A Deposit on School Futures

Gov. Pete Wilson, happily awash in a budget surplus, proposes spending another $1 billion on some of the things public schools need most: better teachers, textbooks, library books, remedial summer school and after-school programs.

The state anticipates a budget surplus of $4 billion, and Wilson is rightly trying to point some of that money toward improving dismal student achievement. More would be even better.

He’s made some good choices, including a $45-million boost for teacher training programs. Teacher quality across the state is uneven. Beginning teachers need help as they learn their way around a classroom and many veteran teachers need retraining in phonics-based reading instruction and math basics. Wilson would fund both. Outstanding teachers who pass the difficult National Board Certification would be rewarded with a one-time merit bonus of $10,000. Wilson, who has steadily increased his friendliness toward education as his term in office draws to a close, would fund grants and internships and assume student loans, all helpful in recruiting students to a relatively low-paid profession.

California’s textbook shortage would be eased with $250 million intended to buy every student a new math textbook. More millions would help restock barren school libraries.

The state’s worst schools need special attention. Wilson proposes funding for educational intervention teams, successfully used in other states, who would go into the lowest-performing schools, diagnose what isn’t working and prescribe steps toward improvement.

In poor, high-crime communities, schools would get funding for after-school programs that stress academics. In some neighborhoods, schools are the safest haven for children, and should be kept open as long as possible. A new remedial summer school reading and math program would help children in the third through sixth grades. A good dollop of funds would also go the state’s universities and community colleges.

That’s all good news. The dismaying fact is, however, that even with the new spending, California would remain far below the national per-student average spent annually on school libraries--about $7.50 nationally, currently an anemic 78 cents in California. And the state would still be considerably below average in textbook spending. The governor’s spending plan is a good place to start the legislative debate on how best to rejuvenate public schools, but it should by no means end there.