Remember, there is no quid pro quo.
Denials aside, there appear to be plenty of connections between Gov. Chris Gregoire’s education reform package and her hopes of building support for a temporary sales tax increase.
Gregoire on Tuesday unveiled bills that will finally add consequences on teachers who get poor evaluations and also begin to use factors other than seniority in teacher layoffs, call-backs, transfers and vacancies. She said sales-tax-hike voters need to know they’re ”making a good investment in an education system that’s improving.”
But she stressed that there is no quid pro quo to trade school reform for business support for a tax effort.
First, let’s review: Gregoire presented a batch of budget cuts in October, the result of state tax collections continuing to fall below expectations. Among the $2 billion in cuts were another slice out of the colleges and deeper cuts to basic education.
Then, in November, Gregoire proposed a three-year sales tax increase of one-half cent. If approved by voters sometime this winter, the $500 million a year raised would “buy back” the proposed cuts to education. Gregoire had already laid some foundation for the tax hike, and at least it wasn’t immediately trashed by the business community – at least as represented by the Association of Washington Business, Boeing and Microsoft.
But the latter two companies seemed to condition their support on further changes in public schools.
“It is important for the special session to adopt outcome-based reforms that will help ensure that all Washington students receive a quality education,” said Microsoft’s executive vice president and general counsel Brad Smith. “These steps will best ensure that any proposed increases in the sales tax will lead to real improvements in education and thereby deserve the public’s support in a referendum.”
Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Jim Albaugh released a similar statement. And both men seemed to know more about what was coming than the rest of us. Albaugh, for example, said Gregoire deserved praise for a budget plan that “places education reform at the top of the agenda for the upcoming special session.” But she didn’t say anything about ed reform for three weeks.
Even then, her package was a bit underwhelming. The substantive change in the evaluation system would be to tell teachers that they must improve if they’ve spent two consecutive years ranked second from the bottom (basic) on a four-tier scale. If they don’t reach the third tier (proficient) during a probation year, they could be fired.
Gregoire also would speed up the timeline for dismissal of teachers graded at the bottom (unsatisfactory).
But having consequences for bad evaluations was urged on her, unsuccessfully, when the four-tier evaluation mandate was passed in 2010. Adding criteria other than seniority to assignments and layoffs was in a bill earlier this year that Gregoire refused to support. And even this late support is for a weakened version that requires only that credentials, evaluations and expertise be considered in any new assignment plan. As such, seniority could still be the dominant factor.
Will these bills be enough to win tax-hike support – especially financial support – from business? Smith’s reaction Tuesday was noncommittal: “We view her proposals today as a positive step in the right direction.”
The Washington Education Association responded favorably to the evaluation change but not the teacher-assignment bill. Union President Mary Lindquist has not endorsed the tax plan, saying the sales tax is regressive and falls too heavily on the poor. Instead, Lindquist has said “it’s time for profitable corporations and the very rich to finally pay their fair share.”
Gregoire’s courting of business by taking a few more steps toward reform might not be enough and only fuels the convenient conspiracy theory among teachers – call it the single-billionaire theory – that ed reform is a move by rich men to “privatize” public education.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blog:thenewstribune.com/politics
Twitter: @CallaghanPeter
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