End union power, improve education

Earlier this year, state legislative leaders said they wanted to reduce institutional racism in the public schools by enacting Senate Bill 5044 and similar bills to require that school and university employees attend mandatory Critical Race Theory sessions.

This flawed political ideology teaches that white people in all situations are oppressors and other groups are automatically oppressed. These leading lawmakers, who ironically control the very power structure they condemn, say the forced sessions will “dismantle structural racism.”

Strangely, the Legislature took no action to re-imagine the education redlining by neighborhood, by which black families are disproportionately assigned by zip code to failing urban schools.

State assessments find that public schools consistently fail to provide black children the basic education and skills they will need to achieve success in life. Officials report that only 14% of the state’s black eighth-graders are proficient in reading, and only 21% are proficient in math, aome 30 points lower than scores for white students, according to 2019 data.

Yet, every year, school officials assign children to 118 state-identified failing schools, handicapping their 40,000 students with a substandard education.

In our state Legislature, powerful Democrats controlling the education committees could pass laws to help minority and low-income children gain access to successful public-charter and private schools. However, lobbyist filings show the most influential interest group at the state capitol is the Washington Education Association union. The union uses its power to elect certain legislators, who then systematically block bills to give low-income, black children access to better schools.

For example, to promote learning choices, Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, introduced Senate Bill 5200, a bill to provide $15,000 private school scholarships to students with special needs and in foster care. Black children in particular would have benefitted from access to the cutting-edge therapies and teaching methods available only from the private sector.

During the committee hearing on S.B. 5200 on Jan. 29, 2021, Schoesler urged colleagues to pass the bill. “Why not try something different to help students and their families,” he asked.

Committee Chairwoman Sen. Lisa Wellman, at first responded warmly to helping black children. However, after WEA union lobbyist Lucinda Young testified in angry opposition to the bill’s generous help for students, the mood of some members changed and Wellman led the move to kill the bill in committee.

This is not the only time a bill to expand learning options for families was stopped in committee.

Later in the 2021 session, House Education Committee Chairwoman Rep. Sharon Tomiko-Santos blocked House Bill 1195, the bill to reauthorize the state public-charter school law. Her move killed Washington’s charter school law, meaning no more of these innovative public schools can open.

Washington’s 16 remaining charter schools successfully educate black students and send them to college. These schools are very popular in the minority community.

Why aren’t more Democrats in our state concerned about efforts to block new charter schools from opening and instead lead the charge to help minority students?

Certain lawmakers are also working to starve existing charter schools from receiving the same funding traditional public schools get. Charter schools are denied access to local levy funding, which represents about $2,500 on average per student.

During the 2020 legislative session, powerful Democrats blocked a bill and a budget provision to give charter schools more equitable funding.

All public school children deserve equal access to the good education that other children already enjoy. Reducing the WEA union’s power to block education options for black children would do far more for eliminating institutional racism than passing harmful bills like the Critical Race Theory mandate.

– Liv Finne is the Washington Policy Center Center for Education director. Email her at lfinne@washingtonpolicy.org.