A letter from WEA President Kim Mead...

When the Legislature adjourned this morning at around midnight, educators won a major victory: We maintained a top-in-the-nation evaluation system, protecting it from including unreliable and inaccurate data points. We can now continue our focus on implementing TPEP as a tool to improve teaching and learning.

Many thought the deck was stacked against us, but due to the work of thousands of WEA members, the Legislature did the right thing and adjourned without mandating the use of state tests in teacher evaluations.

Your emails, phone calls, letters, petitions and personal visits in Olympia educated legislators about why mandating state tests as part of teacher evaluations was not a good idea.

Congratulations.

Our success in protecting our evaluation system means local teachers and their administrators will continue to decide what assessments are appropriate to use in teacher evaluations. We'll be able to continue implementing our new evaluation system so it is fair and provides the feedback and support teachers need to be successful. That's good for both teachers and our students.

While legislators listened to us on teacher evaluations, the Legislature as a whole fell short on school funding and complying with the Supreme Court's McCleary decision. The budget they passed has NO funding for smaller class sizes or to restore educator COLAs, even though our class sizes are ranked 47th out of 50 and educators will go six years without a state COLA.

So while we won a significant policy victory, we still have a school funding challenge ahead of us. Our victory in Olympia on teacher evaluations shows that WEA members are a powerful advocate for public schools and students in Washington, and I'm confident that in coming weeks and months, we'll have the opportunity to make progress on important needs like class size and compensation.
 
Thank you for your hard work.
 
Sincerely,
Kim Mead, WEA president
 
P.S.: For a complete take on the legislative session, visit www.OurVoiceWashingtonEA.org