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January 4, 2005
Report Paints Bleak Picture of Public Schools
By Duke Helfand - Los Angeles Times
In nearly every objective measure of school quality -- including funding
and academic achievement -- California's public schools trail the nation,
painting a grim portrait of the state's once-sterling school system,
according to a Rand Corp. study released Monday.
The researchers found that declining per-pupil funding, ballooning
enrollments, relatively flat teacher salaries and large class sizes
have undercut the state's efforts to improve public education.
Even a reform that was meant to boost achievement -- reducing the size
of classes in kindergarten through third grade -- spawned an unintended
consequence of introducing legions of inexperienced teachers to schools,
particularly those serving low-income and minority children.
The report did not offer recommendations to address the problems, but
its lead author said the state should consider systemic solutions rather
than piecemeal remedies -- an approach that would require huge sums of
money at a time when Sacramento is grappling with a multibillion-dollar
budget shortfall.
"The system as a whole has problems," said Stephen Carroll, a
Rand senior economist who warned against the consequences of inaction.
"The economy in the future is going to depend on the quality of the work
force," he said. "We're not developing a work force that is going to be
competitive with other states."
The Rand report underscored that concern, pointing out that:
California's fourth- and eighth-graders have consistently scored lower
on reading and math tests since 1990 than most of their peers across the
country, including Texas, New York and Illinois; during this time, their
average reading and math scores ranked them above only Mississippi and
Louisiana.
Teachers without full credentials accounted for 15 percent of California's
287,000 teachers in the 1999-2000 school year. These inexperienced teachers
were concentrated in schools serving low-income and minority students.
--Teacher pay falls below the national averaage when salaries are adjusted
for the high cost of living in California. The outlook appears more positive
when teacher pay is viewed in raw dollars: in the 1999-2000 school year, for
example, teachers with a bachelor's degree but no experience earned nearly
$27,000; those at the top of the salary schedule earned more than $56,000.
Those figures put the state in the top 10 but fell short when the
cost-of-living adjustments were factored in.
California spends less per-pupil on school construction than the nation and
such other large industrial states as Texas and Florida. Still, it has made
progress over the last decade in building new schools and repairing old ones;
voters, for example, approved more than $11 billion in state school
construction bonds in 2002 and nearly $10 billion more in local bonds.
Even though California schools began reducing class sizes in kindergarten
through third grade in 1997, the state still had the second-highest overall
student-teacher ratio in the nation in the 1999-2000 school year; California's
classrooms had nearly 21 students per teacher, compared to 16 per teacher
nationally.
California's education leaders acknowledged the problems raised by the report,
saying the state has shortchanged students.
"It is clear that without additional investment in quality instruction and
student support we cannot expect to restore California to its status among
the top-achieving states," said Jack O'Connell, the state Superintendent
of Public Instruction. "Nor can we expect to close the achievement gap that
leaves low-income students, Latino, and African American students lagging
behind their peers."
O'Connell and the head of the state Assembly's Education Committee said
California's school finance system should be overhauled so that more money
reaches the neediest students.
California is home to more than 6 million public school students -- or nearly
13 percent of the nation's school-age children.
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