More than 2,600 people backed a bill in Olympia to create Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for low-income and special needs students, but Democrats are already working to kill it. Rep. Travis Couture (R) pointed out that Washington’s public schools are delivering their worst reading and math scores in 30 years, despite some of the highest per-pupil spending in the nation. Naturally, Democrats and their union backers insist on doubling down on this disaster, claiming school choice would somehow harm public schools—because letting parents actually choose is apparently too dangerous.
Meanwhile, ESA programs are thriving in other states, giving families real options while improving student outcomes. A whopping 75% of Americans support ESAs, but in Washington, Democrats prefer to protect their broken education system rather than help students escape it. At the hearing, multiple speakers cited evidence that school choice improves achievement, but Chair Sharon Tomiko-Santos (D) had enough of those pesky facts and cut off testimony.
Democrats falsely claim that ESAs would only benefit rich families—ignoring that this bill is specifically for low-income and special needs students. Unsurprisingly, the bill isn’t scheduled for a vote yet, because Democrats know that if parents actually had a say, their government-run monopoly on failure might collapse. Read more at Center Square.
On January 29, 1998, three people testified at a hearing before the Senate Education Committee in Olympia, Washington. The hearing was set up by Senator Harold Hochstatter of Moses Lake. The three people who testified were Cris Shardelman, Roxanne Sitler and myself.
Senator Hochstatter set up the hearing after seeing the damning evidence provided in a document that had been secreted away in a file drawer in the offices of the Washington State Board of Education. That document was obtained under duress. It was obviously so revealing, of the failure of The Schools for the 21st Century Pilot Project, that those in political power, in Olympia, did not want that document to ever see the light of day. That cadre included both Republicans and Democrats.
That document can be found at https://www.scribd.com/document/380850206/Schools-for-the-21st-Century-Resource-Document
The presentation of Cris Shardelman, Roxanne Sitler and myself, can be found at https://www.scribd.com/document/380850587/Schools-for-the-21st-Century
And so damning was the evidence, that Republicans were told by leadership that they would be wise not to show their faces at the hearing. And very few did. For his part, Senator Hochstatter was relegated to a broom closet size office in the basement of the Senate Office Building. When he ran for governor, the Washington State Republican Party refused to support his campaign.
The Superintendent of Public Instruction, Terry Bergeson, although not given a podium at the hearing, continually and deliberately interrupted, with the help of the Senate Education Committee minority ranking member, Democrat Rosemary McAuliffe. The goal was to disrupt the presentations as much as possible.
And what the report reveals is why students, in Washington State, are failing and failing miserably. And it isn’t that Republicans didn’t and don’t know, it’s that Republicans were bought in to systems education, bringing education transformation designed down from, and aligned back to, the United Nations Education Goals found at https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/education/ Bear in mind that what is on this webpage now, is not what was on this webpage in 1997/98.
If you want to learn how systems education works, that document can be found at https://www.scribd.com/document/469184307/Killing-the-Morning-Glory-2020-07-14#
A fourth document takes the reader through the history of education transformation, in Washington State, and can be found at https://www.scribd.com/document/380850758/The-Education-Reform-School-to-Work-Workforce-Training-Initiative-July-1997
In 1998, Republicans could have turned the tide on Education Transformation in Washington State; they could have stood up for what was right, what was best for students in government schools. They did not.
Now, Republicans are in a permanent minority in Washington State. The likelihood of their ever regaining a seat, at the levers of power, is slim. And it’s their own fault. They could have done things differently. They did not. Not only with education, but in other areas, like vote-by-mail, as well.
And Washington State students, in government schools, have been paying the price since. Systems education is not intended, never was intended, to produce well-educated children capable of accessing a broad spectrum of knowledge to formulate a reasoned conclusion, as an individual. The goal of systems education, as stated by OSPI Terry Bergeson, is to “think globally, act locally.” In other words, to produce global citizens. This is also stated in a tome put out by the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, in 1994, page 70, “Knowing what we face, we are confident that Washington has the leadership, energy and perseverance to make it to our destination: a world class workforce.” That quote means exactly what it says.
The only advice I can give parents, at this point in time, is get your kids out of the government schools. They are no longer public schools responding to parents, and run by the local school board, they are government schools intent on producing global citizens.
Lynn M Finney (nee Stuter)
