Legislature moving on anti-sex trafficking bills

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:30:13 PST

The state Senate has passed legislation aimed at preventing online sex ads that feature minors. The House should follow suit without delay. State Senators approved a number of bills Wednesday aimed at combatting sex trafficking and I'll write more about them later in the day. But the biggest deal was passage of Senate Bill 6251, a tough, and I believe unprecedented, hammer against online ads selling sex with minors. Here's a story that captures the Senate vote.

In this Times editorial last month we argued that it is important to deal with the commercial advertising of underaged prostitutes.

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, has done impressive work putting Washington state at the forefront of legislative and law enforcement efforts. SB 6251 is especially fine work because it promises to regulate commercial advertising that sells young girls and boys for sex but doesn't appear to infringe upon free speech protections. In addition to editorials, I've written columns about the horrors of sex trafficking and what can be done to combat it. Here's one.

Adding color to the education reform debate

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:31:04 PST

My latest column encourages people of color to engage in the education reform debate. While I use charter schools as an example, reform-inspired changes to federal, state and local education laws go beyond autonomy in some public schools.

According to OSPI, most of the budget cuts coming in our state will directly impact students of color and students in poverty, at the same time that we're in the bottom 5 states in the nation for how well our public schools are addressing the needs of students of color. This 2008 state report gives a sense of the challenges facing our state's educational system. U.S. Census figures point to Washington as one of the fastest browning states in the nation. We're in the bottom 5 states in the nation for how well our public schools are addressing the needs of students of color.

diversity CNN reports that nationwide, more than 1.6 million public school students attend nearly 5,000 publicly funded, independently operated charter schools. As of 2008, African Americans made up 15 percent of students in traditional public schools, versus 29 percent of those enrolled in charter schools.

The lack of diversity in the education reform movement may be a product of geography. This story references battles in East Coast cities where traditional civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund are facing off on opposite sides of the charter school battle.

Debate about charters suffers from the lack of an updated view. The UW's Center on Reinventing Public Education offers one here. It is worth reviewing the Stanford study and asking what's changed since then.

The Seattle Times: Ed cetera

Legislature moving on anti-sex trafficking bills

Adding color to the education reform debate