Peter Schrag

Peter Schrag

It's amazing how fast we can accommodate to an inadequate educational status quo. Somebody in Sacramento called it "re-benching our lowered expectations."

For months, mostly thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown'due south intense campaign, California's school supporters had been in a state of fretfulness, swinging from excitement to near-panic: If Proposition 30, the governor'due south proposed tax increase, was to fail, the upkeep trigger would forcefulness schools to lop yet more days off the agenda, lay off notwithstanding more teachers, and cutting yet more than programs.

Some of it might have happened. Counterfactuals are always hard to evidence. If it had, it might have brought dwelling to voters – at last – that, aye, there was indeed a cost to pay for our unwillingness to heighten taxes. Merely given the fact that information technology wasn't fate, merely politicians, that made the schools the prime number target of possibly severe budget cuts, a lot of other things could have been cut equally well.

Now, at best, nosotros're roughly back to some approximation of an inadequate norm. Yes, Proposition thirty won, and yes, at that place may be Autonomous supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature – maybe – that in theory could heighten taxes without Republican votes.

But even if every cent went to schools of the $half-dozen billion to $8 billion that Suggestion xxx will generate, which certainly will non happen, we notwithstanding wouldn't go dorsum to the national average in per-educatee spending, much less to anything approaching real adequacy or equity in our various, convoluted system.

At last count, we were amidst the bottom among 10 states in per-educatee spending, at or near the very lesser in course size, and in counselors, librarians, and nurses per student. The schools that the bulk of our poor kids attend still accept the least experienced teachers, the worst equipment, and the shabbiest facilities.

Nor is at that place much chance that the leaders in the Senate and Assembly tin harness their supermajorities for tax increases. Some of those members, equally a senior legislative staffer told me this calendar week, won past razor-thin majorities. The final thing they're going to practise is jeopardize their seats by voting for taxes.

In the past couple of years, fifty-fifty every bit the share of Republican registration and votes has gone down, nosotros've weakened parties fifty-fifty more. With the state'southward new open chief, at that place'due south almost no reason for voters to register with any political party.

And so how much clout does the leadership even so accept? Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Associates Speaker John Perez are not ayatollahs (as Willie Brown one time described himself) and the voters are still tax-resistant.

Could the Legislature's supermajorities withstand oil industry pressure and money to impose an extraction fee (as they well should)? Could they restore the total vehicle license fee? Or (God forbid) could they laissez passer Molly Munger's across-the-board income revenue enhancement?

Tuesday's vote did, in the words of a veteran Sacramento school consultant, restore "some stability" to the system, improve the schools' credit ratings, and revive some esprit in the school community, and that's zero to sneeze at. The tight times of the past few years take also imposed a sort of "market exam" in some districts, he said – he cited Fresno as an case – putting them in a improve position to take advantage of new funding when it comes.

For the state as a whole, that would include shedding some plush unproven programs, amid them the rigid twenty-i across-the-lath class size reduction formula imposed without report in the mid-1990s, and calculation many more preschool classes and an additional middle school menstruum, as Fresno has just done.

But California'south educational activity system, though no longer sinking, is still, as he said, "a decrepit erstwhile transport." If the projections are right, the salvation voters approved on Tuesday will take the states dorsum, roughly, to the funding levels of 2007-08. Meaning that our instruction funding will all the same exist in the pits. The promise of the Master Plan to universal admission to depression-cost higher teaching is a thing of the by. We are not about to de-privatize the Academy of California. In addition, Jerry Brown's tax may generate every bit much backlash as school improvement: "Yous raised my taxes and the schools nonetheless suck."

California has started to move toward some major changes in its teaching system – toward a weighted school funding formula that provides a base of operations for each student, plus boosted funding for poor students and English learners; toward the national Mutual Core standards and the new tests that come with information technology.

Merely unless the extra weighted formula funds really go to the students they're designed for, and not but to the districts in which they become to school; unless the state provides the means to effectively implement Common Cadre and the rigorous retraining of teachers it volition require; and unless the governor'south telephone call for local control is accompanied by authority for the locals to raise their own taxes, none of those things will hateful very much.

And then don't expect very much more than than a continuation of the status quo, at least for this year, and maybe for a lot longer. About certainly passage of the new tax will reduce chances of whatever more substantial tax reform for some years. Yes, we're meliorate off than we were a week ago. But permit no 1 call up that we have but voted ourselves a good, equitable school arrangement.

 Peter Schrag is the retired editorial folio editor of the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of "Paradise Lost: California'due south Feel, America'southward Future" and "California: America's High Stakes Experiment." His latest book is "Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America" (University of California Press).

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