The Washington State Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) Committee met Tuesday, July 24 to discuss the status of the GET program and to establish a new unit price. Established in 1998, the GET program is Washington’s 529 pre-paid tuition savings plan.

The Committee heard updates on the program as well as a presentation by the State Actuary on the status of the program. GET has sold 9,611 new accounts this year resulting in 943,718 new units. Although the program sold enough to remain solvent (over 900,000), it did fall short of its goal of selling over 1.5 million units.

The Committee also agreed to a $9 increase in the unit price for the 2012-2013 enrollment period beginning in November. The $9 increase will bring the cost of 1 GET unit to $172.

The Washington State Revenue Forecast Council released updated numbers for the month of July and the news is good … modestly. Revenues since the mid-June forecast were $66.5 million above the agency’s initial forecast.  But, according to The Olympian, interim forecaster Steve Lerch sounded a note of caution. “Due to the high variability of monthly Revenue Act receipts, it is too soon to tell whether this month’s Revenue Act variance represents a real increase in collections or if it will be at least partially reversed next month.”

Lerch goes on to caution that the the June’s ” US employment report of only 80,000 new jobs indicates  that the labor market remains weak and businesses are cautious about adding new workers. To put this in context, employment gains of approximately 160,000 each month for the next year would be needed to reduce the unemployment rate by 0.5%.

He also warns that the the Washington economy continues to grow at a moderate pace and, much like the national experience, Washington employment growth has slowed down after a strong start at the beginning of the year. 

These higher collections and recent caseload forecasts push the state’s total general fund reserves, including the Rainy Day Fund, above $410 million through June 2013.

You can access the full report here.

Last week The Compensation Technical Working Group finished nearly a year’s worth of work around K-12 salary recommendations by releasing a 177 page report to the Legislature. The Compensation Technical Working Group (CTWG) was formed after the Legislature passed legislation tasking the group with developing an enhanced, collaboratively designed salary allocation model for the K-12 sector. According to a news release from the CTWG, the key directives for the group’s report were:

• Attract and retain the highest quality educators
• Reduce the number of tiers within the existing salary allocation model
• Account for regions of the state where it may be difficult to recruit and retain teachers
• Conduct a comparative labor market analysis of school employee salaries and other compensation
• Provide a concurrent implementation schedule

The nine key recommendations are:

• Increase the starting salary for teachers and educational staff associates to $48,687
• Provide Fair Market-Based salary allocations for all K-12 staff
• Maintain comparable wage levels through an annual cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) and periodic wage analyses
• Align the Salary Allocation Model to the Career Continuum for Educators
• Invest in 10 days of Professional Development time
• Allocate mentors and instructional coaches in the Basic Education Funding Formula
• Provide appropriate staffing levels and increased program support for Basic Education
• Amply fund state Basic Education salary allocations and limit locally funded salary enhancement to 10 percent of the state allocation
• Ensure school districts receive the same or higher state salary allocations per state-funded employee

Detailed descriptions of these recommendations can be found in the report.

Of particular interest to The Evergreen State College were the group’s recommendations on salary allocation for teacher’s with advanced degrees. The Evergreen State College currently offers a Master’s in Teaching. After much deliberation the group recommended a model that “recognizes the level of education the employee attains. The salary allocation model provides an increase in salary for a graduate degree (Master’s or PhD), but reduces the premium from the current 21 percent (highest in the nation) to 8 percent. The group lowered the premium to a similar level that other states pay educators for advanced degrees as well as to a level recognized by comparable occupations.”

The group reached these conclusions after reviewing research on graduate degrees and teacher effectiveness. Recognizing that the research is mixed and limited to studies that measure the effect on student achievement in limited subjects and grade levels, the group relied primarily focused on research that found an in-subject Master’s degree leads to increased student achievement in those particular subjects. As a result, the CTWG recommended that the advanced degrees must be relevant to current or future assignments, as locally determined by the school district, in order to be eligible for placement on the proposed tier on the salary allocation model. This recommendation is aligned with the current statutory requirement that credits be aligned to the individual’s current or future assignment. Additional credits and clock hours are removed from the salary allocation model, but the group recommends that the state pay for additional time for professional development activities.

This recommendation should have little effect on Evergreen’s program due to the fact we require students enter the MIT program with their “content” area credits achieved.

The report is to be sent to the Legislature for their consideration. With a price tag of nearly $2 Billion to implement all of the recommendations, the Legislature will need to decide whether to accept the group’s findings, and if so, how they will be implemented and ultimately paid for. Although the price tag is very steep, the CTWG’s recommendations were released on the heels of the State Supreme Court’s McCleary decision. In McCleary, the court found that Washington is not living up to its constitutional duty to fully-fund K-12 education. As a result, the CTWG’s recommendations may play a significant role in the coming legislative session.

Several other groups will also be taking up the report. Most immediately the Quality Education Council will meet July 20 at the Cherberg Building in Olympia. It is expected that the QEC will discuss the recommendation in depth and make recommendations to the Legislature based on their deliberations.

Another group that will be keeping tabs on the Compensation Technical Working Group recommendations is the Joint Education Funding Task Force created by HB 2824. The group is directed to produce a report by the end of the year that describes how to fund elements of ESHB 2261. Passed in 2009, ESHB 2261 sets out to fully-fund K-12 education, a constitutional duty of the State of Washington.