Take any of the problems that beset American education: underfunding, violence, high dropout rates, illiteracy, teen pregnancy. California shares them all, and more. And consider this: though California spends less on education per student than any industrial state in the nation, its student population is exploding-fueled by a wave of mostly poor, mostly non-Englishspeaking immigrants - many of them illegal. The situation has grown so desperate, says state schools Superintendent Bill Honig, that California would have to build a new 600-student school every day for five years just to maintain its sorry status quo. What is that status quo? Schools so crowded that teachers call them holding pens. Educators quitting in droves. Parents opting out of the system. A “lost generation” of children who are as much victims of their schools as beneficiaries.
How did things get so bad? Afterall, not so long ago California’s schools were among the nation’s finest. The answer is partly demographics. High birthrates and a flood tide of immigrants have boosted California’s population by 26 percent over the last decade; by the year 2000, the number of children in school will rise 46 percent, to nearly 7 million. Two thirds of these newcomers will be foreigners. Asians living in California have doubled since 1980; Latinos have grown by 70 percent. By some estimates, as many as a third of California’s inner-city students are in the country illegally.
Chronic overcrowding is the most visible result. California classes average 28 students, largest in the nation, after Utah’s. But it’s not unusual for a single teacher to have 35 or more children. To cope with the crush, many schools are switching to a staggered, “Multitrack” calendar that allows them to operate year-round. Ethnicity is a challenge in itself. Nearly 100 languages are spoken in state schools. In San Francisco, classes may well be taught in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Tagalog, Korean, Polish, Russian and Armenian.
Ethnic diversity has reached an extreme in southern California. " Los Angeles is the new Ellis Island," says Helen Bernstein, head of L.A.’s teachers union. She offers a graphic snapshot of the city’s students. “The majority of children we teach live in poverty. One of every four babies in L.A. is born to a young or unwed mother. More than 20 percent of the city’s adults are illiterate. Three quarters of our children enter kindergarten speaking only Spanish. Many graduate from high school without being able to read or write, add or subtract, fill out job applications or understand simple instructions. The Los Angeles public education system is in intensive care.”
California created many of its difficulties. The state spends only $4,500 per student each year (compared to $8,300 in, say, New Jersey). Reason: California’s population explosion, coupled with Proposition 13 and other tax-limitation measures that ban local school financing. The recession hasn’t helped, either; real expenditures per student are expected to fall by at least $350 next year. Schools across the state are letting teachers go, cutting programs for gifted or handicapped children and eliminating “extracurriculars” like art and music and phys. ed. San Francisco’s Richmond school district brushed with bankruptcy last year; so did Montebello, the 12th largest of the state’s 1,012 school districts. San Diego has cut routine maintenance: plugged toilets get fixed, but forget leaky roofs or broken drinking fountains. L.A. schools are so strapped that teachers shell out, on average, $1,200 yearly to buy their own classroom supplies.
Small wonder that teachers are quitting in droves. Gretchen Dockweiler counts among the disillusioned. For 20 years she taught in California’s public schools–before quitting in frustration to become a realestate agent. “Often I would go home in tears,” she says. “I had 43 children in my last fifth-grade class, only l0 of whom spoke English.” Almost everywhere, it seems, you meet former teachers, all with tales of burnout and fear of school violence.
Parents are also giving up. In Los Angeles, one in eight children goes to private or parochial school. Michele and Robert Zapple never considered themselves urban pioneers. They lived a comfortably suburban life on the fringes of the San Fernando Valley, a tranquil world of swimming pools and, they thought, good neighborhood schools. But when their son entered first grade-a very different world of gangs and overcrowded classrooms-the Zapples opted out. Withdrawing their son from school, they joined a home-education co-op where parents do the teaching. Says Michele, “Welcome to the new frontier.”
But California educators don’t have the choice that the Zapples have, and they’re scrambling for solutions. As in other states, they are pushing parents to take more responsibility for childrens’ education, pulling local businesses into “adopt a school” programs, improving efficiency by delegating more budget and curriculum decisions to local authorities (so-called school-based management). Schools czar Honig recently proposed to “radically change the way schools do business.” His recommendation: scrap the “shopping mall” approach to education - where kids drift through a traditional liberal-arts curriculum - and instead force students into a specialized “major,” either in an academic discipline (such as mathematics or literature) that prepares a student for college, or a vocation (such as health care, auto mechanics or graphic arts) that leads directly to a job. Says Honig: “Kids have to see a payoff between education and life.”
Some would say that the problem is less the curriculum than the administration. Talk to virtually any California teacher, and you hear angry reports of corruption and mismanagement: administrators who skim funds, demand kickbacks from suppliers, place relatives and friends in highpaying jobs. Among recent scandals, just in Los Angeles: an education-consulting firm that billed the city for services to students who did not exist, a schools superintendent who (in the midst of a budget crisis) paid $250,000 to speechwriters and public-opinion pollsters. In March, Honig himself was indicted for having allegedly steered more than $222,000 of federal funds to an educational-consulting company headed by his wife. He denies the charge. But a fact remains: L.A.’s unified school district alone covers 708 square miles, employs 34,000 teachers at 850 schools and educates (if that’s the word) some 825,000 students. Can such a cumbersome, overburdened bureaucracy be changed?
Skeptics have come up with a slew of tear-it-down-and-start-over “reform” initiatives. None is more controversial than “parental choice,” offering state financing to parents who send their kids to private school. Other states have experimented with similar plans, but none so sweeping as California’s. If its sponsors gather 616,000 signatures by June 25 (they’re nearly there) the initiative will be placed on California’s November ballot. If approved by a majority of voters, it will become law-and, opponents say, deal a body blow to public education. Parents choosing private or parochial schools (or no school) would receive a $2,500 voucher for each child; spending at public schools losing students would be correspondingly reduced. The question will spark a fiery debate, for it pits choice and taxpayer rights against the future of the state’s schools.
Meanwhile, another important test is coming up-a June referendum on a $1.9 billion bond issue for school construction. The vote goes to the heart of California’s crisis: too many kids, too few schools. If voters turn it down, there will be no new money. Overcrowding will get worse. Fewer teachers will be hired. Those most hurt will be those whom teachers call “kids at risk” - children who don’t speak English, who can’t keep up, who need special help to stay in school, adapt to a new country or simply join society. Given the state’s failures to date, the choice might seem obvious. Alas, in California it isn’t. Kids at Risk
