Many organizations give position statements without actually knowing what their constituents believe on important issues.  NWPE is dedicated to determining educators' actual views on important issues and sharing this information with policy makers.  Over 1100 educators were invited to participate in NWPE's survey.  A report on the survey results covers four major areas:  Education Reform, Education Funding, Legislative/Policy Issues, and Current Concerns of Educators.  Just a few of the results are listed here.  See www.nwpe.org for the full report.

EDUCATION REFORM:  Educators were surveyed on their views of the effectiveness of Washington 's current education reform process.  This reform agenda was initiated in 1992 and established Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) and the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).  Some notable results indicate that:

• 67% believe that the WASL distracts from classroom instruction;
• 72% believe that EALRs and the WASL have impeded teacher authority to make routine decisions on classroom management and instructional methods;
• 69% believe that the expenditure of state funds on the education reform agenda tied to the WASL has not been an efficient and effective use of state education dollars for raising student achievement; and
• 77% believe the WASL should be discontinued in favor of an effective but less costly student assessment and accountability system that includes multiple measures such as locally chosen assessment tools and standardized tests such as the ITBS, NAEP as a sampling to determine program strengths, etc.  

EDUCATION FUNDING:       

• 65% oppose instituting a state income tax;
• 55% oppose temporary tax increases and/or "sin" tax to maintain education funding;
• 55% support cutting other programs and/or raising taxes to fully fund teachers' COLAs; and
• 64% support cutting other programs and/or raising taxes to fully fund class size initiative.

  LEGISLATIVE/POLICY:  Some issues with significant interest among educators revealed:

• 73% believe unfunded mandates should be considered "not mandatory;"
• 58% believe teacher strikes should be prohibited (70% among NWPE members); and
• 57% support HB 1194 requiring teaching the relationship of the Declaration of Independence to the state and federal constitutions (65% among NWPE members).

Additional issues such as charter schools, retire/rehire policy, and flexible compensation packages to attract and retain high quality teachers were surveyed.  These are reported on later in this document.

EDUCATOR CONCERNS:  The percentage of respondents who indicated moderate to high concern with the issues listed is detailed below: 

• 89%  Class Size           
• 87%  Discipline
• 86%  Pay         
• 83%  Benefits   
• 82%  Teacher quality
• 78%  Teacher authority to make routine classroom decisions for students
• 69%  Religious or political intolerance in schools
• 60%  Reliability of union support for all bargaining unit members

Please see NWPE's website for additional details about the views expressed above as well as educators' views on numerous education issues such as charter schools, teacher strikes, performance pay, and more.