A 21st-Century Agenda for California’s Schools

SACRAMENTO —  California’s educational reform movement began in 1983 and we now must address some crucial questions: How do we raise expectations for our students and for those who work with them? Which reforms are working and which are not? What further programs, incentives, and accountability measure do we need? What funding level does it take to make the system most effective? How is the money spent?

The education community is not arguing that the solution is simply to throw money at the problem of improving our schools. Additional resources must be tied to a continuing effort to improve the quality of education. Consequently I have prepared an “Agenda for the 21st Century,” which charts our course for the next decade and beyond.

As we approach the 21st Century, our schools face enormous challenges. We need to educate more students to higher levels of academic competency if they are to obtain jobs and our nation is to remain competitive in the world economy. We must also instill strong civic and ethical values in our students to keep democracy alive and to help students develop the character and judgment they need to live up to their potential.

Future jobs will demand much higher skills than those of today--few employment opportunities will be created for those who cannot read, compute and follow directions. As society becomes more complex, the amount of education needed becomes greater. A century ago, a high school education was considered superfluous for factory workers and a college degree was the mark of an academic. According to a study published by the Hudson Institute for the U.S. Department of Labor, by the year 2000 a majority of new jobs for the first time will require postsecondary education.

The department’s agenda outlines accomplishments in California’s educational reform movement, what changes are under way and what still needs attention. Let me briefly touch on some of the issues we face:

Sustaining current reforms: Many reforms are starting to pay off, and we must intensify efforts at the local level. We have established high standards and a strong core curriculum, lengthened the school day and school year, attracted high-caliber new teachers, initiated a mentor teacher program, developed better instructional materials, increased discipline and instituted strong accountability and more efficient fiscal management systems. In addition, we have taken steps to improve school and district management.

Because of these reforms, test scores have gone up; more students are taking academic courses, especially in lower socioeconomic areas; and, of crucial importance, morale has been rising.

We have developed a clear blueprint of what is needed to make our schools better--this vision must be translated into a reality in every classroom. True reform requires sustained attention. It does little good to come up with ideas of how to make our schools work better if these ideas are not actually implemented, reinformed and updated.

Productivity and competitiveness : California’s educational system must be treated as a competitive enterprise. This nation cannot gain its share of the international marketplace if students do not possess the skills and knowledge they need to be productive members of society.

To this end, the way in which we recruit, train and assess new teachers must be radically altered, and we must make an increased investment in upgrading the skills of existing teachers so they can teach the strengthened curriculum. Teachers must play a larger role in the decision-making process, and we need to place greater emphasis on professional development.

Accountability, incentives and sanctions: The educational community must hold itself accountable--both for academic progress and fiscal management. California is the first state to establish a statewide academic accountability program, and it will be expanded so that citizens will be able to evaluate their schools on an even broader array of quality indicators.

A recent report by USC education Profs. Allan Odden and David D. Marsh for Policy Analysis for California Education indicates that when schools put together all the critical reforms, they show improvement. All our estimates indicate that about 30% of our schools are extremely successful, about 40% are working in the right direction and another 30% are still not performing well for a variety of reasons--some lack leadership, faculty teamwork, parent involvement or resources. Others simply have not implemented reforms.

Those schools, programs and individuals that are performing well should be rewarded, thus providing incentives for continued improvement and serving as examples for others. Likewise, sanctions should be invoked against those that are consistently failing to live up to expectations and standards.

Dropouts and low-achieving students: Our students continue to be plagued by problems of drugs and alcohol abuse, truancy and dropouts. Schools need to provide counsel to these students, many of whom no longer find adequate support at home.

Changing demographics: By the time this year’s kindergartners graduate from high school, California’s school enrollment will be about 6 million students--an increase of 1 1/2 million children. These young people will increasingly reflect our state’s diverse population--one in four already comes from a home where a language other than English is spoken. The ethnic mix of students in the year 2000 is expected to be 42% Anglo, 35% Latino, 11% Asian, 9% black and 3% of other ethnicities.

Comprehensive services to young children : We need more and better child and health care, and preschool and kindergarten options, as an increasing number of women join the work force. It is estimated that about 2 million California children need some form of child care. A report just released by the Committee for Economic Development shows that every dollar spent for preschool saves $4.75 in later social costs, such as remedial education, welfare and law enforcement.

Choice: Parents must have more choice in the selection of schools. In a free-market economy, if a consumer does not like a dress or shirt at one store, he or she can go to another vendor. Consumers of public-school services have not had this same ability; we must consider how best to offer this option constructively, to allow for a healthy competition among schools for results. Some limited-choice systems exist now, such as magnet schools or magnet programs within schools; some districts offer open enrollment. In addition, parents can now enroll their children in the school district where they work, rather than where they reside. Senate Bill 813, the major educational reform act of 1983, provided more than $2 million in state start-up funding for 20 specialized secondary-school programs, such as the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts; additional funding should be made available to expand this specialized schools program.

Size issues: Issues of size--class and school--as well as district size and governance must be addressed. California’s class size--one of the nation’s highest--must be reduced if our teachers are to teach a more rigorous curriculum. We need to encourage consolidation of services in some smaller districts and raise the question of whether Los Angeles Unified would be more effective if organized in smaller units.

Facilities: California needs to build 10 classrooms every day, seven days a week, for the next six years, just to accommodate a flood of new students. Many existing buildings require major rehabilitation and renovation. The conservative price tag placed on current and projected facilities needs is $1 billion annually over the next five years. These are the pressing needs: to speed up funding approvals in the State School Building Aid Program; to consider year-round school options; to place at least a $1-billion bond measure on the 1988 ballot, to consider seriously such new funding sources as interim private funding and to allow local school districts to issue general-obligation bonds through a majority rather than a two-thirds vote.

Funding: If we intend to hold schools more fiscally accountable, they deserve to be assured of a stable level of funding through a cost-of-living adjustment that provides for increases in the cost of goods and services, and allows school employees to keep up with private-sector personal income growth. We must remove the yearly uncertainty of school funding from the political arena; toward this end the department has introduced an initiative measure to be placed on the November, 1988, ballot; it would guarantee a fair share of state funds for education. Also, the Proposition 4 spending limit needs to be modified next June so that it more accurately reflects the state’s economy and population needs.

These, then, are some of the challenges as we approach the 21st Century. California is receiving national attention for its educational reform efforts, but it will take another 10 or 15 years of sustained effort to ensure that our schools are firmly on course. I am confident we are on the right road.

Single copies of the “Agenda for the 21st Century” are available free from the Publications Office, State Department of Education, P.O. Box 271, Sacramento, CA 95802.