Can CA governor improve schools as education king?

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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In late June, after just a few minutes of discussion, both houses of the Legislature completely overhauled the way California runs the nation’s largest public school system and its nearly 6 million students.

Votes for Assembly Bill 181 — 21-4 in the Senate and 52-4 in the Assembly — reflected a bipartisan consensus, rare on big issues, that the system is failing California’s children. The vote was based on an implicit, perhaps even desperate, hope that streamlining the administration could raise the state’s mediocre levels of academic achievement.

The measure demotes the elected state superintendent of schools from the head of the state Department of Education to a member of the state school board and replaces the superintendent with a “commissioner of education” appointed by the governor.

MP Darshan PatelA San Diego Democrat, researcher and local school board member cogently expressed that hope during the brief Assembly debate.

“We cannot continue to do the same thing and expect different results for our students, our schools and our communities. They are the ones who are the real victims of this inadequacy of our systems and structures,” she said, adding, “The proposal before you today would encourage more consistent policymaking. The change will allow policymakers and the public to hold the governor accountable for educational outcomes.”

The last sentence of her notes is the key element. Although the governor has always been an important member of California’s complex education leadership structure, a host of other actors facilitate the shifting of responsibility when academic test scores and other measures reveal academic deficiencies.

The sudden reversal of decades of management status quo, as first proposed in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s State of the State address last January, is a remarkable feat in itself. Doing so against the opposition of the California Teachers Association elevated him to a minor political miracle.

“The proposal would divert attention from the real needs of students and schools by introducing significant management change that is both unnecessary and counterproductive,” the powerful union wrote in a statement ahead of AB 181’s approval. “This proposal does nothing to improve student outcomes or strengthen public education.”

For decades, the teachers association and other education unions have easily chosen their favorite candidates for state superintendent. And these elected officials faithfully echoed the unions’ position that the key to increasing results is allocating more money.

School funding has increased sharply since the turn of the century, but test scores have not followed suit. Some categories, such as elementary school reading levels, remain disturbingly low.

The first hint that change was on the table came late last year, when Policy Analysis for California Education, a consortium of education faculties at five major universities, issued a lengthy critique of the current system. The report said California’s complex mix of state and local government “often results in overlapping responsibilities, fragmented authority and challenges in ensuring streamlined decision-making.”

In design, the consortium’s recommendations closely resembled Newsom’s proposal and the final legislation.

The obvious question is whether streamlining the governance of education and making the governor accountable, at least on paper, for academic performance will simply rearrange the chairs on a sinking ship or actually generate more achievement for $25,000 plus that the new state budget will spend to every public school student.

California educational institutions are reluctant to change their mantra that more money is needed to raise scores and are just as reluctant to embrace improvements in teaching techniques, such as the use of phonics to improve elementary reading skills.

The onus will be on Newsom’s successor, most likely Xavier Becerra, to become the town’s new school sheriff.

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