While citizen journalism is increasing through blogs like this one, Clark County Politics and others, we are fortunate in Washington to have a dedicated group watching the goings on in Olympia who are willing to share with us insight into some relevant measures that will have an impact on us and suggestions of how we can push back, the Freedom Foundation.

But Jami Lund of the Olympia, Washington-based Freedom Foundation says the Seattle teachers were boycotting a test that had nothing to do with No Child Left Behind. "It's not a state-required test.  So it doesn't even fall into that general anti-No Child Left Behind sentiment.  This is the district deciding what kind of assessment they wanted to do to measure student growth."

New documents released by Gov. Jay Inslee are making some wonder why they were kept under wraps in the first place. When the Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based think tank that promotes government transparency, was blocked by Gov. Christine Gregoire from accessing six documents in April 2010 under the guise of executive privilege they became curious. The Foundation says it soon found that Gregoire had evoked executive privilege roughly 500 times from January 2007 to April 2011.

“After a review of the content, it seems as though Gregoire’s decision to withhold the documents was more an exercise in self-importance than an effort to hide anything in particular,” Jonathan Bechtle, chief executive for the Freedom Foundation, said in an email.