Davis, Lungren Differ on School Funds, Vouchers

Dan Lungren and Gray Davis both denounce the failure of California’s public schools to teach hundreds of thousands of young children the basics of reading, and promise to reform a broken system if elected governor.

“We have a crisis in education, reading being one of the leading factors in that,” says Lungren, the Republican nominee and state attorney general.

“I think it’s a disgrace that California kids are doing so poorly,” says Davis, the Democratic nominee and lieutenant governor.

But neither man has offered many new proposals to accomplish key educational goals, such as making every child a proficient reader by third grade. Instead, the education debate between the two candidates has primarily revived familiar partisan battles.

Probably the most important difference between Davis and Lungren involves the education budget.

Davis relies on figures prepared by a national teachers union and the state Department of Education that show California ranks around 37th in per-pupil spending--about $900 a year less than the average. Davis pledges a major effort to try to close that gap but is careful to link higher spending to higher standards and accountability.

Lungren argues that raising the level of school spending in California is not an urgent issue. Citing figures from the state legislative analyst’s office showing about a $400 gap, he contends that the state is already close to the national average in per-pupil spending.

The two figures are based on different sets of data. For example, the analyst’s office includes preschool and child care spending, while the state Education Department does not.

Both Embrace Recent Reforms

On many other issues, the candidates agree. They both embrace key reforms that have flowed out of Sacramento in the last two years, from class size reduction to increased spending on textbooks to improved teacher training.

Beyond that, however, Lungren has focused on the longtime Republican goal of offering parents money, in the form of vouchers, to pay for private school tuition.

Davis has ridiculed that idea, saying that it would sell out public schools. Lungren, in turn, has charged that Davis is in the pocket of the teachers unions that endorsed him and is afraid of radical change.

Neither man has so far been a key player in the efforts to reverse the decline of California schools. Consequently, as the gubernatorial candidates angle for the center on one of the year’s hottest political issues, they argue over who made the earliest or most vigorous endorsement of bipartisan school reforms enacted by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Legislature.

Lungren, a former congressman who has staked his name on fighting crime, “hasn’t until now given much thought to education,” said Bruce Fuller, co-director of the Policy Analysis for California Education project at UC Berkeley and Stanford University.

“My own view,” Fuller said, “is that he’s scrambling around a little bit to see how these issues play in the polls.”

Davis, a former state assemblyman, has a reputation for backing public schools but has what Fuller called “very tame and very safe” reform proposals.

“The downside of that is that it reveals a lack of inventiveness, a lack of aggressive thinking in how to challenge the school bureaucracy, which remains sluggish in many parts of the state.”

In hourlong interviews with The Times, Davis and Lungren spoke expansively and at times passionately about the troubles with public schools and their plans to fix them. On many points the two are in sync with current state policies.

* Both would continue rating schools through statewide testing of student achievement. Last spring, the state launched such a program with the Stanford 9 tests, which showed most California schools trailing national averages.

* Both would uphold new standards that call for paying special attention to phonics instruction in early grades.

* Both would require low-achieving students to take remedial classes before moving up a grade. Wilson is expected to sign a bill against “social promotion” this month.

* Both favor a $9.2-billion school construction bond on the state’s November ballot. Davis also favors lowering the current two-thirds vote requirement for passage of local school bonds to a simple majority. Lungren would lower the vote threshold for local measures to 60%.

* Both would invest in new textbooks. Davis proposes $3 billion over five years. Lungren supports a package just passed in Sacramento for $1 billion over four years.

* Both would stiffen teacher credentialing requirements while also seeking to reduce a severe teacher shortage--issues on which the Legislature passed several new measures this past year.

* The candidates have had much less to say about higher education because public attention has been riveted on the quality of elementary and secondary schools. Both agree that the University of California should add a 10th campus at Merced in the San Joaquin Valley.

The shortage of new ideas emerges when Davis and Lungren are asked to respond to a specific educational challenge: How to improve reading skills for the nearly 40% of California students in second through fifth grades who scored in the bottom quarter nationally on last spring’s Stanford 9. Most children at that level can hardly read.

Their answer, in effect, is to exhort parents and teachers to roll up their sleeves and just do it. Neither candidate sets a specific target for how much reading test scores should improve or by when--although Davis says he plans to do so before the election.

Lungren said the state’s reading troubles stem from educational “fads,” “bad teachers,” “lack of standards” and a lack of testing. Those are all issues that the state has addressed in recent years and that Lungren vows will not recur. Lungren, a product of private Catholic schools who earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Notre Dame, drew on his own experience to illustrate what he said must happen next.

“I can remember when going to Catholic grade school, the teachers stressed writing to us and reading to us--that it was something you would enjoy, yes, but also something that you had to put your attention to.”

Lungren, whose younger sister Christine is principal of a public school in Long Beach, said he expects the same focus from students and teachers nowadays--and from parents.

“I’m very partial to reading. I was an English major. I love to read. I’ve tried to instill that in my children. The first example in terms of reading is that which is set by the family.”

Likewise, Davis calls on the state’s teachers and parents to bear down on the task.

Davis, who attended public and private schools and holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford, would require parents to sign a contract committing them to help students with homework. He acknowledged that such contracts would be unenforceable as a matter of law, but says they would help motivate parents to get involved with school. Parent apathy is a pervasive problem in many of the state’s lowest-performing schools.

Davis said, “We ought to invest a great deal of our human and existing financial capacity over the next five years to dramatically improve children’s reading ability.”

Davis gave few specifics of what such a project would entail. But he said the state needs the patience to let recent reading reforms take root. “People think that because the state school board changes standards, teaching changes the next day,” Davis said. We “only wish it were true.”

If the candidates agree on the urgent need to improve reading instruction, they diverge on what is probably the most highly politicized education issue in the country: vouchers.

In an interview, Lungren promised to press for voucher legislation or a voucher initiative if elected, calling it an “essential” ingredient of reform.

School vouchers typically give parents public funds to help them enroll their children in private schools. Critics say they drain scarce resources from the public schools. If the vouchers are used at religious schools--a goal sought by many voucher advocates--they would violate the constitutional separation of church and state, the critics argue. Vouchers have been tried in several states, including a well-known program in Milwaukee that is facing a court challenge.

Although Wilson supports vouchers, he never campaigned on them or made them a bedrock issue in eight years of state budget negotiations. Lungren is different. He says vouchers would light a fire under the public school system by forcing it to compete.

“I think it’s one of the quickest ways to clear out all the underbrush of bureaucracy, the underbrush of tired old ways, the underbrush of poor teachers,” Lungren said.

“If you really want to improve,” he continued, “you’ve got to do something fundamentally different. You can’t just nibble around the edges.”

Davis called vouchers “a simple answer for people who want to demagogue the issue.”

As a practical matter, Davis said, the state’s private schools, with about 600,000 students, don’t have the capacity to teach many of the 6 million students in public schools.

Voucher Opponents Backing Davis

Although the educational impact of vouchers is sharply disputed, there’s little question about the political impact--the issue helps both candidates. As polls have shown in the past, Republicans strongly support the idea and Democrats strongly oppose it, so a debate on the subject tends to bring core supporters in both parties to the polls--a vital fact in an election that is likely to be marked by low turnout.

To be sure, voters overall have been negative toward vouchers in the past. In 1993, when a voucher measure, Proposition 174, was on the ballot, it was defeated soundly.

Lungren’s pro-voucher rhetoric has helped put many education groups on Davis’ side, including the California Teachers Assn., which is the state’s largest teachers union, and the Assn. of California School Administrators, which represents superintendents and principals.

“In Lungren, you have a guy who supports vouchers, and is really ready to give up on public schools,” said Bob Wells, a top official of the administrators’ group. The organization’s endorsement of Davis marked the first time in its 27-year history that it has taken sides in a governor’s race.

Rather than vouchers, Davis said he would explore partnerships between universities and low-performing schools and work with the Legislature and local officials to force shake-ups in school boards that oversee consistently failing schools. He, like Lungren, also supports the expansion of charter schools, which are public schools that enjoy great freedom to draw up their own curricula and educational policies.

But Davis said that if his reforms did not produce measurable progress in student achievement after four years--with targets to be determined soon--he would consider any idea, including vouchers.

Conflict Over Proposition 8

The support Davis enjoys from teachers exposes him to criticism from Lungren, who maintains that his foe is captive to unions.

Davis has joined with the teachers union in opposition to a ballot measure, Proposition 8, that Lungren supports. The initiative would create an official state schools inspector; shift key decision-making powers to local councils of parents and teachers; and make permanent the popular state program that limits classes in kindergarten through third grade to 20 students each. The union maintains that the measure, sponsored by Wilson, would increase bureaucracy and dilute standards.

Aside from the partisan sparring, what distinguishes the rhetoric of both candidates as they reach for the mantle of reform is their relentless criticism of the performance of public schools. That bothers some educators who say reforms are well underway in many places.

“We need to get off the flogging,” said Davis Campbell, executive director of the California School Boards Assn., which is neutral in the race. “In debates, it’s been very negative, really not giving recognition to the schools that are doing a good job. They both should give a little more balance.”

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Sparring Over Schools

California’s governor wields more influence over public education than any other state official. The governor can veto line items in the state budget, appoint boards to oversee the public schools, colleges and universities and command a statewide platform to publicize policy initiatives. Here’s a look at where Democrat Gray Davis and Republican Dan Lungren, stand on the issues.

Davis, 55, attended public and private schools.

* Harvard High School in Los Angeles, class of 1960.

* Bachelor’s degree in history, Stanford University, 1964.

* Law degree, Columbia University, 1967.

* He has no children.

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Lungren, 51, attended Catholic schools and universities.

* St. Anthony High School in Long Beach, class of 1964.

* Bachelor’s degree in English, University of Notre Dame, 1968.

* Law degree, Georgetown University, 1971.

* His three grown children attended Catholic schools.

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November ballot measures:

Proposition 1A, a $9.2 billion bond measure to raise money for public school, college and university construction. Davis and Lungren support.

Proposition 8, a measure to make permanent the state’s program to reduce class size in grades K-3; create a new state inspector of public schools, and shift significant power over curriculum and spending at individual schools to local councils of parents and teachers. Davis opposes, Lungren supports.

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On test scores that show two out of five elementary school students reading poorly:

Davis: “In a nutshell, the system dumbed down the curriculum, and we’re paying a very high price for it.”

Lungren: “If these test results are in fact indicative of where we are, it means we’ve been failing for a long period of time.”

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On state-funded vouchers to help pay for private schooling:

Davis does not support vouchers but would reconsider if, after four years, his programs fail to improve test scores. “I believe vouchers are a seductively simple way of solving an enormously complex problem.”

Lungren vows to push voucher legislation or an initiative if elected. “I think it’s the quickest way to create an incentive for those who operate the public schools ... to do a better job.”

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On charter schools, which are publicly funded but exempt from most state education laws:

Davis and Lungren both support expanding the number of charter schools. The state has authorized more than 150.

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On academic standards:

Davis and Lungren both support new standards the state Board of Education has adopted for teaching math, reading and writing.

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On per-pupil spending:

Davis wants to increase spending. “I would want to substantially improve funding. We can’t make real progress without increased funding. Money, however, is not the whole answer. A change in attitude, namely higher expectations, a more rigorous and challenging curriculum, is equally important.”

Lungren argues higher spending is not an urgent issue. “As a conservative Republican I believe in doing the best you can at the reasonable level of cost, not fighting all the time to be the most expensive.”

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On University of California growth:

Davis supports the planned UC Merced campus and says he would accelerate the timetable for building it.

Lungren supports adding a 10th UC campus in Merced.

Sources: Davis and Lungren and their campaigns; Times research.