Michael Kirst, father of new school funding formula, looks back and at the work ahead - by John Fensterwald
It was the morning after the evening of the
Michael Kirst
Michael Kirst is relishing the all-but-certain passage later this week of the comprehensive school funding reform that he co-designed. That was five years ago, and, after many twists and iterations, the final version, negotiated over the weekend by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Speaker John Pérez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, ended up quite like the one published in April 2008. The framework – with base funding, a supplemental grant for every low-income student and English learner, and extra dollars again to districts with the highest concentrations of those targeted students – was in the paper that Kirst co-wrote with former California Secretary of Education Alan Bersin and then Berkeley Law Center professor and now state Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu.
“It is extremely rare in policy analysis that 80 percent of what you recommend is put into law,” Kirst, a professor emeritus at Stanford, said Tuesday. “Usually you hope policy makers will consider half or less.”
But in this case, paternity won’t end with conception. Kirst, who’s also president of the State
Adult ed, regional occupational centers, partnership academies get reprieve - by Susan Frey
Once-threatened programs that prepare high school students for careers and adults for jobs or college appear likely to get at least a two-year reprieve under the compromise budget plan negotiated between legislative leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown. Under the compromise, districts that currently have adult education programs or are involved in regional occupational centers, which provide hands-on...