NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

Class size initiative too close to call

With 49.5% of the vote, it’s too soon to tell if Ini­tia­tive 1351 will pass. If approved by vot­ers, the ini­tia­tive would low­er pub­lic school class sizes in grades kinder­garten through 12. Washington’s pupil-teacher ratio ranks 47th nation­al­ly, and both the state and nation­al teach­ers unions were the pri­ma­ry sup­port­ers of the campaign.

State Super­in­ten­dent Randy Dorn is also on board:

If it pass­es, I‑1351 will place those rec­om­men­da­tions into law. Reduc­ing class sizes is key to improv­ing stu­dent learn­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly with at-risk stu­dents. That, in turn, will improve grad­u­a­tion rates. When I‑1351 pass­es, the next step will be for the Leg­is­la­ture to fund those class-size levels.

Since there’s no fund­ing asso­ci­at­ed with the ini­tia­tive, it remains to be seen how pas­sage of I‑1351 would affect the leg­is­la­ture’s attempt to sat­is­fy the McCleary oblig­a­tion to ful­ly fund pub­lic edu­ca­tion. Decreas­ing class size is just one part of the McCleary court order to increase edu­ca­tion fund­ing, which also includes pro­vid­ing more mon­ey for trans­porta­tion, mate­ri­als and oper­a­tions, and salary increases.

Written by Kathleen Reynolds :: 10:03 PM

Categories: Education

Comments and pings are currently closed.

Adjacent posts

  • Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation

    Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

    Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than fif­teen years. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t run ads or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

    Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy journalism.

    Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

    Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation

  • NPI’s essential research and advocacy is sponsored by: