From Brown's campaign materials:
MY PLAN:
1. Higher Education
The introduction of online learning and the use of new technologies should be explored to the fullest, as well as ―xtended University‖programs. Technology can increase educational productivity, expand access to higher learning, and reduce costs.
Focus on Community Colleges: California’s community college system has 72 districts, 110 colleges and more than 2.9 million students and plays a critical role in providing education in a wide range of occupational skills and courses for students intending to transfer to four-year schools. Given the effective leadership demonstrated in local community colleges, burdensome state regulations and mandates should be kept to a minimum. Transfer courses should be closely aligned with, and accepted by, the CSUC and UC systems. For example, transfer students are often forced to take redundant courses to graduate from the CSUC system even though they have completed equivalent coursework in community college.
2. Overhaul State testing program. Our current State testing program costs over $100 million, is more than 10 years old, and is not as helpful as it could be to parents and educators. It is time to make some basic changes to improve our testing system. Typically, tests are given in the spring over a 3-day period and results come back in August. Final school accountability scores aren’t ready for almost a year. These tests should be reduced in scope and testing time, and results need to be provided to educators and parents far more quickly. These year-end tests should be supplemented by very short assessments during the school year. The assessment goal should be to help the teachers, students and their families know where they stand and what specific improvements are needed. Tests should not measure factoids as much as understanding. Finally, state tests should be linked to college preparation and career readiness, but current tests were not designed to do this. 3. Change school funding formulas and consolidate most of the 62 existing categorical programs. 5
The consolidated money from the categorical programs would then be distributed on the basis of the weighted formula, not expensive and complex processes. For example, extra funding should be provided for English language learners, low income families and other obvious needs.
There will be a completely flexible ―ase amount‖grant to all districts that is related to what the state expects students to know and be able to do. On top of this base will be a separate targeted amount to school districts based on identifiable needs. This new system would be phased in over time.
4. Teacher Recruitment and Training Teachers are the most important resource for school improvement, but California has not devised a comprehensive and effective policy to recruit and prepare teachers. Currently, the principal elements of teacher effectiveness – college training, practice teaching, mentoring in the early years of teaching, professional development, evaluation and compensation-- are disjointed and unconnected to each other. Many of the so-called reform efforts focus on either the very worst teachers (and how to get rid of them) or the very best teachers (and how to provide them bonuses and special compensation). Certainly we need to weed out the bad teachers and incentivize better and more creative teaching. However, the biggest challenge facing California education is improving the performance of the ―verage‖teacher. It is this group—in most instances-- who educates our children and it is they who need both more preparation and better support. We do not yet know how the laying off of thousands of teachers will affect people thinking about becoming teachers. The number of new teachers--and prospective teachers in universities--has dropped significantly in the last few years. I propose the following: Work with teacher training institutions and state agencies to recruit more teachers from the top third of our high school graduates. Teacher preparation should begin in the undergraduate years and then continue into postgraduate programs in order to provide more in-depth training. Have local school districts play a role in alternative teacher preparation by offering apprenticeships that combine university coursework with extensive classroom experience. It is important that we attract new teacher candidates who will enter teaching as a second career from other jobs. Provide outstanding teachers with ample time and compensation to mentor novice teachers and help improve their effectiveness. These mentor teaching opportunities will also provide career advancement for our best teachers and be a training ground for the next generation of principals and school leaders. 6
Encourage teacher collaboration at school sites to improve instruction and student performance, using student assessments that encompass more than checking a box on a multiple choice exam.
Create a system where the focus on evaluating and improving teacher performance in the classroom is the norm. For example, local school districts should consider on-site visitation programs aimed specifically at teacher performance. Principals are crucial to high performing schools and any reform effort must include programs to strengthen the recruitment, evaluation and training of these key educational leaders. I will seek funding from public and private sources to enable teachers to become principals through a new leadership academy that focuses on developing principals who can be true academic leaders.
5. Simplify the Education Code and Return more decision-making to local school districts California’s education code comprises 12 volumes and thousands of pages. It is the largest in the nation. From 1965 to 2000, California state education policy focused on regulation compliance and added more and more detailed rules to micromanage local schools. In 2000, the state went in a new direction by focusing on student outcomes. But with this new outcome focus, we never changed all the centralized requirements from the earlier decades. Now California controls both what schools should provide and how they should do it. This is regulation run amok. We need to dramatically simplify the Education Code and give school districts more flexibility on how best to meet state standards. We should hold schools accountable for outcomes, not issue minute prescriptions from Sacramento on how to achieve those outcomes. 6. A More Balanced and Creative School Curriculum 7. Place special emphasis on teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) 7
We should expand curriculum and teaching materials in STEM subjects, including online and virtual programs, enhanced teaching materials, partnerships with high tech companies and hands-on learning opportunities.
8. Increase Proficiency in English Use existing federal funds to expand after-school and summer school programs to supplement English Learning programs 9. Improve High School Graduation Rates We must continue to focus on narrowing the achievement gap and reducing the State’s drop-out rate, both of which disproportionately affect students from low income families. According to the California Department of Education, the drop-out rate for African American and Latino students is significantly higher than that for white and Asian students. Kids who cut class and drop out of school all too often end up on the wrong side of the law, behind bars instead of desks. 10. Charter Schools Some reformers talk about massive increases in charter schools as our best hope. As someone who has started and sustained two charter schools in Oakland, I know first-hand the real world difficulties of this approach. True reform must include innovations that touch all students and school systems. 11. Magnet or Theme schools This type of school expanded greatly in the 1970s as ―agnet schools‖to help with racial integration. Consequently, we know a lot about how to implement theme schools, but the 21
st century requires new designs.
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Local school districts should consider innovative types of schools, including theme schools and career education. Schools that focus on a particular theme (e.g. the arts, public service, technology) can attract a broad range of students who are brought together for a common purpose. For example, the Oakland School for the Arts attracts students to downtown Oakland from many surrounding communities and provides a highly motivating and unifying atmosphere to a very diverse group of students. Such models should be replicated and encouraged.
In addition, we should look at career focused schools supported by local businesses and other institutions that prepare students more directly for employment in valuable industries such as high tech, engineering, health care or the building trades.
12. Citizenship and Character As a correlative of the right to a free and appropriate education, each student has the duty to exercise his or her best efforts and actively collaborate in the learning process. Education is a relationship between teacher and student and should be based on mutual respect and trust. Developing good character and the skills of citizenship are fundamental to a democratic society and must be an integral part of what is taught in our schools. In some instances, current school law or practices allow students to undermine classroom decorum and disrupt the learning process. This affects the right of other students to obtain the education they deserve. Teachers must have effective means to maintain discipline in the classroom
Re: Race to the Top Fund [Docket ID ED-2009-OESE-0006]
In view of the hundreds of comments that are being submitted, I am confining my own to just a few general observations.
1. The basic assumption of your draft regulations appears to be that top down, Washington driven standardization is best. This is a “one size fit all” approach that ignores the vast diversity of our federal system and the creativity inherent in local communities. What we have at stake are the impressionable minds of the children of America. You are not collecting data or devising standards for operating machines or establishing a credit score. You are funding teaching interventions or changes to the learning environment that promise to make public education better, i.e. greater mastery of what it takes to become an effective citizen and a productive member of society. In the draft you have circulated, I sense a pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power of social science.
2. Inherent in the command and control philosophy of your draft regulations is a belief that everyone agrees on what should be taught--to whom and when--and how the lowest performing schools can best be turned around. Yet, there are so many unknowns about what produces educational success that a little humility would be in order. A better way would be to state what educational outcomes children should reach and then permit state and local flexibility to figure out how to reach the desired outcomes. The current draft regulations conflate what must be done with entirely too much specification about how to do it.
3. Curriculum choices are not just technical and “evidence based” issues, but go to the heart of deeply held beliefs and understandings of what children should learn. California's current curriculum standards have received high national rankings and there is no evidence that they need a radical overhaul.
4. Your draft also specifies very specific data elements that need to be included without sufficient justification for why all these date elements are essential or how they should be utilized.
5. You assume we know how to "turn around all the struggling low performing schools,” when the real answers may lie outside of school. As Oakland mayor, I directly confronted conditions that hindered education, and that were deeply rooted in the social and economic conditions of the community or were embedded in the particular attitudes and situations of the parents. There is insufficient recognition in the draft regulations that inside and outside of school strategies must be interactive and merged.
6. Most current state wide tests rely too much on closed end multiple choice answers and do not contain enough written and open ended responses that require students to synthesize, analyze and solve multi-dimensional problems and construct their own answers.
7. There are huge technical and conceptual problems that remain on how to assess the specific impact of individual teachers and principals on the scores of students on annual state tests. Test score increases and decreases can be caused by many factors in a specific year, and it is beyond the current state of the art to sort out what is the unique and independent influence of teachers and principals. Performance pay schemes for teachers based primarily on annual test scores in other states reveal more about how not to structure performance pay rather than show what are viable ways to restructure teacher compensation. Compensation should to be just one element of a broader approach to improving teacher effectiveness that includes initial recruitment and preparation to retention and professional development.
Having $4.3 billion to spend on education in this time of draconian cuts is a godsend. We in California look forward to joining with you in promoting a real love of learning and outstanding achievement in all our public schools.
The California Master Plan was created in 1960. When I was Governor in the 1970s, the Master Plan was working far better to provide college access and success. In recent years, however, the master plan has been undermined, and it is unclear whether the current financial model for our universities can be sustained.
Recent state budgets have raised tuition drastically, reduced the number of new students--as well transfers from community colleges--to CSUC, cut class sections so that students cannot get basic classes they need, and driven good professors to other states. Students are dropping out because of high costs and the extended time needed to finish. California’s historic public university research base is declining.
This situation calls for a major overhaul of many components of the postsecondary system. We need to convene a representative group to create a new state Master Plan.
We must also reverse the decades long trend of transferring state support from higher education to prisons. We can do this without sacrificing public safety. For example, as Attorney General, I recently blocked a proposed $8 billion prison hospital expansion—which was unnecessarily expensive and which would have added substantially to our state’s deficit. By relentlessly pursuing similar cost savings, we can channel needed funds to our higher education system.
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