In education, Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom has three major challenges.
The incoming administration of Governor-elect Gavin Newsom will not be cleaning up a mess. Governor Jerry Brown has been a good steward of the state during his time in office.
But Newsom faces three distinct challenges in the field of education. Although Governor Brown significantly increased spending for education, California has large unmet needs and much catching-up to do to maintain its edge as an incubator of talent and innovation, and of equal opportunity for all.
First, to fund K-12 education.
Second, to restore California’s historic tradition of tuition-free higher education.
Third, to pass legislation to assure charter school accountability and transparency and to hold charters to the same ethical standards as public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The point you make about the charter industry being over represented on state boards is very important. Right now the California State Board of Education has three member straight out of the charter industry: https://tultican.com/2017/12/01/california-state-board-of-education-is-a-corporate-reform-tool/ Plus, President Krist, helped Jerry Brown establish charter schools in Oakland. Percentage wise the charter industry would be over represented with two members. As it is now this board is close to a rubber stamp for charter petitions that have been turned down by both districts and counties.
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Yes!
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This is important – the make up of the State Board. What the public does not realize is the financial hit that small and medium size districts take when a charter comes in. We hear a lot in the media about big city districts and their charters – they are better able to absorb them (and cities have the urban areas the reform crowd can hit up for their schemes) but smaller districts can really get behind financially when charters come in. In California, the charter industry is so strong they just go up the ladder – district to county to State- also they keep going back to board meetings – also they take the time to meet individualy with board members – it is hard to fight them. At our union meeting, our union president said that Gavin Newsom has a proposal to fund charters separately so smaller districts do not get hit so hard. Have you heard about this ?
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Not in California, but Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom would do well to prohibit the takeover of Oakland and other CORE Districts by unelected well-supported “agents of change.”
The CORE Districts have been conjured as a collaborative initiative by the “California Office for Reform in Education (CORE). CORE is a non-governmental organization, privately funded, commonly known as a NGO. CORE/
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent.
This MOU specifies that the district will use:
CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators,
a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans,
CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies, and participate in cross-district sharing of all of this data–including information from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.
Another suggestion. No Broad Academy graduates on the state school board.
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Yes!!
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“California must recommit to the long-established tradition that tuition for higher education must be free to all residents of the state. ”
I wonder if this will be addressed at all. It would be fantastic, even just to bring the issue up.
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Yes!!!
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I love seeing you in Capital and Main. Your points were clear, direct, and correct. We need to fully fund public schools, and know how those funds are being spent. It’s that simple. And I sometimes forget that my parents and uncles and aunts attended UCLA tuition free. Those were glorious days. My family escaped poverty and violent pogroms to come to this country, and California helped turn us into doctors and lawyers and teachers, so that we could contribute greatly to society. It’s well past time to return to using state taxes to invest in Californians instead of feeding greedy investment banking billionaires. Darn tootin, Diane! Loved this article.
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So was it Reagan who ended free higher ed in California? What was his argument? It’s very puzzling why people went along with it.
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Yes, it was Reagan.
People should pay for everything. There is no free lunch.
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And Californians said “sure, it makes sense”? Was California the only state with free higher ed?
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Until the mid-1960s, NYC offered free college and university at the CUNY system. No longer.
States have been shifting the cost of higher education from the state to the student for the past few decades.
Students in the past did not graduate with huge debt burdens.
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Higher ed is catching up to the rest of American society. At my university, the total salary increase for faculty was 2% last year while the total increase for salaries above $200K was 14%. The only difference between general society and the university is that the people making over $200K make up 2% of the university population, not (yet) 1% of us society.
Germany has no problem funding free higher ed
https://affordableschools.net/germany-free-education/
How serious is the push here in the US?
https://ourfuture.org/20140319/free-higher-education-is-a-human-right
Of course, one always has to consider the side effects of any plan. For example, making community colleges free would hurt 4-year colleges.
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In Finland, all higher education is tuition-free, including graduate and professional education.
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I, of course, meant only community colleges free is not a good idea.
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Off topic from Politico- The U.S. Dept. of Ed. has had a report since February about Wells Fargo’s higher charges to the market segment-college students. Neither the Dept. of Ed. nor the Trump admin. released the report. An FOIA request from media uncovered the info. The report also showed that students paid 3 times as much in average fees when the banks had relationships with the students’ colleges. The amount per student wasn’t much. But, the aggregate for Wells Fargo and the the other banks who had relationships with 500 colleges wasn’t chump change. The purpose Republicans had in hiding the report is problematic.
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Charter schools duplicate already existing districts. There is no need for them. Therefore, they should not exist. Their lack of accountability and transparency has been exposed repeatedly across the nation. In fact, the resistance to community oversight is part of the design of the charter school model.
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To Abigail’s point – What if there was no profit involved whatsoever with charter schools ? Would they still exist ?
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