I have been involved in public education since the early 1960's, and I wonder if education is considered as important as it used to be.

This involvement has included work as a classroom teacher in secondary schools and colleges, school administration in both public and private education, and most recently serving 7 years on the Federal Way School Board.

Clearly I have found that education, as it says in the State's constitution; a "Paramount Duty."

I have lived in this state since 1979. I have often heard from others who have been involved in Washington education that "education needs improvement." This has been my observation as well.

In recent weeks the President of the University of Washington stated that secondary education in this state was "preparing most students for jobs as car wash attendants."

His boss, the Chairman of the Board of Regents, stated that "the University is running out of qualified applicants for admission."

While there is a shortage of Science employees in this state, we simply don't seem to have many students who are interested.

This is confirmed by the results of the Intel Science Talent Search that shows only one student in the entire state as a semifinalist.

There are individual high schools back East that have more than 12 semifinalists. Does this state's education "need improvement"? I think so.

Since the 1960's there have been a lot of changes in our society. Almost all of these have required more knowledge to be useful. Yet our society seems to be slipping behind that of countries that were considered "third world" in the 1960's.

Locally, we find that SAT scores, when participation is factored in, are low when compared to other states, and are not improving.

We have about 50 percent of our students failing the Mathematics portion of the state's WASL.

The Mathematics has been judged to be 7th or 8th grade level Mathematics by independent evaluators.

Our scores on the Science portion of the WASL are even worse. At a recent school board meeting, I asked a student who was praising his 6th grade Mathematics program "How may 6's are there in 42?"

He responded, after thinking for a few moments, "Five."

Why is this important? There are two groups that have a real stake in this issue. I don't believe that either of these two groups are as concerned about this as they should be.

Taxpayers

Over 40 percent of the state's tax dollars go to support education and the taxpayer needs to add to this the cost of the local levy that in the Federal Way School District is an additional $ 3.48 per $ 1,000 of assessed value.

Taxpayers also need to remember that these students are the ones who are supposed to fund their Social Security retirement.

Car wash attendants aren't likely to be making the kinds of contributions that will be needed to keep those checks coming.

For this reason taxpayers, in my opinion, need to take a far closer look at the effectiveness of the dollars that they are "contributing" to education.

The current success rate, that those who leave high school either with the qualifications for entry into a 4 year college, or with employment skills that will get them to "post car wash" levels is probably less than 30 percent in this area.

If this were manufacturing, a 70 percent rejection rate wouldn't be tolerated for one production cycle yet alone for many years.

My experiences back East would suggest that if taxpayers were concerned, you couldn't get a seat at the school board meetings. Not so here!

Students

The future for the 70 percent of our students who have only "graduated" or are drop-outs isn't very positive.

Unfortunately youth tend, as we all did, to look for the "easiest path," and our schools are paved with these paths! It is easy, as one of my educator friends said, "To major in graduation" or to just drop out.

What are the reasons for this?

I try to read many of the educational journals and newsletters on a daily basis. I have visited many schools, and attended many conferences.

Over the next few columns I would like to explore the causes based on my recent experiences.

I will try to cover all of the parties that influence this situation such as; Parents, School Boards, Administrations and others. Stay tuned.

Charlie Hoff is a former member of the Board of Education for Federal Way Public Schools. His weekly column will appear in upcoming issues of the Federal Way News and online at www.federalwaynews.net.