The bill, Assembly Bill 181, cleared the Senate 21-4 and the Assembly 52-4, margins that reflected an unusual moment of bipartisan agreement. Lawmakers from both parties appeared to share the same underlying anxiety: that California’s schools are falling short, and that simplifying the chain of command might be enough to finally move the needle on student achievement.

Under the new law, the elected state superintendent of public instruction will be stripped of authority over the Department of Education and reduced to a seat on the state school board. In the superintendent’s place, the governor will appoint an “education commissioner” to run the department directly.

Assemblywoman Darshana Patel, a San Diego Democrat, research scientist and former local school board member, made the case plainly during the brief Assembly debate.

“We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different outcomes for our students, our schools and our communities,” Patel said. “They are the ones who are the real victims of this misalignment of our systems and structures.” She added that the restructuring “would promote more coherent policymaking” and give both lawmakers and the public a clearer line of accountability — specifically, the governor’s office.

That last point may be the most consequential piece of the whole overhaul. The governor has always played a significant role in shaping education policy, but the sprawling cast of other players — an elected superintendent, an appointed state board, county offices, local districts — has made it simple for any one of them to deflect blame whenever test scores or graduation rates disappoint.

Upending decades of entrenched bureaucratic structure, an idea Gov. Gavin Newsom first floated during his state of the state address in January, would be notable on its own. Pushing it through over the objections of the California Teachers Association, one of the most influential political forces in Sacramento, is something closer to a political upset.

“The proposal would divert attention away from the real needs of students and schools by introducing a significant governance change that is both unnecessary and counterproductive,” the union warned in a statement issued before the vote. “This proposal does nothing to improve student outcomes or strengthen public education.”

The teachers association and allied labor groups have for years wielded significant influence over who gets elected state superintendent, and those officials have generally echoed the unions’ central argument: that additional funding, more than any structural fix, is what schools need most.

Yet that argument has grown harder to sustain. State education spending has climbed dramatically since 2000, but achievement scores have not kept pace. Elementary reading proficiency, in particular, remains stubbornly and embarrassingly low across much of the state.

Momentum for restructuring began building last fall, when Policy Analysis for California Education — a research partnership involving faculty from five major universities — released an extensive critique of the state’s governance model. The report described a system riddled with “overlapping responsibilities, fragmented authority, and challenges in ensuring streamlined decision-making.” Not coincidentally, the recommendations in that report closely mirrored what Newsom proposed months later, and what eventually became law.

The larger question now is whether consolidating power under the governor’s office will actually improve outcomes for students, or simply reshuffle the deck chairs on a system many consider to be foundering. California is projected to spend more than $25,000 per public school student under the new state budget — a substantial investment that has, so far, not translated into commensurate gains in the classroom.

For years, the state’s education establishment has resisted straying from its familiar refrain that more funding is the answer, while showing far less enthusiasm for instructional reforms such as phonics-based approaches to teaching reading.

Now the responsibility for turning things around will fall to whoever succeeds Newsom as governor — quite possibly Xavier Becerra — who will inherit not just the title of chief executive, but, under this new arrangement, the role of the state’s de facto schools chief as well.

Original source: CalMatters

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