Sen. Ranker Reflects on Special Session Education Challenges

— from Aaron Wasser —

This afternoon [Thursday, July 9, 2015], after six months in Olympia, we finally finished our work… for now.

I will provide a more detailed summary later of what got done this year and what did not, but I wanted to provide you with this outline of the past week’s events so that you understand where we stand and why we took this extra week to complete our work after passing the operating budget that averted a government shutdown last week.

While we had passed a final operating budget last week, as many of you heard, we did not have the bipartisan votes needed to address Initiative 1351 — the noble but extremely costly $2 billion class-size reduction measure that the voters passed last November.

Unfortunately, while lower class size in all our classrooms is something we must continue to work toward, as decision-makers we must be realistic and the difficult reality is that I-1351 would be impossible to afford this year. Earlier this year Senate Democrats proposed a comprehensive plan to address I-1351 and our moral and constitutional obligations outlined in the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision. Our plan, SB 6104, would have amended the initiative to phase it in and honor the will of the voters by committing to this detailed plan for implementation.  Unfortunately, this proposal did not move forward.

We had members who were willing to vote to change the initiative, but we were clear with Senate Republicans about what that means: If we are going to pass a bill that is detrimental to kids, let’s do something significant to help them. That’s why we asked for a solution to our high-stakes testing problem.

Due to a change that was recently implemented nearly 2,000 deserving high school seniors, who did everything right throughout all of their years in school were now being told that they would not graduate – even though many were already accepted to college – because they failed to pass the required punitive high-stakes biology exam.  Basically, the current biology exam is based on the old learning standards – we adopted new standards in 2013 and it is anticipated that the new test on those standards will be available for field testing in 2017. Using a test based on standards that aren’t even taught anymore is totally unfair to those students.

So while it took an extra week, Republicans finally agreed with us and today we passed a bill that delays the high-stakes testing in science for two years – allowing those nearly 2,000 kids to be judged on their years of achievements and good grades instead of one individual flawed text.  We also voted to suspend Initiative 1351. This was an extremely difficult decision.  While I wish we had been able to advance our proposal that fully committed us to phasing it in over time, there were not the necessary Republican votes for our plan and there was simply not the money to pay for the full proposal at this time.

In the end, I strongly believe the one-week delay that allowed us to help those nearly 2,000 kids to move forward with their lives and go to college was worth it.  This was a loose end too important to leave undone.

So while this year we invested $1.4 billion in all day kindergarten, class size reduction in early grades and school construction, there remains significant work yet to be done on implementing the Initiative, teacher compensation and meeting our constitutional and moral obligation to fully fund education and make improvements in other areas of the education spectrum in dire need of repair.

In short, we are done for now, but our work is far from done.

After so many months away, I am very much looking forward to being back in the 40^th District. After a short break with my family, I will begin having my “Senate in your bookstore” coffee afternoons around the district and look forward to seeing many of you there.

It remains an incredible honor to serve you.   If you have any questions or issues you would like to discuss, please email me at kevin.ranker@leg.wa.gov or call Jennifer in my office at 360.786.7678 and she can find a time for us to connect.

I hope you are well and thoroughly enjoying your summer.