California school problem gets worse
By: Dan Walters
Special to The Examiner
April 11, 2010
The depth of California’s educational crisis was underscored a few weeks ago when new nationwide test results placed the state’s fourth- and eighth-graders at or near the bottom in basic academic skills.
The dismal academic rankings were released just after California failed to qualify for one of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education improvement grants even though it had hurriedly made school governance changes, albeit after some nasty political infighting.
The political climate was so divisive that California could not muster the required level of support for Obama-style reform from school districts, teachers and unions to qualify for a grant. And the atmosphere remains so toxic that California may not even apply in subsequent rounds.
After its brief foray into the quicksand of pedagogic policy, the Capitol is returning to a more familiar political battleground — money.
Unions and other elements of the education establishment that were hostile to the reforms pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with White House support are again chanting their fundamental mantra — that real improvement in California’s sorry academic performance requires more money.
State schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell and the union-backed Education Coalition are complaining loudly about what they describe as a $17 billion reduction of state aid in the past two years, and Schwarzenegger’s plans for more reductions in 2010-11 as the state continues to confront multibillion-dollar budget deficits.
The Legislature’s budget analyst says that per-pupil spending, which was already near the bottom of the states prior to recent cuts, would shrink by nearly $1,000 over three years under Schwarzenegger’s new budget.
Teachers, administrators, parents, non-teaching school workers and school board members took turns Tuesday describing the effects of the cutbacks to an
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