No More Tinkering: Remake the Schools

Where are the people who, 15 years from now, will be maintaining the planes we fly, processing our tax returns, distributing medications and changing our IV drips in hospitals, assembling our cars and teaching our children and grandchildren?

In all probability they’re attending public school. And that should be of grave concern to Californians because the once-impressive public school system here has declined precipitously since the late 1950s and early 1960s. California hit bottom on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in 1994, and today, despite several years of serious reform efforts, California students test ninth from the bottom among the 50 states in math, reading and science.

Many California schools do not have adequate art, music or physical education classes; nor do they offer foreign languages, counseling or well-stocked libraries with full-time librarians. Many California schools are deteriorating, overcrowded and understaffed. California teachers have about 25% more students per class than the national average, while the typical California guidance counselor is responsible for a mind-boggling 960 students. As John Mockler, who once ran the state Board of Education, says, “It’s like Calcutta.”

For years, California has been doing education on the cheap. Although it is one of the richest states in the union, it spends only about $6,000 per child, putting it 44th in per-pupil spending. When I asked Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Supt. John Deasy what California parents would do if they saw normal public schools operating in Connecticut, Michigan and the rest of the country, he responded: “They’d move. If they stayed here, they’d revolt.”

There is some good news. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems determined to fix the schools. He’s trying to settle the ACLU’s lawsuit charging the state with failing to provide an adequate education for poor children (unlike his predecessor, who spent some $16 million on legal fees) and he has forged an alliance with the teachers union in an effort to reduce the deficit.

The governor appears to favor an approach to school reform that has been successful in Seattle and Edmonton, Canada, where the power pyramid is turned upside down and schools, principals, teachers and parents become the center of the educational universe.

It’s a comprehensive approach: Authorities figure out the cost of educating every child according to his or her needs. Parents are then told that they can “spend” that amount at the public school that seems most appropriate for their child. They’re encouraged to shop around; that’s parental choice.

Schools as well have choices of their own under these reform plans. In Edmonton, for instance, teachers don’t have tenure or seniority rights, meaning that principals don’t have to take the ones who’ve been teaching the longest but can hire candidates they choose. When parents choose and when principals are free to hire, a school can become “an intentional community” made up of adults and children who want to be there. Then, if the system is clear about educational goals and has reliable measurement instruments, each school can devise its own path to those goals.

But there are serious obstacles to statewide reform in California. For one thing, educational power resides in Sacramento, where the state parcels out education dollars according to very limited, specific and restrictive guidelines, which they are not inclined to change. Another obstacle is teacher seniority, which ties the hands of principals. But John Perez, the president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, said his members might consider waiving seniority if they got something significant in return.

Then there’s the obvious political obstacle to reform: Because more of the kids who cost the most to educate are in poor districts, that means money would go from wealthy districts to poor ones. How popular would that be? Wealthy parents know that money matters and act accordingly.

More than 400 of the state’s 1,000 school districts have private educational foundations, which may contribute thousands of additional dollars per child. That’s certainly not illegal, unethical or immoral, but it has led to California having what amounts to two public school systems: one for the well-to-do, another for the poor.

True reform would mean giving more money to the poorer districts -- where more of the costly-to-educate kids live. A “Robin Hood” approach to education hasn’t worked anywhere else, and California can’t afford new spending, so the additional dollars will have to come from cutting bureaucracies.

California cannot afford to tinker around the margins; radical change is needed. Too many children are being lost, and too many of them are children of color. California cannot afford to have its future majority grow up undereducated.