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Tuesday, Dec. 08, 2009

Dan Walters: School grants a side issue

Ostensibly, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators are working to qualify California for a big chunk of the $4.35 billion that the Obama administration will hand out in grants to improve American public education.

The "Race to the Top" money, however, is merely a side issue.

At best, California might get $700 million in one-time funds, scarcely 1 percent of what the state spends on its six million public school students each year merely a drop in the bucket.

What's really happening this week, as the Assembly takes up a measure passed by the Senate and acts on its own version, is a new skirmish in a years-long war over education policy.

Schwarzenegger is the most visible crusader for changing how schools operate.

He and his allies want more charter schools free to set their own curricula, more parental choice in schools, and tougher performance standards for teachers and pupils alike.

Republicans tend to support that agenda, but so do more than a few Democrats, including leaders of EdChoice such as Los Angeles developer and philanthropist Eli Broad.

Schwarzenegger & Co. face the education establishment, most prominently the powerful California Teachers Association, which is leery of all those kinds of changes, and says California's education problems stem mostly from a lack of money.

As it happens, the Obama education agenda coincides almost precisely with that of the Schwarzenegger faction.

And the conflict sharpened last week when the Assembly's bill was introduced.

But Schwarzenegger, who supports the Senate measure, complained that the Assembly measure "doesn't completely embrace the reform culture that President Obama has charged states to adopt.

With the bill as it stands, the Assembly risks losing hundreds of millions of dollars for California's school children."

The major areas of conflict include the Assembly bill's new restrictions on charter schools and its silence on allowing open enrollment and parental choice in schools.

There's still another, purely political element in the fight over Race to the Top legislation.

The author of the Schwarzenegger-backed Senate bill, Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, is the EdChoice-supported candidate for state superintendent of schools next year, which means the CTA and other groups on the other side of the policy battle will probably oppose her and support Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch.

Dan Walters is a columnist for The Sacramento Bee.