Candidates for schools chief differ on reforms

The two most recognized candidates — state Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, and state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles — are educators-turned-politicians with long legislative careers in the Capitol.

Their most prominent challenger is retired schools superintendent Larry Aceves, who has won the support of school administrators across the state and the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times.

Aceves, who most recently led the Association of California School Administrators, is billing himself as an outsider who comes from the trenches of public education and is not beholden to political interests. Romero said she’s the candidate who has bucked the influential California Teachers Association and can make changes that will ensure better quality teachers and give parents more choice in where to send their children.

Torlakson calls himself a team-builder who can create consensus on education and funding reforms.

Reforming the way teachers are hired, fired and given tenure is one of the issues that has gained momentum in recent months. A bill introduced earlier this year would make it easier for districts to fire unproductive tenured teachers and keep promising probationary teachers.

The California Teachers Association opposes the bill, just as it resisted the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative. That program held out the promise of federal money for states endorsing teacher reforms, among other items. The state Legislature adopted several reforms late last year over the objections of the teachers union, but California still lost out during the first round of funding after the changes failed to gain widespread support from local districts.

Torlakson, who is backed by the CTA, clashed with Romero over the reforms. She supported them; he did not.

The assemblyman, a former high school science teacher and track coach, said tenure is not the most pressing issue facing California education.

"We can get absorbed in that debate when funding gets stabilized,” he said.

Overall funding for K-12 schools and community colleges — from the state’s general fund and local property taxes — has dropped 12 percent over the past two years under Proposition 98, the state’s education funding formula. California is spending $49.9 billion on public education this fiscal year, down from $56.6 billion in the 2007-08 fiscal year.

Earlier this spring, school districts throughout the state issued pink slips to nearly 22,000 teachers. Not all of them will be laid off when the next school year begins, but many of them likely will. The previous year, 60 percent of California teachers who received pink slips eventually lost their jobs.

Romero, a former psychology professor, wants to ensure that competent teachers are in every classroom. Reforms designed to achieve that will improve student performance and, by extension, motivate voters and lawmakers to increase education funding.

They will be more inclined to approve more money for public schools if they see systemic changes leading to better results, she said.

"When you couple resources with reform, you begin to move forward,” she said.

California schools rank at or near the bottom nationally in academic performance and the percentage of seniors who go directly to four-year colleges, according to a 2009 report by the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.

For Aceves, reforms should start with a better teacher-evaluation system that more accurately measures performance, but he said any change must incorporate union input.

"The notion that you can’t fire ineffective teachers is nonsense,” he said. "Teachers unions have to be at the table.”

On state funding for schools, Torlakson advocates a measure that would protect education spending from raids by the state government, in much the same way a 2004 proposition limited the state’s ability to take property tax revenue from cities.

He also wants to give local governments the power to raise money for their school district.

Aceves pushes for closing state loopholes that allow the wealthy to avoid paying some taxes and changing the formula to calculate the state’s per-pupil funding to local school districts. He noted that in the Santa Clara County district where he was superintendent, the state’s per-pupil funding was roughly $6,000. By comparison, it was about $11,000 per student in neighboring Palo Alto.

"The system clearly is not working,” he said.

Aceves and Torlakson also advocate curriculum reform to reduce the state’s 20 percent dropout rate and narrow the so-called "achievement gap” that consistently shows lower standardized test scores for black and Hispanic students than for whites and Asians.

Both advocated more vocational education in high schools to make learning more relevant to students who are not bound for a traditional four-year college.

Torlakson also favors asking voters to approve a ballot initiative that would provide money for such items as laptops and iPads, so every student would have access to the same technology.