Promise to Fix Schools Is Davis’ First Big Test

When he ran the public schools in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, Mac Bernd might have told you that some of his 29 campuses were doing fine and others needed to improve. You would have been obliged to accept his word.

Now that he is superintendent in Arlington, Texas, Bernd reports that 11 of his 65 schools are “exemplary,” eight are “recognized,” and none is “low performing.” Any Texan who doubts him can look it up on the Internet.

The contrast between the two systems goes a long way toward explaining the groundswell for “school accountability” in California as Gov.-elect Gray Davis prepares to take office Monday.

In this state, there is no consensus on what it means for a school to do well or to fail. There are no guarantees that sinking schools will even get a warning or help.

In Texas, how schools are judged is a matter of law. Students get tested on a state-approved curriculum; schools get rated in part on the results; the state can step in when ratings drop through the floor. Failure and success mean the same thing from El Paso to Houston to Arlington.

Bernd, who left Orange County for Texas a year ago, said he feels more responsibility--and more public pressure--for results than ever before. His job evaluations depend on how his schools rate on the statewide scale.

Likening himself to a sports coach and his school board to an owner, Bernd said: “If you’re the coach, and you get to pick the players and to run the plays, you ought to win. And if you keep losing, they’re going to find another coach.”

Such no-nonsense policies appeal to voters these days in California, where Davis won election as governor last fall in part by promising to fix the schools. Davis plans to call a special session of the Legislature to pass urgent school reforms. Last year, most state students who were tested in basic skills trailed the national average.

One of Davis’ top goals, probably the most politically challenging, is to devise a system that would hold the nation’s largest state public school system accountable for better performance. To that end, his education secretary-designate, Gary K. Hart, has scrutinized the Texas model and others.

The time may be ripe for a breakthrough.

Over the past two years, the California school board has adopted the state’s first set of academic standards for reading, math, science and history.

Also on the way are new statewide tests to measure how students fare compared to the standards. Starting in March, students will face the first test questions in reading and math, in addition to the standardized Stanford 9 exams given last year.

Business leaders, steeped in a culture of quality control and bottom-line performance, have given the movement a push. A new state business coalition last month called for “meaningful consequences” for dismal schools.

Finally, there is national peer pressure. California, often an education trend-setter, is now following the lead of states such as Texas and North Carolina.

Critics say teachers unions stand in the way of reform in California. The California Teachers Assn. remains wary of any plan that treats public schools like a free market. Union leaders say they are willing to agree to an accountability system so long as schools get adequate financial support and fair treatment.

“Teachers want to be accountable. Schools want to be accountable. They want to improve. However it comes out, we just think it should be fair,” said Tommye Hutto, spokeswoman for the 285,000-member union, probably the most influential education interest group in Sacramento. “Everybody’s got to take responsibility. There’s enough blame to go around everywhere.”

Across the country, school accountability has become a rallying cry for would-be reformers who say that public education for too long has focused on process and now must produce results.

A survey by the Education Commission of the States in November 1997 found that 43 states have, or plan to have, academic standards and 46 have state testing systems.

Significantly, a growing number of states are also adopting carrot-and-stick systems to raise student achievement. The commission found that 14 states offer rewards--usually money--to teachers, schools or districts that post student gains. Thirty-three states threaten districts or schools with sanctions for persistent student failure. Those sanctions range from warnings (the most common) to state takeover (a rare step).

Crafting an accountability plan that can pass political muster in California and fairly distribute reward and punishment to 8,000 public schools will not be easy. The state’s size and diversity defy simple formulas.

How to compare schools serving impoverished urban neighborhoods to those that serve affluent suburbs? How to compare the work of experienced and well-trained teachers to that of thousands of novices working on emergency permits? How to measure the achievement of 1.4 million students who are not fluent in English--one quarter of the total enrollment? Should schools be judged by the progress they make or held to common benchmarks?

Perhaps most difficult: How much time should the state grant laggard schools to shape up and what punishment should they face if they don’t?

The Threat of Intervention

A year ago, a state task force called for a system that would grant low-performing schools four years to right themselves with the help of state-subsidized “academic coaches” and “distinguished educators.”

If those measures failed, the task force said, schools would be identified as “in crisis” and face state intervention.

The possible interventions? State takeover, including reassignment of teachers and administrators. Or closure of the school. Or any other measure the State Board of Education might dream up.

“At some point, you’ve got to be able to say to a school, ‘Hey, folks, it’s just not working and some dramatic action needs to be taken,’ ” said David Marsh, an education professor at USC who participated on the task force. “There gets to be a point where you say, ‘Enough’s enough.’ The kids have to have a chance for success.”

The task force included top players in the state school system, academics and business leaders. Its recommendations influenced a school accountability bill that passed both houses of the Democratic-controlled state Legislature.

The bill would have launched a voluntary program to give 250 ailing schools extra help in exchange for external monitoring of their problems and progress. But Republican Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed it, calling the bill toothless.

Now the issue has fallen to Davis, a Democrat, who since the election has declined to spell out his thinking publicly.

During the campaign, Davis took pains to sound as tough on education as on crime. He proposed deploying public colleges and universities as academic SWAT teams to help failing schools--those that score in the bottom 10% three years in a row. He backed a recent state move to curtail the practice of passing students from grade to grade who haven’t mastered the curriculum, known as “social promotions.” He endorsed mandatory summer school for students who fail to attain minimal skills.

“I view a failing school like a natural disaster,” Davis said during one debate with his Republican opponent, Dan Lungren. “It requires immediate and urgent action.”

But state action carries its own risks. Communities often resent Sacramento for meddling in their affairs. Consider the experience of the Compton Unified School District.

California seized control of the debt-ridden Compton system in 1993 as a condition of a financial bailout. A succession of state-appointed administrators has struggled ever since to win the confidence of parents and the city leadership.

Last year, the latest administrator, Randolph Ward, launched an initiative to withhold grade promotions for about 1,200 low-achieving students unless they attended summer school and passed a basic skills test.

Some parents said the new get-tough policy unfairly penalized children who attend what has long been one of the worst school systems in the state. “We did not fail. They failed us!” one group chanted at a protest in July. But for many parents the program proved popular.

Observers argue about the lessons of Compton. But Ward said some lessons are indisputable. First, you can’t take a system in which barely one out of 10 students are performing at grade level and expect to get six out of 10 to that level overnight.

Second, merely passing a law is no guarantee of lasting reform.

“What history has taught us: In any reform movement, it has to be both bottom-up and top-down,” Ward said. “If you don’t have support at the street level, where all the action occurs, and all the change and work and sweat and constant monitoring must occur, than all you have is good legislation without any real change.”