It was fully in place for the 2018-2019, and 2019-2020 school years. So yeah, I expect measurable improvement in results.

For a student who was educated for 10 years under funding level A and where funding level B was available for 1 full school year (2018-2019), resulting in some changes in the classrooms in the districts only after some time delay after funding was approved, I'd expect to see almost no change in the spring 2019 testing. Spring 2020 testing was impacted by COVID. It's fine that we have different expectations, though.

The thing is, the "fully-funding" issue has completely vanished from the agenda. It is never discussed anymore. It's back to the same old "we need more funding to make a difference" rhetoric.

In fact, I recall the very day the legislation passed, the same advocates were demanding even more money.

I've lived in Seattle for over 40 years now. Long enough to see innumerable funding increases based on demands that "this time it'll fix the schools". Nothing has moved the needle.

One of these is wrong:

1. the way the school system is set up and run

2. our expectations of what the schools can accomplish

Money is just not the problem.

"The thing is, the "fully-funding" issue has completely vanished from the agenda. It is never discussed anymore."

The state was failing to provide funding to all of the school systems in the state. The legislature came up with a plan to fix that and the state Supreme Court agreed with it. There isn't much else to say there.

What is the plan on how to spend the money to improve results?

There is none.

This is akin to expecting improvement of a building constructed on shaky foundation after increasing funding when the construction reached the 8th floor.

And then when they got to the 9th & 10th floors there was a pandemic.

I would certainly expect progress on the unstable foundation after a year and a billion dollars spent.

In this analogy, the foundation is “the years of schooling the student has already experienced”.

There's no evidence that things for the first year students have improved.

Does Washington do standardized testing on kindergartners or first graders? If not, I agree with your claim that there’s no evidence [in any direction] to test this specific hypothesis most precisely.

I agree with (what I believe is part of) your position that lack of money isn’t the sole (and not even primary) problem in our schools. More money alone won’t fix anything. Maybe it’ll bring back music or other specials that some kids like, but money alone won’t put our education on par with Switzerland, China, or Singapore.

It’s also probably true that whatever is actually needed will also need money, at a minimum in the transition period. It’s a necessary but not sufficient input.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, plus citation needed.

Not to mention that you can only know whether the foundation improved after you build on top of it... which is something we can only observe in the future.

Note that I am not saying that you are incorrect in your assessment. All I am saying is that it's too early to know one way or another.