Make WA education chief answerable to the governor to increase accountability

It’s hard to know whom to blame for poor outcomes in education. Frustrated parents complain about teachers or principals. Exasperated taxpayers criticize budget managers and school board members. The bottom line is, authority over education in Washington is so diffuse that no one person is answerable.

Instead, nearly a dozen agencies — the state Board of Education; Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction; Charter Commission; Department of Children, Youth and Families; Professional Educator Standards Board; Student Achievement Council; Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board; State Board of Community and Technical Colleges; and the state Education Ombuds — all have some say in children’s education. Plus, of course, 295 school boards. With so many masters, no one is really in charge.

Not even Gov. Jay Inslee. And that’s in a state where the Constitution declares education the state’s “paramount duty.”

This tangle, amid persistently lackluster results, is at the root of several proposals floated over the past decade to put education under control of the governor, like the departments overseeing commerce, transportation, agriculture, corrections, employment, labor, health care and child welfare. That way, Washington’s CEO could hold an education chief accountable for problems. Unlike now, when no one has this authority.

Lawmakers must pave the way by enabling the governor to appoint a schools chief who is an education expert, not just an energetic campaigner.

The most recent idea along these lines came from the current Superintendent of Public Instruction himself. Chris Reykdal says he campaigned for election to the position partly to start that conversation. The legislation he supported, which would have required passage of a constitutional amendment, sank last year under the perception that it would remove autonomy from local school districts — a power grab, parents said.

Yet more power for oversight is exactly what our state education system needs. Too many agencies with limited authority allows for buck-passing that ends nowhere.

By law, the Office of Public Instruction is mostly an information-collection agency. It is not empowered to do much with that data. Reykdal acknowledged this frustration last month, describing the questions he often gets about tracking how money was spent to address education during the pandemic: Which districts did intensive tutoring? Who offered after-school supports? What were the exact interventions aimed at learning recovery?

“This state has never accounted in that way,” Reykdal said during his State of Education address in January.

It’s the same with budgeting. When districts submit multiyear spreadsheets forecasting million-dollar deficits, OSPI doesn’t do much beyond offering gentle guidance to get back on track. It has little authority to take corrective action.

Being elected does allow the state’s education chief to speak “boldly, with an independent voice,” Reykdal says. And on some matters, like charter schools, he has indeed made his position clear, inveighing against anything that suggests privatization.

But he has been far less bold about pushing for high standards. After test scores revealed that 4th and 8th graders are weaker in math and reading than they’ve been in nearly 20 years, Reykdal’s description of learning loss as “a misnomer” is galling.

When the same national assessments showed that only a third of eighth graders were proficient in reading, Reykdal waved off concerns, saying this rating represents “a very high bar” because it indicates that students are on track to enter college without needing remediation when they get there. Isn’t that what we expect? (Only 28% of eighth graders were proficient in math.)

The cost of Washington’s hands-off approach was made clear through a recent investigation into the Northwest School of Innovation Learning, which contracts with the state to provide education for special-needs kids. A Seattle Times report found that, rather than educating students, Northwest SOIL abused and neglected them. Yet Reykdal defended his agency’s consistent renewal of Northwest SOIL’s contracts, saying his oversight was limited by state law.

Back in 2012, then-Gov. Chris Gregoire recognized these problems and suggested making the schools chief a cabinet-level position with authority over the entire span of a child’s education, from preschool through college. She knew it would be an unpopular idea. It was.

That’s because Washington has a proud tradition of local control. Appointing a Secretary of Education would not change this. But it would make one person — the governor — answerable for outcomes, something that has been sorely lacking.