Proposition 8 fuels controversy over education system

Friday, October 16, 1998

Proposition 8 fuels controversy over education system

ELECTIONS: Creating councils, empowering principals part of
bill

By Hannah Miller

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

In the past couple of years, educational ideas have been trotted
out to the ballot box like so many flesh-pressing politicians.

Used to decide anything from staffing to vouchers to admissions,
this explosion in education bond-measures is understandable in
California, where pollsters repeatedly find that education is the
second most important issue on voters’ minds (after crime).

And now, in that grand tradition of making education a political
issue, Proposition 8 offers voters a hodgepodge of sweeping
changes.

The measure would give parent-teacher committees control over
curriculum, personnel and budgets, create a new chief inspector for
the schools and require teachers to have credentials in the
subjects they teach.

The measure would also make permanent the class-size
reduction-funding provided in 1996 by Gov. Pete Wilson and would
mandate expulsion for students caught on campus with drugs.

The empowerment of the parent-teacher committees, called ‘site
councils’ at schools where they already exist, has proven to be the
most contentious issue, because each site council would be
responsible for setting a school’s curriculum.

‘We would have 8,000 different separate standards and curricula.
It would be a mess,’ said Karen Donhoff with the California
Teachers’ Association (CTA), a teachers’ union that has come out
against the measure. ‘If a child transfers schools in mid-year, he
might have to toss out everything he’s learned.’

Advocates of the measure say that more parents would participate
in their children’s schools, but opponents warn that the measure
could derail the long-running effort to set statewide educational
standards.

Historically, California has been one of the few states to lack
statewide standards. Critics blamed California’s abysmal test
performance on the widely varying requirements determined by
districts.

But that will change next year, when the state unveils its
curriculum standards hashed out by the department of education over
the last few years.

‘Now, for the first time ever, the standards exist. They give a
common expectation,’ said Nick DeLuca of the No on Proposition 8
campaign, ‘(Statewide standards) provide a way to test kids and set
expectations as to where they should be at a certain grade
level.’

Curriculum standards also directly impact students who want to
attend the University of California. The UC system’s strict
admissions requirements are designed to mesh with the current
curriculum taught in California high schools, and if Proposition 8
leads to massive revamping, the UC requirements will also have to
be altered.

In addition to curriculum changes, the proposition would also
give principals more power to fire teachers.

‘You can’t invest in something without having accountability,’
said Tovey Giezentanner of the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. ‘We
spend $35 million a year on education in this state, and our scores
are just deplorable.’

This worries CTA higher-ups, who fear that the loss of due
process would lead to principals arbitrarily firing teachers.

Another major change contained in the bill would be the creation
of a chief inspector (or ‘Czar,’ as opponents call it) for the K-12
school system.

The chief inspector ­ patterned after a successful English
model ­ would be responsible for performance reviews of
schools, although the department of education already does
this.

‘The chief inspector would be an information gatherer,’
Giezentanner said. ‘You can’t fix a car unless you know what’s
wrong with it.’

Under Proposition 8, the chief inspector position would be
filled like a UC Regent ­ appointed by the governor to a
10-year term without legislative approval.

The teacher-credentialing part of the measure hasn’t been much
debated. About one-third of the proposition is devoted to
strengthening the subject-matter requirement for teachers.

Two of the most publicized parts of the proposal ­ the drug
policy and class-size reduction items ­ clarify and strengthen
already existing laws.

In 1996, massive funding was provided to reduce class sizes to
20 students in kindergarten through third grades.

Because it was a legislative act, that funding is not ensured in
the state constitution. Proposition 8’s major selling point is that
it makes this funding permanent.

Opponents charge that this is redundant.

‘It’s a solution in search of a problem. Nobody has talked about
cutting class-size reduction funds back,’ said DeLuca of No on
Proposition 8. ‘That was put in here to sell the initiative.’

For students caught on campus with drugs, state law already
mandates a very narrow set of choices for principals. Many
districts and schools already have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for
drugs.

‘This doesn’t make any meaningful contribution. Sometimes,
expulsion isn’t the best way to deal with a student who has a drug
problem,’ DeLuca said. ‘This initiative gets rid of flexibility
that would allow principals to choose.’

The overall cost of the proposition is estimated at $60 million,
for creating the chief inspector, more credentialing tests and the
added expenses of educating expelled students at special
facilities. According to the legislative analyst, though, most of
this money would probably be found within the current education
budget.

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