On October 13, the Foundation for Excellence in Education will bring its National Summit for Education Reform to San Francisco. No one disputes that American schools need improvement, but many us engaged in the daily struggle to provide a quality education to every child feel the Foundation’s agenda of more testing, expanding charter schools and ending local control amounts to a deep misunderstanding of the source of and solution to the problems in our schools.

Teachers and parents in California’s schools are stressed and demoralized. Budget cuts have decimated staff, leaving us near the bottom of all states in per pupil spending, and staffing ratios for teachers, administrators, counselors, librarians, and nurses. Elementary classrooms are exceeding thirty students each, high