Few would envy the job of lawmakers attempting to wrestle a balanced budget onto the books in the face of pressing needs and a daunting, multibillion-dollar deficit.
But with their faces deep in spreadsheets, they have perhaps overlooked a troubling pattern in education funding. To put it concisely: Legislators are planning to squeeze three programs that benefit lower-income families, while ignoring a no-cost way to boost academic achievement for all kids.
Some specifics: Both houses in the Legislature, as well as the governor, propose to cut money for early learning by trimming the state’s Transition to Kindergarten program, which prepares 4-year-olds for school. They’ve also floated a plan to carve up to $59 million from Local Effort Assistance that supports property-poor districts, while lopping off funds to cover summer classes in Running Start, which allows high school students to earn college credit.
In some ways, the impulse is understandable. Considering our lackluster results in K-12 education, voters are legitimately frustrated by unending spending increases in that sector. Yet lawmakers keep avoiding an obvious way to improve school results for free: ban smartphones.
It’s bewildering. The much-bemoaned decline in student performance correlates to smartphones showing up in classrooms after the pandemic. Three dozen other states saw similar drops and implemented bans. The result? Marked academic improvement.
Against that context, Washington’s refusal to decisively rid schools of these addictive, distracting devices is akin to shoveling the $42 billion we’re spending in state, local and federal dollars for education straight into the fireplace. Lawmakers instead want to spend another $124,000 on a report about the issue, due by the end of 2028.
Of course, any district can impose its own smartphone ban without waiting for a statewide edict. (Those that have, like the Peninsula School District, are seeing steady gains.)
But Washington doesn’t allow districts to devise their own diploma standards: Every high school senior must complete 24 credits to graduate, wherever they learn.
If we’re serious about improving outcomes, we need to be serious for all kids — whatever their age or family income, and wherever they go to school.
