CA schools need stronger state oversight, researchers say

from Carolyn JonesCalMatters

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California’s K-12 schools have come a long way in the past 20 years, but according to a comprehensive review of the state’s school system, further progress may require tinkering with a long-established form of school governance: local control.

This is among the long-awaited conclusions Getting to know the facts report released Thursday, a 1,000-page effort written by more than a hundred K-12 education researchers.

“We’re in a much better place than we were,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the State Board of Education and one of the report’s authors. “But we need a consistent management system if we are to continue to progress.”

The Getting Down to Facts reports, published every 10 to 12 years, are wide-ranging reviews of California’s K-12 system—what’s working, what’s not, and how lawmakers should respond. For this report, researchers looked at everything from special education staffing to school closings major renovation of high schools. The report is based on extensive data analysis and interviews with hundreds of superintendents, principals, school board members and parents.

The report’s timing is important because the state’s K-12 school system is at a point of transition, said Suzanne Loeb, a professor of education at Stanford who is among the report’s lead authors.

California’s political landscape is changing as voters elect a new governor and state superintendent of public education this November. Artificial intelligence is expected to changed drastically the way students learn in the coming years. And the state is at last emerging from the COVID-19 pandemicwhich upended learning for nearly all of California’s 5.8 million public school students.

Lack of consistency and accountability

For at least a century, California has had a complex system of school oversight, with the governor, legislature, state superintendent and state school board sharing policymaking authority. Local school districts have wide latitude to adopt these policies to meet the unique needs of their students. This system was further strengthened more than a decade ago when the state moved most of the financing decisions to local areas through the local control funding formula.

But that leaves wide gaps in student performance and questions about who is responsible for what, according to the report.

“California has invested heavily in education and there are examples of real excellence,” Loeb said. “But we haven’t been very good at scaling it so that it’s consistent across the state.”

Transitional kindergarten, expanded after-school programs and public schools are a few new programs that have led to big improvements, according to the report. Low-income students in particular benefited from these initiatives. For example, low-income scholars who attended TK had higher math and reading scores in third and fourth grades, especially if they attended well-funded elementary schools, researchers found.

Big investments, big improvements

In the mid-2000s, California schools were in dire straits. They ranked near the bottom nationally on almost every metric. This was the impetus for the first Getting Down to Facts report in 2007, which aimed to stop the downward slide.

The state has nearly doubled per-pupil spending since then, adjusted for inflation, and now ranks well above the national average. Because of the local control funding formula, which allocates more money to districts with higher numbers of high-needs students, there is more equitable funding than existed in the past, the report noted.

California students are scoring significantly higher in reading and math than they did two decades ago, even after accounting for the setbacks of the pandemic and even as the percentage of English language learners, low-income students and other high-needs students has risen.

“Over the past two decades, the state has adopted more rigorous standards and assessments, made school funding more equitable … and improved achievement scores, especially in reading,” the researchers wrote. “These changes did not solve California’s education challenges, but they leave the state in a better position than it was fifteen years ago to pursue broader and more ambitious goals for students.”

Solutions and ideas

Concentrating more power in the state could bring some accountability and transparency, help narrow achievement gaps and ensure all districts adopt programs that have shown promise, researchers said. For example, the state may require districts to adopt curricula that have been successful, hire more teachers or counselors, or expand after-school programs.

Part of this shift in power may be happening soon. Governor Gavin Newsom recently proposed transferring most of the superintendent’s duties to the State Board of Education, whose members are appointed by the governor. That won’t solve the problem entirely, but it’s a good start, Darling-Hammond said.

The report also suggests improving conditions for teachers and administrators. The state needs to do a better job recruiting and training teachers and ensuring they stay in the profession. It should also reduce paperwork for administrators who spend too much time filling out forms that are redundant and useless.

“California has strong foundations, ambitious goals, and visible examples of what richer and more consistent educational experiences can look like,” the researchers wrote. “The central challenge is whether state policymakers (and others) can link policies, supports and institutions into a system that provides these opportunities consistently for students.”

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