Hello Readers,

With the legislature in full swing in Olympia, your scribe has been busy tracking the flow of bills being introduced and referred to legislative committees for hearings.  In the even-numbered year, the legislature meets for just 60 days, so it is like a sprint, as opposed to year-round legislatures that are more like marathons.

As is true in every sesssion, there are a slew of bills related to both K-12 and higher education that WTIA follows.  We advocate for improving K-12 education, especially around math and science and for increase numbers of STEM degrees from our state's universities.

This year the state has an opportunity to really advance K-12. Senate Bill 6696, http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=6696&year=2009 is a bill that would help Washington compete for Race to the Top federal dollars to improve education.  In order to qualify for RTTT funds, a state must have a plan to close persistently failing schools, a teacher evaluation system based on student data and robust student data collection systems.  Charter schools and a STEM focus also bring extra points on the application.

This bill was requested by Governor Gregoire.  She consulted with many education groups, most notably WEA, the teacher's union, who opposed last year's major education reform, HB 2261.  While the Governor was successful in getting WEA to agree to evaluations, the actual bill language is not strong enough for the Feds.  Amendments to the bill will be necessary.

WTIA, along with many other entities, testified in favor of SB 6696.  Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn came out strong for the bill and for improving it.  We applaud him for that.  We will be working with the Excellent Schools Now coalition, http://www.excellentschoolsnow.org/, to make the bill as strong as possible so that Washington's application for Race to the Top stands a good chance of succeeding.

Unfortunately SPI Dorn is not quite as supportive of ensuring our high schoolers can demonstrate their mastery of math and science as he is the requester of HB 2915, http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=2915&year=2009. 

This bill further delays the requirement that high school students pass a statewide math and science test to graduate from high school.  The bill pushes the deadline for math back to 2015 from 2013 and to 2017 from 2015 for science.  This is simply unacceptable.  We need to redouble our efforts to ensure that schools and students are ready by the current deadline.

WTIA, along with many other groups, testified against HB 2915 this morning in the House Education Committee.  This bill is likely to be voted out of committee unless legislators hear from you.  Please contact the House Education Committee members today.  http://www.leg.wa.gov/House/Committees/ED/Pages/MembersStaff.aspx

You can contact them via e-mail using lastname.firstname@leg.wa.gov as the naming convention.  Thank you for your support of this issue.  If you have any questions, please contact us at Lmcmurran@washingtontechnology.org.