ImageAfter a misspent summer of slumming with politics and task forces, the UFWS Blog is back. Not much changed while we were gone. Just as classes began last week, Washington’s state universities took another 6.3% cut to their state appropriations. For those keeping score at home, that brings the average cut to state appropriations for our public universities over the last two years to about 34%.

That hammer falls directly on our students. In the wake of the cuts, Western Washington University dropped the ax on fourteen programs and put twelve more on the chopping block. And for the programs that are left, students will inevitably be paying more.

And the students most likely to get screwed are the many in this state who should be going to college.

On September 14, the Seattle Times took a break from its relentless bashing of state employees to celebrate the news that Washington high-schoolers had the highest average SAT scores in the nation. But lest you think that the Times has lost its edge, read on. They congratulate the students, the legislature, and the state generally, but they can’t bring themselves to say the word teacher. From Barack Obama and Arne “I play basketball with the president so I must be cool” Duncan to organizations like Stand for Children and the Gates Foundation, all of our self-styled “education reformers” (none of whom would ever dream of working for teachers’ wages) are quick to blame teachers when students fail and unwilling to give them any credit when students succeed. Reading the Seattle Times, you get the impression that there must just be something in the water that makes our students do well on their SATs.

The Times editorialists really lose their tenuous grip on reality when they write: “This is worth applauding because the more students taking and doing well on, the SAT, the better chance of increasing Washington’s dismal numbers of high school graduates who earn a college degree.”

Well, no.

Not unless all those kids with high SAT scores have enough money to pay out of state tuition somewhere else. Washington ranked 48th in the nation in public university participation rates even before the bottom fell out in the last biennium. Thirty-four percent cuts to state appropriations on top of that doesn’t leave a lot of room for more students, no matter how high their SAT scores are. Washington’s public universities turn away thousands of qualified applicants every year due to dismal funding.

Faithful readers of the blog will no doubt recognize that we’ve made this point many times before and perhaps worry that we’re in danger of becoming a one trick pony. But again, not much has changed while we’ve been away.