Why Politicians Love to Talk About Reforming Education

Why education? And why now?

Every candidate for every office at stake in this year’s state elections comes complete with a plan to reform education--reduce class size, stop “social promotion,” bring back basics, build more schools.

One of the hottest propositions on the June ballot will be English for the Children, sponsored by Silicon Valley businessman Ron Unz, which would dismantle the state’s bilingual-education program. The Los Angeles teachers’ union, meanwhile, has qualified, also for June, the “95-5” initiative, which would prohibit California school districts from spending more than 5% of their budget on administration.

Gov. Pete Wilson, barred by law from seeking another term, is working hard to position himself as the state’s principal-in-chief. Last month, he introduced an initiative, aimed for November’s ballot, that would make his class-size reduction permanent, establish a state inspector for public schools and require teachers and principals to be more accountable for their students’ performance. The governor’s State of the State address brimmed with education, including a proposal to place $8 billion in school-construction bonds on the ballot over four elections.

Democrats also have jumped on the education bandwagon. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is seeking to qualify an initiative for the November ballot that would raise cigarette taxes by a dollar a pack to pay for a longer school year, further reduce class size and end social promotions. Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, running for governor, proposes that the state spend $3 billion over the next five years on textbooks and that teachers be required to assign a specific amount of daily homework. Gubernatorial candidate Al Checchi already is trumpeting his education reforms in paid television ads. They call for teacher testing, an end to social promotion and increased school funding, paid for by a 10% cut in the education bureaucracy.

GOP Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, a virtually certain candidate for governor, has yet to weigh in with an education agenda, but he favors providing public funding for vouchers that would enable students to attend private schools.

This upsurge of interest in education is the result of a number of factors: skyrocketing enrollment in public schools, which spotlights the need for more school construction; national surveys that repeatedly show California lagging badly in achievement scores, standards and per-capita education spending; a rebounding economy; the existence of extra budget money that, under Proposition 98, must in part go to schools; polls indicating that education is the major voter concern this year, and, of course, the 1998 elections.

Term-limited legislators see “fixing” the school system as a ticket to another elective office. Wilson is hoping he can leave office pointing to an uptick in student performance. That would look good in California history books--and play well in national politics. Wilson is using a time-honored governors’ tactic in building his legacy: shifting and deferring the burden of payment for high-ticket items like education. That will leave the next governor with a major fiscal mess.

One of Wilson’s favorite political strategies is “Get CTA,” the state’s powerful teachers’ union. His proposed budget would not pay teachers during “passing time,” the few minutes when students travel between classes. His education initiative might force the CTA to divert funds from candidate contributions, which overwhelmingly end up in Democratic campaigns. Wilson’s proposal to fund “opportunity scholarships”--a.k.a., vouchers--is yet another poke in the eye of the teachers’ union, which spent $9 million to defeat a voucher initiative in 1993.

The governor’s budget appropriates $52 million for students in the lowest-performing schools to pay for attendance at another public or private school. This can, said the governor, “rescue” students “trapped in California’s worst classrooms.” In targeting schools largely in urban areas, Wilson seeks to soften his image of “racial insensitivity,” which has dogged him in the wake of Propositions 187 and 209. Latinos are among those most concerned with academic failure, because their children make up 41% of the state’s public-school population.

Similarly, Feinstein can use reform to reach out to Latino voters, who remain cool to her because of her strong stance against illegal immigration. An issue that resonates with voters from the urban core to the Central Valley, school reform could help boost her favorability ratings (on the rise from the muddy depths of her 1994 Senate race) for a possible run for governor, or a place on the Democrats’ national ticket in 2000.

The GOP wants to win back “soccer moms” and independent voters wooed away by President Bill Clinton’s fixation on mending the nation’s schools. Education is “one of the reasons why there is a gender gap,” Republican pollster Q. Whitfield Ayres explains, “because Democrats . . . have been trusted with the issue more than Republicans.”

It’s simple political arithmetic. “If you are going to be a majority party,” voucher proponent Marshall Wittman explains, “you have to have solutions for areas that don’t necessarily vote Republican.”

State politicians assiduously court the “education establishment,” a conglomeration of powerful and politically active interests. To understand how heat-seeking the issue of education can be, one had only to witness the budget briefing given by Marian Bergeson, Wilson’s secretary for child development and education. The Capitol Press Conference Room was filled with dozens of bureaucrats and lobbyists representing teachers, school boards, administrators, parents’ groups and school employees--and five reporters. The stakes for the education coalition are high. The mood was intense.

Diffusing that intensity could be essential to candidates, to avoid the kind of nasty media unleashed by angry--and well-heeled--anti-abortion and pro-term-limits groups in last week’s special congressional election in Santa Barbara.

If bitterness can be avoided, maybe this will be one of those rare times that the political and policy stars are in alignment, and there is an opportunity to get something done.