Ballot Decisions Pivotal to School Reform

Californians may think their vote next month for state superintendent of public instruction will settle who runs their schools.

The truth is that the superintendent is just one player in a splintered leadership that governs the nation’s largest school system. And the rifts could deepen if voters approve a ballot measure to shake up education management both in Sacramento and in the local schoolhouse.

Although the race for state superintendent and the education initiative known as Proposition 8 have drawn little attention, these two highly partisan contests on the Nov. 3 ballot could prove vital to school reform.

The superintendent campaign pits incumbent Delaine Eastin, a Democrat who supports raising the state’s spending per pupil, against schoolteacher Gloria Matta Tuchman, a Republican who favors giving parents vouchers to help move their children from troubled public schools into private ones.

Proposition 8, backed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats, would create a statewide inspector to assess and rank all 8,000 public schools. It would also shift significant authority over spending and curriculum from local school districts to new, parent-controlled councils based at each school.

What links the two campaigns are fundamental questions of power: Who has it in our schools and who doesn’t.

Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican barred by term limits from seeking reelection, is the most influential figure by virtue of his line-item veto power over the state budget. Then there are the State Board of Education, appointed by the governor to make school policy, and the secretary of child development and education, a high-profile advisor to the governor.

But the buck doesn’t stop at the governor’s desk--to the great frustration of Wilson and his predecessors.

The state superintendent heads the Department of Education, an independent agency with programs serving 5.7 million schoolchildren and millions more adults and preschoolers. A thousand local school boards and superintendents zealously guard their own turf. So does the Legislature; many state senators and Assembly members style themselves education experts. Proposition 8 would inject yet more players into the mix.

“We have everybody and nobody in charge of education,” said Michael Kirst, a Stanford University education professor and former president of the state board. “It is very important, big stuff. Who’s running the show here?”

Analysts describe the current system as “dysfunctional” and “a mess.” Discontent has grown so widespread that in 1996 a commission charged with drafting revisions to the state Constitution recommended abolishing the elective office of the state superintendent and vesting its powers in an appointed position under the governor.

The proposal died in the Legislature but remains popular with many education insiders. Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the Republican nominee for governor, endorsed it anew in a September debate with his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis.

Some say that an elected superintendent is necessary to keep the public in public education.

“This is democracy,” said Wayne Johnson, vice president of the 280,000-member California Teachers Assn. “We have tremendous problems, but there’s nothing wrong with the system.”

It is almost impossible to assess Eastin’s performance without considering the limits on her authority.

The 51-year-old former state assemblywoman from Fremont says she has worked the “bully pulpit” to promote higher academic standards, student testing and school accountability.

During her four-year term, the state launched a phonics-friendly overhaul of reading instruction in 1995, cut class size from kindergarten through third grade in 1996, adopted rigorous standards for what students should know in reading, writing and mathematics in 1997 and, this year, extended the school year the equivalent of one academic week.

Eastin claims a good share of credit, saying that she was an early advocate of those reforms while others were Johnny-come-latelies.

“Let’s be very clear here. I have been the loudest voice for standards for all kids, in all schools, in all parts of the state,” Eastin said.

But it is one thing to advocate and quite another to wield influence. Eastin has frequently been upstaged by the Wilson-appointed State Board of Education, which has amassed power and staff in recent years. Meanwhile, Wilson crossed $8 million out of Eastin’s $35-million budget last August amid a feud over the size and duties of the superintendent’s legal team. Eastin, whose office is technically nonpartisan, had to take the lumps from the Republican governor. Such conflicts could fade, of course, if one party held both offices.

Even Eastin’s supporters concede that the superintendent is often overshadowed by top legislators and the governor. So class size reduction, to name just one of several examples, happened not when Eastin wanted it but when Wilson did--and on his terms.

“Those of us in the Legislature can work with [Eastin] to a certain degree, but at a certain point, we’re either going to face a veto or we’re going to have to figure out how we can work a [compromise] agenda,” said Kerry Mazzoni (D-San Rafael), head of the Assembly Education Committee. “I think that’s been very frustrating for her.”

As administrator of a 1,200-employee agency, Eastin gets mixed reviews. She said she has tightened lax management controls. For instance, Eastin said that when she entered office, she found most contracts were signed by department administrators after they took effect. No longer. “If you have a late contract, you have to come and see the great and powerful Wizard of Oz,” Eastin said--meaning herself.

But Eastin’s critics say her administration has stumbled on several occasions. Allegations of misuse of adult education funds disbursed by the department led to a federal investigation that came to light this year. And auditors in the U.S. Department of Agriculture this year complained of fraud and abuse in a child nutrition program administered by the state department. Eastin replies that her agency is cooperating with federal officials.

On bilingual education, Eastin has taken a moderate--slack, her critics say--position on enforcement of Proposition 227. Eastin opposed the anti-bilingual initiative before it passed last June. She has argued that the state should consider requests from school districts that want exemptions from the new law.

Eastin was forced into a runoff election after failing in June to win an outright majority in a five-way race. She got 43%; Matta Tuchman finished second with 26%. A Field poll released last week showed the superintendent continuing to struggle to raise her profile. Eastin’s support among likely voters was 28%, compared to 18% for Matta Tuchman and a huge 54% undecided.

Matta Tuchman, 56, has run a low-key campaign and trails in fund-raising. Four years ago, she finished fifth in a field of 12 seeking the superintendency. It would take a major upset for Matta Tuchman to win.

The Orange County schoolteacher says she has three decades of classroom experience that Eastin can’t match. She also is a former member of the Tustin school board. But she is primarily known for opposing bilingual education and co-sponsored Proposition 227 with businessman Ron Unz.

Matta Tuchman has financial backing from supporters of school vouchers and has kept up a drumbeat of criticism of Eastin’s administration. Perhaps most important, Matta Tuchman’s candidacy has forced Eastin’s allies to expend energy to reelect the superintendent at the same time they are trying to rally behind Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and defeat Proposition 8.

Wilson hopes the initiative will cement his legacy in state education. Named the “Permanent Class Size Reduction and Equal Educational Opportunities Act” because one provision would guarantee funding for the class size program, Proposition 8 takes direct aim at the superintendent’s office and others Wilson calls “educrats.” Statewide polls, released last week, show the initiative leading among likely voters but with less than the simple majority needed for passage.

At the initiative’s heart is the “chief inspector of public schools,” an idea Wilson picked up last year on a trip to Great Britain. “I gathered it was popular with everyone except the British teachers union,” Wilson said. That was good enough for the governor, who has spent most of his eight years in office fighting California teachers unions.

The inspector would be appointed by the next governor for 10 years and would have carte blanche to rank the state’s schools by test scores, dropout rates, attendance or any other criteria. The office’s annual budget, about $15 million to $20 million, would come from Department of Education funds.

Backers of the initiative--mainly Wilson and Republican allies--say that the inspector would put a premium on school performance at a time when the majority of California schoolchildren test below the national average in basic skills. Opponents--including the state PTA, teachers unions, other school groups and Democrats--say the position would add an unelected, unaccountable, unneeded layer of bureaucracy. Tops among their fears: that the inspector general would twist test data to bash public schools and lay the seeds for school vouchers.

Another key provision would force local school boards to create new “councils” at each school with authority over spending and curriculum. Parents would hold at least two-thirds of all council seats, teachers the rest. Wilson said he is attempting to spur parent involvement in schools.

That’s a goal all sides consider crucial for raising student achievement. But opponents say that the councils could veer off in 8,000 directions, voiding state efforts to install a new system of testing and curriculum linked to common academic standards.

Other portions of Proposition 8 crack down on students caught with drugs on campus, stiffen teacher credentialing requirements and give principals a greater hand in hiring and removing faculty. Principals would be forced to use student achievement tests in evaluating teachers--a switch from current law. Finally, the guarantee of class size reduction funds would enshrine the wildly popular program in the budget, even though there is no statewide data yet on exactly how much it helps students.

The initiative, like the superintendent’s race, underscores the obstacles to holding public schools accountable. Most parents and taxpayers want better data on schools. At the same time, they want to know who is in charge of fixing them. Proposition 8 could help fulfill the first wish, analysts say, but it does nothing for the second.

“We go round and round,” said Peter Schrag, an education analyst and former editorial page editor for the Sacramento Bee. “We’ve got this very diffuse kind of system, where it’s really very hard for anybody to know who’s the bad guy in the picture--or the good guy. The whole school governance structure in this state looks like the wiring design on a nuclear power plant. This [Proposition 8] makes the accountability picture even more complicated and problematic.”

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A Look at Prop. 8

What it does: Among other provisions, it would create a chief inspector to rank all public schools from best to worst; would create parent-controlled councils at each school with significant power over spending and curriculum; would make permanent in the state budget a program to reduce class size from kindergarten through third grade.

Arguments for: Gives unbiased information on school performance, enhances local control, insulates class-size reduction from budget politics.

Supporters: Gov. Pete Wilson; Yvonne Larsen, president of State Board of Education; Gloria Matta Tuchman, candidate for state superintendent; Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, Republican gubernatorial nominee; California Republican Party.

Arguments against: Creates more bureaucracy with an inspector unaccountable to the public; dilutes state academic standards by allowing each school to devise its own curriculum; unnecessarily locks a program into the budget before fully evaluating its effectiveness.

Opponents: California Teachers Assn.; state PTA; Delaine Eastin, incumbent state superintendent seeking reelection; Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, Democratic gubernatorial nominee; California Democratic Party.

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Sources: State ballot pamphlet; Times research