Executive director's note: When you come to the fork in the road, take it 

With apologies to Yogi Berra, that malapropism might become the call sign for the future of education in California in 2008.

By the time you are reading this column in the Annual Conference edition of California Schools, we will be getting closer to the time when Gov. Schwarzenegger will be unveiling his reform plan for the Year of Education, scheduled to be thrust upon us in the coming months.

We have the spent the summer and the fall preparing for this and, at this writing, we have reasonably high hopes that the governor, Secretary of Education Dave Long, state Superintendent Jack O’Connell and the legislative leadership will have devised an agenda and an approach to that agenda that will address the issues that face real kids and teachers in our schools every day.

How can I be so optimistic? Well, for those of us who dwell in the land of infinite possibilities and acute disappointment, what choice do we have?

Starting this past May, when the nearly 300 members of CSBA’s Delegate Assembly participated in an unprecedented review and analysis of the “Getting Down to Facts” studies commissioned through Stanford University, our officers and Board of Directors have worked to synthesize this work into a set of principles that must be addressed by our leaders. Coupled with our public engagement campaign funded by the Hewlett Foundation and our joint advocacy efforts with the Association of California School Administrators, there is every reason to believe that we have positioned ourselves well—either to support the governor’s agenda or to go it alone if we have too many differences with what he and the legislative leadership devise.

I am not sanguine about what is ahead of us. Our public engagement campaign—with the unprecedented partnership of CSBA (on behalf of the Education Coalition), the state PTA, the League of Women Voters and Children Now—has uncovered themes in our consultations with decision-makers and business leaders that very much mirror the findings of the Getting Down to Facts reports; you would not know that, though, by the way pieces of those reports were rolled out to the press earlier this year.

Remember what happened? Some participants in the studies chose to put the emphasis on their personal notion that the reports were a clear admonition not to throw good money after bad—that we needed reform before putting more money into a “failed system.” Others ran as fast as they could from the reports’ financial analysis, which clearly showed that the public schools are significantly underfunded. In their haste to beat a retreat, they ignored the inherent contradiction of financing schools on a shoestring while holding them to academic standards that are among the highest in the nation. Then there was the call—essentially a throw-away line, really, buried in the thousand-plus pages of the reports—to make it easier to get rid of “bad teachers.” Of course, that raised the ire of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers.

California Business for Education Excellence, an interest group arrayed on the other side of the political divide, railed against the entire report with their repeated refrain that there is no accountability in California’s public education system. Not to be outdone, several major newspapers objected at length to any suggestion that the reports proved that there wasn’t enough money in the system. That’s ridiculous, as most of the reaction was; but I suppose that, positional politics being what they are, that is what we have to expect in these situations.

My favorite commentary, however, came from the San Jose Mercury News. That newspaper cautioned against the extreme reactions of folks like CTA and CBEE and called upon Gov. Schwarzenegger to work with those “willing to see the big picture”—using the work of CSBA and its grant partners as an example of this sensible approach.

So, what happens now? Which fork in the road will the governor and others be taking as they consider all of the input they have received and decide upon the agenda for the coming year?

In my observations of the governor—both in my personal interactions with him and watching him from afar—I truly believe that he wants to make a significant impact that will have a lasting effect. I am hopeful that one of the people he’s listening to is his secretary of education. Dave Long—a long-time professional educator and public school administrator—didn’t take his new job to shuffle papers and write veto messages for bad bills. He is the one person close to the administration who actually knows what’s going on in the real life of kids and schools, and he has assembled an incredibly talented team around him to help with this important work.

Will Long carry the day? The secretary hosted a series of “listening tours” around the state this summer that solicited input from school and community people as to what the governor should consider. Obviously, there were no silver bullets presented; but there were sensible and coherent conversations about what goes on in the real world. That’s a heck of a start, as far as I’m concerned; after all, as Yogi Berra—that sage of the fork in the road—said on another occasion, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

As we wait for the governor to take his fork, the governor’s own Commission on Education Excellence, chaired by Ted Mitchell, has submitted a report on its findings and recommendations coming out of the Getting Down to Facts studies. Mitchell is an eminently sensible and intelligent man; along with Alan Bersin, whom he serves with on the state Board of Education, Mitchell asks the tough questions about issues we have been concerned about that come before the SBE. Like Yogi Berra, these men appreciate the difference between theory and practice.

At this writing, we don’t know what the Mitchell commission has recommended. Reports indicate the commissioners had trouble finding consensus because of the apparent ideological divide among their members.

We are getting some indications that both Dave Long and Ted Mitchell have strong inclinations to loosen the strings that bind the public schools—the most overregulated and underadministered enterprise in the public sector in this state. They may see the wisdom in returning as much decision-making to the local level as possible—perhaps even in changing the philosophy of our accountability system from one that is compliance- and input-driven to one that truly finds an appropriate balance between input and outcomes.

My worst fear is that we will see nothing of significance or, even more elusive, vision. I certainly hope that we don’t hear any more happy talk about “efficiencies” and the expansion of charter schools—as though somehow that will mitigate the challenges kids bring with them to the schoolhouse door.

There are many moving parts to the challenges we face. It took us years to get where we are today, and although things might have been different in years past, it doesn’t mean that things were necessarily better. We have many new and different challenges today. But we also know that children with disadvantages at home—whether they be poverty or any other indicator of social distress—and disadvantages at school—such as the lack of access to great teachers and a support system of classified staff—deserve our complete and unwavering attention.