My choices are:
So here’s the thing, I’m note sure there’s anything seriously wrong with Washington State’s schools. I don’t know if they are being run well either. And if they are being run poorly, what can be done to fix them? I don’t think the education establishment has acquitted itself very well on it’s attempts to improve education. Both candidates are members of that establishment, from somewhat different perspectives. Whether or not we have the WASL in it’s current form I think is of little import, despite the arguments pro and con from teachers and whatnot. From my experience mentoring high school kids at Chief Sealth (one of the poorer performing and under-supplied schools in Seattle) the WASL is neither causing anyone’s downfall nor proving to be anyone’s savior. (I do wish the SPI would ban the gimmicks the Seattle Public Schools use to drop badly performing students from the official WASL statistics, but that’s not going to actually fix education.) And lastly, I don’t really know how much influence the Superintendent of Public Instruction really has on the individual school districts in the state.
So unless someone posts something really insightful here, I’ll not be voting in this race. I know I changed my mind on the Lt. Governor race, so maybe I will here too. But I’ll definitely need better arguments than either of the candidates’ web sites or the newspaper endorsements I’ve seen. Comment away, if you care.