California Moving Away From Washington's Corporate Education Reform
Posted: 07/29/2013 6:42 pm
California's shift to a new weighted student funding model represents just the most recent example of how Democratic state policymakers here are charting a different course in education policy than the Obama administration and Congress.
As I noted in a post last week, California and Washington have taken distinctly different approaches to achievement gaps that increasingly are most closely associated with economic inequality. Rather than focusing on firing "bad" teachers and closing schools, California has moved to direct more resources to low-income districts and increase local decision-making, with sanctions a last resort after support and technical assistance have failed.
Other examples of the divergence between California and Washington abound. It's not just that Gov. Brown and Secretary Duncan failed to come to terms over a waiver from No Child Left Behind when nearly 40 other states have. While the feds have pushed for greater linkages between student and teacher data, Brown (with the unions quietly cheering) vetoed funding to implement a teacher database, CALTIDES.
In March, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, headed by Brown's