Newsom's education plans wrongly focus on…
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Newsom's education plans wrongly focus on spending rather than reform
Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses his revised 2019-2020 state budget during a news conference Thursday, May 9, 2019 in Sacramento, Calif. (Photo by Rich Pedroncelli, The Associated Press)
By The Editorial Board | opinion@scng.com |
PUBLISHED: January 15, 2020 at 8:29 am | UPDATED: January 15, 2020 at 4:20 pm
In his budget proposal last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed massive new investments in California's public-school and community college systems, including $900 million in teacher recruitment, $1.2 billion in local-control funding, $350 million in grants for teacher training, $900 million for special education, $32 million for all-day preschool and hundreds of millions more for programs in low-performing districts and for after-school programs.
Unfortunately, Newsom – as well as Democratic legislators – refuse to answer the main question. Is more money really the cure for the state's ailing public-school system?
Under Proposition 98, which earmarks more than 40 percent of general-fund spending to K-14 education, minimum funding "would increase $496 per student to $12,600," reported Ed Source, which is "80 percent more per student than at the low point following the Great Recession nine years ago." Some education activists called for even more funding, but there's little question the budget spends a lot more money on public schools.
It's disappointing that the governor has been far more focused on the spending side of the equation than the results side. The conventional wisdom is that more spending will equal better student success. At one point in the governor's long press conference, he expressed frustration at Latino and African-American performance gaps, but pointed to modest improvements in overall test results. "(N)one of us are naive, and none of us are spiking the ball," he said.
We're glad Newsom isn't being naive, because there's a need for more wisdom when addressing the situation in California's public schools. For starters, a 2018 report from the National Center for Education Statistics found that California's poor students ranked second to last in the nation on test scores – even after additional funding by the previous administration.
Then there's the state's inadequacy in tracking how locals spend extra dollars. A November report from the state auditor expressed concern "that the state does not explicitly require districts to spend their supplemental and concentration funds on the intended student groups or to track their spending of those funds." If the state can't evaluate past spending, how will it track the success of new spending?
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The governor touted his education budget as part of a "parents agenda," but last year Newsom signed a compromise package of charter-school-related bills that will make it tougher for parents to choose these generally successful alternatives to traditional schools. That will harm poor and minority parents and students the most, given the notorious problems afflicting California's struggling low-income schools.
And the link between spending and academic performance is tenuous. "No. 1 New York's 4th-grade (National Assessment of Academic Progress) scores are virtually identical to those of California, which spends scarcely half as much. Idaho, which is No. 50 in spending, has scores as high or higher than both," noted CalMatters columnist Dan Walters. "Texas' demographics are similar to California's and spends less per pupil but has higher scores."
We're not saying money isn't part of the fix, but changing the way the system operates is far more important. For instance, court cases have highlighted how California's union-backed teacher protections leave ill-performing teachers in the classroom. Instead of focusing solely on money, the governor should embrace reform. He is right, however, that there's certainly no reason to be spiking the ball.
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