Vantage point: Congratulations—now get to work!
By:
Frank Pugh
Published: November 8, 2010
Knowing full well what a harrowing experience an election campaign can be, I’d like to extend my congratulations to all the governing board members who were successful in their election bids on Nov. 2, and my condolences to those who were not. You deserve our thanks for fighting the good fight on behalf of our kids. I’d also like to extend my congratulations to Jerry Brown, California’s “new/old” governor, Tom Torlakson, the new superintendent of public instruction, and all of the new faces in the California Legislature.
And with that, the honeymoon is over.
In 2011 and beyond, Gov. Brown, Superintendent Torlakson and the Legislature will face many challenges. Foremost among those will be determining how to support the state’s public schools in a way that helps rather than hinders their efforts to improve academic achievement. As I’ve watched our state leaders during the time that I’ve been a school board member, many times I’ve thought that the best thing we could hope for would be for them to just leave us alone. But right now, we need their help. And right now, I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt and presume that they will be helpful.
The education issues facing the state are formidable: the reduction of nearly $18 billion in education funding over the past two years; the suspension of Proposition 98’s minimum funding guarantee; the challenges to improving student achievement that have resulted from the state’s chronic underinvestment in education; unfunded mandates that have saddled schools with responsibilities they lack the resources to address properly; and—last but certainly not least—ongoing, sometimes misguided reform efforts coming out of Sacramento and Washington, D.C..
There is no single cure-all for these problems, but there are some key issues for the governor, the superintendent and the Legislature to address. Academic achievement is a priority for all school districts, but that performance is currently based on a standardized test-driven system of evaluating our students and schools. California needs more portfolio- and project-related assessments to truly evaluate academic achievement and—more importantly—to keep our students engaged. Our reform agenda needs to be driven by data and facts, not trial and error. And the most urgent reform needed is the reform of California’s education finance system. By working with the plaintiffs of Robles-Wong v. California, Gov. Brown can create a school finance system that provides all students an equal opportunity to meet the academic goals set by the state and rid our schools of the current system that is unsound, unstable and insufficient.
By nature, I’m a pretty optimistic guy. I’d really like to believe all of the campaign commercials that have inundated the airwaves in recent weeks. You know the ones I mean—the ones that made promises, the ones that implied that a new day was on the way, if only [fill in the blank] was elected. So, even though history may not be on our side, I’m going to hold out hope that some of the things I talked about in this column actually happen. And if they don’t, those folks in Sacramento are going to hear from CSBA, and hear from me.