An Obscure Race for a Key Job

No matter the office you’re seeking--governor, lieutenant governor, dog catcher--the sure way to get a foot in a voter’s door this year is to vow to “fix” the state’s education system.

Education has risen to the top of the public’s concerns, and polls show that the majority of voters think the schools need a major overhaul.

Odd then, that the one constitutional officer whose job description specifically includes overseeing California’s 8,000 public schools should be so obscure. Or that the campaign to fill that job should be so invisible.

Since California’s Constitution was adopted in 1849, voters have selected a superintendent of public instruction every four years. The responsibilities include handing out more than $36 billion to 1,000 local school districts, enforcing education-related laws and keeping track of trends in enrollment, class size and financing.

Yet the incumbent of that office--Delaine Eastin--is virtually unknown. A poll conducted by her campaign earlier this year showed that, unprompted, only a third of likely voters could identify Eastin, who was first elected in 1994.

A Los Angeles Times poll this month found that 31% of likely voters were in her camp, compared with 16% for her closest challenger, Santa Ana first-grade teacher Gloria Matta Tuchman.

But 52% of the voters were undecided. And Cliff Staton, Eastin’s campaign consultant, said that having four opponents in the nonpartisan race will make it very difficult for her to avoid a November runoff by getting the majority of the votes June 2.

A fiery speaker, Eastin, 51, served four terms in the Assembly, representing a suburban area south of Oakland. She also headed the Assembly’s Education Committee.

During her first term as superintendent of public instruction, Eastin appointed task forces made up mostly of people outside the education establishment. Those bodies recommended a series of changes aimed at reemphasizing basic skills in math and reading. But Eastin’s critics say that she has not fully embraced those recommendations and has stuck with educators and experts in her department--in effect undermining needed changes.

That perception--that Eastin is defending instructional methods that have contributed to the poor performance of California students on national tests--also has caused bad blood between her and the State Board of Education.

The superintendent has little power to act unilaterally. The governor and the Legislature set the state’s education budget. The State Board of Education, appointed by the governor, establishes education policy. And policy is filtered through the governing boards of local school districts.

Eastin’s predecessor, Bill Honig, was an educator who fashioned systemic reforms that addressed graduation requirements, teaching methods, the content of textbooks and even the tests to be given. Eastin, whose background is as a politician, has functioned more as a cheerleader, trying to drum up more resources to pay for smaller class sizes, more computers, a longer school year and so on.

That’s also what Eastin is stressing in her campaign. Her stated goal is to raise education spending in the state to the national average over the next five years. This year the state is spending roughly $5 billion below what it would take to achieve that goal.

Eastin has said she would urge the Legislature to spend the state’s current $4.4-billion budget surplus on such things as mandatory summer school and after-school programs for students who are behind, art classes, higher teacher salaries, textbooks, library books and science labs.

And although she says she would work to get along with whoever is elected governor in the fall, Republican or Democrat, she will press him or her on the spending issue. “We really and truly need to have somebody who puts kids first in the governor’s office,” Eastin said. “Any Democrat who thinks . . . I’m going to go off quietly in a corner if they don’t put kids first is badly mistaken.”

The most visible of Eastin’s four opponents is Tuchman, who ran unsuccessfully in 1994. Tuchman’s supporters include many conservative Republicans, including those who support publicly funded vouchers for students to attend private school.

A longtime opponent of bilingual education, Tuchman co-chairs the campaign for Proposition 227, which would virtually end bilingual education in the state and which polls show will probably be a runaway success Tuesday.

If it does pass and Eastin is reelected, Tuchman says, she doubts Eastin will enforce it.

The state Department of Education until recently forced districts to teach in children’s native language whenever possible. Like most supporters of bilingual education, Eastin dodges the persistent questions regarding its effectiveness.

Instead, she points to programs that she believes are working--such as those that simultaneously teach Spanish-speaking children to speak English and English-speaking children to speak Spanish.

Those programs, she said, “would be outlawed” if Proposition 227 passes. “Why would we replace the programs that are working and allow some rich person to pull something out of a hat and say that’s what we should do instead?”

Tuchman said she will enforce the provisions of Proposition 227 if she’s elected.

“I will not only follow them but also guarantee that every district teaches children to read, write and speak in English,” Tuchman said. “Eastin would carry on with business as usual.”

The others seeking the job are:

* Barbara Carpenter of La Jolla, a former president of the San Diego County Board of Education who runs her own career counseling firm. Carpenter would seek to reduce the size of the state Education Department and provide vouchers for poor students to attend private schools.

* Miles Everett, a Sonoma County teacher who believes that television is the greatest obstacle to children learning to read. Students “don’t see why school should demand so much difficult reading, concentration and persistence--so unlike the effortless, mindless, instant gratification they find so comfortable on TV.”

* Mark Isler, a Van Nuys food distributor who also ran for the office eight years ago. Isler said the key to improving education is allowing parents to choose how their children are educated, using publicly funded vouchers if necessary to send them to private school. Beyond that, however, “the solution is back to basics, back to high standards and back to discipline.”