NEWS ANALYSIS : School Voucher Threat Gives Impetus for Reform : Education: State has passed no major plan since 1983. Officials scramble for solutions but public is skeptical.

Education leaders are calling the defeat of the voucher initiative last week a wake-up call. But for much of the public, it seems the alarm has been sounding for years and state officials have repeatedly pressed the snooze button, letting California’s public schools drift into mediocrity through neglect.

Now, fearing the next voucher battle that proponents say could come as soon as next year, elected officials from both parties are scrambling to offer solutions to improve the performance of California’s 5.2 million students and restore public confidence in schools once considered among the nation’s best.

“Education has been a partisan issue for too long,” Republican Assemblyman Charles W. Quackenbush (R-San Jose) said. “I think now the political will is here to get some of these problems addressed.”

But a frustrated public is waiting to see if real change will grow out of this equivalent of a deathbed conversion.

Since 1983, when the state embraced a far-reaching package of reforms that made children spend more time in school and take tougher classes, no comprehensive reform plan has survived the state’s legislative process.

Instead, reform proposals have been political pawns used by factions of the education Establishment--employees’ unions, school board associations, school district lobbyists--to gain leverage to make deals on smaller issues of special interest to their members.

“The politics have superseded the policy,” said Maureen DiMarco, Gov. Pete Wilson’s top-ranking education adviser. “But now, I think we have reason to believe things are going to change.

“I think people are realizing they may win this battle or that battle, but we are losing the war. And the public is utterly disgusted with this political gridlock, with these political battles that don’t benefit a single child.”

It is too soon to tell if this newfound resolve to change will translate into gains in the schoolhouse. And, without a bold, creative leader, it is difficult to see how formidable obstacles--lack of money and a student population that grows needier by the day--will be overcome.

But, pledging a new era of bipartisan cooperation, politicians and union leaders are seizing the moment to pitch their own versions of education reform. The elements in each are much the same: more technology in schools and less crime; more accountability and less bureaucracy.

Those ideas have been suggested in some form or another in the past, and few offer solutions to the state’s most intractable education problems, including the high cost of reducing class size from the second largest in the nation and building enough campuses to house exploding student enrollment; the rising number of poor and immigrant students with special needs, and the often-paralyzing influence of a teachers association that has exercised its political clout to block reforms that threaten its members.

In addition, the public’s patience is wearing thin: Statewide polls show that fewer than 1% of residents believe the state is proceeding quickly enough with reforms.

Some education experts say California’s best chance for reform came in the early 1980s, when Bill Honig was the visionary state schools chief, money was plentiful and the political will to make fundamental changes in the schools was strong.

In 1993, Honig is gone, the economy is sour and the public is more disenchanted with school quality and less likely to be placated by piecemeal solutions.

“I don’t think it’s likely the state is going to come out with much of anything that will make a difference, other than the kinds of things that are largely symbolic,” said Stanford education professor Michael Kirst. “For one thing, change takes money.”

But it is clear that some of the arguments wielded by backers of Proposition 174, the school voucher initiative, have struck a chord with the public, politicians and the education bureaucracy.

There was, for example, the voucher supporter who showed up at debates with a pushcart filled with the 40 pounds of books that make up the state’s education code, which spells out everything from how many days class must be in session to what kind of paint should be used on bathroom walls.

“Do we really need this much regulation?” asks Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, which is considering an overhaul of the voluminous education code.

Under the threat of vouchers, legislators appear to be rethinking a host of issues. In the past year, they moved swiftly to approve two bills, one of which had languished for five years. Both were touted during the campaign as proof that public schools are being fixed.

It was only in the final weeks of the summer session that the Legislature approved what it hailed as landmark school choice legislation, designed to allow parents to transfer their children to public schools outside their own neighborhood. But the measure was packed with restrictions to limit transfers and make it more palatable to the California Teachers Assn.

Many school district superintendents and education experts agree that its passage had more to do with voucher campaign politics than with reform. It was late off the mark, they said, and went no farther than open enrollment policies already in place in most districts.

The Charter Schools Act--the other widely cited example of state education reform--allows a school to secede from its local district, break free from state regulations, define its own goals and manage itself.

But the law allows for only 100 of the state’s 7,000 public schools to become independent and allocates no extra money to help them chart their new course, which some say is proving to be a tough hurdle to overcome.

That bill, by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) was opposed by the CTA, which favored a competing measure by Eastin that would have protected collective bargaining agreements. But Hart was unwilling to compromise. “We snuck it in,” he said, by using a parliamentary maneuver that caught the CTA off guard.

Now the CTA, which poured $12.4 million into the effort to defeat Proposition 174, is pledging to promote reforms.

The union--which spent $1.3 million lobbying legislators last year--has been able to block and delay changes big and small, from peer review of teachers to merit pay and changes to the tenure system.

But the pro-voucher campaign’s pointed criticism of public schools has caused the leadership of the 230,000-member union to undergo “very deep introspection,” said its president, Del Weber.

“I think CTA has found they have to come to the table” with ideas for reform, DiMarco said. “We all know what they’re against, but they have difficulty communicating what they are for when it comes to reform, other than more money.”

Weber said his union has not yet developed reform proposals, but will host a series of public hearings over the next year, then prepare “common sense legislation” dealing with school technology, campus safety and over-regulation of public schools.

Already, in the days since the voucher election, there has been reform action on several fronts:

Wilson unveiled a five-point reform plan, called in the head of a national education commission to mediate reform discussions and pledged a truce in his feud with the CTA.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, considered a likely candidate for governor, staked out her turf as the “education candidate” with a more radical set of proposals--including a revamped bilingual education program, beefed-up vocational training and so-called disciplinary schools.

And Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) pledged to bring education leaders from around the state together in a February “Education Summit,” similar to his economic summit last spring, which provided an arena for business leaders to air their complaints and led to a flurry of legislation to make California more business-friendly.

Many said it will take leadership from the business community to keep reform on track. If businesses lose faith that the state’s public schools can improve enough to produce an educated work force, they will be more inclined to back radical change, such as the next voucher initiative.

Hart said one reason business did not pump financial support to the voucher campaign is that it has already invested in other reform efforts, such as the LEARN plan to decentralize the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“If those efforts run into a brick wall . . . the corporate establishment will jump ship,” Hart said.

The challenge for reformers will be to initiate change with few resources, as the cash-starved state continues to claw its way out of a lingering recession.

“The battle over money isn’t the answer,” DiMarco said. “How are we spending our money now? Is it efficient and is it effective? We have not come to agreement on what we want to do, and that has to come first.”

The Legislature is considering a $200-million bond measure that would include $50 million to improve school safety by constructing campus fences and buying metal detectors. The remainder of the money would be used to wire aging campuses to accept computers.

“The state cannot and should not do it all, but we do have a responsibility to make sure that every child, whether they’re in Los Angeles or Ukiah or Weed, gets an opportunity to sit down in front of the best technology,” said Eastin, who intends to announce her candidacy for state superintendent of public instruction this month.

The state has been without a permanent schools chief since Honig was convicted in January on conflict-of-interest charges for steering lucrative political contracts to a firm run by his wife.

During his decade as state schools chief, Honig spearheaded reforms that forged a national reputation for California as being ahead of the curve in improving school quality. He frequently battled state legislators and Govs. Wilson and George Deukmejian to fend off school spending cuts, and took on the unions in pushing for school standards and accountability.

Politics delayed the appointment of Honig’s successor when Democrats derailed Wilson’s choice by refusing to confirm Orange County legislator and former teacher Marion Bergeson. Instead, Honig’s deputy, Dave Dawson, has stepped in until next June’s election.

“We have something of a vacuum and a lot of us are looking at how do we fill that. Dave Dawson is a nice man, but he’s not Bill Honig and he doesn’t pretend to be. Bill Honig was very good at pushing for things and he had a sense of where he wanted to go,” said Mary Bergan, head of the reform-minded California Federation of Teachers.

For reforms to make it from Sacramento to the schools, “We need someone who says ‘I don’t care if I have your money; I don’t care if I have your support; I don’t care if I have your votes, I’m going to do it right,” said Los Angeles teachers union President Helen Bernstein.

“It’s not that somebody is blocking reform, it’s who’s going to lead it. . . . And we don’t see the dynamic leadership.”

Some say that public schools cannot afford to depend on politicians or a charismatic leader to bring about real change. “It’s really up to those of us who are in the system to stop giving excuses about regulation and what we can’t do, and focus on what we need to do,” said Bergan.

Indeed, outside of Sacramento there are other hurdles to school reform, such as the political jousting between local school boards and union chapters that keeps many districts on the brink of crisis.

In Los Angeles, it took the threat of vouchers, a state takeover and a teachers strike, plus an ongoing breakup movement, to force school board members to wholeheartedly embrace a business- and community-backed reform program. Since then, the district has made decentralization its mantra.

But voucher backers have pledged to return with another initiative within two years, and some say it is only that threat that will keep the heat on to force change.

Al Shanker, head of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “It could very well be that now that the initiative has been defeated, people could become complacent and slip back into business as usual.”

Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this story.