RE: Opportunity to Learn Standards

I would like to respond to Senator Vasconcellos' statement:

"It's simply unthinkable that California doesn't have such
standards already."

While a agree with the senator, I think that, as opposed to being "unthinkable" that California doesn't have such standards, I would expect California not to have these standards in effect.  Though our state tends to be on the cutting edge of education's newest fads, theories, and "master plans", it lags in performance.  

To paraphrase Daniel Moynahan, "School quality is directly proportional to a its relative distance from the Canadian border." If northeastern states devote more to per pupil expenditures, more in teacher salaries, and have the NAEP results to show for it...res ipsa loquitur.

"These standards spell out the educational essentials that many 
California students now lack: a qualified teacher, a curriculum 
aligned with the state's standards, enough texts and materials 
for both classroom use and homework, clean and safe learning 
environments and so forth."  

I agree, but California, while being so progressive in certain areas, still lives in the 19th century in others. A clear example is what occurred last week in Sacramento.  

There is a grass roots movement in Tuolumne County to unify seven one-school school districts into a relatively small unified district, feeding into one high school.  The benefits would include seemless teacher transfers from one school to another (a qualified teacher), a common curriculum between schools only five miles apart (curriculum aligned...),
pooled money for more cost effective purchasing (enough text and materials...), centralized administration responsible for equitably furnished and maintained physical plants (clean and safe learning environments...), etc.

It just so happens that the band of "too many chiefs" (local school board members and superintendents) work hard at crushing the ("not enough Indians") movement for a local referendum to be decided by the electorate, and successfully lobbied the State BOE to disapprove the issue getting onto the ballot. 

Again, so much for local and state school boards, and Mark Twain's famous commentary on them. We in the gold fields are still living in 1849.  I can't wait for the day the discussion formally turns to "unification"!

As a side bar, I would be very happy to discuss, meet, and/or share with Senator Vasconcellos the objective data which the state BOE perhaps could not, or possibly would not accept. Senator, feel free to contact me at my listed email address.