This bill seems like a good idea on the surface, but once you read it you find that it really is not about school funding at all. They have some great ideas about class size, availability of materials, and school facility minimum requirements -but they never nail down how they are going to pay for it.
They then go on to discuss certification levels. Here they toss Masters Degrees aside like they are meaningless and fully back the National Board Certification but then leave evaluation of teachers to other teachers. From my personal experience, my Masters degree program taught me more about teaching than my BA program ever did, and the National Boards program is equivalent to a dog and pony show !
Next comes evaluating teachers based on student progress. On the surface that too sounds like a great idea. However, if I teach 7th grade Reading and a student enters my class with a 4th grade reading level and leaves at the end of the year with a 5th grade reading level ; have I succeed or failed? The student is still viewed as a student lacking the proper skills and preparedness to enter 8th grade but they advanced one year in reading level within the one year they were in my charge. Again, Success or Failure?
This task force was asked by Gov. Gregoire to write a bill to address basis education funding of our public schools and they wrote this bill which does very little to define where the money would come from for all the things they wish to change. Did they succeed or fail?
In my opinion they failed to write on prompt (this is a WASL scoring term which means that even though the student wrote something, they did not stick to the topic they were required to write about)
Please write to your legislators and ask them not to support this bill.