California Educational System Crisis

A bottom up assessment of California’s education system should focus on those value-added expenditures that directly contribute to educating California’s youth to higher standards.  Performance metrics need to be established on the education system that are based upon improved student performance over time.  If we don’t measure it, we won’t get the improvements we are looking for and desperately need. 

Public funds should be directed to establishing a learning environment for students with the requisite tools and instruction.  The educational system needs to be supported and based upon meaningful contributions from all three elements of this system:  teachers/administration, parents, and students.  All three must be held accountable for the lackluster performance we have today.  Resources to train and retain good teachers and capable administrators are essential.  Beyond these “simple” requirements, other expenditures need to be constrained. 

Students and parents need to fulfill their part of the effort by being ready to learn and provide the respect for the education infrastructure, including teachers.  Those students who come to class unprepared or cause trouble should be held accountable for this performance failure.  Their lack of effort drains resources from the students who want to be there.  Parents who treat the education system as a day care center should be held accountable for their lack of effort to provide students with the support and guidance they need in conjunction with classroom instruction. 

Students who choose not to take advantage of the public funds to learn should be held accountable for their failure and lose the right to participate.  Teachers who fail to energize students or keep up with new curriculum should be held accountable and be subject to performance metrics and retention criteria.  If there are no consequences for failures, then there will be no hope of correcting these deficiencies. 

Once we can identify how we define the contributions required by each group of the education system and the metrics we will use to hold them accountable, we should be able to work through a budget which meets our needs and does not try to over compensate by failures in any of the principal groups. 

These concepts fly in the face of the established educational system and have no real chance to success without a strong top-down push from the Governor as well as a strong groundswell of support from parents who are ready to accept their responsibilities and hold others accountable as well.  The question becomes, are we ready to take on the moneyed interests in power today to make these changes.