Educators' Stumbling Block: WEA Assails WASL

Last Friday we were lunching outside Von's, and a stream of conventioneers was passing by. Some of them stopped at Von's and we couldn't help but notice that a number of them tripped on the single step on the way in. They'd alert the ones behind them, and they'd take a ridiculously large step through the door. When Von's filled up and they started filtering back out, they tripped on the way out. We didn't remember ever tripping on that step, so we asked this one guy what the convention was, and he told us it was the National Association of Elementary School Principals. We don't normally laugh at people tripping over things in real life, but when elementary school principals do it, it's very, very funny. (The conference's theme was "Soaring to New Heights.")

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the WEA assembled 1,300 educator troops in Tacoma and parceled out some incendiary talking-point devices.

Washington’s class sizes are 47th in the country, our teacher pay is dead last on the West Coast and the state's per-pupil funding is 42nd nationally. Yet the Senate budget does little to improve class sizes, and it cuts educators' future pensions. It also fails to keep pace with the rising cost of health care for school employees.

And, adds a mad-as-hell educating friend of ours, the state government wants to increase WASL testing, expanding it to more grades than just 4th, 7th, and 10th. The WASL and all the money spent on it is counted in the budget as "educational spending," so this is being spun as an increase in overall education spending.

On the plus side, if there's anything we remember from our own schooldays, it's how much fun it was to waste days filling in multiple choice ovals. That prepared us for the real-world experience of taking internet personality quizzes while bored at work.