State of Education Address - January 22, 2008

Back to State of Education Address - January 22, 2008

Good morning, and thank you for joining me. It's wonderful to be here with so many of you who share a strong commitment to improving public education for each and every one of our students. I know that for all of you, EVERY year is the Year of Education.

So let me just begin today by saying, "Thank you." Thank you to the people you never read about in all the stories about school takeovers, budget cuts, or test scores. Thank you to the teachers, the paraeducators, and the administrators. Thank you to the bus drivers, the school board members, the nurses, the parents, and the students who work hard every day to help improve public education.

Thank you to the thousands of California educators whose hard work has led to successes we don't hear enough about:

Successes like 442,000 more California students who are reading proficiently, just in the past four years.

Or the 50-percent increase in low-income students who are taking Advanced Placement exams, over just the past four years.

Let's remember those successes, and let us all be empowered by them as we move forward in 2008 and beyond. We need both confidence and hope in the work that's ahead of us.

Now, we all know our state is in dire fiscal shape, and this won't be the first year I'll fight for schools to get their fair share of funding. We have a serious budget shortfall, but improving our education system is the key to ensuring that California has a well-qualified workforce to secure a healthy economy in the future.

Even as we now battle simply to guarantee that our schools get the minimum funding level necessary, we also should begin developing a plan to ensure that that our schools are set on a path toward the funding they actually need to reach our desired outcomes — all students fulfilling their potential, whether they choose to go on to college or straight in to the world of work. This new plan, then should, begin with getting additional resources to those students who have the greatest need.

Last year, as you know, the Governor, legislative leaders, and I requested a comprehensive research project that brought together the best minds to determine how our education system can do a better job of preparing California's students. I may not agree with all of the researchers' conclusions, but one thing that came across loudly and clearly from their work is that while we need to be more efficient in the way we fund our schools, we also must invest more in California public education.

Education Week also made this abundantly clear in its recent report card on school funding in each state, showing that California spends nearly $1,900 per pupil below the national average. The amount we invest in students is $5,100 per pupil less than New Jersey, $4,000 less than Wyoming, and $1,500 less than Louisiana. We can do better — we must do better.

Many of the proposals you're going to hear about this morning, however, require little or no new funding. This is intentional, because while we need that extra investment to be truly successful in the long run, there is much we can accomplish right now.

My friends, as I said when I stood here before you one year ago, our future success requires us to close the achievement gap that exists between our white students and our students of color, as well as gaps with our English learners, poor students, and students with disabilities.

Statewide test scores in 2007 indicate that we need to work harder to raise the achievement of all our students and that we have made little progress in closing the achievement gap.

The achievement gap can be seen in test scores, drop-out rates, and rates of college entry and completion. The gaps in all of these measurable indicators influence a student's future ability to earn a living wage, pursue a satisfying career, and own a home. These indicators show up later in terms of measurable gaps between the haves and have-nots, and you can directly relate those gaps to impoverishment, imprisonment, even lower longevity and level of health. We simply must recognize that the students of today are our greatest asset for tomorrow, and we must build those assets for all of us to succeed.

Now, it's true that the achievement gap exists nationwide, but in nearly every other state, it is viewed as a problem affecting minorities of students. In California, the students representing the achievement gap are the majority of our school population. In California, closing the gap is more critical than anywhere else in this nation and it is the way to help all students succeed. Closing the achievement gap will not only improve the lives and futures of our students, it will secure the future of our state.

If we allow past trends to continue and do not close the achievement gap, research shows our state will lack the skilled workforce we need to be competitive. We'll lack the resources to pay for public and social services just at the time the demand for those services will greatly increase.

But that's not the future I see for our state.

We have an economic and moral imperative to close the gap, and this past year I've been focusing on this challenge with many of you. A challenge of this magnitude requires the commitment of all of us, for the sake of all our students, all the time. This is why I called for it to be the focus of my P-16 Council, a statewide assembly of education, business, and community leaders chaired by Dr. Barry Munitz, a true champion of public education. Over the past year, the council has worked tirelessly to determine just what the state can do to create the conditions necessary for closing the gap. And that's a key distinction I want to emphasize. The Council's work was about what the state can do differently to better assist schools and districts in closing the achievement gap. This is not another attempt by those of us at the state level to tell all of you how you should improve while we absolve ourselves of responsibility or accountability. I'm enormously grateful to the members of the P-16 Council for their work. And today I'm pleased to formally accept their recommendations and to share with you my proposals for how our state should respond.

The Council's work was rooted in four major themes. Access: the extent to which all students have equitable access to core conditions, such as qualified, effective teachers; rigorous, standards-aligned curriculum; and effective interventions. Culture and Climate: how schools can offer the best environment for promoting learning and a sense of belonging for students, parents, and school staff. Expectations: how we must truly foster high expectations for all of us in education. And, finally, Strategies: the proven effective or promising practices the state can promote for closing the achievement gap.

These themes give us a good framework as we consider what more the state can do to close the gap. But I also know that it all comes down to teaching and learning. If we do not ensure that all of our teachers are professionally supported, well trained, and yes, well paid, we will never close the achievement gap. That, my friends, is what this is all about.

Now, let's take a closer look at our first theme, Access. Without a doubt, access to quality preschool can help close the achievement gap. Yet it is the students who need quality preschool the most who lack access to this important educational program. These students begin to experience an achievement gap early in life because they lack access to this vital program. This need not be.

Crystal Saladin, a first grade teacher at Main Avenue Elementary School in the Robla School District here in Sacramento, sees the achievement gap in her classroom on the first day of school and works tirelessly to rescue her students from it. Every day she teaches students the English language she teaches them to read. She struggles to teach addition and subtraction while some of her students do not recognize the numbers 1 through 5. Every day she thinks of new ways to connect with her students, one by one. Crystal sees that those kids who have had access to quality preschool before kindergarten are eager to learn and play cooperatively together. They know their numbers, colors, and the letters in their names.

But teachers such as Crystal cannot close the achievement gap by themselves. We must work toward the day when quality preschool is available to all California children, so no child starts school already lagging far behind his or her peers.

So I am working with Preschool California and other stakeholders to co-sponsor legislation carried by my good friend Senator Darrell Steinberg. It will consolidate all the current Title 5 programs serving preschool-aged children, to create the largest state-funded prekindergarten program in the nation. This will make our pre-K delivery programs far more streamlined and efficient.

My goal is not just to have the largest pre-K program in the nation, but to have the highest quality program. So I am proposing the creation of a quality-improvement system that will tie higher levels of funding to higher levels of quality.

Now, we can't measure quality unless preschool providers know what we mean by quality. Our preschools need foundations on which to base their programs, foundations that are grounded in the best research on socially and developmentally appropriate benchmarks for learning as well as on how to reach our English learners. So today I am delighted to formally release what I believe are the finest preschool foundations in the world.

These foundations will offer our early childhood educators a clear understanding of what our youngest learners should know before entering kindergarten. From these foundations, frameworks will be developed that will guide our early childhood educators in providing the playful, enriching early learning experiences that create both kindergarten readiness and a love of learning.

We can't close the achievement gap unless we close the readiness gap before kindergarten. My P-16 Council has developed a strong plan to help us get there. Access to quality preschool is key to closing the achievement gap, and these steps will help thousands of California children to be ready to learn when they begin school.

Now, even if all students enter kindergarten equally prepared through high-quality preschool, some will face bigger hurdles than others as they move through public school. Even when our state is short of financial capital, I know we have the human capital to improve on what we do. Imagine if every school had access to a successful business partner to provide mentors, materials, and opportunities for students. If every school had a higher-education partner whose students could mentor and inspire younger children. Or if every school had a social service agency partner that would make certain that students came to school healthy and well fed. Because as we know, a nutritious breakfast is a simple and proven way to increase learning. These partnerships are so important and effective because educating our youths is a collective responsibility — and we all need to be involved and accountable.

My P-16 Council recommends expanding access to partnerships with a goal of linking every public school in the state to a regional partnership. We have many successful models in California, like ARCHES (the Alliance for Regional Collaboration to Heighten Educational Success). So to encourage additional partnerships, I am asking each district to reach out to business communities, community colleges, to universities and parent and community organizations, to form and build partnerships that will help us work together to help our students.

Our segments of education also must do a much better job of partnering with each other and even simply talking to each other. Far too many of our students, particularly students of color, graduate from high school believing they are prepared, but find themselves unprepared to succeed in either college or work. Nearly 65 percent of African American students and 61 percent of Latino students require remedial courses in their first year at a California State University campus, compared with 26 percent of white students. My friends, to close the achievement gap we must fix this disconnect between what we expect of our high school graduates and what our business and higher education communities need from our high school graduates.

I'm delighted to announce today a remarkable new partnership. The California Education Roundtable — made up of the leaders of all segments of public higher education in California — has agreed to collaborate with me on an integrated, concerted, measurable, and coordinated plan to close the achievement gap. By June of this year, each educational segment will, on the basis of its unique mission, identify the specific actions for which it will be responsible as part of a comprehensive plan.

In addition, I am pleased to announce that, at my request and with the agreement of Governor Schwarzenegger, all four systems of public education in California — K-12, community colleges, the California State University, and the University of California, joined by our private colleges, the business community, and the career technical education community — have agreed to join 30 other states in the American Diploma Project, a successful national reform effort sponsored by Achieve. This endeavor supports the alignment of expectations across the education spectrum, emphasizing rigorous and relevant preparation for the demanding world our students will face. The expectations of our K-12 system must be more closely aligned to the real-world needs of our business community and systems of higher education. 

So now, for the first time in our state, this partnership will mean that all segments of our education system have committed to align their expectations to ensure that all students will be prepared to succeed. It is a testimony to our shared commitment that every single leader of California's diverse educational systems put aside his or her individual interest to join in this effort for the collective good. It's a major step toward the day when all students can move confidently through our system of education, knowing that if they do what is expected, they will truly be prepared.

The P-16 Council's second theme is Culture and Climate. How can schools offer the best learning environment for all students?

Recently, New America Media released a poll of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians that makes clear it is time for us to check our assumptions about the racial climate in our schools, in our communities, and in the workplace.

The poll found that only 30 percent of African Americans, 60 percent of Hispanics, and 43 percent of Asians believe strongly that every American has an equal opportunity to succeed. Racial tension was viewed as a "very important problem in the U.S." by an incredible 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African Americans, and 73 percent of Asians in the poll.

Clearly, it is time to move past the discomfort of talking about culture and race. It's time to move past the harmful illusion that we live in a color-blind society. Whether we know it or not, an attempt to be color-blind can feel to a student of color like a rejection of that student's culture and experience. 

Our schools cannot create a climate that is supportive of all students unless they first understand the perceptions, impressions, beliefs, and expectations of a school's students, teachers, and staff.

We are all, to some extent, trapped in the perspectives, assumptions, and experiences of our own culture. We conduct our relationships and build our institutions on the basis of those perspectives, assumptions, and experiences. If we expect all our students to learn to their full capacity, we must make them feel safe, encouraged, and empowered to learn. They must feel that their culture and the experiences they bring into the school are not only tolerated but understood and respected. Are we truly doing all we can to understand the culture and respect the experiences of every student? Without a conscious effort to do so, our actions might unconsciously reflect the historical, institutionalized habits that have disadvantaged our students of color. Unconsciously, we may be conveying that differences are deficits our students bring to school.

It's not easy to engage in self-reflection about race, for me or for anyone else. I've struggled and stumbled at times over the past year when talking about race. But until we begin the discussion, until we understand our own cultural perspectives and biases, we can't begin to correct any institutional biases that we might have: biases such as those that allow for lower expectations, culturally ineffective instruction, or fewer resources at schools serving students of color. It is time we have the discussion. It is past time

So I have directed the Department of Education to include evaluations of racial and cultural issues within the existing California School Climate Survey or the California Healthy Kids Survey. This will cost schools no additional money or time, but will provide valuable information to guide them in the important dialogue that must occur.

In addition, over the next year, I'm going to bring together experts from around the country to help develop world-class professional development on what it means to be culturally responsive in the classroom, in the principal's office, and in the administration building. This curriculum will help our educators provide a school climate in which students from all cultures and races feel equally supported in learning to high expectations.

I also will be collaborating with the deans of California's schools of education to work to embed culturally responsive instruction in all of California's teacher pre-service and professional development programs.

Next, in the area of high expectations, the P-16 Council looked at not only what we expect of students but what we expect of our schools.

I believe that the best thing we can do to raise expectations for all students is to constantly rededicate ourselves to our world-class academic content standards. Because our standards have been in place for more than a decade and because our curriculum and assessments are all aligned to them, it's easy to assume that they are embedded in our school cultures as well. But having standards is not the same as truly, deeply, and consistently embedding them in every classroom. It is not the same as expecting that all students will achieve those standards and carrying out the demanding, creative, collaborative work of fulfilling that expectation with every new child who enters a classroom.

Before we look for new solutions, every part of our education system should first continue to examine and deepen its commitment to the standards that are a model for other states and even other nations. We need to unpack the standards — pull them apart, study them continuously, and find new ways to use them to reach every student every day. It's work that calls for deep implementation involving constant assessment, adjustment, commitment, and time.

We also must accurately measure, at the state level, the progress schools are making toward reaching proficiency and closing the achievement gap. Our state accountability model — the Academic Performance Index, or API — sets the expectation that student learning will improve each year in every school, ultimately moving toward the proficiency of every student in every subject. It's a model that's clearly based on results, as it should be. I've fought hard to maintain California's model of accountability, here in Sacramento and in Washington, D.C., because it is objective and fair and it gives schools credit for improving the achievement of all students year to year. The API truly has been a driver of positive change.

In addition to objectively measuring student achievement, the state should both encourage effective practices and give credit to those schools that employ them. It's time to create an additional way to recognize schools for practices designed specifically to close the achievement gap. Let's publicly report on how our schools are doing when it comes to such things as:

• Putting experienced teachers in the most challenging classrooms.
• Creating effective partnerships.
• Establishing great parent involvement programs.
• Carrying out effective interventions.

So I'm going to develop a set of Achievement Gap Intervention benchmarks, which will contain key indicators that research shows are highly correlated with closing gaps in student achievement. We want to recognize, reward, and provide incentives to those schools that are closing the gap.

To help me identify these benchmarks and ensure that they measure what works best, I'm delighted to announce today, Christopher Edley Jr. (Outside Source), a national leader in civil rights law and Dean of Boalt Hall School of Law, has agreed to co-chair a Superintendent's advisory committee to develop such a system. Dean Edley will be joined by Deb Sigman, my incoming Deputy Superintendent for Assessment and Accountability, as his co-chair.

Beyond measuring the achievement gap, we also should use our rewards system to ensure that schools are successful in closing the gap. Therefore, I've directed my staff, starting in 2009, to ensure that in order to become a California Distinguished School, not only will schools have to meet the current criteria, but they'll have to narrow their achievement gap as well. Schools closing their gap will have truly earned the right to be called "distinguished."

Finally, the P-16 Council looked at Strategies: proven or promising practices, supported by data, to narrow the achievement gap. Over the past year, and at November's Achievement Gap Summit, a truly remarkable gathering of more than four thousand educators from 52 counties, we looked at many promising strategies. We found that no one program or practice is necessarily successful for all, but one ingredient is essential for any strategy to succeed. That ingredient is information. Schools and districts making the most progress are those that constantly look at ways they can do things differently and better to foster student success. They are continuous learning systems.

Now, one of the hallmarks of a successful, continuous learning system is the practice of using new information to pilot new strategies on a small scale. One district using this practice wisely is Long Beach Unified, a district that introduces promising new programs to a few classrooms or a few schools at a time, and then implements district-wide only those that have shown success.

When it comes to implementing important new education policies, I think our state policymakers can learn some things from Long Beach Unified, by starting small, analyzing what works, and then scaling up over time.

The same researchers who concluded that our state must invest more in education broadly agreed that California needs to be more flexible with its funding. The same conclusion was reached by the Governor's Committee on Educational Excellence, chaired by my friend and president of the State Board of Education, Ted Mitchell. We should maintain strong accountability but allow local districts to be more innovative in how they serve their students' diverse needs.

I agree with these conclusions, as did my P-16 Council, and I don't believe we should wait until the "right year" to make it happen. The time for action is now; we needn't wait for further study or legislation. So I intend to bring before the State Board of Education a pilot program allowing Long Beach and Fresno unified school districts — the third and fourth largest districts in the state — significant new flexibility in how they allocate their resources. This flexibility will allow them to be more innovative in designing programs to close the achievement gap. In exchange for the increased flexibility, the two districts have agreed to form a partnership to learn together, model, and replicate effective practices. In addition, they will commit to specific benchmark progress goals. The item we will bring before the Board of Education will be thoughtful and precise and will be based on each district's individual needs and records. Long Beach, which has been a national model for successful urban district management, will receive more flexibility, while Fresno, a district that has greatly improved but is still in transition, will receive a little less. I believe deeply that with the leadership of Chris Steinhauser in Long Beach and Mike Hanson in Fresno, this new partnership will be a model pilot that we can soon extend to districts throughout this state. 

Now my friends, if we're going to close the achievement gap, our state must make it possible for every classroom, school, and district in California to become a continuous learning system. We must build a statewide data system that provides all the information we need to make the best possible decisions to serve each individual student in California.

Today we have the beginnings of an information system that will tell us where we are in terms of compliance with No Child Left Behind. Yes, at long last our state has student identifiers and will soon have a system that will enable us to track student achievement over time. This is no small accomplishment. Just as with our statewide improvement in student achievement, I think that too often in our desire to improve even more, we don't stop and recognize the incredible progress we've made. I want to thank all the people here at CDE and in the field who have worked so hard on building a high-quality data system and advocating on its behalf.

We must keep working to see this system expanded to provide information that will tell us which practices and materials are the most effective, where and how we should intervene, and how we might improve instruction, one child at a time. Because of limits placed on the data we currently collect, we are not able to do these things today — and we simply must. As a first step toward instilling this culture based on information, I am pleased to announce a generous grant of more than $2 million from the Gates and Hewlett foundations that will help us create a vision and roadmap for the kind of data our state needs to truly improve teaching and learning as well as decision making at both the state and local levels. I also am pleased to be joined by Governor Schwarzenegger as a full partner in this process. The grant will allow us to partner with the respected consulting firm of McKinsey & Company to act as our professional adviser during this process. Together we will create a document by this summer that clearly lays out what additional information the State of California needs to collect and how much it will cost us to do it. This roadmap will then serve as the basis for the Education Data Commission I'm serving on with Governor Schwarzenegger, a commission that is charged with turning our work into reality. 

We also need to instill in our education system a culture based on information, a culture providing us with the ability to analyze what is known and the willingness to put that knowledge to good use. So I will sponsor legislation this year to build on our existing programs and provide more professional development in the use of data.

But, what's the point of collecting valuable information if we don't have the ability to share it? For too long, school districts across the state have been left to solve problems on their own with no central resource to guide them and no mechanism to collaborate with other educators across the state when success is achieved. For too long, we've had islands of excellence in this state — teachers, schools, and districts with unlimited amounts of valuable institutional knowledge that remain isolated from the rest of the state. Today I'm unveiling the beginning of a bridge to those islands of excellence. A program I'm calling "Brokers of Expertise" will provide a new level of connection and cohesion across the levels and regions of the system. All schools in California, regardless of their performance levels, will benefit from increased knowledge about how to close the achievement gap and raise all student achievement levels. Let me show you how it works.

(Brokers of Expertise video [http://www3.cde.ca.gov/video/comm/brokersofexpertise.asx] (WMV; 4:08 mins.; 22-Jan-2008; Closed Captions for Windows Media Player)

We are just at the beginning of building this system and remain a few years away from it being widely available, but "brokers" is an idea whose time has come and that delivers on the best of California. To begin this process of sharing best practices immediately, however, next month I'll officially launch Taking Center Stage II, a tremendously valuable Web-based tool for our middle school educators. It will bring research, best practices, and a forum for sharing through an accessible, continuously improving format.

And for educators throughout our system, I'm pleased to officially launch Closing the Achievement Gap: Achieving Success for All Students [http://closingtheachievementgap.org] (Outside Source), a Web site created by the California Department of Education in partnership with WestEd and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We created this site to continue our conversation and make sure there is a central hub for the latest research, ideas, and success stories on closing the achievement gap.

Here in Sacramento, I am also working to make the Department of Education a continuous learning system so that we can better assist California's schools to close the achievement gap. We've changed our mission statement and determined that the Core Purpose of the California Department of Education is to lead and support the continuous improvement of student achievement with a specific focus on closing achievement gaps.

This is, in part, recognition that the state must change as well. Too often we sit here in Sacramento demanding change and improvement from schools and districts while not being willing to also look critically at ourselves. A continuous learning system means that the state, too, must continually evaluate itself, review the programs and formulas we put out and, if they are not working, change or eliminate them. Unless we gather and use information to meet the needs of specific groups of students, we will not close the achievement gap. 

My friends, the recommendations I've made today are not the total answer. They are just a start. But they are an important beginning. We have made a choice to focus our attention on closing the achievement gap for California's underperforming students. Doing so represents the fulfillment of the promise that we — as educators — made to our students and their parents: the promise to educate every student to high standards, regardless of background or circumstances. That goal is not easy; that goal is not modest. Yet, I am convinced that the goal is achievable. In a very real and very practical way, educating every student to high standards is about the future success of our Golden State.

The goal of closing the achievement gap demands a kind of focused desire. It calls for a willingness to change, to be bold, and to try new ideas. The time has come for us to answer this call. Together we can close the achievement gap and open the door to a better future for every student, without exception.

Thank you.