State’s Education Grades Not All A’s, but Improved

If the state of California were a student in one of its 7,400 public schools, it might get this report card for 1985, more than a year after passage of a landmark reform law:

“A” for improvements in money for schools, tougher courses, longer days and years, and better pay for beginning teachers.

“Excellent” for the new attitude and spirit of the 1,029 school districts teaching 4.2 million children.

But “Needs Improvement” in the crucial areas of class size, school construction and teacher recruitment.

“We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go,” said Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles), co-author of the reform-finance law and chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee.

‘In a State of Flux’

“We still feel we are in a state of flux. There are still unmet needs,” said Cathi Davis of the California School Boards Assn.

There is widespread agreement that the 1983 law (SB813) passed by the Legislature after long negotiations with Gov. George Deukmejian has dramatically turned around the state’s public school system.

After several years of fiscal and policy neglect, the law infused the public school system with much-needed money, academic reforms and a general attitude that public education is once again important in California.

“The educational reforms that have begun to occur have markedly improved the quality of the teaching and educational experience in schools,” said Paul Possemato, assistant superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest with 579,000 students.

“We’ve got a common vision and a common direction, and that’s important,” said state schools Supt. Bill Honig. “We’re not fragmented as before.”

There is also agreement that more is needed. California’s classes are still the largest in the nation. Schools will need an estimated 85,000 more teachers by 1990. Districts need up to $7 billion in new or renovated schools. Thirty-one percent of entering high school freshmen drop out before graduation.

Two prestigious commissions issued reports this fall that praised the commitment of the 1983 law but listed extensive and expensive problems and proposals relating to teacher recruitment, class size and school construction.

The Legislature this year passed several bills aimed at those pressing problems, including a $60-million measure to reduce high school class sizes and a complex package to help districts finance new schools. But the Republican governor vetoed most of the bills, refusing to give schools more money than required by the 1983 law. He did sign bills to give schools $20 million for books and other instructional materials and to provide $3 million for programs aimed at reducing the dropout rate.

Election-Year Battles

Many of the issues are likely to be the subject of election-year battles between lawmakers and Deukmejian, who repeatedly points with pride at the increases in education funding since he took office.

State Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, co-author of SB813 and author of the vetoed class-size reduction bill, said if Deukmejian doesn’t come to some compromise on class size, the governor will learn “there’s a political price to pay.”

“The governor sits back there and says, ‘Education is my first priority.’ Does he mean that’s the first thing he vetoes?” said Sen. Leroy Greene (D-Carmichael), author of the vetoed school construction bill.

The state’s public schools, kindergarten through 12th grades, are getting $17.4 billion in revenues during the 1985-86 fiscal year. That includes $11.3 billion from the state, $3.2 billion from local property taxes, $1.1 billion from the federal government, $1.5 billion from other local sources and an estimated $250 million from the lottery.

The total provides $3,912 per student, which is a 6% increase above the 1984-85 figure.

The increases since 1983 reverse a trend of the previous decade, when student enrollment, academic performance and financial resources declined.

The state hit a high of 4.5 million students in 1970. But then population trends and movement to private schools caused a slip to a low of 3.9 million in 1980. Enrollment started increasing the next year, hitting 4.2 million this year. As the children of the post-World War II baby boom couples move into schools, enrollment is expected to rise 500,000 by 1990.

Student performance in academic tests, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test and the California Assessment Program, also fell during the last decade. The trend was nationwide, but California, which once bragged about its fine education system, was doing worse than the national average.

Rampant Inflation

School financing suffered from rampant inflation in the 1970s, Proposition 13 in 1978 and the economic recession of the early 1980s. In 1974-75, California spent $1,530 per student, or $3,472 in today’s dollars. That had declined to $3,353 in 1985 dollars by 1982-83. The state was spending $8,256 per classroom less in 1982-83 than was the case five years before, according to a report by the study group, Policy Analysis for Education.

The concerns prompted SB813. It increased per-student revenues by 8.7% in 1983-84 and another 7.2% in 1984-85. Its more than 80 reforms included longer school days and years, increased beginning teacher salaries, a “mentor teacher” program to pay extra for experienced teachers to help others, high school graduation requirements and easier dismissal of incompetent teachers.

Such sweeping changes need time to be put into effect in all school districts, and some districts have not done them all. And such sweeping changes do not quickly produce results.

Slow to Turn Around

“You’re not going to turn that around overnight,” said Honig, adding that it will take 5 to 10 years to see real results.

Harder Academic Courses

But he said he was encouraged by reports this fall that more high school students are taking harder academic courses, and by substantial improvements in standardized test scores for third- and sixth-grade students. However, he was disturbed by a drop in test scores for eighth-graders.

Leading the list of problems that must be addressed in the future are the related issues of class size and school construction.

California ranks 50th in the nation in its student-teacher ratios. The state ratio is 24 students to each teacher in elementary grades and 28 to 1 in secondary, with many crowded areas having 30 to 35 students to a teacher, even in the crucial elementary grades. The national average is 18 students for each teacher.

“Classes of that size are an insurmountable barrier preventing teachers from providing students the attention they need,” said a report this fall by the California Commission on the Teaching Profession.

Considered Top Priority

The California Teachers Assn., which represents 150,000 of the state’s 190,000 teachers, has made reduction of class sizes its top priority and has been placing newspaper advertisements around the state featuring its state president, Marilyn Russell Bittle.

“Excessively large classes do not merely lower the quality of education for children,” she says. “They also constitute poor working conditions for teachers.”

“We really can’t be serious about excellence until we have low class sizes that enable teachers to respond to the needs of the diverse school population,” said Sen. Hart. He said he doesn’t know if he will pursue his reduction bill, vetoed this year for the second time, because “you hate to bang your head against the wall.”

The main opposition to his bill or related efforts to cut class sizes is the cost. Reducing the size of every class in California by one student would cost $400 million. Getting classes to the national average would take $3 billion.

Money Factor

“If you ask the public, teachers or legislators if you should reduce class sizes,” says Assemblyman Charles Bader of Pomona, the Republican vice chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, “the answer is yes, until the dollar sign is attached.”

School building needs is a related problem. Since Proposition 13 limited property taxes in 1978, school districts have been hard pressed to pay for new schools in rapidly growing areas and for renovations of decaying schools.

Greene’s vetoed bill and a related package would have given school districts more power to create benefit assessment districts to levy fees on homeowners and builders. Deukmejian said the plan needs more work and said he hopes a compromise could be reached next spring.

Bader, who was involved in the bill package, said he is disappointed in the veto and that the “ball is now in the governor’s court to indicate the kind of proposal the governor and his staff favor.”

Two other controversial school bills that were vetoed would have provided $10.2 million for 160 school districts with declining enrollment but not declining costs, and would have required school buses to meet federal safety standards.

Another pressing problem in future years will be recruitment of the estimated 85,000 new teachers California will need by 1990.

“Teachers are instrumental to educational improvements, but systemic compromises with professionalism have eroded the attractiveness and contribution of the teaching career,” said the report of the California Commission on the Teaching Profession.

That commission, chaired by businessman Dorman Commons and funded by a private grant, issued a long list of thought-provoking and sometimes expensive proposals to halt the impending teacher shortage. Those include increasing teacher salaries, restructuring the tenure process, adding examinations for pay raises, requiring new teachers to complete a year of paid “residency” and improving classroom sizes and instructional materials.

Legislators said that report will prompt numerous bills in the next few years.

Getting the Message Across

“We need to send a message to young people that teaching is a desirable profession,” said state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), vice chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.

Hart said another issue will be the year-round school, which he said more districts need to consider.

“We still have an education calendar based on a 19th-Century agricultural model, when the kids needed the summer off to help with crops. If we’re really serious about competing with the Japanese and living in an information society, we can’t have three months off,” he said.

Honig said he probably will seek a second term as state schools chief next year because changing California’s schools “is going to take more than four years.

“We’ve got some catching up to do with funding as well as quality. We’re not there yet.”