By Mark

A recent guest piece by Bill Keim in The Seattle Times's Education Lab Blog points out some sobering numbers about education funding in Washington, particularly considering the Supreme Court ruling that the state of Washington is not adequately funding public education.

Particularly interesting is the infographic from the Washington Association of School Administrators that compares Washington's per-pupil funding over time as compared to the national average, to Massachusetts (similar in demographic, economy, and education standards), and to Alabama (historically under-funded and under-performing by various measures).

Simply put, our state has been in neutral while Massachusetts, Alabama, and the nation as a whole has been in high gear. 

And here's the problem with that: As of right now, Washington's schools seem to be performing well. 

This is of course a problem for two reasons. First, it weakens the argument that Washington schools need to be better funded. Second, it runs the risk of leading people to believe that good performance can be sustained without resources.

The last three years in my classroom I have been living the good life. Due to local support, my program received funding that provided me access to desktop computers every day, every period for each my 9th grade English students. Every day, if I want, I can have my students use technology to consume and produce meaningful texts and engage with content in exciting ways. Instead of having to rely upon the (decades old) literature anthology on the shelf, the whole world can be our textbook thanks to the technology–which of course, came with a cost.

The result of all this has been dramatic, one simple example being the sheer amount of writing I have been able to facilitate for my students. Because of easy access, we write constantly, and because it is "in the cloud," I can easily offer higher quality formative feedback much more quickly than if I were taking home a stack of papers every day and hand-writing on them. The amount of writing my students do is easily double what my classes would have done in the past. And mind you, this doesn't mean I've simply piled on the homework, it means they are getting more meaningful practice, more timely and useful feedback, and more opportunities to grow.

I am one of only a few English teachers in my building with this kind of access to such a resource. 

Next year, I am looking strongly at a change in assignment that would keep me in my building but have me no longer in such a technologically-equipped classroom. Gaining access to technology will not be as simple as me saying "roll your chair over and log into Google Drive to read my feedback on your essay." Instead it will mean scheduling access to a computer lab a few weeks in advance and hoping that my prognostication about where students will be (in terms of skill and content readiness) will align my lessons with access to the technology. Poor me, right? I recognize even this would be a dream for many teachers.

My point is simple: I am going to have to change the way I do things because of my access to resources. I will still do my best, my kids will still write as often as I can get them to, but how much practice I get them to do, how quickly I turn feedback around, and how far we end up going will be different without the tools I've become so used to. Will I still be a good teacher? I think so.

That's where my district and my state is getting a good bargain. I am a dedicated teacher willing to put in many more hours than my contract requires and willing to innovate to compensate for a lack of resources. If my building were an analog of the nation as a whole, my future computer-less classroom is like Washington State: a hard-working, dedicated teacher doing the best he can with fewer resources than the teachers down the hall. If resources get added to all the other rooms (states), they will bit by bit start to outpace me no matter my best efforts. In some cases–and I hate to say this–other rooms with less dedicated and less proficient teachers but greater access to resources, whether technology, time, or smaller classes, will see their students' performance surpass mine, no matter how great of a teacher I am with my overhead transparencies, TV-VCR combo carts, and red bic pens.

Washington is getting a really good bargain right now. And for now, our teachers are rising beyond the challenge. Just imagine what amazing things could be happening if we were just at the national average of per-pupil spending. Or even funded at the same level as Alabama is by comparison.

If we're not careful, it won't be long before we watch other states leave us in their dust and we're left talking about the great schools Washington used to have. Eventually, we'll be getting what we pay for.