California’s new school chief

Eighteen months ago, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, saw her attempts to improve the state’s badly flawed teacher tenure law thwarted by maneuvering led by Democrats allied with the California Teachers Association, in particular Assemblyman Tony Thurmond of Richmond, who later apologized. Weber spoke at Thurmond’s swearing-in as state superintendent of public instruction. This may have been a courtesy. But it may also suggest Weber is privately lobbying Thurmond in the hope he’ll pursue basic education reforms his predecessor, Tom Torlakson, opposed.

Every Californian should hope Thurmond is a change agent. It’s absurd that teachers can get tenure in the spring of their second year on the job; that the state doesn’t use smart metrics to track student progress and how much teachers help their students learn, and that many districts don’t try aggressively to coach up struggling young teachers. Instead, those resistant to reform continue to insist that school quality is a function of school spending despite all the evidence from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida and Texas that this just isn’t true — that multilevel accountability is what’s essential.