(The Center Square) – The Washington State Board of Education has adopted its annual legislative platform that guides the Board’s advocacy work for the year.
At a meeting earlier this month, SBE set its 2025 legislative platform to include building on “an equitable and inclusive K-12 education system where every student is empowered with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in a changing world.”
Among the priorities for SBE is continuing work on FutureReady, its strategic plan aimed at comprehensively updating high school graduation requirements.
SBE plans to ask lawmakers for additional funding to build support through, “a task force, subcommittees, and community liaisons, with a focus on gathering input from underserved communities.”
A two page document from SBE on FutureReady notes, “In today’s rapidly changing landscape, our current graduation requirements may fall short of fully preparing students for success.”
Financial literacy as a graduation requirement is on the list.
This includes things like being able to read financial statements, understanding interest rates, credit terms, and how to create a budget.
Rep. Skyler Rude, R-Walla Walla, ranking minority member of the House Education Committee, offered a financial education bill during the 2024 legislative session.
“It would have students obtain a half credit of financial literacy education to graduate and it passed the House unanimously and went onto the Senate where it died,” said Rude in a Thursday interview with The Center Square, who added he’s been working with the state education board on developing a similar bill for next session.
“Even without a bill, we will likely be going in that direction because they are (SBE) interested in doing that, but I still want to have a bill that puts in statute it will be a graduation requirement and sets a timeline in law for them to complete that work,” said Rude.
Rude said SBE is surveying districts across the state to determine how many are already teaching financial literacy and if any already require it to graduate.
“That will be really important for us going into session to know how many districts are already doing that,” said Rude.
SBE is also pushing ahead with ‘mastery-based learning’ (MBE) as one its core missions.
According to SBE’s document on MBL, “Students receive help based on their individual interests and needs. Students move forward at their own pace. This is especially important as students recover from learning disruptions caused by COVID-19.”
Inclusion is a big theme in MBL.
“Students experience compassion and belonging. MBL honors the unique contributions of every student and the knowledge they bring from their diverse cultures and communities.”
Critics of MBL including authors on the website educatedandfree, argue MBL is cheating all students out of a robust education.
Rep. Rude also has concerns about MBL.
“The whole concept of a student having to demonstrate mastery of a topic is really good, but the downside sometimes is if we give teachers so much latitude to determine what mastery is then we might not be creating a uniform system, so that’s a concern,” said Rude.
The Walla Walla lawmaker shared an experience touring a school in Olympia where they use mastery based learning.
“I was asking a lot of questions about how to transfer classroom credit into what colleges are looking at and I wasn’t really satisfied with the answers that I got,” said Rude.
“My goal for K-12 would be producing students who are exceptionally well qualified to move onto the next chapter in their lives, whether that is higher education or working, or on an apprenticeship,” said Rude. “I’m not confident our schools are doing that right now.”
Another goal for SBE in 2025 is to diversify the teaching workforce, so that teachers look like the students they are educating.
Rude said he supports the concept but has concerns about it wading into affirmative action territory.
“It’s far more important that we have quality teachers than it is pushing this constant conversation about race because sometimes talking about it so much ends up not being beneficial,” said Rude.
SBE will also be pressing lawmakers for more funding for special education to include removing the cap on special education funding.
