Big gap in where students are and where they need to be

A decade ago, an academic research team produced a massive report on the shortcomings in how California’s K-12 schools educate about 6 million students.

“Getting Down to Facts” was issued just as a very severe recession hammered California and public school financing, most of which comes from the state’s income-tax-centered revenue system. Jerry Brown reclaimed the governorship in 2011, and many changes to K-12 have since occurred.

Taxes were raised to dramatically increase per-pupil spending; some of the money was focused on helping poor and English-learner students close the achievement gap; the state adopted Common Core standards; its accountability system was drastically revamped to downplay academic testing in favor of “multiple measures.”

Today, a successor team of some 100 researchers, once again assembled by Stanford University and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), released a follow-up study.

It found that while “California’s education system is moving in the right direction… large achievement gaps persist”; the system needs more money, it needs better pre-kindergarten education and a better system of charting achievement.

Though “researchers have documented the steady progress California has made on student test performance, they also have found that California continues to lag the nation, with both lower average scores and greater disparities among student groups relative to other states.”

There’s broad agreement in education circles that closing the achievement gap is critical, but there’s been virtual war between the state’s union-led education establishment and a coalition of education-reform and civil-rights groups over how best to do it.

The new Stanford/PACE report, previewed at an “education equity forum,” appears to take a middle position in the fierce achievement-gap debate. Its findings provide points for both sides while bolstering support for raising school spending. How much?

Researchers conclude that “while public schools in California spent about $69.7 billion on school operations in 2016-17, an additional $22.1 billion – 32 percent above actual spending – would have been necessary for all students to have had the opportunity to meet the (state’s) goals.”

The report said districts would need to spend an average of $16,800 per student to allow students in a typical California school to meet the state’s goals. The actual district-level spending, said the report, is closer to $12,750 per student.

And that presents a political challenge just as California is about to elect a new governor and a new state superintendent of schools.

A 32 percent increase is just about what both candidates for superintendent, Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond, advocate, though they represent opposing sides of the equity war.

However, the additional $22.1 billion cited in the report would require the biggest tax increase in California history, three to four times as much as the income-tax hike on the richest taxpayers that Brown persuaded voters to pass in 2012.

The state’s next governor better be ready.