Turn Down the Heat

The rising marks that California high-school seniors scored in the most recent test of what they are learning serves also as something of a report card on reforms in public education in the state.

Some educators say that you cannot prove a direct connection between the higher scores and the reform effort and the hundreds of millions of new dollars spent to support it. But the fact that the seniors are the first group to move through high school under the reforms, with more demanding curricula and better-paid teachers, must mean something.

For Bill Honig, the state superintendent of public instruction, the test scores were at least as welcome as a Nobel peace prize--probably more so. Peace is not much on Honig’s mind as he battles Gov. George Deukmejian over the size of the next fiscal year’s education budget. Honig wants $900 million more than the governor budgeted, and he obviously believes that the test scores will help him get it. “Clearly, investing in the system pays off,” he said when he announced the scores.

The governor saw the scores differently. A spokesman said, in effect, that it just goes to show that the state can coast a while on reforms because it can get better education with less money than Honig wants.

It is a judgment call as to whether California public schools can safely coast on a budget that the governor says is all that the state can afford or whether, as Honig insists, reform is cumulative and, once started, must proceed on schedule or fail. Clearly Honig’s judgment, based on years as a teacher and school administrator, is more persuasive. We agree that he needs the money.

About $600,000 would be used simply to prevent inflation and expanding school enrollment from eroding the school system already in place. Some would go for textbooks, some to hire more mentor teachers--talented teachers who can share that talent with their colleagues.

Some would make it possible to stop throwing new teachers “to the wolves,” as a Rand Corp. report released on Monday called the practice of putting them into the least desirable schools and telling them on their first day that they are on their own. Honig wants teachers to serve a year as interns, the way medical graduates do, so that new teachers could start under the guidance of experienced teachers.

The most serious threat to these necessary projects now is the growing feud between Honig and Deukmejian. Honig is right, but he is acting like a sophomore who knows that he has done A+ work and is getting a C from the head office. The governor sulks, puts a political spin on his remarks about education and personalizes what should be a cool, rational judgment about what is best for the future of California.

The reforms came largely as a result of the efforts of a coalition of businessmen, civic leaders and education leaders. If the coalition wants to save its reforms, it must persuade Honig and the governor to start over and work out the problem on a cool, rational basis.