The Governor just appeared at a press conference to announce that he was calling a special session of the legislature to "ensure California is eligible to compete for billions in recovery funding for education." This is apparently to address the comments from both President Obama and Secretary Duncan suggesting that California won't be eligible for the Race to the Top funding. The reforms proposed a pretty exciting:

• Linking Student Achievement and Teacher Performance Data. Having linked data will increase transparency around how California’s students, teachers and schools are performing. With this information, the specific needs of students, teachers and schools can be better addressed.
• Measures to Turn-Around Struggling Schools. Turning around struggling schools increases the overall quality of our state’s education system.
  • Repeal California’s charter school cap – an unnecessary barrier to innovation.
  • Give parents more freedom to choose the school that best serves their children by both authorizing open enrollment for students in the lowest-performing schools so they can attend any school in the state – and removing the cap on “districts of choice” so any student in the state can attend school in a participating district.
  • Focus efforts on the five percent of schools that consistently underperform, helping ensure all California students can reach the state’s academic standards.
• Measures to Help California Recruit and Retain High-Quality Teachers and Principals.
  • Reward teachers who are consistently doing the toughest jobs. Alternative pay schedules highlight effective teaching practices and creates incentives to improve our education system. o Measure student progress to help identify what works in the classroom. Every child is different and looking at both growth measures and overall achievement scores provides a better picture of a student progress over time.
• Improving Accountability for Schools. Modifying how the state uses data to measure performance will help more accurately track the progress of students, teachers and schools on an annual basis – so that California can make continuous improvement in our education system from year to year.

Wow! That's a pretty ambitious agenda. I'm going to comment briefly on the major points.

First, "Linking Student Achievement and Teacher Performance Data" addresses the "Teacher Data Firewall" that we have in the education code which prevents student performance data from being used in teacher evaluation. Despite claims by the State Superintendent, the Federal Government suggests that this firewall alone would prevent the state from competing for the funds. I find it amazing that our state would spend millions to build data systems to track student and teacher data and yet be prohibited from connecting the two systems in order to evaluate teacher effectiveness.

Second, "Measures to Turn-Around Struggling Schools", which includes abolishing the Charter School cap, expanding public school choice and intervening in the bottom 5% of schools. I don't see much impact from removing the charter cap. I'm not certain the cap has prevented any charters from forming. The expansion of public school choice should motivate a few school districts to pay attention to why parents are pulling students out of their district. If a district is losing a bunch of students (and funding) to a neighboring district because parents want a better education for their students, hopefully it will consider how it can be more like the other district. It should also provide incentives to the high-performing districts to expand the number of students that it can serve. Why shouldn't we reward high-performing districts with extra students (and funding)?

I'm a big supporter of intervening in the bottom 5% of schools. Actually, I think 5% is too low, but you have to start somewhere. For far too long, school districts have skated by with schools that have been in program improvement for years. Nearly every district chooses to implement "another reform strategy" rather than the more draconian options such as closing the school, replacing the principal, and replacing the staff which are outlined in NCLB. I think the trick will be in getting the right people involved. It will need to be people who are experienced at turning around schools. If we're simply going to increase the involvement of those who are already supposed to be helping the school such as district staff or county office of education staff, nothing is going to change.

Third, "Measures to Help California Recruit and Retain High-Quality Teachers and Principals" seems to suggest a valued added merit system. Student progress would be considered and teachers having the greatest impact would receive additional compensation. Again, I think this is a great idea and long overdue. As I've ranted before many times, it simply isn't fair to make longevity the only measure to determine how teachers are compensated. Better teachers should receive better pay. Nearly everyone except teacher union leaders are convinced of the benefits of this sort of system.

Fourth, "Improving Accountability for Schools" is a bit more vague. We certainly can use data more effectively. I'm hoping this means identifying high-performing teachers and utilizing them as models and identifying their teaching practices which can be taught to their peers. I think every school district has these excellent teachers. If we could better use them to help their peers improve, we'd end up with a greater number of excellent teachers in our schools.

Overall, I'm very excited about the Governor's proposals and I'm interested in seeing more of the details. My biggest concern is that he is going to take a lot of heat from the "Education Coalition", which includes the teacher unions and organizations representing administrators, business officials, etc. Those groups traditionally fight major reform efforts. It seems as though they prefer things the way they are albeit with greater funding. I'm not sure how he is going to overcome this powerful group's efforts to derail his proposals. The big thing he has working for him is the Federal funding. It will make it more difficult for the coalition to argue against the changes. It should be an interesting thing to watch.