Educational Foresight
The Quality of Schools Will Affect the Quality of Your Life
by John Merrow

I asked the young woman who had just emerged from the voting booth if she had voted for the special measure to give the schools more money. Her answer did not surprise me. ``Education is very important, but I don't know why I, as a single person who doesn't have kids, should have to bear so much of it,'' she said.

Many adults feel the same way, and since 75 to 85 percent of households do not have school-age children, schools face an uphill battle when it comes to raising money.

I wanted to ask that voter who she thought would take care of her when she's older. Who does she think is going to maintain the commercial jets she flies on, process her tax returns, assemble the car she buys and repair her plumbing? And when she's older, who's going to change the IV-drip and make sure she gets the correct dose of the right medication?

The answer: Someone who's now a student in a California public school but will graduate into the workforce.
That young voter -- and everyone else – should be concerned about improving the quality of education because California's public school system has declined precipitously since the late '50s and early '60s.

For the past 18 months, I've visited schools up and down the state making a PBS documentary. I've seen schools that are deteriorating, overcrowded and understaffed – schools where teachers have about 25 percent more students per class than the national average, and where the typical guidance counselor is responsible for a mind-boggling 960 students. No wonder California students are ninth from the bottom in math, reading and science.

For years, California has been doing education on the cheap. The richest state in the union ranks 44th in per-pupil spending. Today most California schools do not provide what parents in other states take for granted: regular art, music and physical education classes, foreign languages, counseling and well-stocked school libraries.

from the San Jose Mercury News Documentary Details Schools Collapse Thursday, February 5, 2004 By Nicole C. Wong If the decrepit conditions of some California public schools make you wonder how the Golden State lost its sheen, check out a PBS documentary tonight about the 30-year downfall of education in the richest state in the union. In the hour-long documentary, award-winning TV journalist John Merrow traces the decline back to the early 1970s, when the California Supreme Court ruled in the Serrano v. Priest case that the state's system of funding schools with local property taxes was unconstitutional. Then voters overwhelmingly passed Prop. 13, which froze property taxes on homes and businesses and protected against new local taxes. In the following years, immigration increased school enrollment. California's class-size reduction plan prompted a scramble for more teachers and classrooms. And state-mandated fads on how to teach students led to a free fall in test scores. As a result, some students learn beneath leaky roofs and broken light fixtures. Their music classes meet in the cafeteria, if there even is enough money for a music program. And their state sits near the bottom of the nation's achievement list based on test scores. ``We wrote off adequacy,'' Stanford education professor Michael Kirst says in the documentary, ``and we ended up with equalized mediocrity.''

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

The good news is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has demonstrated a willingness to tackle the problem. For starters, he has forged an alliance with the teachers union in an effort to reduce the deficit. The governor has also expressed interest in exploring reforms that have proven successful in Seattle and Edmonton, Alberta. There, the power pyramid has been turned upside down, and schools, principals, teachers and parents are the center of the educational universe.

In Seattle and Edmonton, authorities determine the cost of educating a ``normal'' child and then figure out how much extra it costs to educate a child with special needs, or a child whose first language is not English, and so on. Then, figuratively speaking, a sticker with that dollar amount is put on each child's forehead and parents are encouraged to shop around for the public school that seems most appropriate.

The next step is to return power to local schools. Educational power in California resides in Sacramento, which collects the money and then parcels it out, with strings attached, in 88 different ``categorical'' education programs. Schools have to spend a good chunk of the money on accounting and staff time, filling out paperwork required to keep track of how each dollar is spent.

In Seattle and Edmonton, principals control most of the money that's spent in their schools, which keeps the focus on education, not bureaucracy. One California principal told me she controls just 3 or 4 percent of her school's budget. In Edmonton, it's closer to 90 percent.

True reform requires more flexibility in hiring. Seattle teachers don't have seniority rights, which means principals can hire candidates who are right for the job instead of being forced to take the teacher with the most seniority. Seniority generally rules in California, which has perhaps the most powerful teachers union in the country.

The trick may lie in a little give and take. When I talked to John Perez, the president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, he said his members might waive seniority if they got something significant in return.

Getting California schools back on track will require more money. Wealthy parents know that money matters and act accordingly. More than 400 of the state's 1,000 school districts have private educational foundations, some of which contribute thousands of additional dollars per child. That's not illegal or unethical, but it puts children from poor families at a severe disadvantage.

California cannot afford to tinker around the margins. 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. One of every eight kids in America goes to a public school in California. That's a lot of future nurses, pilots, plumbers, police officers and teachers.