Op-ed: Create a state Department of Education that reports to the governor
We must fund education and create a seamless, accountable system, writes guest columnist Chris Gregoire.
WASHINGTON’S education agencies are too often focused on the adults, not the children. Among my biggest goals as governor has been to change that, to return the focus to students in a seamless education system from early learning through college, and to provide accountability for that outcome.It is our moral responsibility to get it right, and now it’s also our legal one with the state Supreme Court’s McCleary ruling on the constitutional mandate for K-12 basic education funding. In the budget I proposed for 2013-2015, I asked the Legislature to make a sizable down payment on that obligation. That starts with $1 billion for the next two years and grows to $3.4 billion a biennium in six years.
We must do more than provide the funding. We must fix the system, starting with the creation of a statewide Department of Education that spans early education, K-12 and higher education.
Should the Legislature act on my budget proposal, the impact of my proposed investment would be immediately felt across the state. More than half of all kindergarten-through-second-grade students