Will students benefit from Newsom’s education reform?

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Gov. Gavin Newsom released a short and vaguely worded section in his State of the State address earlier this month offering an overhaul of the way California’s massive public education system is run.

“We are long overdue to modernize the management of our education system,” Newsom said, “and so in the budget I will present tomorrow, I am proposing to merge policymaking by the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, allowing the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to coordinate our education policies from early childhood through college.”

The the adoption of the budget on this issue was longerbut still failed to specifically say what Newsom meant.

The proposal cites two reports that lament the multiple, often overlapping and sometimes competing, state and local entities that govern schools. One was the so-called California Master Plan for Education, released in 2002, and the other was from the Policy Analysis for California Education, or PACE, a multi-university think tank. which was released just weeks earlier.

The budget proposes “shifting the oversight authority of the management of” the state Department of Education and local districts to the California Board of Education.

In doing so, without saying it directly, Newsom would strip the elected state superintendent of schools of management authority over the state Department of Education by placing the incumbent in an ombudsman or advisory role. Governance will be vested in the Board of Education, which is appointed by the governor, and an appointed executive director.

“These changes will strengthen the governance of California’s education system to provide coherence and meaningful accountability to address the needs of students, parents, teachers, school staff and administrators,” the budget proposal states.

The current chief, a former state legislator Tony Thurmond, complained that he was not consulted on what would be a major overhaul of accountability for a system that serves nearly 6 million students and is the largest single piece of the state budget.

“This management proposal does not establish any structures that have been proven to move the needle on student outcomes,” said Thurmond, who is running for governor, “and instead shifts the authority to implement TK-12 education programs from the official that California voters have elected to lead our state’s public schools.”

Clearly, the Newsom administration had been laying the groundwork for the power shift — or power grab — long before the address to the state. The PACE report, published in December, was part of the process. This requires exactly what Newsom offers.

“California’s education management system is a complex network of agencies and organizations designed to serve the most diverse and expansive TK-12 population in the United States,” PACE declared report. “This system includes state, regional, and local levels of government, each charged with specific responsibilities and oversight. At its core, the structure seeks to balance statewide educational goals with local control and accountability.

“However, its complexity often leads to overlapping responsibilities, fragmented powers and challenges in ensuring streamlined decision-making.”

PACE issued a statement supporting the change from Michael Kirst, the state’s foremost academic authority on education and an architect of the school finance overhaul, Local control funding formula adopted in 2012 under then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

Kirst called it a “new vision and dramatic overhaul” that would address the 19th-century governance structure.

“The lack of fundamental change since then has hindered progress in education,” he said.

Politics aside, Newsom’s proposal would streamline governance, which is now opaque and fragmented, and shield the system’s many points of authority from accountability. However, by giving almost complete authority to the governor and his or her appointees, it will be more difficult for the governor to avoid accountability if educational attainment, which is now languishingdoes not improve significantly.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.