SD? SBE? OSPI?

What are these? How do they affect children's education?

These "institutions," all funded by your tax dollars are supposed to have a positive effect upon our children's education.

Let's start with the ESD (Educational Service District)

This unit has a board that is "elected" by your local school board members. It used to be in the Burien Shopping Center but is now housed in some pretty expensive digs in Renton.

I doubt that any of the board members can remember who they are.

In the WSSDA tradition they try, very successfully, to remain uncontroversial.

I cannot recall in my years any actions that they have taken to "improve" education either at the school district, or classroom level.

Talking with many school employees, I usually got either a puzzled look or an outright denial of any knowledge of this group's effect upon classrooms. They do offer a series of "professional development" classes for teachers in South King County; run some head start programs and some other peripheral activities.

I would urge any who are interested to go to their web site for a closer look.

The phone directory of this organization takes several computer pages! While there are considerable costs here, improvements in classroom education would have to be considered as 'marginal" in my opinion.

This is a state that has some of the lowest funding for education. Yet it supports several of these Districts throughout the state.

They all have Superintendents, Boards of Directors, and employees. Perhaps in areas of the state with small school districts there might be a rationalization for them.

State Board of Education (SBE)

Again a "board" elected in large part by School Board members who probably cannot remember who serves on the "Board."

This Board also seems to follow the WSSDA motto of "no assertiveness."

This Board determines certification requirements for teachers, and recently has become involved in determining what a good mathematics program might look like.

In the certification arena they have made, at the behest of the teacher's union and the teacher's colleges, the process of obtaining a teacher's certificate as costly as possible.

This has deterred many qualified people to abandon the thought of teaching.

As this is another voluntary board, they do not do this work themselves but merely "ratify" something that is presented to them.

They avow, in their web site, that "they are dedicated to improve student performance dramatically, and provide all students the opportunity to succeed in postsecondary education, the 21st century workforce, and citizenship."

I am not sure what group of educators would not subscribe to this lofty ambition, but there is little evidence of any specific efforts of this group that reach into the classrooms of our schools.

An ambition such as this might have been voiced by the group that picked the colors for the deck chairs of the RMS Titanic!

I have only heard of one member of this Board who has ever advocated for any change in education that might show up in a classroom.

Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI)

This group, housed in the wonderfully restored, at considerable cost, Old Capitol Building, is supposed to act as the liaison between the State Government and individual school boards as well as to offer "its help" to the SBE in its "deliberations" on its ambitious goals.

There is a staff here of over 300 involved in apportioning and sending out the checks to the individual school districts for the funds allocated by the legislature.

When the Legislature finally figured out that school districts (boards) couldn't handle "educational reform," they placed defining what that meant in the hands of the SBE and OSPI.

Since the SBE had little or no expertise in this concept, the heavy lifting fell upon OSPI. Out of this came the WASL and well over $1 billion dollars of expense to "reform" education.

What has this accomplished?

We now know that our kids aren't doing well academically, at least as the WASL defines this.

Do we know what to do about this?

According to OSPI we need to "retrain" our teachers in the topic of the month.

While the Education Reform Act required new efforts by students, parents and educators, this group, and most school boards, seem to feel that they can do this without the first two parties if only they had more funds!

The Washington Education Association (Teacher's Union) is right there on this one!

Do you see any real hope for better education in these three groups?

There are only a few more parties involved in this mess. Next? The Legislature.

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.