ShareThisThere's some grousing over the bill to implement the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the education community against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it's basically a good deal.
The settlement would send additional money to the state's lowest performing schools through the 2013-2014 school year. Some would like to see this new money more broadly distributed, but then the amounts would be so small that they'd just be eaten up in salary increases, rather than in true educational improvements where they're most needed.
The deal is not without problems. The main one is simple: There's not enough money to cover all schools in the bottom 20 percent of performance. About 2,200 schools and 1.4 million students fall in that category. The deal provides about $401 million a year to schools for 2008-2009 through 2013-2014 and places a focus on high-quality teaching. That's enough to reach about 800 schools and 660,000 students _ a pilot project more than a systemwide solution.
The money is being targeted to hire high-quality teachers so the schools can reduce class sizes to 25 students in grades 4 through 12.
The focus on teaching is the right one. Though there's some dispute over whether class-size reduction itself improves performance, we know that high-quality teaching is the most important factor in education and that students most in need of the best teachers are the most likely to face underprepared teachers at hard-to-staff, lower-performing schools. That cycle has to be broken. No one should doubt that a new injection of high-quality teachers into these schools could shake things up enough to get real gains in performance.
This deal, which is laid out in Senate Bill 1133 by Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, could be an opportunity to focus on teacher recruitment and high-quality professional development in the state's most-struggling schools.
The bill requires the superintendent of public instruction to evaluate the distribution of classroom teaching experience in these schools, with the aim of achieving a balance of enthusiastic, starting teachers and experienced veterans. The bill also requires that teachers at the selected schools, including interns, be "highly qualified," as defined by the national No Child Left Behind Act.
An important requirement is that the schools would have to meet all the requirements of the 2004 Williams settlement. It addresses poor conditions at schools, including decrepit facilities and lack of textbooks that contribute to high teacher turnover. That settlement also requires review of assignment patterns of new, underprepared and out-of-field teachers at these schools.
If the schools do not meet all of these requirements after three years, their funding will be terminated. The bill requires an independent evaluation of progress in the funded schools in 2010, 2012 and 2014, including recommendations on whether the program should be continued after 2014.
The funding of the deal ends in 2014. After that, if the program is successful, there will be pressure to continue funding and expand the program to more schools. But if it's successful in raising the performance of the state's lowest-performing schools, that's a good thing and a good investment of state resources.
