Talk Back tackles Cal education
A panel that included former chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools and StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee took a close look at some of the biggest problems facing education in the Golden State and also considered viable solutions to a system that ranks among the lowest in the nation.
Radical reform · Michelle Rhee, Catherine Shieh and Ben Austin (right to left) debates the challenges facing California public schools. — Ralf Cheung | Daily Trojan
The Wednesday panel was part of Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics’ Students Talk Back series, this one with focus on education reform in the state of California.
Unruh Institute Director Dan Schnur moderated the panel, which included USC College Democrats finance director Catherine Shieh and USC College Republicans member Haran Sivakumar, both of whom spoke about education reform from a student perspective, and Ben Austin, a former member of the California State Board of Education and founder of reform group Parent Revolution.
The discussion began with an overview of the type of policy environments that foster productive reform in education. Rhee’s organization, which is committed to reforming American public education, recently gave California an ‘F’ on its national report card. Rhee emphasized that states that are willing to cross party lines and work toward nonpartisan reform strengthen their education systems. She cited Massachusetts as one such example.
“Massachusetts usually ranks among the highest in the nation when it comes to education,” Rhee said. “StudentsFirst gave it a ‘D+’ grade because of its inefficient policy environment. Instead of rejecting the criticism, state legislators saw it as an opportunity for improvement, and have been working towards closing the state’s achievement gap.”
Throughout the discussion, however, the theme of legislative inaction remained dominant. Shieh, whose internship for a congressman included serving as a field representative to the U.S. Department of Education on his behalf, emphasized the lack of dialogue taking place between teachers and policymakers. Austin agreed that when it comes to education, power is in the wrong hands.
“This type of politics is too important to be left up to the politicians,” Austin said.
Austin was instrumental in the passage of California’s 2010 parent trigger law, which allows the parents of children in underperforming schools to bring in new teachers and leadership, or even vote to turn the school in to a charter school.
“Parent trigger is a transfer of power from the legislators who are upholding the status quo to the parents, whose chief concern is the children,” Austin said.
Sivakumar voiced the frustration of many by questioning the funding priorities of the state, which ranks fourth-highest in teacher pay but does not have the student performance data to match.
“How long can we look to increase tax revenue to fund a system that is completely broken?” Sivakumar said.
Panelists stressed the importance of the education issue, and encouraged college students to get involved in reaching the solution.
You write:
> Sivakumar voiced the frustration of many by questioning the funding priorities of the state, which ranks fourth-highest in teacher pay but does not have the student performance data to match.
Who are these “many”? How does CA teacher pay compare to cost of living? Is it reasonable to assume there should be a correlation or a causal relationship between teacher pay and student test scores? What are the main determinants of student test scores anyways?
Here’s the scoop: the strongest influences on student test scores are non-school factors. And if it turns out that the challenges of poverty, health care costs for personnel, transportation, facilities, energy, etc., are all really high, then, yes, we may need more money to run schools and pay teachers a living wage. And California is already at or near the bottom compared to other states when it comes to providing librarians, nurses, counselors, aides and site administrators. Teachers in other developed countries earn salaries comparable to engineers and doctors, by the way.
> “How long can we look to increase tax revenue to fund a system that is completely broken?” Sivakumar said.
The system is not completely broken. Let me repeat: the system is NOT completely broken. Schools in high poverty areas are certainly coping with all that their students confront in their lives. To the extent that the system needs improvement, most of it will cost money. We’re struggling because we’ve already cut, and cut, and cut, and cut. All that’s left to do is shorten the school year. Meanwhile schools that have low levels of poverty to address are doing well. About 90% of California’s students are in public schools, and we’re filling up our colleges and universities with capable students. Could we do better? Of course? Completely broken? Not at all.
And I’ll bet the supposed “experts” on education on this panel let that statement go by, didn’t they? Because it suits their political goals to present a system in dire need of their preferred fixes. What has Rhee fixed? In the little time she had, she accomplished nothing educationally – at least nothing you can believe because the test scores were highly suspicious according to independent analysis and some highly reputable journalists who’ve dug into the story. Rhee effectively slowed the investigation and shows none of her usual swagger and brash attitude when it comes time to pass the buck for what happened on her watch. What about the parent trigger? It has touched a grand total of three schools in California. In the first case, Parent Revolution staff presented themselves as community members to bring in signatures. A judge threw out that petition on technicalities. In the second case, parents circulated two petitions at the same time, claiming one was the backup for the other, and then pulling a bait-and-switch. In all cases, apparently if the parent trigger petition succeeds at starting a change, only the parents who signed retain any voice or vote in the next steps. Is that empowerment? What about the community itself: are parents of current students the only ones who deserve a say in the governance of a public institution operated for the public good using all of our taxes?
All in all, this sounds like a pretty embarrassingly one-sided presentation and over-simplification of complex education policy. Who benefits? Hmmm… the panelists, their organization’s funders, the funders of the event… not the general public, or the USC student seeking better information about California public education.