Upgrading a school system with fair state funding - Lake Washington School District, Redmond, Washington

American Education, August-Sept, 1984 by Rod Chandler

The two major reforms for Lake Washington School District have brought about dramatic results. Since 1976, student achievement test scores have soared. In eight years, fourth graders improved from the 59th percentile (41 percent of the children tested performed better) to the 74th percentile. On the Iowa tests of Basic Skills, Lake Washington students improved their average achievement test scores from just about the 60th percentile in 1975 to over the 90th in 1983. (Test scores are reported in national percentiles. A national percentile rank indicates the percent of students in the national sample which the student's scores equalled or exceeded.)

The community attitude toward Lake Washington schools reflects the change. Bob Hughes, president of the school board, says business and citizen support for schools is stronger than he has ever seen it. "We are passing special levies now with 80 percent voter approval," he points out.

Vogel agrees and cites teacher morale as another indicator of improvement. "We still have problems with pay and public recognition," she says. "But teachers here are far more satisfied now than they were ten years ago. And because of that they are doing a better job."

Project 2001 and forward planning

Just the same, Scarr and the school board are not satisfied. They have now launched a forward-looking planning program called Project 2001 to plan for the future.

"We know that children born in 1983 will graduate from high school in the year 2001," says Scarr. "We established a project which will examine the needs of high school graduates that year so we can start providing the education to satisfy those needs today."

Project 2001 has attracted a citizens' committee with some real clout. The presidents of four major corporations are serving along with teachers, administrators and citizen activists.

Futurists from Harvard, Hudson Institute, Boston Consulting Company and Stanford will provide the committee with predictions of educational needs in the future. The group will also visit employment centers in Massachusetts, California, Texas, and Florida to learn from employers what their requirements will be. Interviews with individuals representing the arts and humanities will be conducted and an examination of other professions will be made. By the end of 1984 a draft plan of recommendations and an action plan will be presented to the school board.

The idea of forward planning like this has captured the imagination of the community. As one committee member, Tom Paur, President of Intergraphics Corporation, put it, "What can be more important than planning for the future? We can be a creative and positive force now and maybe avoid the problems we face today twenty years from now."

Teachers, administrators, parents, and citizens of the Lake Washington School District are vastly more satisfied today with their schools than they were a decade ago. By establishing goals and setting up strategies for meeting them, by training teachers and evaluating their performance the district has come a long way toward excellence in education. Stable school funding from the state has resulted in better teacher-to-student class ratios (1 to 27 in Lake Washington) and far greater security for teachers whose jobs were never certain from year to year under the old levy system.