Washington State Gets an "F"
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“Roxanne” is a 1987 remake of “Cyrano de Bergerac”, one of the most celebrated plays of the French theater, written by Edmond Rostand. Instead of being set in 17th century France, "Cyrano" was changed to "Charlie", a fire chief in a small town in Washington State. Chris is the character in the film Roxanne falls for because outwardly he looks good. But inwardly, he not intelligent or articulate thus he can’t get his “words” to come out right.

“Access Washington” the Governor’s website and the "Department of Early Learning website announced with excitement on March 1, 2007 Washington state ranked 4th in the nation according to the National Association for Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) for child care licensing and oversight.

Instead of “truth telling” and “words” of integrity about the NACCRRA study the citizens of Washington State get “worms” and in Stephen Colbert’s vernacular “truthiness”.

If you are not familiar with Stephen Colbert, see my links page. Truthiness is a satirical term coined by television comedian Stephen Colbert to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively, instinctively, or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts. On December 10, 2006, the Merriam-Webster dictionary announced that truthiness was selected as its 2006 Word of the Year.

Governor Gregoire stated on the “Access Washington” website, “It’s exciting to see national recognition of the work we are doing in Washington , however, we know more must be done to strengthen oversight and raise our standards even higher.”

The NACCRRA website gives an “unexciting” picture of child care in the United States including Washington State . Washington ’s “high ranking” doesn’t capture its score of 89 out of a possible 150. Washington got an F. An “F”.

NACCRRA’s “We Can Do Better: NACCRRA’s Ranking of State Child Care Center Standards and Oversight” summary report states: “It is not enough to be moving in the right direction with strong child care standards if a state’s oversight system doesn’t measure up. Without adequate oversight, there is no way to evaluate whether state standards are actually being met. There is much room for improvement by the states.”

See the complete study at this link: 1. http://www.naccrra.org/policy/scorecard.php

A public disclosure request has been made to review the documents DEL gave to NACCRRA for their study. Check back for follow up information.

FOLLOW UP: As of March 13th the public disclosure coordinator can find no record that any statistics or research was sent to NACCRRA. The public disclosure coordinator is checking further for us.


FOLLOW UP APRIL 17, 2007 After getting public disclosure, the documents show the "study" was merely a fill in the blank form that the child care licensing managers filled out. The managers self disclosure earned Washington State an "F". This study in no way was an independent research project, with independent oversight as to whether "standards" were applied and applied consistently. Additionally, there was no independent research to assess whether "oversight" is happening and what the quality of that "oversight."