HB 1410, SB 5444 die in committee

Neither HB 1410 nor SB 5444 made it out of the Education and Finance committee on Cutoff Day, The Olympian reports.

Despite those bills dying, House Speaker Frank Chopp and Haigh, who serves as the chairwoman of the House Education Appropriations Committee, both said they expect a big-picture measure to pass into law this year.

And Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, said she thinks elements of the task force plan will survive — particularly a piece that would pay for a more uniform accounting and financial-tracking system for schools.

It's too bad in a way; HB 1410 might have been amended into something useful. But as it stood, it was biting off a gargantuan morsel of reform steak, and ended up choking on its own ambition.

crrrrrazy ed reform in HB 1410

The WEA is steamed about HB 1410 (2009-10), all 111 ed-reforming pages of it. (Really. You want to read the entirety of the 111-page bill? Go right ahead [pdf].)

What has the WEA in a froth is, primarily, the bill's destruction of the state salary schedule. Adios, degree-based salary advancement (pp. 36ff):

The salary schedule shall not provide increased salaries based on continuing education credits or academic degrees.

No grandfathering, mind you, for the teachers who dutifully went along with the old ways, spending hours, days, weeks, months, or years of their time to get that master's (pp. 41ff):

23 NEW SECTION. Sec. 205. TRANSFER TO NEW SYSTEM.
(1) Certificated instructional staff whose first employment with a school district commenced before the 2012-13 school year have the option to make an irrevocable transfer to the compensation system with salary allocations provided under section 204 of this act....

(3) Any employee subject to this section who has not transferred to the new compensation system by November 15, 2021, shall be automatically transferred effective September 1, 2022.

So you've got ten years to milk that master's for all it's worth. Yet the bill makes it seem like the state is trying to model compensation after the wider professional world, including...

19 (a) Results of the preliminary labor market survey and analysis conducted under this section and other information about average salaries for noneducators in comparable occupations in Washington, including noneducators at the beginning of their careers and various types of educational staff associates working in noneducational settings;

Here's a tip: in other professions, advanced degrees mean a higher salary. Heck, many companies pay for their employees' schooling.

There's more, including a fun phrase, "academic watch," that turns the bill into a miniature NCLB Act, rubrics aplenty, "team-based bonuses," recommended class sizes, Core 24 and much, much more.

The bill's status: it's been sent to the Education Appropriations committee. Here are their phone numbers and emails. They met tonight for a public hearing at 6:00. I wasn't there.

I was too busy reading the bill.