First of Four Parts. Part Two: Teachers, Part Three: Funding and Part Four, Governance
The basic elements of Arnold’s education reforms have begun to make their way into the press, and unsurprisingly, they’re not good. Arnold intends to use his “Year of Education” to make a power grab at the expense of teachers, students who have different educational needs, and even basic democracy.
The most dramatic reforms appear to have been abandoned due to the budget crisis, as Arnold is in fact likely to propose balancing the budget on the backs of students. But other changes that don’t involve money will still appear in his State of the State address on Tuesday:
In his State of the State address on Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce an ambitious but controversial education agenda that includes merit pay for teachers, more local control of school finances, and essentially barring 4-year-olds from entering kindergarten.
Additionally, the AP adds some more proposals that seem likely to be unveiled:
Business leaders who advise Schwarzenegger say failing schools need to be held accountable first. They want Schwarzenegger, through his education secretary, David Long, to use the tools of the federal No Child Left Behind Act to punish schools with large numbers of failing students.
Many of those schools are in high-poverty neighborhoods and have a high proportion of black and Hispanic students.
2008 will indeed be “the Year of Education” in California, but not in the way Arnold intended. We will have to engage in a major fight if we are to protect education from crippling budget cuts and the imposition of a business-based agenda that parents oppose and that does nothing to actually improve learning and achievement.
The first thing to understand about education reform, before even looking at the specific proposals here, is that it so often misses the point. The problem with education in California isn’t that it is universally bad. I am a product of California public schools, from my first day in kindergarten in suburban Orange County in 1984 to my graduation from UC Berkeley in 2000 – and I had a great education the whole way. The problem is instead that it is uneven, and that students of color, and those from poor backgrounds, do not have the same educational opportunities or outcomes.
One of the most accurate predictors of student achievement is the income level of the student’s parents. Lower-income families tend to live in districts with inadequately funded schools, but also aren’t able to give students the kind of external support, such as test prep or computers, they need to succeed. Idealistic teachers who go to work in, for example, Oakland often burn out due to the lack of state support for their work and either find another career or take a job in Walnut Creek.
Those teachers who remain often give what they have to their students, but education is not a substitute for economic opportunity. To target poor children for aid but not their parents or their neighbors, as many have come to understand, is not a likely recipe for success.
We do indeed have an achievement gap in education in California. But it isn’t going to be addressed by abandoning the poor and students of color, by attacking teachers, and by reducing the amount of democratic control over education. California has an education problem because it won’t spend money on improving it, and Arnold, with his firm opposition to any new taxes, refuses to do the only thing that will help remedy the situation.
In that light, educational reform proposals such as those Arnold are proposing have to be seen in a different light. They’re proposed to achieve political goals, not educational goals. Over the next three days I break down the proposals according to three categories: Teaching, Funding, and Democracy. A lack of respect for each is at the core of Arnold’s plan, as is a desire to seize power over education in California.
Will Democrats rise to the occasion? Last year was to be the Year of Health Care. Arnold proposed individual mandates, and Democrats pooh-poohed it. But, 11 months later, there was the State Assembly, controlled by Democrats, approving a plan that incorporated Arnold’s basic proposals, with some slight differences in the details. If the Year of Education is to have a better outcome than the Year of Health Care, we need Democrats to stand firm for public education, for students, and for teachers.
