ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a team of education advisors on Wednesday that includes classroom teachers, district superintendents and his own mother-in-law, and vowed to give local officials more control over schooling.

After a nearly two-hour meeting with the 24-member panel, which is chaired by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Schwarzenegger told reporters that he wanted to reduce federal and state involvement in education and return more “local control” to the schools.

He declined to identify specific areas of over-regulation, though an advisor cited restrictions on teacher hiring and scheduling as examples.

“There’s a philosophic difference” with Davis, Schwarzenegger said. “He thinks Sacramento should say down to the schools what to do.”

At the same time, Schwarzenegger seemed to embrace several tools that Davis has supported for checking on student progress.

Schwarzenegger endorsed the state’s current system of student testing, as well as state standards on curriculum and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which created a federal mandate for student academic progress across the country.

Asked if there was a contradiction between his support for such measures and his desire for local control, Schwarzenegger replied that government-mandated tests and standards provide individual teachers with information to tell them “what is the result of my program.... So there’s no contradiction at all.”

Schwarzenegger also endorsed charter schools, which are public schools that have been exempted from some regulations to encourage innovation. His panel included Jennifer Andaluz, co-founder and executive director of San Jose’s Downtown College Preparatory.

“We need more and better charters,” Schwarzenegger said, adding that he does not back private school vouchers because voters have rejected voucher initiatives and because “we have to support our public schools.”

Among the panelists were Jaime Escalante, the retired Garfield High School calculus teacher who was the subject of the movie “Stand and Deliver;” former Los Angeles Unified School District board chairwoman Caprice Young; the superintendents of the San Jose, Elk Grove and Fresno County school districts; and Michael L. Hardman, chief educational advisor to the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in Washington, D.C. (Kennedy, who was killed in World War II, was an uncle of Schwarzenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver.)

Schwarzenegger also named his mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, to the panel. She said she came to discuss special education issues, an expertise she has developed through her support of the Special Olympics and the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation.

“You did not come out for nothing, Eunice,” Schwarzenegger told Shriver during the opening of the education summit before reporters were asked to leave.

Shriver said she had never before supported a Republican, but added: “I agree with something he has done. He’s done a lot of great work for handicapped children” through the Special Olympics.

She noted that she disagrees with her brother, U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who as a Democrat is not supporting the Republican Schwarzenegger. She hinted that she doesn’t care for the recall, adding, “I think the people have made up their minds -- I’m not a resident of California.”

Referring to her son-in-law, she said: “I think he’d be a very good governor.”

The education team also included an appointee of Gov. Gray Davis: California State University Board of Trustees Chairman Bill Hauck, who was originally named to that panel by Gov. Pete Wilson but was reappointed by Davis to an eight-year term.

“They asked me to be on the round table. It doesn’t imply any endorsement by me,” Hauck said. “But [Schwarzenegger] was at the meeting to learn, which is a good thing. Whether he would be able to achieve things that Davis has not been able to achieve is something we’ll see.” Participants said that Schwarzenegger’s team took a dim view of California education, despite recent gains in test scores and some improvements in education funding under Davis.

William G. Ouchi, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and author of a recent book on school reform, launched the closed-door meeting with a series of statistics -- mostly drawn from the results of a test called the National Assessments of Educational Progress -- that show California’s fourth- and eighth-graders failing to meet “proficiency” standards.

Among the issues discussed in the meeting, participants said, were incentives to attract more math and science teachers to urban schools, student access to books and materials, reading and writing curricula, and how to reduce paperwork for teachers and principals.

Schwarzenegger said he mostly was the student during the session. “We had a terrific meeting where I could learn a lot,” he said.

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Times staff writer Allison Hoffman in Los Angeles contributed to this report.