Loosen the Grip of Central Power : Conversation: Turnaround expert Sanford C. Sigoloff advises schools to spend smarter and stop living by old rules.
Sigoloff, a specialist in rescuing troubled companies, serves on the state’s Board of Education, chairing the committee on performance and evaluation. A graduate of Beverly Hills High School and UCLA, Sigoloff, 64, became a reluctant media star in the mid-1980s when he was featured in TV ads for the troubled Wickes Companies. (“We got the message, Mr. Sigoloff”). Head of a Santa Monica consulting firm, Sigoloff teaches a course in crisis management at UCLA’s Graduate School of Management. He spoke with S. J. DIAMOND about the crises in California schools. Question: Did you go to public schools?
Answer: I went to public school, as did my children for most of their education and now my grandchildren. I think leaving public school for private is the ultimate in frustration, recognizing that you couldn’t get what you expected.
Q: Why did the California Learning Assessment System test results cause such a stir?
A: The CLAS test is the latest in a kaleidoscope of hot buttons, like English as a Second Language, Proposition 187 or school crime. The results do indicate that what kids are getting in school is not going to make them world-class competitors 10 years from now. But these issues are like volcanoes: They bubble up, then stop or explode, and it’s over. I’m less interested in pyro-glyphics than in what we can and should accomplish.
Q: Can you define the underlying problems?
A: School reform and improvement are not new ideas, but there are a lot of restrictions now, starting with the monetary: We’re not heavily investing in education. If you look at the future, there isn’t any more revenue, and K-12 education’s share may be declining.
Also, our expectations are changing. We’ve put schools in the position of being societal servants, not just educators. Schools are having to deal with issues that belonged to the family, maybe the church, and educators are beginning to recognize that many problems aren’t transitory but permanent, like the breakdown of the family.
Q: What do you think is the best approach?
A: You define the crisis and rank its elements by priority. We’ve started by saying we don’t have enough money. But the question isn’t just the amount, but the effectiveness in how it’s spent. A critical issue is dollars for new schools, given a shortage of schoolrooms and schooling space. We have to be able to borrow this money. But the voter, on bond issues, has said, “I’m not comfortable with letting you people use my money.”
How old are the books in our libraries? The textbooks? How many innovative methods have been brought into the classroom? How many hours a day are our children in school? Less than in other industrialized countries.
Whether or not you like the testing method, we’re not getting across the educational basics to our children. The surprise in the CLAS test wasn’t the scores, but the depth of the problem. It isn’t just the inner city that’s not doing well; the rowboat has a lot of people in it.
We know what the problems are--we’re not uninformed--but everything precipitates an argument. With what characteristics should children leave the school system? In our day, we had to know Latin, history, our Constitution. What do students have to know today?
Q: What would be on your list of priorities?
A: First, the fundamentals--new textbooks, curriculum changes in reading and math, ways to get teachers to meet these goals, enhanced programs for language-minority students to learn English well.
Then why not some new teaching measures, like computers, or teachers who haven’t gone through the school system? You can’t do these things if you live by the old rule book. We need innovation. Why can’t schools run an extra couple of hours a day or 11 months a year? Why can’t you have team teaching? Why not have an associate in arts teacher for special teaching, or more parents in the classrooms? And why not give local authorities more opportunity to raise their own funds, so people in Los Angeles, which needs new schools, could have a bond issue without involving people in other areas?
Q: Would it help to shift power to the local level?
A: We should be shifting some educational decision-making to the local level. LEARN, which is local school management, is doing some terrifically exciting things. Systemwide reform is gradual: You can only mandate change when you have a single crisis manager--in business, the chief executive. We have the Department of Education, the Legislature, the governor and the entire school system, which, until recently, has been run the same way for 60 years.
The CLAS told us we have to change. So in a strange way, the first priority may have been met: Everyone’s looking at the subject.
