3 Reforms to Keep California Schools on a Quality Track

1998 came in with promise but ended with unease. Lawmakers started with a healthy budget surplus, which encouraged talk of reversing earlier hits taken by local government and education, as well as discussion of rebuilding neglected infrastructure.

After another needlessly protracted budget stalemate marked mostly by wrangling over lowering the vehicle license fee, the year ended with the paradox of high hopes (and high expectations) for a new administration and a projected budget deficit of $1 billion or more.

Even so, 1998 had significant high points, especially for education.

Locally, the roots of Ventura County’s full-time Cal State University campus took permanent hold at the former Camarillo State Hospital.

Statewide, we built on previous reforms by increasing our investment in class-size reduction and boosting it into our high schools. We asked voters (and they agreed) to pass the largest school bond in California’s history, and we established a multimillion-dollar program to furnish new textbooks and library and science materials to our schools.

To put these moves in perspective, many large and small education improvements have been adopted in recent years: rigorous curriculum standards with clearly defined statements of what students should be able to know and do, a statewide testing system to measure the success of those standards, a four-year program to provide every high school with access to technology, and zero-tolerance discipline programs to insure safe campuses. And there is much more yet to do.

In 1999, to further the process, the Legislature should focus on three key areas:

First, our children must have a stimulating learning environment to keep them focused. Even with the new bonds to build and renovate schools, nearly $40 billion is needed over the next 10 years. That is why I have reintroduced legislation to lower the vote threshold for local school bonds to a simple majority, like we have for state school bonds.

Second, the new standards, instructional materials and other resources that we have adopted will all go for naught unless our students are taught by quality teachers who are committed, respected and rewarded for the crucial role they play. Consequently, we must improve our teacher preparation, certification and continuing education programs and raise the starting salaries for teachers to attract and retain quality professionals.

And finally, we must implement accountability to ensure that the schools are accomplishing what we have asked of them. Accountability must include measurable goals for each school, rewards for high-achieving schools and interventions for low-performing schools.

These and other reforms will keep us on track to making California’s schools reign supreme in the nation. I am anxious to see the impacts of what we have accomplished so far, and I am eager to work with our new governor in the coming months and years, but I am also mindful that this is a long process.

To put it all in perspective, I encourage readers to visit a school close to them, whether they have children attending or not. We are all invested in having an educated populace, so it behooves us all to get educated about how our schools really work--in the classroom.