State review of K-12 funding, efficiency has parties anxious over its release

By Aurelio Rojas , Sacramento Bee, February 7, 2007

Two weeks ago, the most extensive review ever done of school funding and efficiency in California was released to political leaders in the Capitol under tight security.

Spearheaded by Stanford University, with $2.6 million in funding from four philanthropic organizations, the yearlong initiative of 23 separate studies seeks to determine how California can meet its educational goals.

The report examines two of the most explosive political questions: Does the state spend enough on K-12 education? And is there too much waste in the system?

It is stirring anxiety on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Democrats hope it will call for more money, while Republicans want greater efficiencies.

The findings aren't scheduled to be publicly disclosed until March to give Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, legislative leaders and the superintendent of public instruction time to digest the data and form responses.

Only a few staff members have been given access to the report -- and they are sworn to secrecy.

"It's like if you tell somebody, they're going to have to kill you," said Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the governor. Schwarzenegger requested the study along with Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nzqez and schools chief Jack O'Connell.

The report is intended to address enormous disparities that exist in educational quality. For years, policymakers empaneled blue-ribbon commissions whose recommendations have landed in the trash heap.

But policymakers pledged that this report -- which will serve as research for a nonpartisan commission convened by the governor -- will not suffer a similar fate.

"Maybe all the drama surrounding the release of the study will give its ideas a little more traction than we've seen in the past," said Kevin Gordon, an education consultant.

The study comes as students are being asked to meet tougher state and federal standards.

But teachers skilled in such areas as math and science are not evenly parceled, and there is a yawning achievement gap in California public schools.

Hilary McLean, a spokeswoman for O'Connell, said white and Asian students score better than African Americans and Latinos by as much as 30 percentage points in English in most grades. The differences are almost as large in math.

Paul Warren, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst's Office, said the state is making a record contribution toward schools this year -- $8,250 per pupil -- but still ranks in the lower half of states in per-pupil spending.

The report is aimed at giving state officials information needed to reform the system, with a focus on whether funding is adequate and allocated efficiently and fairly. That means tackling politically delicate topics such as discrepancies between rich and poor districts, and the difficulty of assigning the best teachers to the neediest schools.

Ted Mitchell, the former Occidental College president who heads Schwarzenegger's advisory committee on education, has been reviewing the report since it was released Jan. 23.

Like others who have seen it, he declined to comment on whether the report calls for spending more money on schools or exacting greater efficiencies.

"But speaking from the committee's point of view, the committee clearly leans to a combination of both -- efficiency measures and adequacy concerns," Mitchell said.

O'Connell, who has been briefed on the report, said he hopes it will lead to a statewide dialogue on improving the education system.

The schools chief said he expects legislative leaders will meet with the governor on the matter in the days leading up to the public release of the findings.

"People say they want information on research and data," said O'Connell, a Democrat. "This is bipartisan and it will take a bipartisan effort to implement some of the recommendations."

Lockhart said the Republican governor is committed to improving the state's schools.

In his proposed 2007-08 budget, the governor has called for a $275 increase in per-pupil spending. But advocates for the poor say more is needed.

Only about a third of schools that receive federal funding for poor students meet statewide achievement goals, according to the state Department of Education.

In other states that have conducted studies like the one that has the Capitol on edge, courts have ordered officials to increase school spending. Late last year, the State Court of Appeals in New York mandated at least $1.93 billion a year in additional school aid to New York City in a 13-year lawsuit over education financing.

No quick, cheap fix for state's schools

Studies find problems in the public education system are so great it would take $1.5 trillion a year to remedy

By Joel Rubin and Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2007

California's immense public school system is plagued by gross inefficiencies and inequalities that will require fundamental reforms and much more money, according to a series of studies released this week.

Suggested reforms included making it easier to fire bad teachers, providing massive infusions of resources to schools that serve the poor, delivering more accurate student data and eliminating excessive paperwork and conflicting rules and directives.

More than a year in the making, the 22 independent reports taken together paint a picture of an education system beyond tinkering, in need of major overhaul. While changes must include a huge, but unspecified, infusion of money, any increase in funding would be squandered without a total rethinking of how education dollars are spent, the authors concluded.

"For too long, California education policy has been made in a haphazard manner," said Ted Mitchell, the former president of Occidental College who is chairman of the governor's education advisory committee. "We've had one-off proposals  the cumulative effect of which has been to create a system that is byzantine, convoluted and horribly ineffective."

The best teachers and administrators have succeeded, he added, "in spite of the system and not because of it."

California ranks near the bottom on many national achievement assessments of states.

The 1,700-page collection, commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, state Democratic leaders and state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, broke little new ground. The scope and depth of the analysis, however, make it a centerpiece in the debate over how to improve schools. It follows other major Schwarzenegger initiatives, such as his "reinventing government" effort, that have a mixed record of moving from blueprint to reality.

Key findings were unveiled at a Wednesday news conference in Sacramento attended by Schwarzenegger, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), O'Connell and others. It was a bipartisan display likely to come under strain as lawmakers consider crafting reforms.

The governor's committee plans to draw up specific recommendations by late summer or early autumn, Mitchell said.

Three reports, dealing with the politically explosive question of more money for schools, were held back until this morning.

The most eye-catching detail in these reports, obtained by The Times, was the calculation that $1.5 trillion more each year would be needed to make all students academically proficient under the current system. That's about 25 times more than present spending for the K-12 and community college systems, which consumes about half of the state budget.

That trillion-dollar figure "assumes nothing in the system will change," explained researcher Jennifer Imazeki, an assistant professor of economics at San Diego State University. Her calculation, she said, was not a serious proposal for funding but rather an exercise to demonstrate how broken things are now: "The relationship between money and performance is weak and noisy in California."

Schwarzenegger, considered too moderate by some conservative Republicans, glided away from a direct response on whether schools need more money, saying that the education system needs to operate more like a business: "Money alone will not fix anything." Reforming the system, even without added funds "can get billions in the classroom."

His Republican counterparts like the idea of more local flexibility, but "we must be careful not to use this report as an excuse to take on massive new spending we simply cannot afford," said Assemblyman Martin Garrick (R-Solano Beach), vice chairman of the Assembly Education Committee. "We will reject any attempt to raise taxes."

Still, researchers said that no amount of money would help absent dramatic reform.

Several studies focused on the state's tortuous system of governance, which the Department of Education, the state Board of Education, the governor, the Legislature and local school boards all helped create. The result, researchers concluded, is a contradictory, counterproductive tangle of rules that compares unfavorably with many other states.

"Instead of encouraging flexibility and innovation at the local level," one summary report concluded, "many of California's state policies constrain [schools] regardless of what may be their most pressing local needs."

One report, for example, emphasized that huge sums are tied up in restrictive grants.

Other studies addressed insufficient teacher training and support as well as the state's subpar ability to compile and make use of student performance data.

Researchers for another study surveyed more than 250 principals statewide. More than anything else  even increased funds or more teachers  principals said they needed greater power to fire ineffective teachers. Also hindering them, principals said, are the hours of paperwork the state requires.

Schwarzenegger nodded in agreement at the mention of the need to fire bad teachers. He had pushed for an unsuccessful ballot measure in 2005 that would have eased the requirements to fire teachers.

Nunez, a close ally of teachers unions, stood by that finding while also emphasizing the need for better support and training for teachers and more funding overall.

The president of the California Teachers Assn. praised the suggested reforms, but criticized the focus on ineffective teachers. "Frankly, firing one or two teachers isn't what this is about," said Barbara Kerr. "It's about big-picture reform. I'm sure if you ask teachers what they want, they would say to get rid of bad administrators. Let's get over this part."

Officials and educators emphasized the need to come together over serious reforms.

"If we're going to significantly improve our schools, we're going to have to put down the buzz words and climb out of the partisan trenches," said Marshall Smith, education program director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a sponsor of the nearly $3-million study.

Some critical pushback emerged almost immediately.

"The study's use of the term 'overhaul' sounds a bit like scrapping everything and starting over. We have proof of academic, operational and governance successes in the California education system," said Brian Lewis, executive director of the California Assn. of School Business Officials.

Another critical view came from California Business for Education Excellence, which wants to toss the current statewide accountability measure, the Academic Performance Index. "Unfortunately, this top-to-bottom review of school funding clearly misses that mark," said Jim Lanich, that organization's president.

The endgame also was on the mind of longtime community advocators for school reform.

"We already know what needs to be done, and now have the research and data to back it up," said Soledad Padilla of the grass-roots group California ACORN. "But we are concerned that, given the scale of the problem, there may not be the political will to do what is necessary."

Statement from CTA President Barbara E. Kerr On Release of New Public Education Studies

BURLINGAME - Barbara E. Kerr, president of the 340,000-member California Teachers Association, issued this statement today about the release this week of the new "Getting Down to Facts" group of public education studies:

- Educators welcome these studies. CTA agrees that changes must be made to improve student learning, but as these studies also show, change cannot happen without a substantial investment in new education funding to help all students succeed and reach the high standards we've set for them.

- We have one of the largest economies in the world, yet California's education spending per student has trailed the national average for almost three decades. With some of the largest class sizes in the country, it's hard for students to get the one-on-one attention they deserve. California also continues to rank last in counselors and librarians per student. Art, music and career technical education programs have practically disappeared in our public schools.

- This is a comprehensive study and it deserves a comprehensive approach. Blaming teachers for what's wrong with our schools, while doing nothing to address the real problems our schools face, is not the way to improve public education. Rather than making it harder to recruit and retain teachers by questioning their professional rights, we should be looking at proven reforms like reducing class sizes, providing quality training for teachers and principals, and getting adequate textbooks and materials to all schools.

- CTA looks forward to working with the governor and the Legislature to ensure that all public schools get the adequate, stable and ongoing funding they need to help students succeed. Our school funding system has been below-average for way too long. It's time once again to make our public schools the best in the nation.

Statement from CTA President Barbara E. Kerr in March, 2007 Issue of California Educator

I don't have to tell you that our schools need more resources, and as I write this column, we are just days away from the release of the long-awaited school funding studies. Funded by four foundations at a cost of $2.6 million, more than 30 researchers nationwide have been conducting one of the largest independent investigations of how California governs and finances education.

The research effort, which has been going on for about a year, is being coordinated by Stanford University and is titled Getting Down to Facts: A Research Project to Inform Solutions to California's Education Problems. There are 23 separate studies.

The studies are supposed to identify what reforms are needed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our school system, and what additional resources are needed to help students meet the states academic standards and provide every child in California with a good education.

California has some of the most rigorous educational standards in the country, and we've got layers and layers of accountability systems, but we continue to fall below the national average in per-pupil funding.

When viewed as a percentage of personal income - and remember that California is the sixth-largest economy in the world - California expenditures on K-12 education have remained flat since Ronald Reagan was governor.

When adjusted for cost-of-living differences, California ranks 43rd in the nation in per-pupil funding.

California public schools continue to have some of the largest class sizes in the country, ranking 49th in teachers per student. California ranks 50th in guidance counselors per student. And we rank dead last in librarians per student.

This lack of funding and investment in public education has led to program cuts. The number of Cal-ifornia public school students involved in music education courses dropped by almost 50 percent be-tween 2000 and 2004. Meanwhile, 61 percent of California schools do not have even one full-time arts specialist.

In Career Technical Education programs, three-quarters of our high school technology education programs have disappeared since the early 1980s.

Despite these challenges, all of you have been doing miraculous work in your classrooms. Califo-nia schools are making progress, student learning has improved, and test scores are up across the state.

In addition, CTA has been working to bring more resources to our schools. We fought back attacks on the minimum school funding guarantee and passed the Quality Education Investment Act, which brings $2.9 billion over seven years to our schools of greatest need.

CTA has been actively meeting with about 25 different career tech organizations and has held two CTE Summits to bring everyone together to strategize about the future of technical and vocational ed-u-cation and how we ensure that all students, whether they go to college or not, get an opportunity for well-paying jobs to compete in the global economy.

But if California wants this progress to continue, the state is going to have to invest more resources in our public schools. Meaningful education changes must be accompanied by substantial investments to help all children succeed.

CTA has been working with business leaders and education organizations to lead that charge. I'm sure there will be some recommendations in these studies that we don't agree with, but we must use this opportunity to create pressure on lawmakers to deal with the funding challenges facing our schools and to begin discussions on how to provide adequate resources to all classrooms and students. It's time California once again invests in education excellence.

I want to end this column with a reminder that March is Women's History Month. Started by three ed-ucators in Sonoma County who noticed that woman were basically absent from textbooks - no more than 3 percent of textbook content in the late 1970s was devoted to women - it's a time to celebrate the role women have played throughout our history. And the theme for this year's celebration could not be more appropriate.

The theme for Women's History Month 2007 is "Generations of Women Moving History Forward." As described by the National Women's History Project, Moving History Forward is a process of individuals coming together for the greater good of the society and confirming the idea that individuals working together can be effective in building a better, more compassionate world.

Yes, we're in this together!

Lawsuits lurk over cost of fixing schools

By Laurel Rosenhall , Sacramento Bee, March 19, 2007

California lawmakers now have more than 1,000 pages of research documenting loads of problems with the state's schools and estimating how much it would cost to successfully educate every child.

The landmark package of 22 studies released last week by Stanford researchers calls for at least a 40 percent increase in education funding and an overhaul of the way the state governs its schools.

It's too soon to know if the research will prompt real change in California's politically fractured Legislature. Even though a bipartisan group commissioned the studies, reactions to the findings already have diverged along party lines.

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger welcomed the suggestions for change but dismissed the call for more money. Democrats, on the other hand, called for both policy reforms and an increase in funds.

But state leaders should have a strong incentive to keep this call for change from devolving into a political stalemate.

That's because a wave of litigation has been sweeping the country in recent years trying to address one of the major questions the Stanford study raises: how much it costs to adequately educate a student.

And if California lawmakers don't enact some of the funding and policy proposals in the Stanford studies, that litigious national trend could extend here.

Lawyers call them "adequacy" suits -- and about 30 states have been slapped with them, said Molly A. Hunter of the National Access Network, a New York advocacy group that tracks litigation over school funding.

"What typically generates a lawsuit is school districts feel like they're not getting enough money from the state ... to do what the state is asking them to do," Hunter said.

And that usually means getting students to meet increasingly rigorous academic standards. Over the past decade, many states have ratcheted up their expectations of schools and students without giving the schools more money -- prompting the wave of adequacy suits.

California set the bar high for what students should learn when it created academic standards in the 1990s.

Then came a testing program that measures how well students are meeting those standards. Now schools are judged twice on those test scores: first by the state, then by the federal government.

California says every campus should achieve an Academic Performance Index score of 800, a tally that reflects the entire student body's test performance.

The federal government -- through the No Child Left Behind law -- expects all students to be proficient in math and English by 2014. Schools must meet tougher targets in these subjects every year until then. If students fail to meet the performance targets, schools face a series of sanctions.

California schools right now lag far behind both the state and federal goals. Statewide, 45 percent of students are proficient in English and 48 percent are proficient in math. The average API is 720, with elementary schools scoring higher and middle and high schools scoring lower.

The state already spends roughly half its budget -- or about $54 billion -- on education.

The Stanford adequacy studies look at what it would take to get California students to meet the state and federal goals. They examine the link between what a state puts into its schools -- resources -- and what it gets out of them -- student performance.

The researchers try to predict how much student achievement would grow if schools had more money for a variety of things: preschool, smaller class sizes, after-school tutoring, nurses, more administrators to deal with behavior problems, more specialists to help students with disabilities, more English support for students who are not native speakers.

One study concludes that schools need 53 percent to 71 percent more funding to get students to meet the No Child Left Behind goals for 2011-12, which call for about 78 percent of them to be proficient in math and English. Another study determines that schools need about 40 percent more funding to meet the state goal of an API of 800.

Both studies say that schools with large numbers of low-income children need vastly more funding than schools that serve the middle class to achieve the same results.

"This is the largest bipartisan adequacy study in the country that's not (driven by) a court order," said state Superintendent Jack O'Connell.

O'Connell, along with the governor and legislative leaders, had requested that the adequacy studies be done. He said their request had nothing to do with adequacy lawsuits in other states.

"My motivation was simply on the merits of addressing funding and reform for public education," O'Connell said.

Others speculate that the state asked for the studies to prevent being hit with an adequacy lawsuit.

"The perceived need for that kind of research exists in the shadow of adequacy suits having been filed around the country and the obviousness of California's insufficiency of funding education," said Catherine Lhamon, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

"As I read the tea leaves, they are trying to get out ahead of a lawsuit."

Lhamon was among the lawyers who sued the state in 2000, alleging that California did not provide its lowest-achieving students with basic tools for learning: up-to-date textbooks, safe school buildings and credentialed teachers.

The state settled the so-called Williams case in 2004, acknowledging its failure to give all students the supplies, classrooms and teachers they needed -- and agreeing to pour an additional $1 billion into the lowest-scoring schools.

But that case did not address the idea of "adequacy" -- it focused on the concept of fairness by looking at the vast differences in school conditions. The Williams case established an educational "floor" that the state must provide at all schools, Lhamon said. An adequacy case, on the other hand, would determine a "ceiling" -- what the state must do to ensure that students receive a proper education.

"We weren't trying to solve the whole ball of wax" in the Williams case, said John Affeldt, another lawyer who worked on the case.

"We were saying it's unconscionable that these kids don't have books, that their facilities are so decrepit and that their teachers are not qualified," said Affeldt, of the San Francisco public-interest law firm Public Advocates.

Both lawyers expressed hope that the state would use the adequacy research to solve its educational problems through the political process. They said they'd be watching over the next couple of years to see if lawmakers approve substantive changes.

"It's a historic opportunity for the state to address continuing inadequacies in a smart way," Affeldt said. "Without litigation."

LAUSD may gain funding

Bills would change ways state would split money

By harrison Shephard, Los Anegeles Daily New, March 19, 2007

SACRAMENTO - Grappling with a public education system that desperately needs more money, California lawmakers are targeting new funding formulas designed to help Los Angeles Unified and other urban districts.

The bills come after landmark studies, released last week, found California schools from kindergarten through 12th grade need a top-to-bottom overhaul and an additional $24 billion to $32 billion every year just to remain competitive with schools in other states.

"The report validated what a lot of us have already known: that it does take more resources to educate a poor child than a middle-class or high-income child," said Assemblyman Kevin DeLe n, D-Los Angeles.

"That being said, at the end of the day, we as legislators in the Senate and Assembly, as well as the governor, will be tested. Ultimately it's a political decision, not an academic one."

But at the local level, Los Angeles Unified School District officials would be satisfied if they could just get a bigger piece of the existing pie for schools that are overcrowded and have more disadvantaged students.

Officials have long complained that state formulas shortchange the LAUSD, which is in the middle of a massive building program to relieve overcrowding and eliminate the need to operate schools on a year-round or multitrack basis. DeLe n has authored a measure that would change state formulas for funding school operations to benefit districts with the highest number of impoverished and minority students.

Currently those formulas are based on average daily attendance.

DeLeon's bill would create a "weighted" formula that would attach varying funding levels to different types of students.

It would specifically give more funds to districts and schools with more minority and low-income students.

But some lawmakers, especially Republicans who tend to represent rural and suburban districts, are likely to be skeptical of proposals that shift more funds to urban districts.

Such proposals, they say, can harm suburban and rural schools that are doing a good job educating students.

"At the same time, you've got to decide you don't want to punish people for doing a good job," Runner said.

Runner agreed that more money needs to be spent educating children who have language challenges or other obstacles to learning.

But he said race, ethnicity and economic status alone should not automatically mean a child or district needs that extra assistance.

"I think it's wrong just to say we need more money because these children are poor and of color," Runner said.

"If there are certain learning issues, like language, then I think that's a different issue. But I don't think it's just because of the socioeconomics (or) the minority status," he said.

Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, has authored a bill that would provide Los Angeles and six other districts with more funds to operate year-round schools.

Under current law, when districts accept state grants for construction of schools, they lose grant funds toward extra costs of operating schools still on the multitrack system. The theory is that the new schools will relieve overcrowding at the multitrack schools, so extra operating funds will not be necessary.

But LAUSD officials say it takes three to five years to build a single new school. Meanwhile, they say, existing schools continue to suffer from overcrowding, even though they lose the funds to deal with it.

The district expects to lose at least $70 million over the course of its school-building program because of the funding formula.

Superintendent David Brewer III, who was in Sacramento last week to testify in favor of Romero's bill, said $70 million is equivalent to giving the district's teachers a 1 percent raise.

"As a superintendent, when I have to reach into my general fund to pay that differential - the extra cost of operating a multitrack vs. a single-track school, it costs money," Brewer said.

"And that means I have to take it away from other things that are very important to running a school."

Some members of the Senate Education Committee expressed skepticism, noting that changing the formula would mean taking money away from other districts.

"If we give some districts more money, then it follows that some districts will get less money," said Chairman Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena.

Scott also has a bill that would alter formulas and base funding on monthly enrollment, rather than average daily attendance.

Tracking daily attendance, he said, burdens educators with too much paperwork and districts with high administrative costs.

A simpler measure would allow schools to dedicate employees' time to more important functions, he said. Such a change also could reduce penalties on districts that have higher absenteeism, such as LAUSD.

Scott's formula would be based on how many students are enrolled in a school, not how many regularly attend.

Another bill sought by LAUSD changes the formula for funding school construction and modernization projects that are now being financed with a $10.4 billion education bond approved by voters last year.

Under current formulas, districts that are expected to face declining enrollment in coming years, such as LAUSD, receive a lower level of funding.

But LAUSD officials said the district is already facing severe overcrowding, and the formula underestimates the need for funding of new projects.

A measure by Assemblywoman Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, would alter that formula to lessen the role that reduced enrollment plays.

"It would definitely benefit LAUSD, but we believe it will also (help) some of the other large urban areas as well," Bass said. "Some of the new construction money is geared to support school districts where enrollment is increasing. L.A. Unified's enrollment is decreasing, but all of us know that L.A. Unified is severely overcrowded."

"The main point is to make sure Los Angeles and other urban areas, like San Diego and the Bay Area, get their fair share."

More money

Here are some of the bills pending in the state Legislature that would change state school-funding formulas, potentially to benefit Los Angeles Unified:

SB 121 by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles: Districts that accept grants to build new schools lose state money for operating year-round campuses, even before the new schools open. The bill would let them keep the operations money.

AB 179 by Assemblyman Kevin DeLe n, D-Los Angeles: Would use a "weighted" formula to provide more funds to districts with more minority and low-income students.

AB 1014 by Assemblywoman Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles: Would reduce the size of funding cuts to districts with declining enrollment, including LAUSD.

Free every school to do its job

By Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee Editorial, March 19, 2007

In a blow to the conventional wisdom that the ivory tower rarely produces anything of practical value, 23 teams of researchers working independently on the question of what ails California's public schools have come up with a conclusion that even the Legislature ought to understand: The state government should set academic standards, assess student performance and hold schools accountable, and then get out of the way and let local educators find the best way to teach our kids.

If the schools need more money, it should be targeted at poor children and high-quality teachers, but otherwise left mostly to the discretion of schools and districts to spend as they wish.

And to tie these two things together, we all need more information, about how individual students and teachers are performing, which new approaches are most promising and where additional investments are producing the most bang for the buck.

Those are the main points to come out of 18 months of research financed by private foundations on behalf of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's legislative leaders and the superintendent of public instruction.

The project is expected to spur a new round of introspection about the quality of California's schools and the best way to improve them.

"We're in desperate shape," said Marshall Smith, education director for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which helped pay for the research. "The system is broken in many ways. Children are not succeeding in the ways they need to succeed."

Not only are minority children lagging too far behind white students in California, the research concluded, but almost every group of California students, no matter their race or economic background, is performing more poorly than their counterparts in other states.

"The schools of California are doing badly by everybody," said Eric Hanushek, a researcher from Stanford University who helped coordinate the project.

Adding more money might help, and one of the studies suggested that it would take tens of billions of dollars in new funds to do the job right. But adding more money to the system as it is now structured would be a waste, the researchers said. That's because too much money we already spend is wasted on things that have no proven connection to academic performance.

The researchers were also refreshingly blunt about what they could not conclude.

"We don't know what works," said Susanna Loeb, another Stanford researcher who coordinated the studies. "We really need to figure out what works and move in that direction."

The studies did offer some concrete conclusions about what's wrong with the status quo:

- California's current school finance system is irrational. Similar districts serving similar students often get very different amounts of money, while districts serving students with vastly different needs often get the same amount of money, or budgets that are not linked to their needs.

- Too much of the money the schools get is controlled from Sacramento.

More than 100 special "categorical" programs unnecessarily tie the hands of local educators with no evidence that the programs improve learning. There is even some evidence, one of the studies suggested, that these earmarks make schools less efficient and thus detract from student performance.

"There's just lots and lots of regulation," Loeb said.

- Teachers are rewarded based on education and experience rather than results and recruiting needs. There is little meaningful evaluation of teacher performance today, and it is too difficult for principals to fire "chronically ineffective teachers."

- Schools and policymakers are flying blind because California has lagged behind other states in developing a system to keep track of individual student performance.

In fact, if there is any single thing the state could do quickly to start moving in the right direction, the researchers said, it would be to complete the development of a computerized information system that would gather that data. Without it, there is no way to know what works and what doesn't, and it will be difficult for schools, districts and policymakers to share what they learn even if they are given the freedom to run their own affairs.

California, Loeb said, needs to create an environment that stresses innovation and "how to learn from innovation."

One intriguing angle in the research was its review of the relatively small number of schools that are "beating the odds" by producing better results with disadvantaged students than would be expected from results statewide. The study found that such schools, on average, spend less than low-performing schools, although in high poverty areas the better schools spend slightly more. If their secret could be boiled down, the research said, it would involve high-quality teachers and staff, a standards-based curriculum and coherent instruction.

Those are the schools that are innovating, despite all the barriers documented in the rest of this research. The state needs to know much more about what makes these students excel, and it needs to free every school to act on that information. Once that groundwork is laid, then it will be time for a rational, detailed discussion of exactly how more money might help other schools become better.

More money! Fewer rules! Tastes great! Less filling!

By Peter Schrag , Sacramento Bee Editorial, March 21, 2007

It's rumored that at least five people have read all of "Getting Down to Facts," the 1,700-page, 22-part report on California school finance and governance released last week.

Predictably, with so huge a set of documents, many of them mired in academic abstraction, there's something to reinforce almost every position and support almost every headline.

The release was split into two parts, the first on productivity and efficiency, the second on how much more money it might take to give every California student a chance at academic success.

That ranged from a modest additional $1.7 billion to a number too large to quote in a family newspaper. (The midrange was around $20 billion to $25 billion, a 40 percent increase.)

The governor, not surprisingly, showed up for the first leg, but not the second. Fix the broken system, he said, before we put more money into it. He promised he'd work on the problem next year. This year he's too busy with health care and global warming and, very likely, a budget with another fat deficit.

The postponement is probably a good thing since nobody in his office has the capacity to analyze or otherwise deal with the report's many elements.

There's little in it that's new, and a lot that's debatable, but it's all packaged in one comprehensive, high-profile set of diagnoses that will be cited for years: over-prescriptive state mandates that hamstring local schools and their leaders; lack of data to evaluate programs; money allocated without logic or reason; the near-inability of principals to fire bad teachers; lack of any rational policy to improve teacher quality and get them where they're most needed and, as a strong afterthought, the state's inadequate funding.

The report itself is ambivalent. It doesn't like categorical programs but, in calling for more targeted resources for poor and minority kids, seems to want to add some of its own. And despite its implicit swipe at the powers of teacher unions, its wish to give districts more fiscal discretion seems to throw more money on the bargaining table.

More telling, in arguing for fewer top-down prescriptions, the report's summary assumes that the state's high standards and corresponding accountability system alone will keep districts focused on raising student achievement.

But its iteration of California's weak student test scores vis-`-vis other states on NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, ignores the big gains California has made on the very standards and tests it expects to drive the system.

In the years between 1999, when California's accountability system was put in place, and 2005, California's lowest ranking elementary schools -- the bottom 10 percent -- gained 190 points on an 800 point scale, exceeding the academic scores of the state's midrange schools in 1999. All schools in the ninth decile in 2005 would have been in the top rank in 1999. More improvements are expected when new rankings are released next week.

Similarly, in the period from 2003 to 2006, the number of students rated proficient in algebra, regarded as essential to later success, rose from 103,000 to 163,000; in biology the number went from 124,000 to 174,000.

None of this suggests that California schools are flawless. Blacks and Latinos continue to lag behind Asians and non-Hispanic whites. Most of the schools that serve them have weaker teachers, too few counselors, shoddier facilities and often inadequate equipment. Thousands of California State University freshmen still need remedial work.

But the report's emphasis on NAEP scores, which don't measure the same academic skills mandated by the state's standards, buys into all the familiar generalizations about failing schools.

Different states also have different rules on which and how many English learners and learning handicapped students are excused from NAEP or "accommodated" with extra time and other advantages. For a study that's supposed to be based on research and involved a platoon of Ph.D.s, it takes its most fundamental assumption largely for granted.

Broad-brush negative assessments of schools are always convenient, both for the left, which wants more money, and for a lot of people on the right, who would rather cut funding or throw the whole system open to vouchers. If they can agree on anything, it's that the schools stink.

In releasing the report, Susanna Loeb, the Stanford researcher who headed this massive project, made clear that cherry-picking the report was not going to fix the state's large problems of governance and finance and won't do much for school quality or student achievement.

There's not much chance of that. Major reforms can't be engineered without additional funding; they go together. But Republican legislators weren't interested in the project to begin with and the unions aren't in business to make it easier to get their members fired. California has no strong lobby for quality.

Still, despite its flaws, the report may start the long overdue debate about rational and adequate funding that California so badly needs. It could also launch a thousand lawsuits. Either way, it should concentrate the mind.

Don't buy Schrag's spin about massive education study

By Chris Reed, San Diego Union Editorial, March 21, 2007

A week before the release of "Getting Down to Facts" -- the massive study of California's public education system -- the spinners were already in full false-framing mode, leaking word in Sacramento that it called for massive spending increases. Then the actual report came out, and the two 70-page summaries that I read made plain that any new spending was pointless without vast reforms.

Teachers union could block public school change

By Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee Editorial, March 22, 2007

With new research suggesting California schools need a dose of reform to go along with any new money, the state's biggest teachers union -- the California Teachers Association -- will play a major role in deciding how far those changes will go, if they go anywhere at all.

And based on a conversation with the union's leaders this week, it sounds as if the CTA is going to be very skeptical, to put it mildly, about major changes in the way the schools do business.

The research is the product of more than 20 separate papers sponsored by a group of private donors on behalf of state leaders. Taken together, it suggests that the schools need more flexibility to spend their money as they wish, that principals need more freedom to hire and fire their own staffs, and that the state needs to collect better data on how students perform and which teachers make a difference.

The research also suggests that the schools need more money, but says more cash won't do any good if it is poured into the existing system without reform.

CTA President Barbara Kerr said her 335,000-member union will fight any attempt to overhaul the schools that does not also provide more money at the same time. Kerr said she is "concerned" that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested last week that the reforms should come first, then the money.

"Efficacy and adequacy have to go together," Kerr said, using the education community's terms for better performance and more money. "What we have now is not adequate."

Kerr said the union is open to the idea of change, but she added: "Agreeing to what that change should be ... may be more difficult."

The researchers didn't make any specific recommendations. But they reported that the No. 1 complaint they heard from principals is that they don't have the power to fire bad teachers. Most said they had only one or two teachers they would dismiss if they could. But they seemed to think that simply having the authority to manage their own payroll would be enough to change the way their schools work.

Another key point: information. The researchers said there is an appalling lack of data about what works and what doesn't in California schools, and they suggested that individual student performance be tracked in a way that allows teachers to be evaluated on how much impact they have on a child's mastery of the material.

The CTA isn't likely to entertain such changes any time soon. Kerr said this week that any move to change the way teachers are evaluated would have to be bargained separately in each of the state's thousand-plus districts as part of their union agreements. And any attempt to pay teachers based on performance would have to wait until all teachers are paid what she described as an "adequate" salary.

Instead, the union is promoting legislation it helped craft last year as an example of the kind of reform the schools need. Senate Bill 1133, drafted to settle a lawsuit over funding that the CTA filed against Schwarzenegger, commits $2.9 billion over seven years to 500 schools with some of the lowest-performing students in the state.

The money -- $500 per student in elementary schools and $1,000 per student in high schools -- will go largely toward reducing class size.

It will also add more high school counselors (one for every 300 students) and training for teachers and administrators. Any school that enters the program will also be free to spend its other state and federal money largely as it sees fit.

"We are putting our money where our heart is," Kerr said. "These are the things teachers have been saying make a difference. Now we are going to prove it."

Kerr and David Sanchez, who will soon succeed her as president of the powerful union, said they do support increased flexibility -- as long as it does not endanger job security for teachers.

For starters, they would like to start by getting rid of the requirements of No Child Left Behind, the federal education bill sponsored by President Bush and leading Democrats that requires schools to improve results for all students, including minorities, and penalizes them if they fall short.

"For 7 percent of the funding of education in this state, the federal government has decided that they are going to control the whole thing," Kerr said.

Some state mandates could also be jettisoned, Kerr suggested.

Currently, about one-third of school spending is dictated by more than 100 separate programs, known as "categoricals," that are controlled from Sacramento. The union has a big incentive to see some of those strings cut because doing so would leave more money available for teacher salaries.

Maybe there is some common ground in there somewhere, a grand deal that largely deregulates the schools to do as they wish as long as their students are making progress toward meeting state standards. Local officials, in consultation with their unions, would decide how much to pay their teachers and how they should be evaluated or, if necessary, dismissed.

Huge research project reviews funding and governance of states schools

California School Board Association, March 2007

The release this week of exhaustive research into virtually every aspect of California's complex systems for governing and funding K-12 public schools sets the stage for results from a separate comprehensive study by the California School Boards Association and its research partners to identify workable strategies for fixing what's wrong with the system.

It took two days and hours of press briefings to summarize the major findings included in "Getting Down to Facts," the umbrella title given to the 23 studies released March 14-15 in Sacramento. The research was requested by the governors Committee on Education Excellence, state School Superintendent Jack O'Connell, state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nzqez. Funded by four national foundations and coordinated by Stanford University, the voluminous project is according to its principal authors is an unprecedented attempt to synthesize what we know as a basis for convening the necessary public conversations on what we should do.

What we know, researchers said, is that "California's school finance and governance systems are fundamentally flawed" and, as a result, students here lag behind comparable students in other states.

The reports stressed that piecemeal reforms, such as new categorical programs, haven't worked in the past and won't help in the future. Although the state may have to significantly increase its investment in California schools to support better services for students, money alone won't fix what's wrong. New spending must be part of a comprehensive overhaul of the system, the reports concluded.

That overhaul should include a system to track progress of individual students, more local control over how money is spent, relief from cumbersome and inflexible Education Code requirements, authority to more easily dismiss bad teachers, predictable state budgets and equitable funding among districts.

The reports said California has not linked school spending to the standards it expects students to meet. In fact, the main costing-out study estimated that the state would have to increase school funding by at least 40 percent to attain its achievement goals.

"In the short term, while there will be much to like and dislike in individual studies, it is important to note that the main themes emerging from the project are really quite supportive of positions CSBA has advocated on behalf of local school boards and the children they serve,' said CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin.

Survey seeks consensus on reform and investment

Some of the same foundations that supported "Getting Down to Facts," principally the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, also financed the work under way now by CSBA, the League of Women Voters, Children Now and the PTA.

As part of that study, which is nearing completion, surveyors asked key leaders in business, education, government and community-based organizations for their thoughts on school funding and structural reform in K-12 education.

Researchers at CSBA and its survey partners say they hope that insights from this survey and data analysis will provide the catalyst for transforming the wealth of "Getting Down to Facts" research into the essential consensus that's needed for action.

"It is our hope that the package of K-12 research released this week reinforces what we have heard over the last year from the key opinion leaders we surveyed," said Dr. Kathy Kinley, president of CSBA. "There are so many different opinions and ideas as to how best to reform education in California, but our survey results point to there being some shared principles that can bring divergent groups together."

All these research projects are closely tied to CSBA's ongoing adequacy campaign, which is aimed at tying school investment to the actual cost of educating California students.

"I can honestly say that these studies are unique, and I applaud the effort by our policy-makers in calling for them," said Plotkin. "However, findings alone will not do the trick. After these reports are released it's critical that the governor, the Legislature and other state leaders come together around a set of recommendations that will achieve the lofty goals that all parties have for Californias schools."

Radio Ads about GDTF

April 2007

Hoping to ensure that the exhaustive study on the state's public schools doesn't fade from legislators' radar, the Education Coalition and the California Teachers Association is launching a TV and radio campaign to push for greater school funding. The groups will hold a press conference on Tuesday in Sacramento.

Headlined "Getting It Right," the commercials, in both Spanish and English, needle the Governor and legislature to "to invest in our children's future, and give our kids the schools they deserve."

Here's the text of one of the radio spots:

Announcer: At the request of the Governor and the legislature, Stanford University recently issued more than 20 studies on what California should do to help our kids get the education they deserve. The bottom line? California school funding is inadequate  the studies say we need forty percent more. Here's what parents, teachers, and principals say:

Teacher:It means that California's classrooms are among the most crowded in America.

Principal: We don't invest enough in quality training for principals, teachers, and other educators.

Parent: Many of our schools don't have art and music programs, or technical and vocational education.

Announcer: The experts agree: California schools need to change, but that can't happen without more resources. The Governor and the legislature need to invest in our children's future, and give our kids the schools they deserve.

California school fixes ahead: Proceed with caution

By Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee Editorial, October 31, 2007

Brace yourself: California is about to get another "year of education." It will almost inevitably come with high-decibel laments about the dismal performance of California schools, excessive expectations about all the things schools can do and Bulfinch-size volumes of myths about how great they once were.

There'll be lots of modish talk  about categorical programs, testing, standards, proficiency, funding, governance, college preparation, career technical education, merit pay, class size, accountability, English learners but little attention to what's worked.

David Long, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's secretary of education, told an interviewer for California Schools Magazine recently that the year of education "means that we'll start that creative, assertive, thoughtful conversation. ... It's going to take some time, so I always caution people that everything isn't going to be accomplished in 12 months."

That's a relief. The governor's man says it will take more than 12 months to do the job. Since the nation has been fixing schools since the founding of the Boston Latin School in 1635, it shows a rare glimmer of realism. It's especially encouraging in a governor's office that hasn't shown much capacity for, or interest in, serious educational matters.

Because he didn't understand the issues and failed to vigorously defend his own appointments to the state board of education in the past few years, Schwarzenegger lost three of the strongest educational policymakers California has had in the past generation.

And although he vetoed some of the worst of recent bills undermining California's model academic standards, in most cases it was a near thing.

The governor still seems to believe that even in a state like California, whose low achievement levels match its low investment in schools, large improvements can be bought for little or no money.

He talks grandly about how he benefited from vocational education in Austria after World War II (take a shop course, become a champion body-builder?) but so far has shown little interest in the complex philosophical and technical questions about how new career-tech programs should be run, funded and staffed, or who should take them.

But judging from reports of those who have recently discussed ideas for next year's school reform agenda with members of the governor's staff, the greatest impediment may be the governor's own excessive ambitions for yet another humongous ("fantastic!") headline-grabbing program that, as with his ailing health care initiative, is supposed to solve everything.

Hardly anyone doubts that the biggest task in improving schools is to attract and retain good teachers at the neediest schools, and to provide the support staff, resources and conditions that will allow them to work effectively.

That means either shifting resources from other schools, a political near-impossibility, or additional funding. Reducing achievement gaps may also require longer school days and elimination of the broken up school calendars that hundreds of thousands of students are subject to.

Schwarzenegger's Committee on Excellence in Education, headed by former Occidental College president Ted Mitchell, is likely to recommend a weighted school funding formula that would designate additional funds for each student with special needs in a district (English learners, special education students) but allow the district to allocate the funding according to its priorities. The plan would require districts to report publicly precisely how the money is spent in each school.

But there's a hitch. The California Teachers Association resists any differentials in pay or working conditions other than those based on college credits (which seem to mean little) and years of experience. And most people in the school establishment oppose honest reporting of the actual average pay of teachers in individual schools.

Without those numbers, districts can continue pretending that all their schools have teachers with similar experience and abilities, thus concealing major resource gaps among schools in the same district. They'd also be able to continue using federal money to replace, rather than supplement, funding for needy kids.

Equally important: Unless reformers recognize what everybody intuitively knows - that better education depends on a lot of things outside school, such as health care, preschool opportunities, parental engagement, housing, peer culture, neighborhood conditions, jobs, after-school programs - there's little chance for in-school reforms to show dramatic results.

American schools have long been asked for too much, often in crisis terms - winning the Cold War, keeping the nation economically competitive, combating the evils of drugs and alcohol, teaching safe sex or no sex - and blamed for too many problems.

Critics of immigration are correct that the large numbers of children from low-skill families who come to school speaking little or no English impose additional burdens on the system.

Big talk, few fixes for schools

By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee Columnist, November 14, 2007

Were words alone - sheer verbiage - powerful enough to fix California's huge and hugely troubled education system, the problem would have been resolved years ago.

Scarcely a week passes without some new policy conference, legislative hearing, academic study, blue ribbon commission or other verbal venue devoted to analyzing California's educational conundrum and proposing solutions.

This year has been especially productive - if that's the correct term - beginning with a weighty, 23-part study of California's 6 million-student public school system financed by some well-meaning foundations and overseen by Stanford University. It said many things, but was short on definitive conclusions.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed that 2008 would be the "year of education"  presuming, apparently, that he would be successful in his vow that 2007 would be the year that California's health care crisis was resolved. And he appointed a Committee on Education Excellence, headed by renowned educator Ted Mitchell, to draft his own school reform program.

Not to be outdone, as it were, a Mountain View-based educational think tank called EdSource sponsored a conference in Sacramento last month at which 47 papers on fixing California schools were presented.

On Tuesday, meanwhile, Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of schools, opened a two-day "Achievement Gap Summit" that drew some 4,000 educators to Sacramento, focusing on the chronic gaps between white and Asian American students on one hand and Latino and African American kids on the other, and promising to add a few million more words to an already staggering inventory.

In anticipation of O'Connell's event, two University of California-affiliated think tanks released a massive report last week that charts the achievement gap and suggests reasons for its persistence, regardless of income levels, including a disparity of educational resources.

More words are on the way, because Schwarzenegger's commission has completed its draft report, although the governor is sitting on it. Mitchell, however, gave a preview to the EdSource conference last month, including a proposed overhaul of school financing that would do away with many of the "categorical aids" that supposedly target money to specific learning problems and refocus the money on the most troublesome schools and kids.

"We are looking at ways to reduce categorical programs," Mitchell said, according to Education Week. "We are looking very hard at weighting systems around the country."

If this account of educational verbiage sounds a little jaded, it's because California's schools, at least as measured by such things as test scores and high school dropout rates, have been deteriorating for several decades despite countless studies and programs that were supposed to fix things.

We  via our politicians and education leaders  flit from nostrum to panacea, from smaller class sizes to high school exit exams, while refusing to broach such taboo subjects as union contracts that make it difficult to assign the most experienced teachers to the most difficult schools and students. The educational establishment, meanwhile, monotonously chants that any academic improvement must begin with massive increases in school financing that, in the absence of some immense tax increase, are not in the cards.

While those participating in O'Connell's conference and other forums float what-if? scenarios, the more immediate reality is that the state budget faces at least a $10 billion deficit next year and the school community is bracing for a potential cutback in its constitutional floor of financing from Sacramento. In light of that, the "year of education" may be postponed indefinitely.

State of our schools: Not all good, not all terrible

By Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee Columnist, December 5, 2007

As California approaches the "year of education" that won't be, what education consultant John Mockler calls the "schools suck" industry continues to churn out information falling somewhere between distorted and flat wrong.

Although California's fiscal problems are likely to limit "reform" next year to a lot of low-cost stuff, it might still be nice to get the picture right.

The most recent flagrantly false factoid appeared in a news story late last month asserting that California's is a "system in which fewer than half of all ninth-graders end up with a high school diploma."

In 2002-3 there were 520,000 ninth-graders in California schools. In 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, 349,000 (67 percent) got diplomas. But since ninth-grade enrollment is famously bloated by the thousands of students who are held back, the better base is probably eighth grade. Using that number (for 2001-2) 75 percent got diplomas.

That's still not great - especially considering the many black and Latino students who don't make it - but a long way from "fewer than half." And if you count those who get general education diplomas outside the regular school system, the count is still higher.

The "fewer than half" is just a symbol of the larger misapprehension that test scores are flat or declining, that schools were better in some past golden age, that they're top-heavy with administrators and that despite spending tons of money, they rank on a par with Mississippi and Bangladesh.

Other Reference Material

While the research project will document the topics below, here is some background material until then.