Texas got the jump on Washington by a couple years in launching an ambitious early learning initiative. As we ramp up the state Department of Early Learning, Thrive by Five and other programs, we ought to be learning from Texas’ early mistakes.

According to the Dallas Morning News, their program hasn’t been faring well:

A groundbreaking effort to prepare Texas preschoolers for kindergarten has eaten up millions of taxpayer dollars but has yet to deliver on the investment, according to a new report released by the Texas Education Agency.

The findings spotlight a

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Is or is not the state still using Pierce County as a dumping ground for ex-cons?

We applauded the Department of Corrections for changing its evil ways in an editorial Sunday. See my Dec. 23 post below.

I looked at the last few months of data. But our sharp-eyed reporter Joseph Turner looked back through August, the first full month a new policy required the DOC to document where its inmates had come from and where it had released them.

See his e-mail below, and state Sen. Mike Carrell’s response below it. Bottom line: It depends when you start counting.

Turner:

Just for the record, Pierce County still is a net importer of ex-convicts since July 22, 2007, the date the Department of Corrections was supposed to begin sending ex-convicts back to the county of their first conviction (with exceptions, of course).

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1. Benazir Bhutto’s assassination threatens to set loose the devils in Pakistan, a country that has both nukes and the Taliban.

2. Orting City officials should reconsider their rebuff of a resident who missed the deadline for challenging a utility tax rate hike by two days.

About our editorials:

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune’s editorial board.

Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email

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Hillary Clinton, battling for votes in Iowa, would dearly love to project the family-friendly image Tacoma’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Smith so easily – and naturally – conveys in the annual Christmas card sent by his office.

I suspect Smith, now in his ninth term representing the Ninth District, is the only member of the state’s congressional delegation with two young children. Daughter Kendall, 7, and Jack, 4. Kendall attends a Tacoma elementary school where her mother, Sara, is PTA president.

Kendall no longer needs training wheels on

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In his column today, The New York Times’ David Brooks lists his choices for best magazine essays of 2007 that captured different slices of American life.

Here are links to those essays.

&bull Nick Paumgarten’s "There and Back Again" in The New Yorker

&bull Vanessa Grigoriadis’ "Everybody Sucks" in New York Magazine

&bull Matt Labach’s "Roger Stone, Political Animal" in The Weekly Standard

&bull Michael Lewis’ "The Evolution of an Investor" in Portfolio

&bull Jeremy Kahn’s "The Story of a Snitch" in The Atlantic

&bull "Crime,

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Pierce County Prosecutor Gerry Horne said our editorial earlier this week about an apparent decline in inmate “dumping” here failed to credit one key legislator.

State Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, should have been recognized for his role in passing “Fair Share” legislation earlier this year. Says Horne:

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The draft version of a potentially far-reaching state plan for addressing climate change was released almost unnoticed in the pre-Christmas bustle.

I haven’t had a chance to study it yet, but the work of the govenor’s climate advisory team is online at this state Department of Ecology website. And here is DOE’s announcement about the report.

The advisory team is accepting public comments on the draft recommendations until Jan. 10. The final report is due to the governor Feb. 7.

Among other things, the team recommends adding "global warming pollution" as one of the factors

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The Class of 2008 is destined to become the most poked and prodded group of students ever to make its way though the state’s public schools. Not only is this the class for which the WASL actually means something, but it also is the first class to have been assigned Secure Student Identification numbers.

Those numbers will allow state school officials to get a better picture of what happens to students. Kids who get their diplomas on time are easy to count — it’s those students who don’t graduate with their class who are harder to track.

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