Posted on 03/16/2007 7:06:14 PM PDT by summer
SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 — A scathing 18-month evaluation of California’s public schools has concluded that the state’s educational system is “broken,” crippled by a complex bureaucracy, flawed teacher policies and misspent school money, leaving it in need of sweeping reforms that could cost billions of dollars.
The report, a compilation of 22 university studies titled “Getting Down to Facts,” was released in two parts on Wednesday and Thursday. The long-awaited report, requested by a bipartisan group of state educators and legislators in 2005, cost $3 million and evaluated why California’s 6.8 million school-age students have lagged behind children in almost all other states.
“The structural problems are so deep-seated,” a summary of the report said, “that more funding and small, incremental interventions are unlikely to make a difference unless matched with a commitment to wholesale reform.”
The report, financed by private nonprofit foundations and coordinated by investigators at the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice at Stanford University, revealed “deeply flawed” problems in both the management and financing of the schools.
Among the findings were these: state financial policies so “complex and irrational” that they thwart school and district efforts to educate and school data systems that are poor and ineffective, making it impossible for districts to share vital information. ; the state suffers from “regulationitis,” a condition that has schools paralyzed by rules and buried in paperwork...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Reading this article made me appreciate all over again how much Gov Bush mattered to this state, Florida, in terms of reforming education. We're not where we want to be in every category, but he certainly brough enormous changes to this state's schools, and didn't wait around for a $3 million dollar study to make big changes, agree with him or not.
As usual, libs want to throw more money at socialism instead of making the structural changes required to make our education system dynamic, diverse, decentralized, and ultimately competitive.
Another reason to homeschool in CA...
This has been happening for decades.
1. There is no reason reform should cost any money. Just fire the bureacracy and give control back to the localities.
2. The real answer is simply to get rid of the public schools altogether. Just give every kid a 10K voucher and in two years California will have the best schools in the world.
"Competitive" is something educators are really not taught in their training. If that concept was a part of the training, in terms of rewarding the highest achieving graduates, or only accepting the best applicants, our schools would change overnight. But, it's just not done that way in colleges of education. They try to do a good job in many ways, but competing for the best educators, and identifying the best educators, is an unknown concept in the training of teachers.
But then, Ronald Reagan was Governor. :)
school choice ping
Hi Summer! I certainly agree with you! I taught for 37 years in this state, and was delighted when Gov.Bush was elected!
Metmom, here is yet another story of the failure of public education.
You know what to do...
Hi seekthetruth! Yes, Gov Bush did A LOT to help education in this state. No matter what his critics claim about problems, and yes, there are still some problems. However, he was on top of education constantly here in Florida -- as all of FR knows, from my thousands of FR education posts when he was governor! :)
I think I need to "study" this...Please send me $3 million and I'll report back the obvious.
ROTFLMAO...
Well it's either the zillions of illegals or the TEACHERS' UNIONS....
They needed a "report" to tell them that? These guys can't think for themselves.
More info:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1800481/posts
"Two estimates, both based on interviews with educators, estimate the cost of meeting the state's achievement goals at an additional $23 billion to $32 billion a year. It is not clear, however, whether that money would bring all students up to the federal goal of having all students proficient in reading and math by 2014."
And it's broken??????
Providing California children with a quality education could easily cost an additional $32 billion a year -
Researchers Thursday stressed that simply spending more money on education without overhauling the system makes no sense. In fact, they discredited an estimate in one report that the state could meet its achievement goals without reform solely by increasing spending. Such an effort could cost as much as $1.5 trillion a year, it suggested.
It's not broken, it's a liberals wet dream, a financial black hole of never ending government waste.
Then CA schools were rated first in the country.
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