O’Connell describes a troubled state of education
Published: March 1, 2006
Warning that the state must address the “terrible fact” that the fastest growing student population in the state — Hispanics — is the group “lagging farthest behind,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell outlined new programs designed to recruit, train and reward good teachers and bring them into the schools where they are needed most.
Rather than listing a year’s worth of accomplishments, O’Connell said he had decided to focus his annual State of Education address on the economic and moral costs of the state’s ongoing achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian classmates.
O’Connell said he would sponsor legislation to allocate $53 million to bring “outstanding teacher coaches in all subject areas” into “our most challenging schools.”
He called on the governor and Legislature to “reestablish and fully fund” regional teacher recruitment centers and incentives to bring gifted teachers into California classrooms, especially in the lowest performing schools. “We must face the fact — like it or not — that the students who need our very best teachers the most are the students least likely to have teachers who are well prepared, fully credentialed and experienced.”
On funding issues, O’Connell championed the effort now under way to gather a broad range of views on the true cost of educational excellence and ways to fund it.
“It is time to stop looking at school funding only through the prism of yearly budget negotiations,” he said. “So, with the help of several foundations, I’m pleased to say we have begun serious, significant research into the question of adequate and efficient funding for our schools.”
O’Connell also called for more career academies and a renewed focus on career technical education; revised, user-friendly school accountability report cards that parents can actually understand; and better training and recruitment of school administrators.
O’Connell said he has obtained funding from the Hewlett Foundation to identify and spread the word about programs he called “islands of excellence” that are successfully closing the academic achievement gap in schools throughout the state.
Exacting academic standards and increased focus on the high school exit exam have raised achievement levels in nearly every subject in nearly every subgroup of students, O’Connell said. But huge gaps in achievement remain.
“The students at the top of the educational heap — kids who are disproportionately white and higher income — are doing very well, but that is not the case with others,” he said.
For example, among California fifth-graders, just 27 percent of Hispanic students and 30 percent of African Americans are scoring proficient in English and language arts, compared with 66 percent of white students.
In science, “a dismal” 14 percent of Hispanic students score proficient.
“And, as bad as those figures are, things get worse as students grow older,” O’Connell said. “The gaps actually widen in high school, where just 16 percent of Latino students and 19 percent of African American students are prepared to enroll in our state university systems.”
Although he had no comment on any specific proposal outlined in the speech, CSBA Executive Director Scott P. Plotkin, who serves on O’Connell’s P-16 Council on education reform, called the superintendent “a visionary” who is “addressing real problems to help real kids.”
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