Conventional political wisdom suggests that California's education policies should be firmly in harness with those of President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. After all, the state has an iconic Democratic governor, no Republican statewide officeholders, and both houses of the state legislature are under Democratic control.
Instead, there is vigorous disagreement. Rather than leading with accountability, California starts with changing instruction and building capacity. Rather than constructing educational politics around a war between "reformers" and educators, it acknowledges multiple, diverse interests and the need for compromise and collaboration.
California's divergence is no red-state aversion to the federal government; nor is it sticker shock at the price of new K-12 assessments. It's an aversion to the Race to the Top mentality, and the embrace of a deeply held alternative view of what drives improvement in public education. "No high-performing country or state has limited their reform efforts to this narrowly conceived approach," wrote former California state Superintendent Bill Honig a few years ago.
The pointy edge of dispute is teacher assessment. "We can't fire our way to Finland," says Michael Kirst, who chairs the California board of education. The state has refused to sign on to the test-score-accountability provisions of the federal agenda. In response, Secretary Duncan has twice, or thrice (depending on who's counting), rejected California's Race to the Top applications and has refused a statewide waiver of No Child Left Behind Act requirements.
Read the full story in Education Week.
Watch a video where Michael Kirst helps to explain the local control spending plan.
Read Michael Kirst's op-ed, “New Common Core standards are right for California,” in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Read this GSE story for more about Kirst's work on the Common Core.
Kirst is also a faculty member of the Center for Educational Policy Analysis.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
