4 million […]

Tuition Transfer

This follow-up to Emily’s earlier post on the Senate’s early action supplemental budget proposal (Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1086) provides a bit more detail with respect to higher education. The Senate-passed early action budget (the Senate Ways and Means Committee staff summary of the chair’s proposal is available here, the bill [big file] is available […]