Learning Curve for Legislators

Despite the distractions of the state’s energy crisis and the nation’s war on terrorism, 2001 was a big year for education reform, both in Congress and in California classrooms.

Accomplishments ranged from boosting students’ basic skills in city schools to setting a national agenda in a sweeping federal education bill passed at year’s end.

But some divisive issues such as school vouchers remained unresolved. And California’s six-year spurt in education spending appeared headed for a slowdown next month, when Gov. Gray Davis will ask the Legislature to redraw the state’s recession-battered budget.

School security once again came under a harsh spotlight.

In Ventura County, the year began with violence. On Jan. 10, troubled teenager Richard “Midget” Lopez stormed onto the Hueneme High School campus during students’ lunch hour and held a 17-year-old girl at gunpoint.

Frightened students watched the drama unfold from nearby classroom windows. It ended when Oxnard SWAT team members shot and killed Lopez, who had told his hostage he wanted to die but could not shoot himself for religious reasons.

Later in the year, two teenagers in San Diego County communities opened fire on their campuses. Andy Williams, a quiet 15-year-old student at Santee High School, killed two students and injured 13 people in March. Three weeks later, Jason Hoffman, 18, wounded five people in a shooting at Granite Hills High School.

“If there was a simple answer [to school violence], we would have had the answer by now,” said San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob after the second shooting. “The fact is, there is not a simple answer.”

Security worries only escalated with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the series of anthrax scares afterward. School officials across the country were forced to guard not just against possible gunfire, but against biological and biochemical attacks as well.

School construction and the struggle to find more classroom space were also themes in Ventura County during 2001.

High school district officials in Oxnard opened the county’s most expensive campus to ease overcrowding in the city’s four other schools. But Pacifica High School, which cost $55 million to build and features a magnet performing arts program, drew criticism from parents in the district’s older campuses, who called spending at the new school excessive.

In the Oxnard Elementary School District, a long-fought battle over whether a new campus could be built on farmland outside city limits was resolved when officials shelved controversial plans for Juan Soria School.

Conejo Valley school trustees grappled with overcrowding in the Thousand Oaks district’s middle schools, and in Moorpark, officials kicked off a campaign for a $33-million bond initiative to build more classrooms and a much-needed campus for elementary and middle-school students.

Meanwhile, in higher education, the University of California set off national debate with its own proposals for reform. UC President Richard Atkinson in February proposed to drop the SAT exam as an entrance requirement, saying that it was unfair and failed to measure how much students learned in high school.

And in November, the university’s governing body voted to overhaul the entire admissions policy. The new process allows personal achievements--not just grades, test scores and factors such as adversity--to be considered for all freshman applicants.

Critics called the move a backdoor revival of race-based admissions--outlawed by California’s voters in 1996. But Regent Ward Connerly, an outspoken opponent of affirmative action, was won over by an amendment declaring that the new policy would not restore race considerations to the admissions process.

In K-12 education, President Bush set the stage for reform with his campaign promise to “leave no child behind.”

Although his personal focus on schools was diverted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Congress pushed forward with a compromise education bill this month even as partisan rivalry scuttled an economic stimulus package.

Marking the most significant education reform in decades, the bill set schools on a new course. It increased federal spending, required every state to test students annually in grades three to eight, and aimed to improve the achievement of poor and minority children. The effect in California, however, was not expected to be profound, as the state has had a testing and accountability program in place for several years.

The bill made no provision for private school vouchers--a hot-button issue for Democrats. The issue might be settled in part by the Supreme Court, which this year took on a challenge to a Cleveland program that uses tax money to send poor students to religious schools.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress were spurred to overcome their differences by American schoolchildren’s lackluster performance on national and international tests.

This month, the Program for International Student Assessment Test placed the United States near the middle among 32 industrialized nations in math and science, but showed that the standing of American students declined in the higher grades.

Earlier this year, release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which measures the academic performance of American children over time, showed little change during the 1990s in reading and science.

It also showed minority students scoring significantly below whites despite years of reforms aimed at closing that gap. On the science test, California students tied for last among 40 states.

A small but vocal backlash against high-stakes testing persisted during 2001, although a poll by the nonpartisan Public Agenda showed that Americans still widely support standardized testing as a check on the effectiveness of public education.

California and Arizona launched yet another test--competency examinations for aspiring high school graduates. In this state, where the test was voluntary in its trial year, 64% of ninth-graders passed the language portion and 44% the math portion. Concerns over potential liability for failing to teach the material on the exam led both states to consider delaying or watering down the tests.

Otherwise, California’s school accountability program steamed into a new phase as hundreds of teachers received cash awards, from $5,000 to $25,000, for their schools’ rising test scores.

Yet, as the year ended, the state’s recession and the budget dent left by the energy crisis threatened to slow reform efforts. Education spending, on the rise since then-Gov. Pete Wilson pumped millions into reducing class sizes in 1996, is likely to suffer some cuts.

In November, Gov. Gray Davis asked for a reduction of more than $840 million from educational funds already appropriated for fiscal 2001-02.

Davis has called a special session of the Legislature in January to act on his proposal. The reduced budgets may force school districts to raise class sizes, cut teacher bonuses and skip repairs.

Even as the state set about dealing with deficits, it faced another potentially costly challenge. It lost the first round in a watershed lawsuit seeking to hold it responsible for poorly staffed and maintained schools. A judge threw out a countersuit in which the state claimed that school districts are responsible. The class-action suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, is set for trial next year.

Meanwhile, the overcrowding and poor physical condition of the state’s schools weighed heavily on lawmakers, who were drafting a massive school bond measure of up to $10 billion for the November 2002 ballot.

In Los Angeles, though, the historically ineffective school bureaucracy was at last showing progress, both on instruction and construction of new schools.

L.A. Unified Supt. Roy Romer set the instructional course by shifting millions of dollars from other programs to hire 750 teacher “coaches” to help other faculty. After concentrating this year on creating uniform reading and math programs in elementary schools, Romer plans to tackle problems in secondary schools in 2002.

The school construction program was moving forward under a new team. And Romer pushed the Board of Education to consider new proposals to finish the notoriously troubled Belmont Learning Complex. The board voted two years ago to abandon the nearly completed downtown high school because of concerns about toxic and flammable underground gases at the site.

In another sign of progress, the district this month ended a decade of legal wrangling by closing a deal to buy the former Ambassador Hotel and its extensive grounds for a future school.

By making improvements, the district also was able to head off the persistent threat of breakup in Carson and the San Fernando Valley.

Carson voters soundly defeated a plan in November that would have created a school district for the South Bay city’s 21,500 students. The union that represents Los Angeles teachers mounted a vigorous campaign against the ballot measure, overwhelming the grass-roots group that had proposed it.

In the Valley, another citizens group saw its breakup plan rejected by the State Board of Education, which found that L.A. Unified has problems but is taking steps to address them. Pulling 200,000 Valley students out of the system--and draining the area’s valuable tax revenue from L.A. Unified--would be a huge setback for the nation’s second largest school district, the board determined.

“Frankly, we ought to give [Romer] a chance,” said Donald G. Fisher, chairman and founder of Gap Inc., seeming to summarize the board’s sentiments.

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Times staff writers Massie Ritsch, Zanto Peabody and Jenifer Ragland contributed to this report.

Earlier installments of this series are available at https://www.latimes.com/reflections2001