Anybody Notice We Have a Crisis? : Urgency of educational reform is no mystery--what’s needed is an all-out effort

The lights are on, but is anybody home?

For more than 10 years education reformers have been warning, with increasing urgency, that American public education is in deep trouble. Everyone agrees that California public education, in particular, faces daunting challenges, especially in terms of ethnic and language diversity and the numbers of children to be educated. So there’s a task force here, a reform movement there, but still no statewide, coordinated, comprehensive plan for change.

That essentially was the 1990 assessment of the respected education think tank Policy Analysis for California Education. Recently, PACE pointed out there still is no comprehensive plan. Teachers, principals, parents and anyone else who pays a whit of attention to public education knows PACE is right.

What will it take to bring Gov. Pete Wilson, Secretary of Education Maureen DiMarco, Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer and the California Teachers Assn. to work together to produce a concrete, specific plan to improve public education, along with the resources needed to make it happen? In public policy, usually there’s nothing like a crisis to focus effort and spur action. Is 70% of fourth-graders, eighth-graders and 10th-graders scoring in the bottom three levels for math not to be considered a crisis? What more of a wake-up call is needed than the fact that California fourth-graders ranked last--tied with Louisiana--among states in the federal assessment of reading skills released last Thursday?

Eastin currently has two task forces analyzing why the state’s student test scores are so low and what can be done about it. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But there are already enough reports from various education reform task forces. If voters continue to see confusion, lack of clear direction and, most important, lack of results , then “public education is going to be out of business,” DiMarco has properly warned.

Although defeated in 1993, proponents of school vouchers that would use public money for private education are organizing to put a second initiative on the 1996 ballot. There’s no clear evidence that vouchers would improve education, but if the guardians of public education don’t act fast, frustrated voters may not turn down vouchers again.

PACE’s comprehensive plan includes: setting solid goals and then retooling the controversial student testing/assessment system so educators can measure how student performance meets the goals; giving teachers greater pay incentives to improve skills that directly affect student performance, and restoring local fiscal control, in part with ballot measures to allow majority-vote tax hikes.

California leaders: The public education agenda has been set. Get going. And all in the same direction.