Ben Mitchell
Director of Advocacy & Policy, Foundation for Tacoma Students
We’re one third of the way through the legislative session calendar, and there are two key things on the docket in the coming weeks:
Two different cutoff dates will winnow down legislation.
Governor Ferguson will release a budget document laying out what he’d like to see.
Our top priority, expanding a financial aid outreach specialist program, is still moving along and faces an important hearing today, February 17, in the Senate Ways and Means Committee. It feels like every week the budget environment gets harder, and for us and every advocate who wants to do something that costs money, it’s a much more challenging dynamic than it has been in recent years.
Governor Ferguson held a formal press conference with an armada of cabinet officials and lawmakers last week where they stood in unified opposition to President Trump’s efforts to withhold federal funds – which account for about a third of our state’s budget – roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and hardline policies on immigration.
Speaking of the federal government, to say we’re staring over the precipice of the end of our democracy is a little hot, but suffice to say we don’t like where we’re at. It’s not clear what’s going to unfold on that front in the coming months, but what’s much more clear at this point is where the legislative agenda is headed in DC. Simply put, what Republicans in congress want to do is take medical care and nutrition assistance away from poor people so that they can do regressive tax cuts.
Lost and overlooked amidst everything happening in DC was the release of academic achievement scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (The federal test scores began to circulate on the same day that there was panic across the country about the freeze on federal funding, and in our circles, how this would affect local schools).
The NAEP data showed a decline in student learning since 2022, part of a longer term trend. Of course, if Trump manages to set himself up as a dictator, nobody will really care about growing academic achievement gaps. But we don’t want to pre-concede that outcome. Not just because it’s important to be clear-eyed about how well our schools are doing nationally and in Washington, but also because it should serve as a call to action. And that’s what we’re here for.
Two key cutoff dates are coming up
The first major deadline of the legislative calendar is February 21, by which most bills must pass out of the policy committees in either the Senate or the House. Then one week later, on February 28, most bills that cost money must get voted out of either the Senate or House fiscal committees. That’s Ways and Means in the Senate, and Appropriations in the House.
These are the two cutoff dates for Levels 1 and 2 in a bill’s journey through the Legislative Session Video Game:
Level 1: Get voted out of policy committee in house of origin (House or Senate)
February 21 deadline
Level 2: Get voted out of fiscal committee in house of origin
February 28 deadline
Level 3: Get approved by Rules committee to move to a vote of the full chamber
Level 4: Get majority vote of full house of origin
Levels 5-8: Switch to opposite chamber, repeat steps 1-4 over there
Level 9: Get signed into law by Governor
Bills that don’t make it past these two levels in time are most likely dead, although there are clever ways to bring them back to life. And one very important exception is that bills that address taxation or are considered necessary to implement the state budget are exempt from these deadlines.
Our top priority bill has a fiscal hearing today
Senate Bill 5164 will have a hearing today in the Ways and Means Committee.
Our big policy issue this year is to invest in skilled and trusted adults whose purpose is to help students get financial aid, and enroll in a right-fit education program after high school. This bill is the vehicle, and it proposes to do two things:
Invest in more boots on the ground by expanding a promising pilot program that will embed financial aid outreach specialists at 2-year and 4-year public colleges and universities.
Offer financial aid training and professional development for adults who work with students in any capacity, and who may not have the technical understanding themselves of financial aid processes.
Our pet policy is in Level 2, and getting a hearing 11 days before the fiscal cutoff on February 28 is a pretty good buffer for the bill to get amended.
And it’s going to have to get amended to be made much skinnier in terms of its cost. The version of the bill that will be heard today has a price tag of more than $27 million over the two-year budget. That’s driven by a statewide expansion of the outreach specialist program, and it’s simply not realistic for the budget this year.
In our Week 3 Update we discussed how the House Version of this legislation was amended to scale down the expansion and remove the financial aid training piece, bringing the cost down for the House bill to about $5 million over two years. That number is still too large, and so we’ll try to get the Senate Bill scaled down to a cost that could be found in the couch cushions of the state budget.
Regarding that House Bill, it’s sitting over in the Appropriations committee and has not been scheduled for a hearing. That indicates that the Senate bill is the “mover” between the two. This is a dynamic that always plays out when there’s twin legislation out of the gates in the Senate and the House. Through a confluence of priorities, relationships, strategy, and politics among lawmakers and advocates, one bill becomes the moving vehicle while the other sits in neutral.
Where things stand with other priority bills
With the policy cutoff date this Friday, a lot of the priority bills we’re tracking are on shaky ground. This isn’t about separating the wheat from the chaff. Lots of bills that are good on the substance get hung up because the policy window just wasn’t quite open this year, a concept we discussed when we introduced our policy platform. And this is a particularly tough year given the budget environment.
Here’s where we’re at: (😁 = Very good shape; 🙂 = good shape; 😬 = dicey; 😵 = dead; 🤔 = I have no idea).
House Bill 1587 – Encouraging local government partner promise scholarship programs within the opportunity scholarship program.
Status – 🙂 (Level 2)
Passed the policy committee and will have a hearing in the Appropriations Committee on Feb. 19.
What this bill does
Allows local governments who want to create a college promise program to access matching funds through the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship.
House Bill 1273 – Improving student access to dual credit programs.
Status – 😬 (Level 1)
Scheduled for a policy committee vote on either Feb. 17 or Feb. 20.
What this bill does
Improves high school student access to career and technical education programs by enhancing collaboration between K-12 and higher education, developing statewide articulation agreements, and improving administrative systems.
Senate Bill 5402 – Modifying financial aid eligibility
Status – 😬 (Level 2)
The bill passed the policy committee unanimously on Feb. 6, but has been sitting in Ways and Means since.
What this bill does:
Expands the reach of the Washington College Grant to make attendance at any public 2-year or 4-year college or university tuition free for families making up to 70% of the state median family income.
House Bill 1557 – Establishing the Washington guaranteed admissions program and requiring student notifications
Status – 😬 (Level 1)
The bill is scheduled for a vote in the House Postsecondary Committee on Feb. 18.
What the bill does:
Formalizes the Washington Guaranteed Admissions Program in state statute, and promotes universal participation in the program among K-12 school districts.
Senate Bill 5352 and House Bill 1404 – Increasing student access to free meals served at public schools
Status – 😬 (Level 1)
Both bills had their hearings the first week of February, but have not been scheduled for votes. The House Bill bypassed the Education Committee and went straight to the Appropriations Committee, so that one has an extra week of runway.
What these bills do:
Mandates free meals for all public school students in Washington State starting in the 2026-27 school year.
Senate Bill 5007 – Supporting students who are chronically absent
Status – 😬 (Level 1)
Had a policy committee hearing on Jan. 28, not yet scheduled for a vote.
What this bill does:
Enhances training for educators, expands dropout prevention programs, provides grants for community partnerships
There’s also a swath of K-12 funding bills that we’ve been tracking, and we’ll revisit those in two weeks after the fiscal cutoff when it’s more clear which bills are still alive, and if they’ve been amended.
It’s not clear what’s happening with new taxes
Going into the session we talked about how Democratic legislators were strategizing about new tax options to do some of the work in closing our very large budget deficit. Publicly, that talk has quieted down, but there’s intense lobbying going on out of public view. The next revenue forecast update is on March 18, and so it seems around then is when the public dialogue for new taxes could pick back up.
Governor Ferguson has said that before he will seriously consider new taxes, he wants to find savings and efficiencies through cuts across almost all state agencies. Agencies were given a budget reduction target of 6%, and the total estimated savings from these cuts would be about $1.8 billion in the next two-year state budget. The Governor has also said that these cuts are assumed to be on top of the $2 billion in savings that former Governor Inslee proposed. Taken together, the cuts from Inslee and Ferguson would take care of about two-thirds of the projected two-year budget shortfall.
Governor Ferguson indicated he’ll release a budget plan in a week or so, which presumably will sketch out his proposal for closing the budget deficit. Whether or not new revenue is part of the plan, and if so, how much and through which tax mechanism is a big question.
For the legislature’s part, Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate have been saying for months that they think some kind of new revenue is necessary. They point to the results of the November 2024 election where voters upheld our state’s capital gains tax as an indication that there’s support.
With that, let’s take a break from the legislative session and talk about NAEP.
What's going on with NAEP?
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) bills itself as our national report card on student academic outcomes. It’s an every-other year test that is administered by the federal government, and it tracks student achievement in math and reading in fourth and eighth grades, among other subjects. A representative sample of about 450,000 4th and 8th graders from every state are selected to take part in the assessment, and this gives us the only national yardstick by which we gauge student learning and make comparisons across states. The most recent round of NAEP testing took place between January and March of 2024, and the results were released on January 29 of this year.
What’s going on with NAEP scores nationally is a continuation of a troubling long-term trend of declining scores overall and a widening achievement gap. This got a lot of coverage in the niche world of education media:
Reading scores fall to new low on NAEP, fueled by declines for struggling students
NAEP scores show disheartening trends for the lowest-performing students
The Seattle Times also provided a good summary of the scores for our state.
In broad strokes, the national picture is that from 2022 to 2024 students held steady in math achievement, but lost ground in reading. But it’s important to remember that holding steady since 2022 still represents a decline since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The continuing decline since 2022 in reading scores is especially concerning, since that was on the heels of the pandemic and we would want to see at least a modest bounceback since then.
Take a minute to study the graphics above and what you’ll notice is that at the national level there has been a long-term trend of stagnation in student learning, and widening gaps between top students and lower-scoring students. You’ll also see a big dip coming out of the pandemic, not surprisingly, but we think the key thing to notice is that the downward trend in student learning started well beforehand. We can’t pin this on COVID.
Reading scores stand out. A 4th grade student must have a minimum score of 208 to be at a basic level, and 40% of 4th graders nationwide scored below that threshold, the highest percentage in 20 years. Scoring below basic in 4th grade reading means that a student will struggle to sequence events or determine the meaning of familiar words.
Below basic is a skill level we should not be comfortable with, and we want to be clear that for us at FFTS we see this as our education system coming up short, not students.
Increasing achievement gaps in Washington
The actual NAEP website is a bit clunky and hard to navigate. We recommend this helpful NAEP Dashboard from the consulting firm Watershed Advisors. You can get a quick sense of how Washington stacks up against other states:
4th grade reading proficiency
32%, tied for 14th nationally
8th grade math proficiency
30%, tied for 19th nationally
You could look at how well our state’s education system performs compared to others and feel with some justification that we’re doing okay. While proficiency rates in the 30s are too low, that reflects a national challenge, and comparatively speaking Washington’s education system is better than most other states.
But there are two problems with this takeaway.
First, we can’t lose sight of the fact that we are in the midst of an overall decline in academic achievement. While this trend is true for the country as a whole, we’ve had a steeper decline in Washington, coupled with widening achievement gaps, especially in math:
National change, 2013-2024
4th grade reading
Top 10 percent: up 1 point
Bottom 10 percent: down 15 points
Not economically disadvantaged: down 7 points
Economically disadvantaged: down 5 points
8th grade math
Top 10 percent: down 3 points
Bottom 10 percent: down 18 points
Not economically disadvantaged: down 9 points
Economically disadvantaged: down 13 points
Washington change, 2013-2024
4th grade reading
Top 10 percent: down 1 point
Bottom 10 percent: down 18 points
Not economically disadvantaged: down 8 points
Economically disadvantaged: down 8 points
8th grade math
Top 10 percent: down 4 points
Bottom 10 percent: down 26 points
Not economically disadvantaged: down 10 points
Economically disadvantaged: down 21 points
Second, states have very different student populations, so it’s misleading to simply compare NAEP scores. The Urban Institute has a great resource where they compare a state’s actual NAEP scores to what would be expected given student demographics, and then produce demographically adjusted NAEP results for each state. They have to make some judgement calls with this, so take it with a grain of salt, but it produces a very different picture of school quality across states:
Unadjusted NAEP scores, 2024
4th grade reading
#1 – Massachusetts
#2 – New Jersey & Wyoming (tie)
#4 – Colorado & New Hampshire (tie)
#13 – Washington (tied with nine other states)
8th grade math
#1 – Massachusetts & Wisconsin (tie)
#3 – Minnesota, New Jersey & Utah (tie)
#24 – Washington (tied with Kansas)
Demographically adjusted NAEP scores, 2024
4th grade reading
#1 – Mississippi
#2 – Louisiana
#3 – Florida
#4 – Massachusetts
#5 – Indiana
#26 – Washington
8th grade math
#1 – Mississippi
#2 – Massachusetts
#3 – Louisiana
#4 – Illinois
#5 – Indiana
#30 – Washington
Some states are responding admirably to serving disadvantaged students. But since Washington is on average wealthier and better educated, our education system is achieving less than meets the eye.
We’re guided by a goal to see students obtain a good earning wage job, with a focus on higher education as a means to that end. So this is very troubling for us. It will be several years before 4th and 8th graders in Washington are navigating their options for education after high school, but the NAEP scores are an early warning about how well our K-12 system is preparing students to do this. We have to reverse these slides in academic achievement in Washington. Students and families face enough obstacles between high school and postsecondary education as it is, and we can’t let academic learning be another one.
Figuring out what to do
We need to keep front and center that the challenge before us as a state is not the narrow issue of learning loss due to the COVID pandemic. The bigger picture is a prolonged overall slide in academic achievement since about 2013, and a gradually widening achievement gap that has accelerated since 2019.
What makes this hard is that there’s not one culprit for this situation. The great recession years of 2009-2012 loom very large. The recession made the lives of poor families and their children extremely hard, and led to a decline in school funding as state budgets were cut. Smartphones, screen time, and social media are unequivocally bad for young people and learning, and the prevalence of these things has grown exponentially.
But we also have to consider what’s been going on inside our schools, especially if we want to get a handle on the widening achievement gap between high- and low-performing students. Michael Petrilli is the President of the Fordham Institute, an education reform research and policy shop. In a recent piece he chronicles a red-state, blue-state divide when it comes to education reform that we think is important for us to consider in Washington. Petrilli gives a verbose definition of “education reform” that can be boiled down as having three main pieces:
A focus on how well money is spent, as opposed to simply how much money is spent.
A prioritization of student outcomes and narrowing the achievement gap.
A belief that the way our education system is managed is really important. Yes, factors outside of a school building are significant, but schools matter and they can be better.
Petrilli’s account is that through the 1990s to the mid 2010s education reform was ascendant across the country, and during this time we saw academic achievement going up and gaps narrowing. But over the last 10+ years Democratic states have moved on from the reform project, while red states have stayed the course to varying degrees. The explicit argument Petrilli makes, and one that we agree with, is that in blue states like Washington we should rediscover the old education reform wisdom.
As we’ve written about previously the necessity of basic education funding is taking up most of the education policy oxygen this legislative. And that’s fine. Research suggests that backing up a dump truck of money does lead to higher test scores and more college going. But as we call for in our Platform, it’s not just about how much we spend, it also has to be about how well we spend in terms of focusing on the things that are shown to drive improved student outcomes and narrow achievement gaps.
The Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University has driven this point home examining the return on investment on state funding against changes in academic outcomes. The data tells an uncomfortable story for most states that undermines the case for investing in our schools. At FFTS we want to change this storyline.
It doesn't have to be a fight
There was a fascinating hearing in the House Education Committee last week for House Bill 1832. The bill is sponsored by Republican lawmaker Michael Keaton – a former Puyallup school board member, not Batman – and is coined the Building Opportunities for Student Success (BOSS) Act. The bill reflects current education reform trends:
Extra funding for students not meeting English language arts or math standards.
Funding incentives for schools where students are showing growth on assessments.
A grant program for elementary reading coaches.
A requirement for schools to use curriculum based on the science of reading.
A requirement for a third grade retention policy for students not reading at grade level.
Instruction to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to consider adopting a specific math method called Singapore Math.
The bill does not have a path forward for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is our daunting budget deficit. But what made the hearing intriguing was the constructive testimony from OSPI and the Washington Education Association. Both of these key institutions testified “con” on the bill, but they signalled broad agreement with the intent of the legislation. You can watch the hearing here, beginning at the 1:00:30 mark, and skip ahead to 1:31:40 to see the key testimony.
OSPI highlighted their support for the goal for targeted investments in early literacy and math. But they don’t like the idea of mandatory third grade retention, and teacher bonuses tied to student achievement because it could benefit teachers in already high-performing schools. Fair enough.
The WEA said clearly that they support the goals of the bill, and that they acknowledge that our education system in Washington can do better. They ticked off components of the bill they agree with – reading coaches, updating teacher endorsement standards, investing in teacher professional development – and things they don’t like such as the grade retention policies. Nasue Nishida from the WEA closed her testimony with the following statement:
“While we don’t agree with most of this bill, there is a lot of energy, we feel energy in this committee and among stakeholders to come together, roll up our sleeves, figure out a plan, work on a direction for our students, and do it together.”
Okay then! Those are sentiments we can work with. Because after all, in Washington we’re not going to make policy to improve student learning if teachers, the most powerful education interest group in our state, aren’t onboard.
A key factor in the breakdown of education reform in blue states was this hostile dynamic between reformers and teacher’s unions. There are examples of blue state peers that show it doesn’t have to be this way. In Maryland they’ve rediscovered education reform ideas in areas where there is agreement like the science of reading and high dosage tutoring, which is something we’ve called for and is a core plank of our policy platform. And if we can’t find traction for those ideas for whatever reason, there are other evidence-based practices that we should kick the tires on at the state and local level.
Democratic lawmakers or a certain ambitious first-term Governor in Washington should seize this opportunity to step forward, find agreement, and lead on turning the tide on student learning.
