By Tom
After enjoying Mark’s take on the recent Washington State Supreme Court’s McCleary decision, you now get to endure mine. Sometimes two views on the same topic is a good thing. Sometimes it’s not.
First the good: The decision itself was a win, however sloppy. The State Supreme Court ruled that the State Legislature has to follow the State Constitution and make ample provisions for public education, which according to the constitution, is its “paramount duty.” The suit was filed five years ago on behalf of four students, Carter and Kelsey McCleary and Robbie and Haley Venema. (Carter and Robbie are still in school; their sisters have since graduated.) (There was a kid named Steve Venema in my 8th grade PE class. I wonder if they're related.) The two families were joined in the suit by a large coalition of educational organizations, including over a dozen school districts and the Washington Education Association. The plaintive in the suit was the State of Washington. The case was actually decided last year, but the state appealed it to the Supreme Court, which made the 7-2 decision last Thursday. The two dissenters included Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, who, with no apparent sense of irony, thought it best to let the Legislature take care of the problem.
And the Bad: Six years. That’s how long the Court gave the Legislature to solve the problem. Six whole years. In six years, all the McCleary and Venema kids will be out of school and pursuing their careers. In six years every legislator and judge in Washington will either be replaced or reelected. In six years, every kid in my class will be in high school, replaced by kids who are currently learning to talk and use the toilet. In six years, the computer sitting in your lap will have been replaced at least once. In six years, you will have had to repaint your house. And in six years, the New Husky Stadium will be five years old, which means that it will have been used about thirty times, by football players that represent a student body from all over the country, whose out-of-state tuition will be used to send Washington students to community college. The Court gave the State six years to do what I can say in six words: Increase revenue to pay for education.
And now the Ugly: This, the Seattle Times’ take on the decision. I’m not sure why, but in the last few years, the relationship between Washington’s teachers (especially their union) and the leading daily newspaper has gone from chilly to cold to disrespectful to downright hostile. This is a new low for the Times; where they apparently blame the education funding crisis on collective bargaining, teacher strikes and our cushy healthcare plans. Ouch.
Will this decision make any difference? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not anytime soon, unless 2018 is your idea of soon.
But hey; a win's a win!
Just got new info. yesterday: Get ready for a huge hit to our health care. It’s coming out of committee work and will be in bill form soon. It will be scary.
Good point, Tom. The average teacher is solid. That was a bad choice of words. I hold my point that education is inefficient with its spending, as is any big bureaucracy.
And DrPezz, you’re also right, that the private sector saw a boom when education did not – but I would argue that education saw this boom but it did not necessarily increase teacher pay.
Because of levies – voted for because people in the private sector felt flush and generous – my district was able to complete some huge remodeling projects, provide masses of technology to some schools, and we saw things like the National Board bonus – which has always been dependent on funding. So, between about my 3rd and 13th years of teaching, things were pretty good.
Then, the well started to dry up. Support staff, cut. New textbooks, unordered. Reductions in force. Walls unpainted (yes, Tom, I know it’s a different union that paints walls).
You both make really good points and I hear you and agree with you, and retract the “average.”
I’m not arguing that teachers should take a pay cut, unless it absolutely has to be done. I’m not arguing that we should pay more for health care, unless it absolutely has to be done.
And it doesn’t have to be done, except for Tim Eyman’s initiative 1053, which meant that the legislature has to have a supermajority to raise taxes but only a simple majority to cut them.
Return it to a simple majority on both sides, and I don’t think we’d be in this mess.
And I was so focused on thinking the Times article wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be that I didn’t really include in my post how much I agree with you, Tom, that this ruling by the Supreme Court lacks teeth, lacks a meaningful timeline, and is about as effective as a referee shaking his finger at a soccer player who should have gotten a red card. That finger is not going to change behavior.
“the average teacher, who demonstrates zero success (except being able to say no child died on her watch) has access to excellent pay and excellent benefits without having to prove she’s good at she does.”
Really, Kristin? Isn’t that a little harsh?
The average teacher, at least in my experience, demonstrates A LOT of success.
Maybe I’ve been lucky, maybe I’ve been blind, or maybe I’m right, but I can honestly sit here and state that the vast, vast majority of the colleagues with whom I’ve taught are competent, caring and successful teachers.
And not one of them deserves another pay cut.
That last sentence should read: “Sharing in the losses WITHOUT the increases is not shared sacrifice.”
Kristin,
I would say that your concerns are not about benefits but about who gets them (” the average teacher, who demonstrates zero success…”), but that’s not going to be solved by cuts to pay and benefits.
A robust evaluation system and competent evaluators would make a huge difference; however, hits to pay and benefits will only reduce the pool of potentially great teachers.
I also cringe when I hear fellow teachers advocating more cuts because the private sector has taken some. The private sector also saw huge increases in boom years while teachers did not. Sharing in the losses with the increases is not shared sacrifice.
Dr Pezz, I haven’t taught for 30 years, so I’m unaware of such a long history of hits. All I know is that I have it pretty good compared to my friends who have been laid off, who work from 7am to 6pm and have to hit certain numbers to stay employed, or who have to meet the expectations of their clients to get paid. My students and parents can hate my guts, and I’m still going to get paid, get health care, and have a job next year because I have seniority.
I, and my colleagues in education, just have to keep showing up. Some of us are exceptional. Some of us are mediocre. We all get paid the same. We all have excellent benefits. Excellent. Say what you will about what we pay out of pocket – the average teacher, who demonstrates zero success (except being able to say no child died on her watch) has access to excellent pay and excellent benefits without having to prove she’s good at she does.
We can argue until we’re blue that principals can fire ineffective teachers and that most teachers are pretty good, but the fact remains that whether you’re good, mediocre or awful, you’re entitled to the same step on the salary schedule if you meet the years/credits requirement.
Regardless, my FIRST choice is that the state can adequately fund education by raising revenue, not asking teachers to take a hit by paying more for health care or working longer days.
“I think it’s time we take a hit.”
You mean besides the hits we’ve taken over the last 30 years? If teacher pay had simply matched inflation over the last 30 years, we’d all be averaging $12,000 more per year. A teacher who started in 1980 has lost $200,000 in salary due to freezes, cuts, and delays.
We pay more out of pocket for less when it comes to medical services, our class sizes have risen, our duties have increased, our requirements to teach have risen, our respect has eroded, and our profession is under attack by corporate interests.
I love my job. I really do. I have considered leaving the profession but probably won’t. However, I’m not interested in taking another hit.
I don’t think the WEA represents your district’s maintainance crew, Kristin, but they did play a major role in the McCleary decision.
Hmmm. I don’t think that article is all that bad, Tom. It makes sense for us to all be on one health plan.
It would make more sense for health care to stop being privatized, so that its CEOs weren’t making five thousand million dollars a year, but that’s a separate issue.
My takeaway was the “This page has argued for leaving education spending — from early learning to higher ed — mostly untouched.” And I like that they come right out and say that this ruling should pull cuts from education off of the table.
That’s where I stand. This ruling should pull cuts from education off of the table.
And I also stand here: That education is tremendously inefficient. A few days ago I was examining a wall in my school and thinking that I should get a group of parents organized to paint it. No can do. There’s a group of employees who are unionized who have dibs on any painting job. And we can’t afford them, so the wall remains unpainted. With a group of parents and Home Depot’s discard racks we could get that wall painted by next week, for $20 and a good time. But, no.
So I think we have gotten into an awkward spot, and the Times uncomfortably points it out – the unions have done such a good job of protecting the interests of their members that the state can’t afford their services.
As a union member – and one who has picketed, marched on Olympia, gone on strike and endured the epithets and hand gestures of mothers in SUVs angry they had to spend the day with their child – I think it’s time we take a hit. It doesn’t mean we work for free. It doesn’t mean we work without healthcare. It means we recognize that we’ve become a little more expensive than the public can afford.
My vote is that the public needs to pay more. Washington legislators are hobbled by a supermajority rule if they want to raise taxes. So, they can’t raise taxes, and taxes need to be raised if we’re going to fund education.
I think what this whole issue boils down to is that the public needs to fund public education, and public education needs to be 1) worth it and 2) cost-effective. I totally support any effort to make those two things happen.
Too bad he’s not on the bench. He would have decided to “Hang ‘Em High” or fined them “A Fistful of Dollars.”
Couldn’t resist.
Oh my gosh. I will comment in a second, but first I want to say that it has MADE MY DAY to see that photo of Clint.