ML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> EDUCATION
Meeting the challenge of providing access to all Californians who are either required to attend elementary and secondary schools or who desire to continue their learning beyond high school is more than a matter of numbers (although understanding the magnitude of demand is essential to any comprehensive planning effort). California has a long-standing commitment to the provision of access to high quality education at all levels. However, indicators of student educational experiences and the impact of those experiences on student learning provide a dismal picture of the quality of education available throughout the state, particularly for students who have not fared well in public schools, colleges, and universities. Put simply, every student should be provided access to more than a seat in a classroom; he or she should be provided access to the educational components that are essential to a high quality education system. Those components include:

Access to the Conditions That Promote Learning

All newborns enter the world poised to develop intellectually, socially, and emotionally from the experiences of their first several years of life. As their senses develop, their brains begin to form relationships between things and events in an incredible journey, learning new smells, sounds, tastes, feelings, sights, even scientific reasoning. Parents and educators have long known that infants and toddlers thrive when they have responsive care, individual attention, and enriching experiences. Evidence from cognitive science, developmental psychology, and neuroscience has shown that meeting these needs not only comforts children, it affects the way children’s brains develop and lays the groundwork for later learning and achievement.[1]

We also know that not all children currently have opportunities to benefit from enriching experiences during the early years of their lives. Low-income children have the most to gain from high-quality childcare but are least likely to experience it. In California, nearly half of all school age children live in families with low incomes and more than a quarter under the age of five live in poverty.[2] Key experiences to which infants and toddlers should have access include:
The foregoing issues may not be primarily educational in nature, but they are crucial to our goal of producing ready learners who can benefit from the quality educational experiences to which they will be exposed and the high levels of achievement we will expect of them as they progress through California’s schools, colleges, and universities. We call upon all California families, child care and education providers, and health care professionals to work together to ensure that all children have opportunities for enriching experiences during their early years of life and that they receive the developmental screenings, assessments, and intervention services necessary to provide them a solid foundation for lifelong learning and achievement. We further call upon families and health and social services providers to collaborate to ensure that children of all ages will continue to receive the services essential to their continued readiness to learn. We offer specific recommendations of what State policymakers can reasonably do to achieve this end:

RECOMMENDATION 1

The State should consolidate and expand funding for all infants and toddlers and enhance developmental screening in the earliest years of life. The path to school readiness begins long before entry into pre-school or kindergarten classes. The first three years of life can have a profound effect on children’s ability to learn and on the social and emotional development that underlie achievement. Because low-income families are least able to provide the health care and enriching experiences supported by research and called for in this Master Plan, we call upon the Legislature to ensure that during the phase-in of these services, all state-supported health care and child care services give priority to low-income families residing in communities served by schools ranked in the bottom three deciles of the Academic Performance Index (API). Incentives should be provided to encourage collaboration among health care providers, early child care providers, and community agencies to enable a collective responsiveness in these communities to the five components of school readiness adopted by the National Education Goals Panel:
RECOMMENDATION 2

The State should support the effective coordination of health and social services delivery for all children, beginning with services that meet young children’s developmental needs, at sites that are accessible to families. Many factors not strictly educational in nature contribute to a child’s readiness to enter and ability to succeed in school. These factors are primarily related to health, nutrition, and family support. Although many public and private providers offer essential services, many new parents, child care providers, and families have difficulty locating and accessing these services. Californians can benefit from promoting access to these services. A decade of experience with Healthy Start in California has shown that school-age children’s outcomes improve when families have access to multiple services at a single site linked to the school. These outcomes include: significantly increased math and reading scores for students most in need; decreased family violence; improved student health; improved living conditions; and decreased drug use, among others.

It is therefore in the interest of schools and other educational settings where children are located for much of the day to serve as the site for the delivery or coordination of those services, but schools must not be expected to be the deliverer of non-educational services. Therefore, partnerships should be actively promoted to bring community-based public and private service providers – including Proposition 10 School Readiness Initiative sites, Healthy Start sites, family resource centers, and child development centers – together to deliver a comprehensive array of health and social supports to children of all ages. To further this objective, we recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 2.1 – The State should provide funding to establish neighborhood-based School Readiness Centers to give families access to essential services to meet young children’s developmental needs.

RECOMMENDATION 2.2 – To the greatest extent possible, schools should make available facilities where students and their families may access essential services from community health and social service providers.


RECOMMENDATION 3

For two years leading up to kindergarten entry, provide voluntary access to formal preschool programs that offer group experiences, standards-based curricula, and individualized transition plans to kindergarten; phase-in full-schoolday kindergarten for all children; and align pre-school and kindergarten standards, curricula, and services. Voluntary pre-school beginning at age three has been demonstrated to have a clear link to children’s readiness for and long-term success in school. Formal preschools provide safe environments for young children and contribute to their social and physical development. In 1988, California’s School Readiness Task Force recommended voluntary, full-day preschool programs and noted that while quality programs do exist in the state, resources to support these programs are limited. Consequently “far too many California families have few choices, or no choice, in gaining access to high quality developmental programs for their preschool children.”[3] Research indicates that formal preschool would also offer California an opportunity to prepare children for active participation in a global society by introducing them to a second language. Scientists have shown that young children are biologically primed for language development.[4] Early childhood settings could foster dual language learning, helping all children establish the foundation to become bilingual and bi-literate – an addition to California’s current content standards that we recommend be developed.

Data from the National Center on Educational Statistics demonstrate that during the kindergarten year, children gain social and emotional competencies that foster achievement as they move through school and that they make measurable gains in specific reading and mathematics knowledge and skills. Moreover, children who attend full-schoolday versus half-day kindergarten do better academically and socially during their primary years of school.[5] For these reasons, we believe it is appropriate that attendance in kindergarten be made mandatory for all children, noting that private and home-study kindergarten programs are appropriate alternatives to state-operated and classroom-based kindergarten programs.

Because preschools and kindergarten have been independent operations in California, their standards have not been aligned. Preschool guidelines stress developmentally appropriate instruction as well as social and emotional development. Kindergarten standards, on the other hand, emphasize narrower academic objectives; but kindergarten should also be developmentally appropriate. We believe that California needs a single, consolidated set of program standards for all publicly funded programs aimed at promoting school readiness for all children. These standards must recognize the developmental continuum that stretches from the early years to the primary grades and facilitate successful transition from one level of schooling to another. We therefore recommend the following:

RECOMMENDATION 3.1 – The State should require, for every child, the establishment of an individualized transition plan as a means to ensure that we have ready schools committed to continuing the development of young learners as they transition from voluntary to mandatory school enrollment.

RECOMMENDATION 3.2 – The State should require kindergarten attendance for every child and provide for the phasing in of full-day kindergarten, beginning immediately for communities served by schools that have API scores in the lower three deciles and expanding annually until all of California’s children have a full-day kindergarten experience.

Until California is able to ensure that all young children have access to enriching preschool experiences, the first three years of elementary school will remain particularly important years of young learners’ formal educational experience. During these years, learning is remarkably rapid and children move from pre-operational to operational intelligence and begin to think abstractly. In the primary school years, children also build relationships with key adults – parents and teachers – and they have their first experience with being evaluated on a comparative basis with other children.[6] To ensure the benefits of efforts to promote readiness to learn in all young children are not lost upon children’s enrollment in public schools, it is important to create ready schools as well. The National Education Goals Panel developed and adopted ten attributes of ready schools that promote children’s readiness for learning.[7] Ready schools:
These characteristics of ready schools provide a natural segue to the components essential to a high quality education that we believe must be provided to every student enrolled in public education, from preschool to university levels.

Access to A Qualified And Inspiring Teacher In The Classroom

Research shows that teachers are the single most important factor in student learning in schools. Students who have access to highly qualified teachers achieve at a higher rate, regardless of other factors. Therefore, to meet its commitment to providing a high quality education, the State must be committed to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to learn from a qualified and inspiring teacher.

Teacher quality is not solely determined by a credential or a degree, and we should think of it as a characteristic that evolves throughout a teacher’s career, rather than as a static achievement. Teacher quality is an attribute that grows or diminishes based on conditions in which a teacher works, personal motivation, and opportunities for growth and development. The following qualities are essential for a teacher to be considered initially qualified, or qualified to begin work in the teaching profession, with the expectation that much more development will take place with experience, mentoring, practice, professional collaboration, and opportunities for focused growth and development:
The availability of qualified teachers varies dramatically among schools. Many of California’s schools and colleges face serious shortages in the numbers of qualified and experienced teachers they are able to recruit and retain. This problem is especially acute in low-performing schools. At least 20 percent of the teachers in schools in the lowest decile on the 2000 Academic Performance Index (API) are employed on emergency permits,[8] and in some districts half the teachers have emergency permits or waivers rather than credentials appropriate to their assignments.[9] In contrast, more than 90 percent of the teachers in the best performing schools on the 2000 API are fully credentialed for the subjects and levels they teach. The reasons for teacher shortages in low-performing schools are many and varied, but certainly include the following:
California’s many ambitious reforms of recent years have had a significant impact on the professional development needs of California’s teaching workforce. The adoption of new academic content standards and performance levels for K–12 students, a new accountability system for PreK–12 schools, and the increasing diversity of California’s student population coupled with recently enacted laws regarding the delivery of services to English language learners in our student population all affect the skills required of today’s teachers and those who will ultimately choose to become teachers. Currently, little attention is given to helping teachers – in K-12 schools, adult education, and postsecondary education alike – engage in, understand, and apply research and new information about how students learn; and few ways are provided for teachers to discuss and collaborate on new strategies that emerge as California’s student population changes. Poor coordination of professional development services remains a serious problem throughout the state.

Ultimately, teachers will go to and stay where they believe they have a reasonable chance of success, which is unlikely to be where the foregoing conditions associated with low-performing schools occur. In our high-performing schools, conditions are nearly the opposite of those found in low performing schools: there is a professional culture that respects teaching and learning; professional staff are supported in their efforts to continually improve their effectiveness in promoting student learning; school sites are well maintained; school leaders build and maintain effective partnerships with parents, community groups, and local businesses; and instructional materials are current and aligned with California’s academic content standards. The challenge to the State of California, and the operational responsibility of local districts, is to ensure that such conditions exist within every public school in the state. To ensure that these challenges are overcome and that every student is taught by a qualified teacher, we believe California must take the following actions:

RECOMMENDATION 4

The State should require that every teacher is adequately prepared prior to assuming responsibility for a classroom of students. Minimum qualifications must be established and adhered to for all teachers who enter the classroom. The committee reaffirms California’s current and developing processes for determining teacher preparation standards, education programs based on those standards that lead to the attainment of a teacher credential, and the credential itself as an indicator of initial qualification to begin work in the teaching profession. Since the 1960’s, when internships were first launched, California has embraced multiple routes to the attainment of those qualifications. The diversity of needs within our state is the basis for allowing multiple approaches to learning to teach, and the committee reaffirms California’s commitment to maintaining and enhancing a variety of routes into teaching. We are committed to the development and implementation of valid and reliable assessments of teachers’ preparedness as a condition of receiving a credential, and recognize that the availability of such assessments may further enhance prospective teachers’ access to the profession.

Even with these various entry opportunities available to prospective teachers, however, California has long had a shortage of qualified teachers available and willing to teach in some of its schools, especially those characterized as low-performing. With the advent of class-size reduction in 1997, the need for teachers grew enormously, greatly outstripping the supply in many places. It is therefore important to bear in mind that efforts to secure sufficient numbers of teachers not be used to excuse exposing students to unqualified or unprepared teachers, and the effects of that exposure must be mitigated while the State strives to eliminate it. Because it is incumbent upon the State to make every effort to ensure that every student is taught by a teacher who is adequately prepared, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 4.1 – The State should immediately replace emergency permit usage with universal participation in the pre-internship program, requiring that every uncredentialed teacher be hired as a pre-intern and thereby be supported to complete teacher preparation as soon as is feasible.

RECOMMENDATION 4.2 – The State should set a specific timeline (five to ten years) to phase out the use of waivers for pre-internship program participants.

RECOMMENDATION 4.3 – On a more aggressive schedule, the State should eliminate the use of waivers for pre-internship program participants in decile 1 or decile 2 (lowest performing) schools.

RECOMMENDATION 4.4 – The State should increase the capacity of California’s postsecondary education systems to prepare larger numbers of qualified educators for our public schools and preschools, particularly in regions where there are large numbers of teachers serving on emergency permits or where projected shortages of teachers are greatest, and from among non-White racial and ethnic groups.

RECOMMENDATION 4.5 – The State should adopt more rigorous education requirements and certification standards for all individuals who teach young children in center-based settings or who supervise others who care for young children, and should immediately require a minimum program of state-approved professional development for all publicly funded providers of care to young children.

RECOMMENDATION 5

The State should focus more resources and attention on hard-to-staff schools.[10] Quality teachers can be attracted and retained by the promoting of an atmosphere of positive support for education, providing improved training and professional development, increasing teacher salaries, and installing outstanding facilities – strategy components that have been unevenly applied, or not applied at all, in hard-to-staff schools.

Educators tend not to stay in situations where they do not feel they can succeed with students or are likely to be inspiring in their efforts to promote student learning. Children of poverty have special needs, and educators need additional resources to succeed with such students. Hard-to-staff schools are concentrated in low-income and urban neighborhoods and serve students who have fared least well according to all available measures of student achievement. Special efforts must be made to attract to these schools qualified teachers who have the disposition and passion to persist in challenging environments, and these teachers must receive the support necessary to enable them to improve their effectiveness. Accordingly, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 5.1 – The State should provide additional resources to attract and retain the finest educators for schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty.

RECOMMENDATION 5.2 – The State should require teacher preparation, teacher induction and ongoing professional development programs and activities to feature a focus on teaching children with diverse needs, races, nationalities, and languages; on teaching children who bring particular challenges to the learning process; and on teaching in urban settings.

RECOMMENDATION 5.3 The State should provide short-term grant funding to create additional professional development schools that operate as partnerships between institutions of postsecondary education and low-performing schools.[11]

RECOMMENDATION 6

The State, regional entities, and local school districts should upgrade their professional development activities and invest more of their resources in human capital development. There is much worthwhile professional development in many parts of the state, including state-sponsored professional development networks; national, state, and regional education reform networks; and some noteworthy individual school districts’ efforts. However, there are systemic impediments to the effectiveness of these worthy efforts, especially the limited amount of time available for professional development and the fact that professional development is not incorporated into the routine activities of teachers and other education professionals. A second concern is the absence of focus on the special skills that equip teachers and other education professionals to effectively address the special needs of students from low-income backgrounds, English language learners, and students with identified disabilities.

Too often, staff development is delivered either as an add-on to or in lieu of the regular instructional day. Traditionally, staff development activities have consisted largely of workshops or institutes that do not provide the clinically based or collaborative activities that research has indicated are some of the most powerful and effective types of development activities.

The resources devoted to professional development are insufficient and too stratified by categorical streams. More time and increased funding are necessary to thoroughly familiarize teachers and other education professionals with state academic standards and how every student can be assisted to meet these standards. While the State has provided important new resources for state-operated institutes, it has reduced the amount of time available for local professional development work. It is our view that more attention needs to be given to local professional development activities that involve collaboration between experienced and less experienced teachers, as well as with other education professionals. We also caution against reducing instructional time for students in exchange for improved teacher development. To make progress in this area, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 6.1 – The State should provide ongoing resources for ten days of professional staff development annually for high-priority-need school districts throughout the state. [12]

RECOMMENDATION 6.2 – The State should provide funding to selected districts to permit linkage of an increase in staff development days with a corresponding increase in instructional days, especially in low performing schools.[13]

RECOMMENDATION 6.3 – The State should provide grant funding to develop models for embedded professional development at the school site and district levels.[14]


RECOMMENDATION 7

The State should establish a career ladder for teachers that rewards exceptional teachers for staying in the classroom. Since teachers have the greatest impact on student learning, it is essential that students continue to benefit from the instructional talents of the most exceptional of qualified teachers. In order to attract individuals to the profession and retain them, teacher salaries should be attractive for both new and experienced teachers, and salary schedules should offer opportunities for increased compensation without leaving the classroom. In addition, we must create a school culture in which teachers assume leadership roles in school decision-making, collaboration occurs on a regular basis, professional development is ongoing, and new teachers are supported. This type of school environment leads to improved instructional practices and student learning . Recent statewide initiatives that support and financially reward National Board Certification are now in place in California. But there are very few opportunities for exceptional teachers, even those with National Board Certification, to assume leadership roles in the public schools without leaving the classroom. California’s investment in the professional development of our teachers should not be lost by incentives and practices that draw our most experienced teachers away from the classroom. The expertise of teachers can make or break a school, and we must find ways of capturing, focusing, and rewarding the expertise of teachers within this most important setting. Accordingly, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 7.1 – The State should provide incentive funding to school districts to create career ladders that reward teachers for demonstrated knowledge, expertise, and effective practice.[15]

RECOMMENDATION 7.2 – The State should promote recognition that becoming and remaining a qualified and effective teacher is, as with mastery of any profession, a long-term, developmental process.


RECOMMENDATION 7.3 – To achieve equity as well as reduced provider charges through the use of collective purchasing power, the State itself should negotiate with statewide employee organizations, and fund the employer share of, uniform non-salary employment benefits for all local school employees.

RECOMMENDATION 8

The State should develop a mechanism for the reciprocity of instructional credentials between K-12 adult education providers and community college adult education providers. California maintains an adult continuing education system that bridges both secondary and postsecondary education. It addresses the needs of young adults who have not fared well in public schools; adult newcomers to California, many of them foreign born, who want to participate in the education, employment, and civic opportunities of this state and nation; adults with disabilities; and older adults, among others. The adult continuing education system provides short-term vocational training that equips adults with entry-level skills to become employable and then pursue college and university options while supporting themselves and their families. It is equally important that we ensure they have access to high quality teachers and that their educational opportunities are aligned with the rest of California’s education system.

California’s current dualistic delivery system for adult education places challenges on providers to sufficiently cooperate and coordinate efforts so that an adult learner can take courses from different providers and still meet long-term educational goals. Although the categories of instruction for community college adult education courses and K-12 adult schools are identical, there are different requirements for instructor qualification. Adult school instructors must be credentialed by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, while community college adult education instructors must meet minimum qualifications established by the Academic Senate of the California Community Colleges. To ensure that comparable quality of instruction is available to all Californians enrolling in adult continuing education, the State should quickly move toward common qualifications and training for adult education instructors. Common qualifications will both enhance the opportunity for adult education instructors to teach in traditional adult education as well as in community college-based adult education and provide a sound basis for better alignment of courses between the two delivery systems.

RECOMMENDATION 9

The State should take action to increase the capability of California colleges and universities to attract, hire, and develop academically qualified teachers and faculty members who also have knowledge and understanding about teaching and learning. California colleges and universities have a core responsibility to provide comprehensive, high quality educational experiences that optimize student learning. Essential to meeting this responsibility is faculty knowledge and understanding about instructional and learning processes, the design and development of curriculum, the assessment of learning, and the identification of student needs. Further, faculty knowledge of and comfort with teaching and learning in diverse classrooms and the appropriate integration of technology into teaching and the curriculum are critically important to the achievement of all students. Unfortunately, few doctoral programs (a common requirement for tenured faculty appointments in CSU and UC) incorporate preparation in these areas into their core curricula.

In addition to explicit attention to the skill of teaching in the preparation of faculty, a doctorate or masters degree in the relevant discipline should be considered an initial requirement for entering the faculty ranks. Qualifying to be a teacher-scholar should be understood as an ongoing process of professional development and experience. Faculty knowledge, skills, and attitudes must be fully engaged to help institutions find creative and feasible solutions to the challenges facing education specifically, and society generally. Over the next ten years, California will need to hire about 35,000 faculty in all postsecondary education sectors, which is more than half of the current work force. It must be noted that the UC and CSU can potentially make substantial progress toward meeting this need by hiring a greater proportion of their new faculty from among graduates of California institutions. With our need for a tremendous number of new teachers and faculty comes an unprecedented opportunity to influence the quality of teaching and learning in California for the next several decades.

We note the importance of postsecondary education faculty charged with the responsibility of preparing teachers for employment in California’s schools, preschool through twelfth grade. Faculty within schools of education are essential to state efforts to ensure that all teachers and faculty have not only academic expertise in at least one academic area but also a broad capacity to adjust teaching strategies in response to different learner needs. Each academic department has a responsibility to ensure that its graduates have mastered knowledge and competencies required by its faculty and to inspire students to continue learning more about its discipline. It is the special responsibility of education faculty to ensure that graduates know how to communicate and help others learn what they have mastered. Of the 35,000 new faculty estimated to be needed over the next ten years, a substantial number of them will be needed in schools of education, both replace retiring faculty and to expand capacity. Care in the selection of these faculty will further enhance our state capacity to improve teaching practice and learning outcomes.

To make sure that this opportunity to ensure access to qualified faculty for Californians pursuing postsecondary education is not lost, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 9.1 – The State should expand programs to attract talented individuals, especially from underrepresented groups, into P-12 teaching and postsecondary faculty careers through forgivable loans and teaching fellowships.

RECOMMENDATION 9.2 - California colleges and universities should strive to ensure that schools of education have the resources needed to produce a substantial proportion of the teachers and faculty needed to staff our pre-schools, schools, colleges, and universities over the next decade and beyond.

RECOMMENDATION 9.3 – The State should increase doctoral and master’s degree production in areas of high need, drawing upon the combined resources of the UC and CSU, as well as the independent sector of postsecondary education.

RECOMMENDATION 9.4 – California colleges and universities should develop an infrastructure to support the ongoing professional development of faculty in order to improve the quality of teaching and promote student learning. The components of this infrastructure should include:

RECOMMENDATION 10

The Legislature should direct the California Community Colleges, California State University, and the University of California to adopt policies, within one year of being directed to do so, regarding the appropriate balance of temporary and permanent/tenure-track faculty for their respective systems, and provide the rationale for the policies adopted. Temporary[16] faculty members offer myriad benefits to colleges and universities. They often bring real-life experiences and practical skills to students and add to the diversity of faculty in many ways. At the same time, they allow more flexibility in the use of instructional resources and work at a lower cost to institutions than tenure-track, permanent faculty. The temporary nature of their assignments inherently provides colleges and universities with significant flexibility to modify educational offerings in timely response to the identification of state and local needs. A growing concern about temporary faculty, however, is related to how their increasing numbers affect the ability of institutions to carry out the full range of activities necessary to fulfilling their respective missions. Temporary faculty members usually do not participate in curriculum review and development, personnel hiring, promotion, and tenure review; student admissions, major advisement, and retention initiatives; and other important faculty responsibilities. These activities constitute an essential part of the academic and student affairs of a campus. Because of the important contributions that both permanent and temporary faculty make, this committee and the Legislature should provide the resources necessary to attain for all segments of postsecondary education a faculty balance that meets the comprehensive needs of students and the institutions, while continuing to examine research that will foster better understanding of the impact temporary faculty have on student achievement and the constraints placed on their participation in other faculty responsibilities. Accordingly, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 10.1 – Annually, the California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California shall report to the Legislature the ratio of permanent/tenure-track to temporary faculty employed by their respective system and how that ratio compares to systemwide policy.

RECOMMENDATION 10.2 – The California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California shall report to the Legislature the set of activities reserved for permanent/tenure-track faculty and the rationale for why temporary faculty cannot be enlisted to assist in carrying out such activities.

RECOMMENDATION 11

The State should strive to maintain compensation schedules that make California competitive in attracting and retaining excellent teachers, faculty, administrators, and other education professionals for its early childhood education settings, public schools, colleges, and universities. California has historically been successful in attracting talented people to teach in its public schools, in part because of the high value the general public assigns to our public schools and because for many years teaching was an attractive profession in which to pursue employment for women choosing to enter the workforce. California has similarly been successful in attracting faculty to its public colleges and universities, in part because of the reputation for quality that has been attached to our public postsecondary education institutions, to which the academic reputations of the faculty already employed by California colleges and universities significantly contribute. In recent years, several factors have contributed to the difficulty experienced by California’s early childhood education providers, public schools, colleges, and universities in attracting and retaining the needed numbers of teachers, faculty, counselors, administrators, and other education professionals. First, many pressures have increased the demand for additional education personnel. California’s population has increased by between 400,000 and 600,000 people every year since 1950, generating continually increasing demand for education professionals to staff our growing public education system. In addition, California’s decision to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade has created additional demand for K-12 teachers. Our public colleges and universities lost many of their outstanding faculty during the 1990s when faculty members were offered early retirement options as a partial response to difficult financial conditions. Moreover, many others of the current public education workforce are approaching the prospect of retirement and will soon have to be replaced.

Second, the cost of living in some parts of California generates a demand for higher compensation to permit prospective public education employees to contemplate establishing a lifestyle similar to that to which they are accustomed if they accept employment at a California public school, college, or university. This cost of living issue is particularly important if the prospective employee is considering a move from another state or from less to more urban sections of California where the cost of living is substantially higher. Public schools, colleges, and universities are not alone in their efforts to attract talented people, especially those who have acquired expertise in mathematics and science. Education institutions (both public and private) from other states, the health care profession, and private business are in direct competition with our public education institutions for both current and prospective education personnel. Consequently, California must consider compensation increases in order to retain the excellent teachers, faculty, counselors, and other education professionals it already has as well as to remain competitive in attracting new personnel.

In the instance of early childhood education providers, compensation is extremely poor in comparison to that of K-12 teachers, a fact which contributes to high staff turnover and thereby impedes continuity of care for children. Salaries and benefits for providers who have backgrounds that are similar to, and perform functions comparable to those of, their public school colleagues must be made commensurate to compensation in the K-12 sector, if California is to establish a professional early childhood education sector as part of a coherent system of education.

Our vision for California public education requires not only that all students be taught by qualified teachers or faculty members but that they also have access to other professionals necessary to a successful educational experience, including effective administrators, health care professionals, counselors and advisors, and learning support professionals. These personnel components of quality cannot be provided without a firm commitment by the State to provide competitive compensation schedules.

Despite the costs associated with increasing compensation for all public education professionals, California must especially find ways to keep teacher and faculty compensation competitive in order to ensure that every student enrolled in a public school, college, or university is taught by an excellent teacher. The committee notes here that postsecondary education faculty are generally expected to engage in more activities than teaching alone, including research, public service, and supervision and/or mentoring of students and student groups. These supervision and mentoring activities are important to the success and persistence of many students, particularly students from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds. Faculty and other educational professionals engaged in such activities should receive appropriate recognition for their contributions. But we wish to emphasize that it is excellent teaching that is most essential to the education system we envision. We therefore further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 11.1 – The governing boards of all three public sectors of postsecondary education should direct an examination of faculty promotion, tenure, and review policies and practices, and revise them, as needed, to ensure that teaching excellence is given significant weight in decisions that affect the compensation awarded to faculty.

RECOMMENDATION 11.2 – The State should empower and encourage boards of trustees of local school districts to include teaching excellence, as determined through districts’ employee performance evaluations, as a significant factor in decisions that affect compensation.

RECOMMENDATION 11.3 – The boards of trustees of local school districts should review their compensation policies, and revise them as needed, to ensure that continuing professional education for which they grant salary credit is targeted to courses likely to yield clear benefit in terms of either employees’ pedagogical, instructional leadership, or management skills, or the depth of their academic subject matter knowledge.

RECOMMENDATION 11.4 – Supervision and mentoring of students and student groups should be given ample consideration in employee performance reviews and be a factor in decisions that affect compensation of teachers, faculty, and other education professionals.

Access to Rigorous Curriculum that will Prepare All Students for Success In Postsecondary Education, Work, and Society

The State must ensure that all students have access to a preschool--12 curriculum encompassing the knowledge, skills, and experiences necessary for successful college participation, productive work, and active citizenship. As a part of these curricula, all schools must offer academic programs and coursework that provide every student an equitable opportunity to qualify for admission to, and succeed in, any of California’s public postsecondary institutions, and that simultaneously qualify them for an array of jobs in today’s workforce and the continually emerging information economy. To ensure this high-quality curriculum for all students we recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 12

The State shall set ambitious learning goals and provide all students a challenging K-12 curriculum, including preparation for postsecondary education. The ambitious learning goals we recommend here are represented in the academic content standards that the State Board of Education has adopted for each grade level in the areas of mathematics, language arts, science, and the social sciences. These standards form the basis of an aligned system of curriculum, materials, instruction, and assessments for each level of the educational system. However, the current standards and requirements are not yet a complete expression of what California students should know and be able to do to be successfully prepared, as described in the foregoing narrative. The standards should also recognize the congruity of academic achievement, workforce preparation, and the knowledge and skills needed for democratic participation in a diverse society. In addition, education must prepare Californians for participation in the international community. Ours is the nation’s most linguistically rich state. At a time when global knowledge, skill, and understanding are at a premium, California’s multi-lingualism is an asset that should be developed to a much greater extent. We must recognize our state’s widespread multiculturalism and bilingualism and embrace it as a 21st century educational and social resource.[17] Accordingly, we recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 12.1 – The State should ensure that early learning gains are continued, by aligning developmentally appropriate standards and curricula for pre-school, early childhood education, kindergarten, and the primary grades.

RECOMMENDATION 12.2 – The State should establish an academically rigorous course pattern as the standard curriculum for every high school student, and provide the learning support necessary to enable students to successfully complete this college readiness curriculum.

RECOMMENDATION 12.3 – Students not wishing to participate in this rigorous curriculum should, with proper counseling and after parental consultation, be allowed to ‘opt out’ of this pattern of courses. In such cases, students should be provided a personalized learning plan to ensure basic academic competencies are taught to them through a challenging curriculum which prepares them for community college or the workforce and is delivered through alternative avenues, including career technical education settings.
RECOMMENDATION 12.4 – The State should ensure that all schools provide all students with curriculum and coursework that include the knowledge, skills, and experiences that enable them to attain mastery of oral and written expression in English and that establish a foundation for future mastery of a second language by the end of elementary school, and attain oral proficiency and full literacy in both English and at least one other language by the end of secondary school.

RECOMMENDATION 12.5 – The California Community College, CSU, and UC should collaborate to strengthen the programs in community colleges that prepare students to transfer to CSU and UC and to ensure that those courses are acceptable for transfer credit at all campuses of CSU and UC.

RECOMMENDATION 12.6 – The community colleges should enhance their career and technical programs that lead to occupational certificates and occupational associate degrees; all postsecondary education institutions should offer industry skill certifications that prepare students to enter the job market with a set of competencies they will need to succeed; and CSU and UC should enhance the quality of professional programs that prepare students to enter professional careers with a set of competencies they will need to succeed.

Access to Participation in California’s Public Universities

RECOMMENDATION 13

The California State University should continue selecting its freshman students from among the top one-third and the University of California should continue selecting its freshman students from among the top one-eighth of high school graduates throughout the state. Since the adoption of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, both the California State University and the University of California have selected their freshman students from restrictive pools of high school graduates statewide. Each system was given respective authority to determine how the top one-third and one-eighth should be defined for purposes of admission to CSU and UC campuses, respectively. Objective criteria – curricular pattern, grade point average, and standardized test scores – have served as the primary basis for determining eligibility. Based on these criteria, the Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees each adopted a policy guaranteeing admissions to any eligible high school graduate who applied. While these criteria and board policies simplified the selection process for both systems, they, in conjunction with the impact of California’s population growth and the popularity of the two systems, have resulted in two unfortunate consequences. First, as the number of high school graduates from California high schools increased and they sought admission to CSU and UC in numbers that exceeded the capacity at some campuses and the State’s ability to financially support both systems overall, admissions criteria were revised to reduce the numbers of qualified high school graduates who were entitled to admission. In addition, both CSU and UC assigned greater weight to grades earned in honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses, a practice that provides an advantage to graduates of high schools that provide significant numbers of honors and AP courses to their students.

Second, students enrolled in schools with high concentrations of students from low-income families have not had opportunities to learn that are comparable to those of students enrolled in schools serving more advantaged families. In particular, they have had fewer opportunities to take and complete AP courses prior to graduation. Consequently, low-income high school graduates who attain CSU and UC eligibility have not had the opportunity to become “highly competitive” for admission to either sector. In response to the UC practice of giving preference to highly competitive applicants, increasing numbers of high schools are offering AP courses taught by teachers without adequate expertise and without a requirement that students completing an AP course also take the AP examination for that subject. We are further concerned that assigning additional weight to honors and AP courses tends to undermine the effort of this Master Plan to increase the rigor of all academic course offerings in public schools by communicating to students who are firmly committed to college attendance after high school that getting into the campus or system of their choice is enhanced by taking AP and honors courses.

We believe that definitions of quality that rely exclusively on test scores and grade point averages fail to recognize and take advantage of the rich diversity of California’s people. Our colleges and universities must not fail to take advantage of this richness as they make admissions decisions, by failing to examine the human qualities of applicants who have met objective criteria for admissions. The life experiences of prospective students who have come to California from around the world, including language, cultural traditions, music, art, and work experiences, can enhance the teaching and learning experiences on every CSU and UC campus and contribute to students’ developing a world view attainable in few other ways for most of them. The value that diversity can contribute to the quality of CSU and UC is of such import that these life experiences and non-cognitive talents should be considered equally with objective measures of academic achievement even when demand greatly exceeds capacity. No campus should deprive its students of these components of quality in a mistaken effort to ration limited capacity by allocating admission slots primarily to applicants with the highest test scores and grade point averages.

Given the foregoing concerns, we additionally recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 13.1 – The California State University and the University of California should continue collaborating with K-12 schools to increase the rigor of all academic courses to achieve the goals of reducing demand for remedial instruction among freshman students and eliminating the current practice of providing additional weight to honors and AP courses in admissions decisions.

RECOMMENDATION 13.2 - The California State University and the University of California should authorize each of their campuses to consider both objective and subjective personal characteristics equally in assembling freshman classes annually from among the pool of eligible candidates.

Access to Current Textbooks and Instructional Materials Aligned with Learning Expectations

California's requirement of compulsory education for all children must be viewed as a contract between the State and our students/parents, complete with rights and responsibilities. Every K-12 student in California has a fundamental constitutional right to a high quality, state-provided education. A rigorous curriculum that prepares all students for a successful transition to college or work should be the ‘default’ curriculum. Accordingly, the State must provide all students with the resources, instruction, and support necessary to enable them to achieve the competencies that the academic content standards and college admission requirements demand. The State must also assure that every school has current textbooks, technology, and/or other instructional materials that are aligned with the content expected to be taught to each student, in sufficient quantity for each student to have access to these materials for home use. This requirement is of fundamental importance. In turn, students must take advantage of these resources and apply themselves in a sustained effort to meet or exceed academic standards set for them. We therefore recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 14

State and local policy-makers should ensure that every school is provided with sufficient quantities of learning materials and resources that are current, in good condition, and appropriate to the learning needs of students, including:

Access to Adequate Learning Support Services

Learning support is the collection of school, home, and community resources; strategies and practices; and environmental and cultural factors that provide every student the physical, emotional, and intellectual support he or she needs to overcome any or all barriers to learning. Learning support includes two primary strategies: Since students do not all mature and progress in their learning at the same pace, the types of learning support appropriate to student needs will vary in different schools and at different grade levels. Recognizing these differences, we recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 15

The State should require and fund the provision of flexible time and instruction to support learning and insure successful transitions between schooling levels. Although the K-12 curriculum and basic conditions for learning should be common for all students, individual students have unique learning styles and learn in a variety of ways; and success for all students requires new, flexible ways to structure time and deliver instruction. Our current system for delivering education provides limited hourly funding for before- and/or after- school tutoring, but basically assumes that all students at each grade will achieve a prescribed set of standards within a set amount of instructional time. This assumption is contrary to reality. The need that many students have for differential attention is normal, and a healthy education system addresses these needs routinely. However, this flexibility should not delay students’ achievement or interfere with timely and successful transitions to succeeding levels of schooling. Accordingly, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 15.1 – State and local policy-makers should define adequate learning support in K-12 as those resources and interventions necessary to meet the academic needs of all students and which help ensure that all attain the state content standards and meet college preparatory requirements.

RECOMMENDATION 15.2 – The State should assign responsibility and provide targeted resources at the postsecondary level to enable increasing numbers of college students to succeed in their academic coursework and attain certificates and degrees.


RECOMMENDATION 16

Provide additional learning support services at grades three and eight, in the last two years of high school, and during the first year of college to assist students who take longer to meet standards or may be ready to accelerate. Although it is important to meet the needs of students throughout their K-12 experience, there is currently a particular need for additional targeted interventions at key transition points for many traditionally underserved students. As with other forms of learning support, these must be developed with the intention of addressing student learning and development rather than remediating failure. They must enable students to meet the State’s content standards and college entrance and placement requirements. An abundance of research demonstrates that the child who has not developed reading proficiency by grade three will be frustrated and disadvantaged for the balance of his/her educational experience.

Our academic content standards call for all students to be provided instruction in algebra by grade eight, and research documents that students who fail to master algebraic concepts dramatically reduce the likelihood that they will go on to college and succeed there. Timely learning assistance and accurate information about college and career opportunities take on greater significance during the last two years of high school as students seriously prepare themselves for life after high school.

The first year of college is critical in many ways in determining whether a freshman student will persist and eventually earn a degree or certificate or drop out before achieving his/her educational objective. The importance of providing focused and timely learning support to freshman students in college will remain high until we have eliminated the disparity in the quality of educational opportunity students receive in the state’s public schools. Examples of instances when learning support may make a significant difference to the success of students include English language learners who need extended learning opportunities, community college courses for seniors who need additional courses to meet university entrance and placement requirements, and students with identified disabilities who need additional services to support them in meeting their academic goals.


RECOMMENDATION 17

Schools should establish and maintain active communication with parent groups to assist school personnel in the provision of learning support designed to overcome barriers to learning. Many public schools establish parent groups to assist in fundraising activities, to assist in making policy decisions in the distribution of supplemental funds (School Site Councils), to provide school ground supervision, and to support athletic and arts activities, among other things. Parents create the early conditions that ready students for learning and should be enlisted to collaborate with schools to continue the emphasis on learning. Schools should regularly communicate with parents about the progress of their children in meeting learning expectations and course requirements for university admission. Too often parents receive mixed messages from public schools: they are urged to visit the school at any time, but receive a cool, if not hostile, reception when they question the behavior and/or decisions of teachers. Schools must be diligent to nurture a culture that welcomes parents as partners in the education process and to offer guidance on ways in which parents can be of greatest assistance to teachers in promoting student achievement. This goal may require provision of learning opportunities for parents, particularly for parents who are English language learners or who have not had pleasant school experiences themselves.

Parents also must also be vigilant against sending mixed messages to school personnel. Not only must they avoid the temptation of automatically taking the side of their children in disputes with school personnel before determining the facts involved, they must also resist the temptation to communicate to their children the value that sports, work, and sibling care are more important than academic achievement. At all levels, including the postsecondary level, parents can help students understand that they can discover knowledge on their own and develop a passion for learning. This understanding prepares students to be active rather than passive participants in their own learning.

Access to Qualified School and Campus Administrators, to Maintain an Educational Culture that is Inviting and Safe, and that Places a High Value on Teaching Excellence and Student Achievement

Educational leaders play a significant role in creating and maintaining campus environments and cultures that encourage students to persist in their studies and that has a direct impact on teaching and learning. Their leadership influences whether teachers, counselors, and other professional staff elect to remain at the institution, the degree to which parents become true partners in the education of their children, and the degree to which the physical plant is maintained in safe and healthy condition.

Throughout the nation it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract and retain high quality candidates to school leadership positions. Surveys by national professional organizations have documented this unsettling trend, especially with regard to site principals.[18] In California, the situation is exacerbated by several factors, including a more stressful work environment, the poorest site administrator-to-student ratios in the country, and inadequate facilities that lead to seriously overcrowded conditions.[19] However, in California and elsewhere, a much more serious cause for concern is that standards-based legislation is holding principals accountable for student achievement, but is not providing principals the authority to manage the fiscal and human resources in their schools. California experiences another serious problem related to the training of school administrators: training programs offered by postsecondary institutions focus on management, when they should be giving systematic attention to the development of leadership.

Both to address the shortage of candidates for education administration positions and to ensure that prospective candidates acquire the myriad skills they will need to be effective, we recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 18

Local school districts and postsecondary education institutions should develop partnerships to recruit, prepare, and educate quality educational leaders. The principalship is an extremely complex and difficult job in today’s schools, as is the superintendency of school districts; and California may soon be facing a severe shortage of qualified school administrators. Molding outstanding administrative leaders must be regarded as a long-term, developmental process requiring a coordinated effort among all stakeholders. Postsecondary education institutions offering administrator preparation programs would be well advised to look at leadership training programs in other fields, such as the military and business, as well as consulting with current school and college leaders to determine the array of skills required of today’s school leaders.

Low-achieving schools tend to be hard to staff , impacted by socio-economic issues, to have a history of failure, and to have considerable turnover in staff at all levels. Leadership in these schools is particularly challenging and multi-faceted, and requires strong administrative and instructional skills. Many new administrators are often not sufficiently prepared to do what is necessary to improve student achievement in these schools and are not given adequate support by their districts to significantly improve instructional programs. Most administrative training programs fail in preparing newly assigned principals to initiate and sustain effective programs to improve student achievement and reverse the pattern of substandard performance so common in those schools. Accordingly, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 18.1 – School districts should provide more resources, such as additional staff and professional development, to principals in low-performing schools.

RECOMMENDATION 18.2 – School districts should increase salaries for administrators serving in low-performing schools.


RECOMMENDATION 19

The State should take steps to ensure qualified leadership for California Community Colleges. Today’s community colleges must address the academic achievement of all students, irrespective of their levels of preparation. Dramatic changes in the demographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of students challenge community colleges to modify their curricula and instructional strategies to better meet the needs of diverse learners. These challenges and traditional practices of community colleges – requiring prospective administrators from faculty ranks to forfeit seniority and not guaranteeing return rights – serve to discourage outstanding faculty leaders from aspiring to community college administrative positions. The 2000 report of the Community College Leadership Development Initiative documented some of the leadership challenges facing California’s community colleges.[20] In particular, the report noted that political factions sometimes prevent campuses from making important decisions, and that frequent turnover of executive officers and low campus morale have contributed to a deterioration of institutional effectiveness. With regard to leadership positions, the average length of tenure for a community college chief executive officer is 4.4 years in California compared to an average of 7.5 years nationally. Further, smaller numbers of well-qualified people are seeking administrative leadership roles due not only to the leadership challenges, but also to the lack of return rights to tenured faculty positions and of competitive job salaries. This situation exists at a time when in the next ten years California will need an estimated 360 new community college academic administrators. [21]
The education doctorate has traditionally been viewed as the terminal degree for professional education leaders. California’s public and private colleges and universities offer few doctoral programs with an emphasis on community college leadership. Moreover, they do not currently offer sufficient numbers of education doctorate programs of any sort to community college (or K-12) personnel who seek this degree as a means to better meet the needs of their students and institutions as well as for other professional development reasons. California relies on private and independent colleges and universities for about 70 percent of its doctorate holders in education.[22] To both ensure that more opportunities are available to prepare community college and school administrators and to make those opportunities more affordable, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 19.1 – The CSU and UC should develop and offer preparation and professional development programs for community college leadership, including establishment of a state-level or campus-based center devoted to community college leadership development and leadership issues.

RECOMMENDATION 19.2 – The California Community College system should improve the terms and conditions of administrative employment in community colleges, including offering qualified administrators return rights to permanent faculty positions as an incentive to attract outstanding professionals to community college leadership positions.

Access to a School or Campus Physical Plant that is Safe, Well-Equipped, and Well-Maintained

California’s promise of access to free public K-12 education and low-cost postsecondary education extends beyond simply assuring a seat for the six million students who annually enroll in public schools or the two million who annually enroll in public colleges and universities. The condition of the school or campus facility is as critical to the quality of educational experience students receive as are the qualifications of instructional and administrative staff. Together they define the conditions of learning, or what we have come to recognize as the opportunities for students to learn. Inequalities in the condition and maintenance of public schools and colleges subject students to unacceptably unequal opportunities to learn, based purely on where students happen to live within the state. This inequity is unacceptable if the State is to have and meet rigorous learning expectations for all students, and recent court action substantiates that position. As a result, we believe it is the State’s responsibility to ensure that all students are provided with equitable opportunities to learn; and we therefore recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 20

The State should guarantee suitable learning environments for all students including classrooms, facilities and buildings. Significant research documents that clean, safe, well maintained, and otherwise suitable learning environments have a positive impact on student learning, while the opposite is true of unsuitable environments. In addition, as noted in the foregoing sections, survey data indicate that unsuitable environments have a negative impact on the ability of schools to provide the quality teaching and leadership that is necessary to provide a high quality education. Therefore, for every school, college, or university facility, we recommend that environments reflect the following characteristics:

RECOMMENDATION 20.1 – The State should establish clear, concise, and workable standards for facilities, to ensure a high quality/high performance teaching and learning environment.

RECOMMENDATION 20.2 – The State should require each school district to prepare and adopt, with appropriate public review and consultation, a five-year facilities plan to meet or exceed state facilities standards[23].

RECOMMENDATION 20.3 – The State should establish design standards for subsidized early childhood facilities, appropriate to young children’s development.

We also recognize that there are other ways to provide high quality teaching and learning opportunities that do not depend on perpetuation of traditional schools or college campuses serving large numbers of students. The tools of technology provide a means by which schools, colleges, universities, and local communities can work together to collectively provide high quality teaching and learning opportunities for students. A student’s community environment is as much a locus for learning as the classroom. Recognizing these possibilities, we further recommend:

RECOMMENDATION 20.4 – The State should establish an Innovation Fund to support innovative projects and intersegmental collaboration in education, particularly those seeking to improve learning opportunities for students enrolled in low-performing schools and increase the use of public facilities located in the service communities of schools.


Table of Contents
Introduction Access Achievement
Accountability Affordability Conclusion