Education Sector in the News

Education Sector's Rob Manwaring is quoted on the lack of urgency for improving California's low-performing schools in The American Spectator. Excerpt from the article "Fools Gold?":

"California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state's Democratically-controlled legislature have become better-known for dysfunctional sparring matches and dueling tax increase packages than for any form of unanimous agreement. So the last month proved to be amazing as legislators agreed to pass a string of the Governator's school reform measures, including a measure that allows more parents to choose schools for their kids outside of the districts in which they reside, and, even more shocking, end a ban on the use of student test scores in evaluating teacher performance.

Certainly Schwarzenegger has earned his bona fides as a school reformer. After all, he has strongly backed a string of unsuccessful voter referendums since replacing the much-loathed Gray Davis six years ago. Among his lowlights: A plan to increase the time it takes for teachers to gain lifetime job protections through the granting of tenure was widely defeated thanks to a $15 million campaign against it by state and local affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers.

But why did legislators, beneficiaries of $346,300 in donations from the unions in 2008 alone (along with campaign help from their rank-and-file), turn their backs on their erstwhile allies? The opportunity to tap some of the $4.5 billion in so-called "Race to the Top" funds, provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has proven to be too tempting to ignore. Declared Schwarzenegger this week after signing the bill: "These bills represent an important first step in bringing California's students and schools closer to billions of much-needed federal funding."

California isn't the only state that has needed prodding from the federal government to reform its woeful public education system. But the state that used to set the pace for innovations good and otherwise has fallen behind its sister states—including Florida, Texas, Indiana, and even the notoriously dysfunctional New York State—in taking steps toward reform.

Befitting California's position as America's state and its role as primary soundstage for disasters real and celluloid, the academic and fiscal morass of its public education system is staggering. It is home to Los Angeles Unified—the nation's second-largest traditional public school district—where two out of every five high school freshmen drop out before senior year. Only New York City's public school system is home to a greater concentration of the nation's dropout factories.

But L.A. Unified is no isolated case. Twenty-six percent of the state's school districts are ranked as academically failing, according to the U.S. Department of Education. They teach 1.6 million children—or one-fifth—of the state's student population. As a result, some 100,000 California high school students drop out before graduation every year. Notes Robert Manwaring, a researcher at the Education Sector, a reform-minded think tank: "[California] have lots of low performing schools, and not much urgency about fixing them." ...

Read more from The American Spectator article, "Fool's Gold?"