Austin Jenkin's excellent TVW interview of Dan Grimm, Chair of the Basic Education Task Force, reveals that the big new education reform bill, HB 2261, does not provide the structural reforms needed to genuinely improve public schools in Washington State. These are his words:

    "Even if there is additional money (to fund HB 2261), without significant structural reforms, we won't see significant improvements in student performance, which is the ultimate goal of all this effort."

Dan Grimm appears at 35:41:

Dan Grimm says we need to change the way we train and pay teachers, give administrators incentives to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom, and other key reforms, none of which are addressed by HB 2261.  HB 2261 instead creates working groups to look at some of these matters.  Mr. Grimm says this is just a way to avoid real structural reform, as any changes are sure to be delayed, refined, amended and minimized.   

He also points out that part of the problem is that the public seems to be generally satisfied with the status quo in education, and for this reason legislators are not passing real structural reforms to improve education.

How frustrating.  And depressing, as Austin points out. 

Dan Grimm and Austin discuss the power of the teacher's union, which is so powerful and well-funded that neither Democrats nor Republicans will pass real structural reforms for public education, short of an uprising from parents and the public.     

Parents are naturally inclined to believe that the public schools are doing fine.  How can parents get the real facts?  One source is our Education Reform Plan.  We describe the true state of public education (for example, did you know that public education officials are producing a generation of students less educated than their parents??) and we offer real systemic reforms to education, reforms that do not require new taxes amounting to $4-8 billion per biennium.