In 2020, California’s top education priority is not a policy, but a value: transparency

Note to readers: Each week through December 2019, a selection of our 101 California Influencers answers a question that is critical to California’s future. Topics include education, healthcare, environment, housing and economic growth. One influencer each week is also invited to write a column that takes a closer look at the issue.

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California’s state legislature was busy in 2019 with several complex education-related issues, and the high-profile debate over the place of charter schools in the public education system resulted in a historic and hard-fought compromise.

Governor Newsom signed legislation placing an initiative on the March 2020 ballot to provide critical funding for construction and modernization of our decaying schools. He also made progress on his promise to create a “cradle-to-career” approach, to provide students with access to more resources from an early age and thread the multiple (and often competing) systems that serve youth into a coherent and more transparent system.

Early signs show that 2020 is shaping up to center on the critical question of funding adequacy. With the attention that will be paid to these important funding issues next year, it may be tempting to make 2020 only about funding.

That would be short sighted, and do a great disservice to millions of underserved California public school students who need us to go further in the aim toward equity and closing the persistent achievement gaps that are holding back our youth from fully realizing their potential.

In 2020, the most important priority to advance K-12 education is not a single policy or funding mechanism, but a value: transparency. Our vast education system is simply not delivering on the promise of a high quality education for all California youth, and is particularly challenged to close stubborn equity gaps among our struggling students.

The release of the most recent Dashboard indicators reveals that some slight improvements are being made in important metrics of school quality, but nobody would claim that the improvements are big enough or fast enough to improve the educational opportunities for the millions of underserved California public school students.

A recent state audit determined districts are not spending critical LCFF funds as the state intended and points to the challenges that remain when we only focus on inputs like spending, without needed clarity and accountability.

We collect vast amounts of information about district finances and student achievement, but we are still unable to assess whether funding variations are producing improved results and how districts and schools can learn from each other to accelerate achievement.

Our current system’s relentless focus on inputs without tying them to outcomes makes clarity and accountability around student achievement nearly impossible to understand and doesn’t provide parents with the information they need to advocate fully on behalf of kids.

Governor Newsom has begun the process of reinvigorating the state’s system for student data collection and analysis. LAUSD, for the first time, is sharing information about schools relative to the academic growth of individual students over time, not just rates of proficiency, thanks to the relentless advocacy of parents across the district. California and Kansas are the only two states in the nation that do not compile and release such analyses statewide.

We must muster the will to use the trove of education data collected by the state to inform how policy decisions are made so the system, along with the public, can learn from its successes and mistakes. The state must move faster and more boldly to expand not only access to this kind of information but to build it into a robust and transparent system of public school accountability that demands not only equity in funding, but equity in opportunity for all California students.

The question of funding demands more than a simple yes or no answer – it is “yes, and.”

As Californians go to the polls in 2020 to consider increasing funding, let’s also prioritize using funding well and transparently. Understanding how funding impacts results is fundamental to making the kinds of broad, significant and sustained improvements in educational outcomes that are so desperately needed. Without that balance we will fall short of creating the equitable schools our kids deserve.

This story was originally published December 15, 2019 at 7:00 AM with the headline "In 2020, California’s top education priority is not a policy, but a value: transparency."