We Need Davis--and Teachers

No challenge is more critical to the future of California than producing dramatic improvements in student achievement. The Nov. 3 elections produced a fresh mandate to tackle that challenge. Gov.-elect Gray Davis acted decisively to name a panel to recommend K-12 education policy reform. Where to begin?

Reinventing schools is a daunting job, only made more so by entrenched coalitions that feel more at home with the comfort of the status quo than the discomfort of change. Financial, organizational and political obstacles can tax even the most vigorous proponents of change. Success for the new governor’s reform effort will come neither easily nor quickly.

Five years of work to reform the troubled Los Angeles public schools has taught LEARN (the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now) several valuable lessons that should be applied for statewide success: think local, set standards, enforce accountability and create financial flexibility.

Statewide education reform won’t work if comes only from the top down. Students learn in individual classrooms. The governor-elect needs to reach directly into the schools where real learning and real neglect occur.

Take reading, which Davis wisely focuses on. As literacy rises, so do all other areas of achievement. But states don’t teach reading; teachers do. Nothing in the LEARN program has been more effective at building results than an eight-day program of collaborative training and planning that allows each school team to design, in part, its own plans of attack on reading instruction.

Successful site-based reform means enhancing each school’s capability to assess student underachievment, plan for improvements and measure educators based on progress. Each school must prepare meaningful improvement plans. They should supplant all the useless compliance documents rotting in file cabinets. The plans should be handed to every parent on the first day of school.

Improving performance also requires defining it. The governor-elect must push state curriculum standards into classrooms and create a fair measure of school performance. He can best achieve this through a statewide testing system based on the state’s curriculum content standards. Then, he must take the indispensable step of providing training and textbooks aligned with the standards.

The key is to stay with students from the time they enter school to the day they leave, so that we can assess the total of their learning. We should measure progress over single and multiple years, proficiency in skills and the application of skills and concepts to new tasks. To be fair, we’ve got to group performance scores by such factors as family income, English language literacy, and others that permit impartial school-to-school comparisons.

Then there’s funding reform. We should simplify the state funding system, which funds dozens of old programs that no longer serve their original purpose. Let’s create a new system based on simple principles: student enrollment, extra cost to educate at-risk students, staff development, instructional materials, transportation and higher local operating costs. Superintendents and principals should then have the freedom to reallocate funds based on competitive plans to meet student achievement priorities. Such a system would provide a powerful accountability tool for parents.

If the state requires greater local accountability, it also must create clearer accountability at the top. The state places responsibility for education on the governor and Legislature. Yet, an independent, elected state superintendent of public instruction exists along with an independent, appointed policymaking State Board of Education. This diffuses responsibility. Both posts should be replaced, the former by the governor’s appointed secretary of education, the latter with an advisory board composed of superintendents, board members, principals, teachers, parents and university researchers. We all need to know where the buck stops.

For 50 years, we have asked our schools to perform at higher levels without creating the basic management tools to allow them to succeed. Nothing less than a bold, long-term plan will provide California children with the world-class education they deserve. That’s what every parent should ask of the new leadership in Sacramento.