Report of the Working Group on Governance

• The Legislature is overly and unevenly involved in education governance, mostly with respect to K-12 education. The Legislature considered over 600 K-12 education bills last year, with individual bills being meaningful to some people and certain aspects of public education but constituting in combination a ‘chaotic’ approach to the system as a whole.
• No formal K-16 coordination/advisory function is currently in place.
• The absence of overall K-16 alignment results in difficulty in student transitions between K-12 and postsecondary education, and among postsecondary education systems.
• There is a deficiency of comprehensive K-16 data upon which to base meaningful and appropriate public policy.
• There is little scope for local control as a legal matter.

Recommendations and Rationale

The following recommendations are intended to be accomplished by the most direct mechanisms possible. Each recommendation is supported by a statement of rationale.

13. The Master Plan should be adopted by the Legislature as a template from which to formulate legislation and regulatory policy and thereby reduce the number of bills considered each year.

Rationale: The California public school system is too large to be systematically improved by piecemeal legislation without regard to an overall plan. Members of the Legislature will benefit from having a Master Plan to which to refer when considering or drafting legislation and proposing budget appropriations.

The Group emphasized the outcomes to which the Master Plan should be geared, which coincided with nationwide goals as well. A fully functioning P-16 system would exhibit: (1) greater collaboration among education professionals at all levels; (2) alignment of standards and curriculum across levels; (3) widespread parent, community, and student understanding of goals and expectations; (4) significant reductions in the amount of postsecondary remedial work required; and (5) lower dropout rates in both secondary schools and colleges.^[6] To achieve these goals, the Legislature must use the Master Plan as a consistent guide when developing legislation.

14. The responsibility for K-16 coordination should be assigned to the Governor.

Rationale: The Group found that lack of coordination is the largest systemic governance problem. Coordination is necessary not only among the postsecondary segments, but between K-12 and postsecondary education. To ensure that this function will be carried out, it should be placed in the office having ultimate accountability and the greatest power over multiple segments; as discussed previously, that is the office of the Governor.

15. An independent agency should be identified to collect K-16 data, including cross-segmental and cross-level data.

Rationale: The Group was unanimous and strong in its assertion that there is currently insufficient data to evaluate/analyze the effectiveness of the public education system in California. There was further consensus among members that the best way to ensure credibility and consistency is to contract with or hire an independent agency to perform comprehensive data collection on an ongoing basis.

Some initial discord emerged over whether the agency that collects the data should be one that currently exists, a newly formed government agency, or an independent one. Since it is already charged with collecting postsecondary data, CPEC was suggested as an entity to collect K-16 data. But the fact that CPEC has to date been ineffective in the collection of data caused the group to view that entity unfavorably as the one to be given that charge. Further discussion led to consideration of two data collection agencies – one controlled by the Governor and one by the Legislature.^[7] But dueling data collection agencies seemed to the Group to be antithetical to the governance goals of streamlining, coordinating, and creating a clear line of accountability. Some members of the Group strongly supported assigning the data collection charge to the University of California because of its resources and research capacity. The greatest level of agreement, however, was found on the recommendation to assign K-16 data collection to an independent agency to ensure accuracy, consistency, and, above all, objectivity.

16. To provide a firm legal basis for a sphere of local control, consideration should be given to amending the state constitution to permit local districts to adopt limited “home rule” authority through votes of their electorates in a manner similar to that long permitted for cities and counties.

Rationale: Although local control is favored politically, there is currently little scope for it, as a legal matter. Granting districts the ability to establish a limited but firm degree of local control would respond to the political desire for local communities to have some autonomy independent of general state laws.