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Highlights from the 2006
Envisioning California conference
Each year, the Center for California Studies holds its Envisioning California Conference—a statewide discussion of issues affecting California. Past conferences have looked at e-democracy, the politics of power, the impact of the defense industry and the legacy of Proposition 13. For this year’s conference, the topic was “How Well are We Preparing Our Young People for Life after High School?”
Introduction to the conference
 It is not coincidental that the great common school movement in America occurred in the 1830s, the same period of time of Andrew Jackson and the democratization of so many American institutions. It’s no coincidence because schools, teachers and quality education are essential to democracy. As John Stewart Mill once said, ‘You can write a democratic constitution but the only way to create a democratic people is through education.’
—Tim Hodson, director, Center for California Studies, Sacramento State
Keynote address
We have to truly think globally…We have to have a culture of high expectations and high standards for all of our students. I truly believe that it’s not only a moral obligation, it is today an economic obligation.
We need to increase the rigor in our curriculum, and we really need to bring what I call a cultural change so that every student and teacher believes that he or she can reach a higher level…We’re clearly seeing positive trends. But we need to do a better job in terms of that culture change. I know it’s a slogan but we’re still ‘leaving too many students behind.’
—Jack O’Connell, superintendent, California Department of Education
Retention rates: Why are so many young men disappearing from our schools?
 Every kid in middle school just wants to be accepted…So if you are a black kid this is your paradox: If you choose to be ‘black’ you’re going to be popular with your black friends but you won’t assimilate. You’re not going to take education seriously…On the other hand if you assimilate, you’re going to move on and be educated, but not going to be considered ‘black.’
There is another choice. There have to be positive role models for African American males, people they can relate to. We need older African Americans who can go back to these kids and say you can still be cool, you can still be popular and you can still assimilate.
—Brian Coaxum, Franklin High School (Elk Grove) graduate and UC Merced student
The adult impact—whether we say it or not—about who is smart and who isn’t is huge, who is college material versus who isn’t, who gets to go into AP class versus ‘Well, we don’t want to hurt their feelings, it’s really hard work,’ is huge. And those are all adult issues.
It changes the dynamic among adults when they can’t pick out by skin color, by language, who the ‘good kids’ are. In fact, they begin to shift and say all of our kids have this potential. In my opinion that is the most important cultural shift, the adults being able to reinforce that whoever you are, whatever your background, you are college material if you choose that, and I will give you the support.
—Granger Ward, California state director, AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination)
African American and Latino cultures have always valued education. It’s a myth that these populations don’t value education.
For young boys of color their first experience with school is generally negative…All children enter school with a positive attitude, but early on boys of color see school as a place to be seen as inferior. They don’t see role models. The teachers don’t reflect them. Maybe the janitors reflect them. But the teachers don’t.
One of the benefits of segregation was that in the insular environment within black communities, children were buffered. People were vested in the well-being of those children…With integration they weren’t always put in classes where they had the best interests of the students in mind.
—Lisa William White, professor, Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department, Sacramento State
The high school exit exam: Is it a valuable measure of our students’ abilities?
How could we endorse an assessment that punishes many black and brown students at a significantly higher rate than their more advantaged peers? More black and brown and poor kids passed than those in the field suggested they could…Students have defied our wildest expectations.
It’s tragic it came to this. Poor kids get less of everything… The exit exam shined a bright spotlight on our failing high schools. Kids were leaving without skills, woefully under-prepared…If we don’t believe students can learn at the highest level, we don’t institute the practices and policies to make it happen. Their diploma was not a ticket to higher ed. It was a ticket to the unemployment line or an urban or rural street corner. The most inspiring part of all of this is that that piece of paper means something.
—Russlynn Ali, executive director, Education Trust-West
If you are to have an exit exam, something that has such an extraordinary penalty attached to it—not getting out of high school—all students who are going to be tested on that test must be taught all of the material that is going be tested. And number two, the students who are going to take that test must be taught that material by teachers qualified to teach it. California can’t say we’ve done this, and therefore California hasn’t reached a point where they can fairly or constitutionally keep diplomas from students who are otherwise qualified.
The state hired a consultant who showed progress as well as continuing deficits and gaps in the exit exam. Remediation is still quite spotty…If we do want a system, we need to do it in a way that is fair to students and doesn’t undermine our goals of improving the quality of education for all students, particularly in eliminating some of the ongoing inequality in the state.
—Johanna Hartwig, attorney, Morrison & Foerster, LLP, firm that brought lawsuit representing students who didn’t pass the 2006 exit exam
The achievement gap must be reduced as soon as possible. It must be mitigated, it must be eliminated.
We must have the same standard for all students no matter what they bring through the door. The way you can do this is with data. When we administer the same test across the board in the same language we can make comparisons we never had before. We wouldn’t have had this discussion if we had escape valves, if we had alternatives.
—James lanich, president, California Business for Educational Excellence
Schools as political terrain
My two-word description for education policy is ‘hopelessly politicized.’ A lot of the literature out there is dominated by think tanks that appear to have an agenda. Scholars can’t even agree what the problem is.
Conservatives tend to focus on studentcentered explanations. People on the left focus on systemic or school-centered explanations. What has emerged is a policy stalemate. Conservatives argue for the implementation of market forces to improve schools, such as vouchers and charters. People on the left argue ‘throw money at the problem’…What has emerged politically is the illusion of reform, with its emphasis on standardized testing and structural reforms. While standardized tests and structure are important they tend to devalue critical thinking and writing skills—promoting rote memorization instead, depriving teachers of creativity in the classroom.
What is most unfortunate is that this focus on reform and structure and testing allows politicians to claim credit for reorganizing school districts, rising test scores and other reforms without having to engage the population in a discussion of the far more complex root causes of educational failure, such as poverty, social inequality and structural changes to the economy.
—Tom Hogen-Esch, director of policy studies, Center for Southern California Studies, CSU Northridge
The state legislature and the governor run education in California and the school districts get to mess around with what’s left over.
There are three kinds of areas in California: urban, suburban and rural, and they’re different. I think if you’re on a committee on education, before they let you vote you should have taken a look at small districts, middle districts and you ought to look at large districts like Los Angeles or Fresno or San Jose, so that when you vote you have an idea about how that vote affects them… We pass a lot of whitewash laws that apply to everyone. There are different needs.
—Bill Lambert, director of government relations, United Teachers Los Angeles
The ways education is politicized are so numerous it’s very hard to list them. Ever since crime became a secondary issue, education became a primary issue, in some ways with the same type of politics. The competition was no longer who could propose the stiff- est sentencing for burglary or whatever, the competition was who could propose the stiffest testing standards…Certainly education becomes a political plaything for a lot of people in Sacramento and Washington.
To what extent has education reform improved things, and to what extent has it messed things up more? Most teachers will agree we’ve changed things so much so often that there’s no consistency over time. We don’t have patience to sit out any particular set of problems. Politicians want to say something is not working as well as it should, so let’s change it, let’s do something different. The main thing is to be steady on the course…Keep in mind, this is like anything else—like crime, like health—there’s no fine, permanent fix, that’s just not the way things work.
—Peter Schrag, columnist, Sacramento Bee
We went through a whole series of major, major architectural changes to public schools…The dollars used to come from the local community. When it comes from the local community, people can get involved in who gets elected to local school boards and whether or not your local school board can take money out of your pocket, and people care about that. Now that it comes from the state budget it reinforces the golden rule of the political process—whoever has the gold makes the rules. And the state of California controls the purse strings, therefore, the legislature and in the governor’s office is where the policy debate happens…
We need to look at what it costs to achieve the outcomes we say we want. My hunch is that number will be much higher than people expect. And once we get the answer we’ll have to step back and say we either have to come up with that level of investment, or we have to scale back our expectations. If that‘s what it costs for every student to be at a level of proficiency, and we’re not prepared to put up that money, we have to be willing to say as a state that we’re prepared to not have all our children achieve that level of proficiency.
—Rick Simpson, deputy chief of staff for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez
Measuring success in our high schools
We need to be very careful about what numbers we use. The data available is still primitive. For example, we’re still debating graduation rates. We have very weak methodologies for assessing what works. One of the worst is ‘best practices.’ Unless we compare both low- and high-achieving schools, and are sure the bad performers aren’t doing the same thing as the high-achievers, it is hard to make inferences.
Where we don’t know, we must be willing to run experiments. We must be willing to randomly try one thing with some students and one thing with other students and see if it makes a difference. That’s the only way you can tell if the things we’re talking about really matter.
—Ted Lascher, professor, Public Policy and Administration Department, Sacramento State
Achieving a shared vision: Creating an environment of success
How well are we preparing students for life after high school? If you look at the data, we’re not doing good enough, especially for those who are underrepresented in some of our most rigorous courses. We have a moral obligation to increase opportunities for academic success, especially for those who have not been successful in our school system.
Do we have the will to educate all children? Those of us who went into education knew we weren’t going to be multimillionaires in terms of dollars. But knew we would become trillionaires in terms of life-changing experience for the children for whom we’ve had the opportunity to touch their lives.
—Odie Douglas, associate superintendent, Lodi Unified School District.
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