Washington is at an education crossroads, where record spending collides with record failure, and parents are demanding lawmakers finally put accountability ahead of bureaucracy.
As Washington prepares for the 2026 legislative session, the familiar chorus is rising again: our schools are “underfunded.” The Washington Education Association (WEA) insists that the legislature must raise new revenue, through measures like a wealth tax, expand benefits for classified staff, protect current funding levels, and grow early childhood programs. Their platform is built to message to lawmakers, lobbyists and taxpayers, that more money will fix what’s broken. Each session the legislature spends allocates more funding to education and each year, the problem grows larger, hurting our students the most.
The numbers don’t lie. According to the Reason Foundation’s K‑12 Education Spending Spotlight 2025, public education in Washington and across the nation is already fully funded. In fact, it is funded at historic levels. Nationally, public school spending is approaching one trillion dollars a year. Washington alone spends more than $20,000 per student, well above the national median. Yet despite this unprecedented investment, student achievement is collapsing.
The disconnect is staggering. Teacher salaries, adjusted for inflation, have actually declined by more than six percent since 2002, even as benefit costs, primarily pensions and insurance, have soared by eighty‑one percent. For every new dollar spent on salaries, more than three dollars went to benefits. Parents see the consequences: teachers struggling to make ends meet while bureaucratic costs balloon.
Meanwhile, enrollment is shrinking. Between 2020 and 2023, Washington joined thirty‑nine other states in losing students. But instead of adjusting to this reality, schools added more staff…81,000 non‑teaching employees nationwide. Today, more than half of all school employees are not teachers. Families are right to ask why dollars are being poured into administration while classrooms are left behind.
And then there are the outcomes. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that reading, math, and science scores are worse today than they were two decades ago. Reading scores for 12th graders are now the lowest since 1992. In science, nearly four in ten 8th graders scored below “Basic” in 2024—the highest failure rate since 2009. Parents don’t need a report to tell them what they already know: their children are struggling with foundational skills, and the system is not delivering.
This is not underfunding. This is massive mismanagement. And yet, the WEA’s demands would lock Washington into even more spending, more bureaucracy, and more programs without accountability. Legislators, especially Republicans who have too often gone along with “fund more” demands, must resist this cycle. While the Democrats in Olympia will do what they want regardless, we hope to see a united Republican front holding the line against further mismanagement in Washington schools. Washington’s public schools desperately need reform.
That reform must begin with accountability. Dollars should be tied to outcomes, not to bureaucratic expansion. Pension liabilities must be addressed so that money can flow back into classrooms and teacher paychecks. Staffing must be right‑sized to reflect enrollment realities. And most importantly, parents must be empowered with choices; homeschooling, microschools, charter programs, and private education, so their children are not trapped in a failing system.
Washingtonians value education. But valuing education means demanding results, not writing blank checks. Parents deserve transparency. Students deserve excellence. Taxpayers deserve accountability. As the 2026 session begins, legislators must switch gears. The data is clear: our schools are fully funded. What they lack is courage, reform, and a commitment to put children first.
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