This is huge. Anyone who teaches in Washington State, has school-age kids or grandkids in Washington State, or plans to do any of the above should sit down and pay attention. The Basic Education Finance Task Force has been quietly working since way before the economy fell apart, drafting a recommendation to completely change the funding structure of our state's school system. The last time we posted about the Task Force on this blog they had five separate proposals. Now there's one. (Imagine being at that meeting.)

All told, the Task Force made six Key Recommendations:

1. Define basic education as the opportunity for students to meet proposed new high school graduation requirements.
2. Basic education includes supplemental instructional opportunities for disadvantaged students, including at-risk pre-schoolchildren.
3. Establish a new state budgeting system with allocations based on class size and instructional hours in model elementary, middle and high schools, with flexibility for local school district spending. Increase state allocation to school districts based on reduced class size assumptions, especially in grades K through 3, and more instructional time, and increase allocations for at-risk preschool children.
4. Reform the compensation system:
   • Determine salary increases and continuing contracts for teachers based on performance factors.
   • Set school employee salary allocations benchmarked by comparable wages in regional non-school employee labor markets.
   • Eliminate state allocations for teacher salary increases based in additional educational credits and degrees.
   • Create new performance-based teacher certification system supported by increased resources for professional development and mentoring
5. Implement a common state-funded accounting and budgeting system for all school districts and enhance the statewide student informational system.
6. Implement the State Board of Education proposed accountability system principals.

For this post, I'm going to focus on numbers 3 and 4. Not that the others aren't important. They are. But space, as well as my expertise, are limited. And again, I strongly encourage anyone with a horse in this race to read the entire report.

Number three concerns, among other things, class size. If these recommendations make it through the legislature I will have fifteen kids in my third grade class. Fifteen. Not twenty-seven. I can't begin to tell you what a difference that would make. And I'm not talking about coming home from work less exhausted. I'll work just as hard with fifteen students as I do now; but with fifteen kids, they'll each get a larger share of that time and energy. That means more time for me to check their progress. More to time to listen to them read. More time to observe them work, figure out how they learn and adapt my lessons to better meet their needs. More time to teach the students in my class, not my class of students.

Older kids don't get it quite so sweet, but the largest class size for any student would he 25; a vast improvement.

Number four deals with compensation, and there are many interesting proposals. First of all, they want to change the "columns" of the salary scale, eliminating the attainment of college education as a basis for additional pay. Although I find that somewhat ironic, given the nature of our profession, I can certainly live with the replacement; more pay based on additional experience and demonstration of best practices. I also like the the recommendation to preserve the annual bonus for National Board Certified Teachers. In my opinion, this is the best way to encourage teachers to improve their craft, leading to better teaching and better learning.

They also recommend increasing the number of professional development days from two to ten. Excellent idea. As long as the time is well-planned and focused on local needs, this proposal will also lead directly to improved student achievement.

There are a few other proposals bundled up in this recommendation, but the biggie comes at the end. They want to eliminate local bargaining for salaries. All negotiations for pay will occur at the state level. This is gonna get wild. Local bargaining is something the Washington Education Association holds very dear. For better or for worse, this will not come without a fight. As it is now, the state sets the basic salary model and local districts tinker with it by the use of TRI pay. TRI stands for time, responsibility and incentive. The Task Force recommends eliminating the R and the I, so that districts can only pay for more time. An interesting idea, but probably a non-starter as far as the WEA is concerned.

Like I said up-front, this is huge, and will affect teaching and learning in Washington State for at least the next generation. What's puzzling to me is why it's been so under-reported. The Task Force will hold a public forum on Monday morning in Olympia and then they vote Tuesday on the recommendation itself. Obviously, the State's financial situation will dictate the timeline by which anything substantial is rolled out, and all indications are that it will be awhile. But when the economy bounces back, and it will, this will probably be what our educational funding system will look like. You should really take a look at it.