The Sinking Schools

Gov. George Deukmejian’s investigation of cost-effectiveness in public education is no substitute for expanded support of the schools--the kind of support that he refused to provide when the tax-windfall opportunity developed in the spring. His denials notwithstanding, his action appointing yet another commission appears to be motivated more by his distracting feud with state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig than with responsible leadership.

Honig has hardly been the epitome of diplomacy and political grace, but he has spoken loud and clear in challenging the evident neglect of education in California, and he was right in doing that. He has set a good example in promising cooperation with the commission despite the governor’s ill-advised decision to exclude him from the commission.

Deukmejian thinks that the schools should not be complaining after receiving $8 billion in increased support over the 4 1/2 years since he was elected. That is a measure of the narrowness of his vision. Even with those fund increases the state has fallen from ninth to 33rd in terms of spending per pupil, now about one-third the level in New York. The governor tends to dismiss statistics like that by saying that money isn’t everything, which ignores the growing evidence of the toll being taken by inadequate funding.

The governor was wrong in his tax-refund proposal, and he is even more seriously in error in seeming to argue that the school districts have only themselves to blame if they are in financial trouble.

Fortunately, there are experienced and expert professionals among those named to the commission. Their charge is to analyze the management and the performance of the state’s schools. Implicit in that is making a judgment about the adequacy of funding. Perhaps they will be able to do what other experts have failed to do, persuading the governor that California public schools--once tops in the nation--are in decline, and that the cost of that decline is far greater to everyone in the state than the cost of providing the increased funding required to restore excellence in the public schools.