The Governor’s Advisory Committee on Education Excellence has released its report called “Students First, Renewing Hope for California’s Future”.  Governor Schwarzenegger “asked 18 of California’s top minds in education to examine our system see what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong and to make recommendations for the future.”

I was stunned by the report. It shines an all too rare (especially in California’s educational system) harsh spotlight on the institutional failure of California’s school system:

California’s current system turns common sense on its head. Too often, students are an afterthought. How else to explain a 100,000-section Education Code in which the words “student achievement” rarely appear? How else to explain how such a system can survive and, in fact, grow when less than one-quarter of students statewide are mastering reading, math, and other subjects? How else to explain our tolerating some high schools where, year after year, less than half of 9th-graders ultimately earn a diploma, and even fewer actually are prepared to succeed in college or on the job?

…It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It is time to say “enough” and to fundamentally rethink how we have organized ourselves to educate the 6.3 million children whose future depends on our effectiveness. It is time to replace a system that gets in the way of effective teaching and successful learning with one that supports our best educators and their students. Specifically, the Committee recommends action on four inter-related priorities and a fifth key foundation. (See Four Inter-Related Priorities on next page.) Taken together, this systemic overhaul will reduce the achievement gap and create a constantly escalating cycle of continuous improvement in our education system. Therefore, it is essential that our proposed reforms be considered as a coherent, comprehensive package. Cherry-picking proposals could make the current intolerable situation even worse. For instance, simply spending more money on ineffective programs without measuring results and rewarding success will exacerbate inefficiencies. Giving principals and teachers more authority without first ensuring they are well-prepared to wield it effectively would be irresponsible. This is where our political leaders will have to demonstrate uncommon courage. Everyone professes to put students first. But collectively, the results suggest otherwise.

 The Committee’s common-sense proposals:

1. Strengthen teaching and leadership.
● Make teaching and education leadership true professions:
 - Give teachers advanced career opportunities without leaving the classroom, including mentoring and site leadership roles.
 - Have peers and leaders use professional standards and performance outcomes to evaluate teachers and principals. Let good teaching and leadership drive out bad.
 - Target professional development to school priorities and student needs.
 - Grant professional compensation based in part on student-performance gains, skills, and responsibilities.
● Deregulate professional preparation.
● Close the gap in teacher and principal effectiveness among schools.

2. Ensure fair funding that rewards results.
● Invest more resources in students, particularly in those at the lowest end of the achievement gap who have been least well-served by the system in the past.
● Deregulate finance, and link local control to outcome based accountability:
 - Use student-centered budgeting to get additional funds to students with the greatest needs:
   ● Drive fiscal accounting to school level to ensure equity.
   ● Correct incentives to ensure students’ progress is not held back.
 - Eliminate almost all categorical program mandates; allow local choice to drive program selection.
● Create local incentives to reward teaching and leadership excellence.

3. Streamline governance and strengthen accountability.
● Refocus accountability on improving outcomes and meeting proficiency targets for all students and subgroups.
● Enhance assessments to measure growth of student achievement.
● Expand local control to increase efficiency: Combine resource flexibility with greater accountability, and encourage greater school autonomy.
● Have county offices provide support to address district needs and state-delegated roles.
● Create a school inspection system to identify problems and support improvement.
● Empower county superintendents through their established service regions to enforce district accountability and intervention.
● Enhance sanctions for school failures, with zero tolerance intervention.
● Designate the Superintendent of Public Instruction as the independent guarantor of success, overseeing accountability (post-2010):
 - Expand and manage data/evaluation systems.
● Create an independent data commission until the Superintendent role changes.
● Have the Secretary of Education manage policy,
program, and funding (post-2010):
● Have the California Department of Education support instructional delivery and stop monitoring process compliance.
● Have the State Board of Education become advisory to the Governor and Secretary.
● Empower parents to help improve learning quality, and give them real choices.

4. Use data wisely.
● Make performance, program, and financial information transparent, and provide it to parents, educators, communities, and the state.
● Create comprehensive data systems that link student, teacher, school, district, and state data, with capacity to link to college, work, and social services data.
● Create capacity to analyze data and programs and to support districts’ needs:
 - Evaluate programs to ensure effectiveness before continuing them.
 - Plus, create a foundation for continuous improvement.
● Prepare our children for success from the earliest age:
 - Implement mixed-delivery, statewide preschool for all 3- to 4-year-olds in poverty.
● Make kindergarten full-day and change entry date.

I highly recommend reading the entire 44 page summary.  The complete report is available here.

I sincerely hope our state government has the cojones to do what needs to be done.  For the first time in my adult life I see hope for California’s students.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.