The Nine Mile Falls School District, in Washington State, lies northwest of Spokane; includes land in both Spokane and Stevens Counties; and is divided by "Long Lake"– the name given the reservoir formed behind Long Lake Dam on the Spokane River.

The school district encompasses three communities – Nine Mile Falls, Suncrest, and Tum Tum and surrounding farm land. The people in the district largely commute to jobs in the Spokane area.

The Nine Mile Falls School District began education reform (systems education, aka outcome-based, aka performance-based, aka competency-based education) in the 1992/93 school year. The district, in writing grants for restructuring money to meet the requirements of the various requests for proposal (RFP) sent out by the state, and in having someone with the authority to do so sign those grant applications, entered into de facto contracts with the state, agreeing to comply with the terms mandated in the RFPs issued by the state and those mandated down to the state by the federal government. The district has received several such restructuring grants ...

Readiness to Learn Grants

Student Learning Improvement Grants

Student Learning Improvement Block Grants

Technology Grant

Learn and Serve America Grant

School to Work Consortium Grants

... to name a few. And, as with every other school district that has gone down the education reform path, the money for restructuring has not gone to the classroom, has not gone to educate children for intelligence; rather it has gone to establish the system established by Goals 2000, HR-1 (by all it’s many names), and peripheral laws. And although the local implementers have consistently claimed that local restructuring is local in flavor; they cannot deny ...

that the outcomes (Essential Learnings) for the Nine Mile Falls School District — what drives the writing of curriculum; what curriculum, instruction, and teaching methodologies must align to; and what the child is to look like when the child exits the Nine Mile Falls School District schools — must align with the State Essential Academic Learning Requirements; the measure of that alignment being the WASL – the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a highly subjective and, therefore, unreliable indicator of academic achievement.

the outside facilitators to guide the process; the contracts; the consortium grants with other schools and school districts; or the fact that what the Nine Mile Falls School District is doing in the education arena walks lockstep with what every other school district across this state, across this nation, is doing in structure and purpose.

the move away from the representative government structure (required by Article IV § 4 of the United States Constitution and by Section 4 of the Enabling Act) to governance by appointed bodies who represent no one but those doing the appointing — a commissar or politburo form of governance.

The links to the left show budget information and test scores for the district since the district started down the education reform road, bringing the district into alignment with the state and federal mandates of Goals 2000, the School to Work Opportunities Act and the Workforce Investment Act; changing the mission of schools from educating children for intelligence to becoming workforce development centers, training children to meet the needs of regional economic development strategies and regional labor markets under the auspices of appointed regional workforce development boards. The words of William Pearson Tolley, Chancelor of Syracuse University, written in 1943, come to mind,

In a slave state vocational training may be education enough. For the education of free men much more is required.

The budget information contained in the links to the left is available to anyone obtaining the F-195 (Projected Budget) and F-196 (Actual Expenditures) for the district. The district debt load may be obtained from the Spokane County Treasurer's Office, and the mil rates from the Spokane County Assessor's Office. District test scores are available from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Understand that in looking at the material concerning the Nine Mile Falls School District, you are not only looking at this school district but every other school district and nationwide as the Nine Mile Falls School District is but a microcosm of schools nationwide.

Note: If you are accessing this page from another webpage, please click here to bring up the Nine Mile Falls School District webpage and corresponding links.

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