“I came to the Legislature because I wanted to restore educational excellence and close the achievement gap that persists in California.  Education spending makes up roughly 50% of this state’s budget, but we still lag so far behind most other states in per-pupil spending.

“The just-released Getting Down to Facts Project (The Adequacy Studies) – a comprehensive 18-month research project of over 20 studies on school governance and finance has confirmed, what we already knew, that we are failing our children.  The 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress ranked California 7th from the bottom in eighth grade math, 3rd from the bottom in reading, and next to the bottom, ahead only of Mississippi, in science.  Whatever differences and distinctions may be raised to question these precise rankings, dismal is the only way to describe the situation in which we now find ourselves.

“The first bill that I introduced as a new Assemblymember, on the very day I was sworn into office, was AB 25.  AB 25 will require the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Education Excellence, and the P-16 Council established by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, to work together to develop a report by July 2009 to the Legislature with information sufficient to establish the reasonable costs of K-12 schools, and to determine the best use of those resources so that every child in California can and will meet academic performance standards.

These comprehensive, research-based studies will be the cornerstone of AB 25.  It will take political will and leadership to translate these findings into policies that reflect systemic reform, but it is essential to do for the future of California.  This should not be a political debate, and I hope that it can avoid the shoals of partisanship.  We are all responsible for all of California’s students.

“It is essential that California’s education system has the funding it needs to provide opportunities for our children. But clearly the problem is not just how much money we put into education.  The question is “are we spending smart”?  Is there a more rational and just strategy for allocating funding among schools that have wide disparities in their populations?  How can we better attract and keep high-quality teachers, and insure that teachers who are struggling are not without support and resources?  How do we restore hope in students who are giving up on their education and dropping out of schools that are not safe and are overcrowded and whose teachers have, themselves, lost faith in the system?

“The good news is that the timing of these studies is right.  There is a new focus on school finance and school governance in Sacramento, and the actions that the Legislature will be working on this year and in the future will now be informed by serious scholarly research, not politics or empty promises.