Scores of Ideas Flow From State’s ‘Education Summit’

Participants in California’s “education summit” hurtled through a crash course in agenda-setting Wednesday, offering up scores of ideas for fixing the public schools.

The ideas, in the form of recommended courses of action, were pounded out in two days by seven committees of California educators, parents, business leaders and legislators. When refined and distilled over the next two to three weeks, they will form the basis of a plan for California’s schools over the next decade.

The final recommendations of the 300-member summit group also will be forwarded to Gov. George Deukmejian, who will include them with the ideas he will take to Governor’s Task Force on Education when it reconvenes in February.

Noting that many of the ideas are controversial or costly, state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig told summit participants Wednesday that he needs some consensus on what course to take.

“If we could put (all of the committees’ recommendations) into practice, we’d be a lot better off in California,” Honig said, “but some of them are going to be controversial, and I’d like to hear your views.”

A sampling of some of the recommendations:

- Decreasing the level of adult illiteracy by 5% each year over the next decade.

- Integrating such community services as welfare and public health with the school systems to help children with “outside” problems that keep them from learning.

- Spending $50 million a year on beefed-up math and science programs.

- Extending the teachers’ work year to provide for planning and staff development.

- “Dramatically” increasing efforts to recruit minorities into the education profession at all levels.

- Revamping testing methods in several ways, including making student assessments more closely tied to “real-world” skills.

When workshop leaders summarized their group’s ideas at the end of the summit, they sparked sometimes lively debate.

And they drew an uncharacteristically passionate plea from Leonard Britton, superintendent of the massive Los Angeles Unified School District.

Noting that children at many of California’s urban schools are staggering under overwhelming burdens of poverty, overcrowding, gangs, drugs and limited proficiency in English, Britton urged the group to press for more funds.

“I encourage you and the governor to speak up for all the children in this state,” Britton said to cheers and applause.

“We know what we need to do,” said San Jose teacher Claire Pelton, leader of the workshop on teacher preparation and recruitment. “It’s a question of developing the political will to jump those barriers.”

Participants worked furiously to plan recommended strategies in the seven areas, which were based on the broad outlines drawn at the first-ever national summit on education last fall.

For example, the workshop discussing ways to restructure schools broke into subgroups and pasted on the walls of their conference room large, hand-lettered outlines of their agendas and issues to be decided.

Joan-Marie Shelley, president of the San Francisco Federation of Teachers, said she was “pleasantly surprised at the extent of agreement reached by a very diverse group of people. . . . It seems to be a process that is working surprisingly well.”

California’s “Teacher of Year,” Janis T. Gabay of Serra High School in San Diego, said she, too, was pleased at the number of good ideas that came out of her workshop on getting high school students ready for college or the workplace. But she acknowledged the difficulties of coming up with plans that work.

NEXT STEP

Over the next two to three weeks, state education officials will distill recommendations for improving public schools from the ideas put forth at the education summit. The recommendations will be forwarded to Gov. George Deukmejian, who will take them to the national Governors’ Task Force on Education when it reconvenes in February. The governors’ group is working on specific national goals and strategies for achieving them, as called for by President Bush and the governors last September.