EDITORIAL -- Require Public Schools To Account for Failure - San Francisco Chronicle Saturday, February 7, 1998

EDITORIAL -- Require Public Schools To Account for Failure


Saturday, February 7, 1998

BILLIONAIRE BILL Gates wouldn't be where he is without satisfied customers. If his software or other products suddenly deteriorated, people would stop buying and Microsoft would fold.

But public schools can provide an inferior product for years and continue to stay in business. Except for the complaints of outraged parents, there is no formal system of accountability.

Benighted schools such as those in Sausalito and Oakland, which repeatedly post bottom-of-the- barrel test scores and show few signs of improvement, can cheat their students and get away with it because no one outside the district has authority to intervene or shut them down if they do not improve.

Legislation by Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Kerry Mazzoni, D-San Rafael, heads in the direction of rectifying one of the greatest abominations in California education. And it is gratifying that the issue is finally in the public policy spotlight, but, unfortunately Mazzoni's bill does not quite get there.

The bill, AB 1734, would set up a two- phase system in which low-performing schools would first create teams of parents and educators to create a plan to improve achievement levels of both individual students and the overall school.

If no improvement was evident after two years, the state superintendent of public instruction would step in and appoint a ``distinguished educator'' from outside the district to assess the school's program and make changes, including personnel shakeups and curriculum overhauls.

But the bill has major flaws. It would create an unnecessary politically-appointed commission to reform the schools, a job that could be more efficiently done by the existing state Department of Education.

The worst aspect of the bill is that if a school showed no progress after four years under the program, there would be no further remedies.

An Education Department task force has already offered a solution to schools that go four years without significant progress. It recommended a range of consequences including closing schools or placing them under state stewardship.

Inherent in the task force's recommendations is the common-sense notion that accountability has no meaning if there are no consequences for poor performance.

The panel said if a school did not improve, responsibility would fall within the jurisdiction of the state Board of Education. The board would act on a recommendation from the superintendent of public instruction on whether to continue current policies, have the state take over the school, close the school or take some other action.

The task force proposal, which has real teeth and does not create an unnecessary new bureaucracy, is closer to what the state's failing schools desperately need.

With a system of accountability, the perceived need by a growing number of politicians to micromanage schools -- even those that are doing well -- should diminish.

School principals should know what the academic goals are and be given the tools to achieve them with as little outside interference as possible. However, they also must be aware that if they fail to do the job of educating their students, someone will step in to do the job for them.


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