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Saturday, August 4, 2012

We thank the PDC of WA...

We thank the PDC of WA for the detailed maintenance of its political contribution database. Although the PDC has its critics, it is the essence of democracy to understand who is driving the political process. Sorting by contributions for all Washington elections in 2012, these are the contributions over $100K to date (August 4th, 2012) :


Name Contributor Date Amount
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS GATES BILL 2012-06-19 800000.00
VOTERS WANT MORE CHOICES - SAVE THE 2/3RDS (MIKE FAGAN) ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON BUSINESS PAC 2012-06-29 265000.00
NEW APPROACH WA STEVES RICK 2012-07-17 250000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS GATES BILL 2012-06-07 200000.00
VOTERS WANT MORE CHOICES - SAVE THE 2/3RDS (MIKE FAGAN) ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON BUSINESS PAC 2012-05-30 185000.00
SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTL UNION WA ST COUNCIL PAC SEIU WASHINGTON STATE COUNCIL 2012-04-24 150000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS JACKIE 2012-06-13 125000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS MIKE 2012-06-13 125000.00
NEW APPROACH WA AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF WA FOUNDATION 2012-07-19 100000.00
NEW APPROACH WA STEVES RICK 2012-06-29 100000.00
OUR WASHINGTON SEIU 1199 NW 2012-07-07 100000.00
SEIU HEALTHCARE 1199 NW PAC SEIU HEALTHCARE 1199 NW 2012-06-26 100000.00
VOTERS WANT MORE CHOICES - SAVE THE 2/3RDS (MIKE FAGAN) WASHINGTON BEER & WINE DISTRIBUTORS ASSOCIATION 2012-05-11 100000.00
WA UNITED FOR MARRIAGE SEIU WASHINGTON STATE COUNCIL 2012-05-24 100000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS JACKIE 2012-06-22 100000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS MIKE 2012-06-22 100000.00



An enormous amount of money is being pumped into "Yes on 1240" which is an initiative to bring "public charter schools" to Washington. Our society these days  is very caught up in monitoring teaching and encouraging student testing and education reform.  For example, the Anacortes School District has received a $500,000 grant from the W.K. Kellog Foundation that intends to create a "cycle of Inquiry embedded professional development system for teachers".  This pilot is intended to become a state wide evaluation system for all WA teachers.  The actor Matt Damon recently gave a speech about his educational experience, citing the fact that all of the great lessons given him by his public school teachers would not have been uncovered by a standardized test. His speech is worth  a listen:


1 comment:

Dan McShane said...

Thanks for the links on this.