Governor signs Obama education reform bills

By SCOTT MARTINDALE
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

“Today is a truly historic day for children and parents throughout the state of California – and for the future of our state’s education system,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “President Obama called for positive change across the nation, and California’s leaders answered that call.”

The two complementary Race to the Top bills – which cleared the state Legislature late Wednesday – are being met with a mix of cautious optimism and trepidation by Orange County schools.

“I don’t disagree with it,” Orange County schools Superintendent Bill Habermehl said Wednesday, “but the devil is in the details. When you look at this piece of legislation, you say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’ But when the bureaucrats write the (legal) regulations – and the people who enforce the regulations interpret things differently than we do – it costs us money.”

Perhaps the most controversial reform for Orange County schools is linking teacher evaluations to students’ academic achievement. California’s Race to the Top legislation also creates tough, new accountability measures for the state’s lowest-performing schools and empowers parents to pull their kids out of failing schools or demand sweeping reform plans for them.

While these strategies are laudable in theory, Habermehl said, they require money to implement and sustain – and the government doesn’t have a perfect track record for putting money where its mouth is.

For example, Habermehl said, the 20-to-1 student-teacher ratio in the classroom – introduced by state lawmakers in the mid 1990s – is chronically underfunded by the state, as are special education programs supported by the federal government. These funding shortfalls amount to hundreds of millions of lost dollars in Orange County alone.

Most of Orange County’s school districts are on board with Obama’s education reform agenda – at least for now.

At least 21 of the county’s 28 school districts have tentatively committed to implementing the legislative reforms passed today in exchange for being able to apply for Race to the Top funding, should California win. Statewide, about 800 school districts and other educational agencies, out of about 1,500 total, have signed letters of intent to apply for the funding.

By this Friday, school districts must also file a memorandum of understanding with the state, which is essentially the formal application requiring them to commit to the state’s education reform agenda.

California’s Race to the Top legislation is the culmination of months of political wrangling in Sacramento over the bills’ language.

Although both houses passed a version of the legislation late last year, the Senate’s initial version was viewed as harder on the lowest-performing California’s traditional public schools, while the Assembly’s initial version was viewed as harder on charter schools.

A compromise was not reached until this week.

Obama’s insistence on specific reforms as a prerequisite to apply for Race to the Top funds has rankled many in the educational community, including the state teachers union.

“The two bills would create chaos in school districts and drain resources from local classrooms; and punish lower-performing schools without providing needed assistance,” the California Teachers Association union said in a statement posted on its Web site.

If California doesn’t win in the first phase of the competition, it can apply again for the second and final phase in June.

Federal officials have indicated only 10 to 20 states total are expected to win Race to the Top grants.

Key reforms

Teacher evaluations: Students’ academic performance may be used to evaluate teachers and principals in California. School districts must get their local teachers unions to agree to this plan for it to take effect at the local level, but the new state legislation provides the legal framework.

Open enrollment: Students at the 1,000 lowest-performing schools in California may transfer to a better school anywhere in the state, including in the same school district. Previously, students’ transfer options at California’s worst schools – as defined by their Academic Performance Index score – were limited.

Failing schools: School districts will be forced to adopt a specific Obama-backed reform plan for failing schools. The reform plan could mean closing the school, firing the principal and up to half of the teachers, or turning the campus into a charter school.

Parent empowerment: At poor-performing schools, a school district must adopt a reform plan if at least half of parents at the school sign a petition demanding a turn-around. The initiative will be limited to 75 schools.

Charter school cap: California will no longer cap the number of independent, public charter schools allowed to operate in the state. Lifting the cap on charter schools is largely symbolic – that is, intended to demonstrate the state’s commitment to Obama’s education reform agenda – as California has yet to reach its own previously set charter school cap.

Student assessment: California will create new framework and support measures for a fledgling state program that aims to track students’ academic progress from elementary school through college. Typical school data reporting systems tend to look at, for example, how eighth-graders perform from year to year, but the state’s longitudinal educational data system will track how a student performs in eighth grade and then ninth grade and so on.