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• Year 2008

SACRAMENTO – State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell made the following statement today in response to Governor Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech:

"I appreciate the Governor's words this afternoon and agree with most everything he said about education. California's schools are doing better and there is a lot to be proud of – success that is far too often ignored.

"I also agree that we have much work to do. Specifically, we need to close the pernicious achievement gap that threatens our children's future and that of our state.

"I also appreciate the Governor's statement that we need to consider new reform efforts as well as fund new reforms. We will not succeed without doing both, and California must have a conversation now about developing a plan for increased investments in our public school students.

"I look forward to providing my detailed plan for reform in my State of Education Address two weeks from today."

Superintendent O'Connell made the following observations about the printed addendum to the Governor's speech:

"We are working closely with the Governor on providing needed assistance to the 98 school districts identified for sanctions under No Child Left Behind. While we still need to work out the specifics, I believe we have a good framework for a system of triage.

"I am very pleased with the Governor's commitment to ensuring a high-quality data system for California. This should indeed be the state's highest priority. While we should all take great pride that every student in California now has a unique student identifier and the state has built a quality infrastructure to support our data, we clearly need to build a more robust information system. Today's data collection merely allows us to be compliant with the federal government. We can do better. So I was very happy to hear the Governor say we need to ‘fund, link and determine additional data elements.'

"I was also pleased to hear the Governor is committed to releasing $29 million in Title I funding. This is exactly what I proposed to do last year, and I hope that we can expeditiously come to an agreement with the Legislature and get this critical money out to our neediest schools.

"We clearly need more teachers in California. We're looking at a looming crisis over the next several years. I would add that the outlook is just as bleak for our administrators. So I welcome the Governor's proposal and look forward to discussing it with the Legislature.

"Finally, I applaud the Governor's call for additional flexibility for successful districts. In fact, I'll have a specific proposal to address this at my State of Education Address."