Washington State and Education

¶ … balance of power between institutions such as the Executive, Bureaucracy, Legislature, and the courts? The state selected for this essay is the State of Washington. The State of Washington is made of three branches that are contextualized after the federal government and these are the executive, legislative, and the judicial. To begin with, the executive consists of the state's governor and the other elected state officials. In particular, these officials carry out and execute the laws passed by the Legislature.

Imperatively, the governor is endowed with the power and authority to appoint members of the judicial branch. Moreover, any bills that are passed by the legislative branch have to be sent to the governor in order to be vetoed or signed. The second branch is the legislative branch. It is made of the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the balance of power within the state, the legislature has the authority to enact bills into laws.

In particular, the Senate is comprised of 49 elected officials standing for the number of legislative districts contained within the state. On the other hand, the House of Representatives is made up of 98 elected members, two for each of the 49 districts in the state (Access Washington, 2017). Third, there is the judicial branch. It is made up of the state courts. First is the Trial Court that encompasses the Municipal, District and Superior Courts. Second is the Court of Appeals and lastly there is the Supreme Court.

These courts of the states have the power of making decisions and rulings with regard to the constitutionality and legality encircling the execution of a law, as ratified and passed by the legislative branch and signed by the state governor (Access Washington, 2017). Lastly, the bureaucracy encompasses an administrative group of nonelected officials that are given the task of carrying out and implementing functions linked to a sequence of policies and programs.

In particular, these are civil servants as well as political appointed who usually fill the non-elected positions within the government of the state. Is the culture of the state considered liberal, moderate, or conservative? How did you make this assessment? In delineation, liberalism is a political philosophy that, in its essence, criticizes and condemns economic and social inequity.

In particular, equality of opportunity is perceived by liberals as fundamental, and to attain that end, they have the conviction that discriminatory practices have to be eradicated and that the influence of great equalities of wealth needs to be lessened. On the other hand, conservatives have an overall preference for the prevailing order of society and an opposition to majority of endeavors to generate swift or significant change. Different from liberals, conservatism wishes to augment individual liberty by maintaining government small aside from different aspects such as national defense.

It insists that individuals necessitate strong leadership institutions and stringent moral codes. Lastly, moderate more often than not represent an amalgamation of both conservative and liberal ideologies (The Saylor Foundation, 2012). The State of Washington is considered to be liberal. In accordance to Webley (2013), this is owing to the fact that the state legalized marijuana for recreational purposes and also made the approval of same sex marriage.

At the same time, despite the state's landscape being largely rural, its people have voted for the Democratic candidate and nominee in every presidential election that has taken place since 1988. In addition, for just about the past thirty years, the state has elected a Democratic governor. Moreover, it is not only geography that actually divides the two sides, it is just about every aspect.

Approximately two-thirds of the state of Washington people reside on the richer, urban west side of the state, which is consists of Amazon, Microsoft, together with the biggest public research university in the entire state. In contrast, the eastern side of the state is rural and its significant industries consist of farming and lumber. Even in the recent United States election, Washington people voted for Hillary Clinton and most of the counties within the state were filled with votes for Democrat nominees.

In fact, the pattern of voting for a Democrat nominee with Hillary having more than 90% of the votes in the state whereas Donald Trump only got 4%. In addition, Washington State is known to have several liberal policies including the increase in the minimum wage, having less restrictive policies on abortion and also the legalization of marijuana as mentioned. In addition the civil rights of the LGBTQ are a fundamental aspect and taken seriously in the state (Webley, 2013).

What one public policy issue dominates debate in that state at this time? One of the public policy issues that is currently dominating debate in the State of Washington at this present time is public education and the McCleary decision.

In particular, in the course of the past week, the Legislature started the second special session of the 2017 fiscal year owing to the fact that it has not come to a concession regarding an operating budget or an education plan that would be in compliance with the state Supreme Court's McCleary decision (Makings, 2017). There is still debate regarding the issue of addressing McCleary, which is a State Supreme Court ruling that called for the Washington State to radically increase the level of spending for the K. through 12 education spending.

This is owing to the fact that for the past 20 years, the State of Washington has radically diminished the proportion of the personal income that is spent on K-12 education. In particular, statistics indicate that from the 1995 fiscal year up until the 2013 fiscal year, the State of Washington decreased the spending amount apportioned for K-12 education by a significant margin of 30%. In the course of this period, the state has shifted from being one that spends highly to one that spends lowly with regard to public education (Stafford, 2016).

In general, high-income states allocate their spending progressively more for every pupil on K-12 education in comparison to low-income states. This is owing to two fundamental reasons, the first being that they apprehend that education spending is a potent investment that gives rise to a horde of benefits to the state. The second reason is that they are able to afford greater spending on education for the reason that the states are wealthy.

However, in this regard, the State of Washington is considered to be an exemption to this particular pattern. This is largely for the reason that despite the fact that the State of Washington is a high-income state, it does not spend more but rather less than national average apportionment on every pupil for K-12 education as a proportion of personal income. And this aspect is the basis of the McCleary debate (Stafford, 2016).

It can be noted that Washington has made some headway in the direction of augmenting educational spending so as to accomplish the compliance to McCleary, but it has been inadequate thus far. Imperatively, one of the key ways of addressing this public policy that is currently being debated is through the raising of taxes. According to Stafford (2016), it is significant to point out that there is the prospect of a major bargain between the Republicans and Democrats.

This takes into account an increase in tax in order to increase funding for education, an aspect that is preferred by the Democrats, in exchange of transferring levy liability from lower-wealth districts to higher-wealth districts, a strategy that is preferred by the Republicans. In particular, this will necessitate strong.