Good News or Bad News? State Board of Education Strongly Supports Pro-business Education Reform

  
  
These articles copied from the State Board of Education website show that the pro-business reformists have made great progress on their strategy of influencing policy at the state and federal level, in order to force changes at the district level across the state. It is much less costly to influence a single Board of Education (state level) and a single voting body (the State Legislature) than it is to try to influence every large district-level Board of Directors, and every community electorate (the voting public).

This is good news if you believe regressive reform is good for our children.

This is bad news if you do not believe that regressive reform is good for our children.


Oct 14 2009:SBE (State Board of educ) press release, copied from SBE website [http://www.sbe.wa.gov/pressroomarticles.htm] on Oct 16, 2009:


"Recently, a new education reform committee [proabably a reference to " new Quality Education Council [which] has been charged with creating a plan to phase in many education reforms, including "Core-24," and with finding the money to pay for them"] held its first meeting in hopes of one day meeting the state's constitutional requirement of providing basic education to all students in Washington.Whether this state has met that requirement has been hotly debated and is now the focus of two separate lawsuits to determine if basic education is indeed being fully funded." [Are they reformists that have brought these lawsuits? Knowledge and logic leads me to predict that this is true. Here is my reasoning: Reformist bottom line is to extract as much business income (and profit) from taxpayer dollars. Education-business can extract more business income from taxpayer dollars if 1) the reform agenda for accountability/standardized teaching and testing/charters/etc. is fully implemented, and 2) if OSPI and the School Districts have more money. This is a testable predication.]


The Seattle Times article By Donna Gordon Blankinship, Associated Press Writer September 17, 2009, "; copied from http://www.sbe.wa.gov/pressroomarticles.htm on Oct 16 2009

School officials in La Center, Wash., aren't waiting for the state of Washington to finish reforming high school graduation requirements. The small Southwest Washington school district has decided to adopt a version of a 24-credit high school graduation requirement while implementation of State Board of Education's "Core-24" plan is still being discussed by that panel and the state Legislature. Board member Eric Liu said at the board's meeting Thursday that La Center is not alone in its desire to "get ahead of the curve" on education reform. He said school officials around the state are watching the process and figuring out how to adopt the changes that seem inevitable....state Higher Education Coordinating Board says [Core-24 requirements] are needed to get into a four-year university in Washington state...Mary Jean Ryan, chairwoman of the State Board of Education, said she would like to help other districts find the money and the will to move toward the new graduation requirements. She suggested some districts may be able to get a federal grant for innovation to pay for early implementation. Bellingham [did you realize your school district is being reformed to create market opportunity for private business?] is another district working toward early adoption of the new standards... Ryan said she was delighted the project the state board has worked so hard on has such an articulate champion in Mansell [Dr. Mark Mansell, Superintendent, La Center School District ]. Core-24 was adopted by the Legislature earlier this year as part of its education reform bill . The state's new Quality Education Council has been charged with creating a plan to phase in many education reforms, including "Core-24," and with finding the money to pay for them....[TRACKING: vocational, technical, and college-prop] [Under the La Center high school reform plan,] students  are given the choice of three different paths to follow in high school: one would prepare them for technical college or on-the-job training, the second would get them ready for college, and the third would prepare them for a more competitive four-year university and graduate school.  Mansell [Dr. Mark Mansell, Superintendent, La Center School District ] described the 24 credits as a means to the end [But are you sure, Director, that Core-24 is the RIGHT means and the RIGHT end?]. The real goal of the new diploma is to help kids think about what they want to do with their life and then get the education they need to make their dream happen. Among the other topics on the [SBE] agenda at the State Board of Education meeting that continues Friday were federal government school reform initiatives, online learning and the state's new assessment system.