$3 Billion Buys Longer School Days, More Pay

Teachers are making more money. Many school districts are back on six-period schedules. School days are longer, and so is the school year.

Those are a few of the differences $3 billion can make in California’s public school system.

Such were the conclusions announced Tuesday by the California Tax Foundation, an arm of the business-supported California Taxpayers Assn., after a six-month assessment of the effects of the 1983 school reform and finance bill signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian.

The intent of the bill was to turn around a widely acknowledged decline in the quality of schooling for kindergarten through 12th grades; improve teacher salaries; create uniform statewide high school graduation requirements built around a curriculum of reading, writing and arithmetic, and address the issues of student discipline and teacher evaluation.

The author of the report, Loren Kaye, said it is still too early to tell whether all the money pumped into the state’s more than 1,000 school districts will ultimately result in better-educated children.

In fact, in the case of longer school days, which in some school districts meant only five minutes more of instruction time, the report said, “Most district administrators, teachers and association officials believe that the amount of instructional time added in their districts will have only minor effect on student performance.”

Elsewhere in the 82-page report, the foundation concluded:

- Nearly every school district in the state has maintained or increased the amount of instructional time, stopping what had been an erosion over the years in the number of hours students spent in the classroom.

- Districts were given incentive money provided by the state for increased instructional time and most chose to use it for raising teacher salaries.

- About 72% of the school districts, representing more than 90% of the teachers and students, are participating in the mentor teacher program.

- Salaries for starting teachers have increased 5% to 15% a year over and above regular pay raises in the relatively small number of districts participating in a special program aimed at raising salaries for beginning teachers.

- Most districts already are meeting the uniform graduation requirements in the new law, and virtually all districts will meet them by 1987.

- Highly controversial features of the school reform measure dealing with teacher discipline and evaluation have had little effect on school districts, because many requirements already were common practices, while others have been tied up in litigation.

“No one is arguing that in two short years the kids are getting a better education,” Kaye said. “Most school officials are optimistic that will be the result, though.”

“The good news is this bill allowed a lot of school districts that had cut down to five periods, like Los Angeles Unified, to go back up to six periods,” he said.

The report said it could find little to support concerns raised last year by Deukmejian that districts were delaying implementation of the school reform bill because of collective bargaining pressure from teacher unions.

“There were occasional instances of refusal to bargain some reforms until agency shop or binding arbitration demands were settled, but these were rare,” the report said.

The report said the school reform bill was drafted with the intent of making the teaching profession more attractive, primarily by upgrading teacher salaries, and that it was already having an effect.

It said the Los Angeles Unified School District, which at one time had difficulty recruiting teachers, was able to meet its need for 1,700 teachers for the opening of school in 1984, “in large part because of the new recruitment incentives in the school bill.”