New Governor’s Unfair Shock to Cal State System

OK, so the California State University system is No. 2. “The second thought,” CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed regretfully concedes. But CSU still didn’t deserve the treatment it got during Gray Davis’ first week as governor.

Insensitive--that’s putting the best face on it. Insulting also fits.

Blame it, hopefully, on an inexperienced staff--rather than gubernatorial elitism.

This is what happened: Davis proposed $13 million in new teacher/principal training at the University of California. To CSU, this seemed a slap in the face, considering that it historically has been the state’s main teacher producer. CSU supplies 65% of our teachers, compared to 30% by private colleges and 5% by UC.

For a governor who claims “experience money can’t buy,” Davis showed a noticeable lack of elementary political skill, i.e. diplomacy. There was little, if any, recognition of CSU--none of the common decency that good managers routinely show subordinates: This isn’t about you. You’re doing a fine job, but we’re bringing in somebody else to help. Don’t worry.

“The way it spun out of control, frankly, I was disappointed,” says Reed, who immediately was contacted by confused CSU presidents. “Teacher training is the No. 1 priority at CSU.”

Bill Hauck, chairman of the CSU Board of Trustees, also was surprised by Davis’ pronouncement. “I didn’t understand why there wasn’t some acknowledgment of the CSU role in teacher training,” he says.

But there shouldn’t have been any surprise given CSU’s undeserved low place in too many people’s psyches.

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Admittedly, I’m a little touchy, being a CSU grad from San Jose State. I’ve grimaced the last few years during the affirmative action battles as much of the establishment--especially liberal elitists--implied that any students not attending UC really weren’t being educated. They were being robbed of all opportunity. They’d never get a job and would wind up on the street.

I also winced during a campaign debate last August when Davis said he wanted to build a UC campus at Merced so Central Valley kids could be “educate[d] . . . in the valley” and not have to travel “to UCLA, UC Davis, Berkeley, whatever.” At that moment, he was standing in the Cal State Fresno theater.

“CSU is taken for granted,” Reed says, “because it’s the real workhorse of California. It’s not the show horse. It doesn’t do those flashy things, all the big-time research, the gee whiz stuff. It just does the work. Every day. When you produce 65% of the teachers, 70% of the nurses and 65% of the engineers, that’s the real meat and potatoes. It’s the economic engine.”

CSU awards roughly 65,000 degrees each year. And affirmative action isn’t an issue. Minorities make up 52% of the 350,000-student enrollment.

“We take the top one-third of high school graduates,” Reed notes. “If you are middle-class minority, California State University is generally where you end up.”

Middle-class whites too. Middle class period. Two-thirds of CSU students work half-time.

“It’s really the people’s university,” the chancellor says.

Then you’d think it also would be the Democrats’ university--and a Democratic governor would show it more respect.

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Davis, a Stanford grad, doesn’t think much of California’s teacher training. It’s a view shared by many ed leaders. The speculation has been that rather than turning to the institution already churning out teachers, the new governor would propose a bigger role for California’s premier university. And that’s what he did.

But it doesn’t make sense to many, not only at CSU but in the Legislature. As Assembly GOP Leader Rod Pacheco of Riverside asserts: “CSU is already ramped up. It’s like asking IBM to build a car rather than asking Ford.”

Indeed, CSU under Reed, ex-chancellor at Florida State, is overhauling its teacher training. Future teachers now begin their classroom experience as freshmen and will continue it until graduation. Previously, they waited until their fifth year. “They’ll learn on the job,” Reed notes.

CSU thinks Davis’ plan should have been aimed at both it and UC.

It was just bad communication, says Davis’ education advisor, former state Sen. Gary Hart. He insists the governor really is not down on CSU. And neither is he, assures Hart, who until recently headed up the CSU Institute for Education Reform.

Davis’ goal simply is to force UC into carrying a bigger load of teacher training, Hart says, and also to attract UC’s “best and brightest” into teaching.

That will be tough when the average starting pay is $25,000 and a veteran teacher tops out in the fifties--regardless of whether the degree comes from No. 1 or No. 2.