Area Educators Weigh In on Governor’s School Reforms

A day after California’s fourth-graders received a failing grade in reading, leaders from Ventura County schools offered state officials a number of suggestions to fine-tune Gov. Gray Davis’ plan to overhaul the state’s schools.

Four bills--the centerpieces of Davis’ educational reform package--give $90 million to improve reading skills, create a peer-review system for teachers, rank the state’s schools and create an exam that students must pass to earn their high school diplomas.

About 40 people--among them district superintendents, leaders of teachers unions, parents and students--went through the bills Friday with Secretary for Education Gary Hart, Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) and Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo).

The meeting at Ventura College came on a day when educators were hanging their heads over California fourth-graders’ poor performance on a federal assessment of reading skills. California ranked second to last among 39 states, and more than 80% of the state’s students are not considered proficient readers.

Jackson, who organized Friday’s round table, said it was imperative “that the headlines that we see in today’s paper don’t ever occur again.”

Hart said part of California’s problem is its failure to settle on one dominant educational theory or standardized test.

“We have had a more difficult time of staying the course,” he said.

Those who attended the meeting seemed to favor Davis’ legislative package but raised several possibilities for improving it. “I support all these initiatives,” said Bill Studt, superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District. “I think they’re on the right track and long overdue.” Students in Studt’s district will begin to prepare for an exit exam as early as next fall, even though the bill that would require it has yet to pass the Legislature. But, Studt added, simply having a statewide test is not enough to turn schools around.

“We see the exit exam only as a vehicle we’re going to ride to implement change in our district,” Studt said.

O’Connell is the chief sponsor of the bill that would require high schoolers, beginning in 2004, to pass a statewide exam in reading, writing and math before they could graduate.

“We expect this examination to be challenging but fair,” O’Connell said.

Buena High School senior Danielle De Smeth will graduate before the first exit exam is given, but she said it is a good way to demand more of students.

“There’s a lot of people just cruising by right now, doing the minimum,” she said.

Likewise, De Smeth supports requiring teachers to be evaluated by their peers. Under that bill, teachers deemed to need improvement would be assisted by other teachers.

“There are a lot of established teachers that need help and aren’t really cutting it,” De Smeth said.

Teachers unions have raised objections to the peer-review bill, wondering whether educators will feel pressure to give each other good reviews. They also worry that pulling teachers out of the classroom to do the reviews will only worsen California’s teacher shortage.

Hart acknowledged that this would be a “historic change” for the unions but said that since other professions such as law and medicine have peer-review processes, education should too.

“We ought to make teaching more like a profession,” said Hart, a former high school teacher who represented Ventura and Santa Barbara counties for 20 years in the Legislature.

The plan to rank California’s 8,000 schools based on achievement tests, attendance and graduation rates also drew criticism. Studt said the rankings could be “demoralizing.”

Under the bill, low-scoring schools would be eligible for grants to pull themselves up. Schools that showed improvement, regardless of their overall rank, would get awards of up to $150 per student.

Hart acknowledged that teachers and administrators might oppose the rankings but that parents would appreciate them.

“The governor feels that more information, more light is a valuable thing,” he said.

The rankings are “not meant to be punitive,” Hart continued. “Growth is rewarded. The absolute ranking is not.”

The reading bill, which did not get much attention Friday, sets aside $75 million for summer academies to improve reading in grades K-4. Summer institutes to train 6,000 beginning teachers to teach reading would receive $12 million.