Category: Education Governance

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The move by Michigan state education officials to approve Detroit Public Schools finance czar Robert Bobb’s shutdown of 70 schools in the district is just another step in the district’s…

Photo courtesy of Stephen Voss (StephenVoss.com)

The move by Michigan state education officials to approve Detroit Public Schools finance czar Robert Bobb’s shutdown of 70 schools in the district is just another step in the district’s long secular decline. Parents have long ago fled the district for charter schools and traditional public schools in suburbia; the district’s enrollment has declined by 54 percent between 1999-2000 and 2008-2009. Meanwhile the district’s woeful status as the worst among big-city districts in preparing kids for economic and social success isn’t obscured by news that its (official) graduation rate for its Class of 2010 is 62 percent; the district accounted for 39 of Michigan’s 92 worst performing schools now targeted for turnaround.

All in all, if Detroit was a private-sector corporation, its status as a going concern would be similar to that of Lehman Brothers and the long-defunct Braniff Airlines. The fact that the district is under state receivership for the second time also proves it should have already happened. It’s only thanks to Michigan taxpayers, who along with Detroit’s own property owners and the rest of the nation, have kept the district from heading into history’s ashbin. If Detroit Public Schools shut down tomorrow, the city’s children would mostly be the better for it and, in some ways, so would the city itself.

But what should replace Detroit Public Schools? After all, Detroit the city needs a functioning public education system in order to start its own revival. A system of high-quality schools is as critical to its economic future as lower tax loads and an influx of middle-class residents. As Richard Daley found out in Chicago and Michael Bloomberg is showing in New York City, school reform has numerous side benefits and can even offset drawbacks such as high taxes and costly rents. More importantly, at this moment, the district still serves most of Motown’s children. While efforts by nonprofits to expand the reach of charter schools in the Motor City is underway, the kids have to still attend school.

One solution lies with what I call the Hollywood Model of Education, under which the district would be limited to handling such matters as construction, transportation and leasing space while the actual education and instruction would be handled by a collection of public, charter, private and parochial schools. In this concept, Detroit’s current schools would be handed off to charter management organizations, individual school operators, nonprofits, parent groups and even teachers; this is already happening in California, where the Los Angeles Unified School District is spinning off 200 of its schools into private hands (while some other schools under its operation are converting to charters). From high-quality teachers looking to new challenges to parents to nonprofits and groups such as LaToniya Jones’ Power the Youth, there are plenty of people who can do the job of running schools (and likely, do it better than the district).

The problem in the case of Detroit is that it has proven even worse at handling the areas outside of instruction than even other big-city districts. It can’t even handle its board politics with common sense. Part of this problem lies with the reality that the district, like so many others, has been a jobs program for politicians and their allies; the rest is due to the reality that when a district falls apart as systemically as Detroit has for such a long time, the dysfunction seeps to every area of operations and instruction.

This could be remedied through a solution more-radical than Bobb has publicly considered so far: Outsourcing the entire back-office and transportation functions to firms who already handle such work. There are plenty of private-sector firms that already handle accounting, property management, maintenance and other such activities. In some sense, from the taxpayer perspective, it could even be cheaper than continuing to keep thousands of Detroit central administrators and staff on the payroll. But it won’t be easy to do. It would be critical for Michigan to place someone skilled at negotiating outsourcing contracts (and, more importantly, capable of striking hard bargains) in order to make it work effectively. It can be difficult for major companies to effectively strike such deals and oversee vendors; Detroit would be a gargantuan task.

But it can be done. More importantly, it needs to be done. Detroit needs a system of publicly funding the best educational options for its kids, not a going concern operating schools.

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At the State Level Education Governance

What Banning Collective Bargaining Doesn’t Mean

RiShawn Biddle

February 18, 2011 5:12 pm February 18, 2011

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Photo courtesy of Colorlines.com

Contrary to what Dana Goldstein might think, the efforts by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (and other governors throughout the country) to abolish laws forcing school districts to bargain with affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers is not some threat to feminism. There is plenty to say about that issue — especially about the consequences of having few men (especially black men) in teaching on the nation’s gender- and racial achievement gaps — but this isn’t the subject at the moment. And Goldstein weakens her general argument against the effort to abolish collective bargaining by even mentioning it. (She also fails to consider that collective bargaining rules for policemen and firefighters aren’t on the table because they get a sympathy vote no other public sector professional group would ever get; it would be political suicide for either Walker or anyone else to touch them.)

The goal that Walker, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and others have in mind is to weaken the clout of public employee unions in structuring work rules, compensation deals and layoff policies that have made it difficult for state governments to deal more-realistically with the $260 billion in budget shortfalls facing taxpayers in the short term, and the $3 trillion in public pension deficits (along with billions more in unfunded retiree healthcare costs) in the long run. From the perspective of reforming American public education, ending collective bargaining would also allow states and school districts to move more aggressively on dealing with the teacher quality and systemic school reforms needed to both improve education for all children and spend the $593 billion in school funding more effectively. Given that states and school districts spend at least $16 billion more in 2007-2008 than they did during the 2003-2004 school year, along with the wasted spending on pay raises for teachers to get master’s degrees (when it has been proven that degree attainment isn’t correlated with — or causative of — student achievement), such a move theoretically makes sense.

But on the education front (and more generally, when it comes to overall government operations), Walker, Kasich and others fail to consider the reality that ending collective bargaining won’t lead to meaningful school reform.

Despite their weakened positions, the NEA and AFT still have the war chests and the bodies to influence state laws in order to achieve their goals. The two unions ladled out $59 million in campaign donations during the 2009-2010 election cycle alone; they also doled out $277 million over the past 11 years, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. This gives them tremendous clout in state legislatures even in the few states in which they cannot technically conduct collective bargaining or where union influence is at first glance rather weak — and structure state laws and policies that restrict what school districts can actually do.

In Alabama, for example, the NEA affiliate there put the kibbosh on former governor Bob Riley’s efforts to allow for the presence of charter schools; it also backed both the eventual winner and loser in the gubernatorial race to succeed him. In South Carolina, another state in which collective bargaining is not allowed (and the state NEA affiliate is floundering), the teachers groups there have successfully opposed efforts to create school vouchers and other reform efforts.

For the NEA and AFT, along with other public sector unions, focusing on lobbying and campaigns actually works better for their cause than collective bargaining. Why? Because they no longer have to slog through negotiations with hundreds of districts. They can bring lobbying heft to the table, and also bring paid research as well. Given that most legislatures lack the massive research and analysis staffs found in Congress, unions can place themselves into the halls of statehouses as experts on education finance and teacher quality issues without breaking a sweat. Teachers unions have long ago mastered the art of lobbying and campaign finance to keep their positions as leading players in education; despite their weakening hold, they still have major influence.

Meanwhile it isn’t just the NEA and AFT that are opponents of efforts to overhaul teacher compensation and other school reforms. Suburban school districts have spent the past two decades opposing expansion of charter schools, and have been among the loudest foes of standards-and-accountability moves such as the No Child Left Behind Act. Many urban school districts have been unwilling to aggressively tackle their dysfunctional bureaucracies and embrace the kind of outsourcing efforts used to achieve efficiency in the private sector.

Essentially, abolishing collective bargaining will weaken NEA and AFT influence. It keeps the two unions from essentially sitting on both sides of the negotiating table. It’s worth doing. But it won’t solve all the systemic problems within American public education. Legislators need to be thoughtful about taking campaign dollars from the NEA and AFT (and the ultimate cost of accepting the cash). School districts need to get their operations in order and embrace innovative ways to improve education. Teachers union bosses and teachers who oppose reform need to stop carping that somehow they will lose all influence if collective bargaining no longer exists for their use.

And as for school reformers? Those in favor of banishing collective bargaining need to think carefully before arguing that abolishing it will fix what ails our schools. And those against it should realize that the moves Walker and others are making on this front would be helpful to their ultimate cause.

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Education Governance

Stepping Into the Hollywood Model: Atlanta and Fulton County

RiShawn Biddle

February 5, 2011 7:06 pm February 5, 2011

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For school reformers and defenders of traditional public education these days, the Atlanta metropolitan area is better-known for the testing scandal that has engulfed Atlanta Public Schools, revealed the district’s dysfunctional school governance, and led to Superintendent Beverly Hall’s fall from grace. The attention to that matter, however, obscures the path-breaking step being taken by Atlanta’s sister system, the Fulton County school district.

By mid-February, the district may end up ditching its traditional district model and becoming a system of charter schools. Taking advantage of a three-year-old state law that allows for traditional districts to break away from state laws governing teacher salaries, evaluations and class sizes, Fulton County plans to ditch most of its central administration and largely limit the school board to a supervisory role. The day-to-day operations of the district’s 89 schools currently under traditional management (stretched across the 13 cities and the county’s unincorporated areas outside of Atlanta) would fall into the hands of each school’s principals and parents in a manner similar to that of the district’s 12 charter schools.

Certainly a change in governance isn’t going to solve all the issues that Fulton County faces. Although the district’s five-year graduation rates (based on 8th grade enrollment) have increased from 75 percent (for the Class of 2001) to 81 percent (for the Class of 2006, the most complete data available), the district still faces some key achievement gaps. Just 47 percent of Fulton County’s Latino male freshmen in the original Class of 2006 graduated (versus 75 percent of their female peers), while only 66 percent of young black men graduated on time (versus 74 percent of young black women). There is also a high level of overdiagnosing learning disabilities, with 8 percent of Latino male students and 9 percent of young black men were diagnosed with learning disabilities (the rate for white males was just 5 percent). Twenty-seven schools — many of them in South Fulton past Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, but also some in the wealthier northern part of the county — were rated academically failing in 2010.

But by converting the schools into charters, Fulton County may be able to adapt new approaches to improving teaching, curricula and leadership — and ultimately, foster a culture of genius in all of its schools. One idea being bandied about is allowing for blended learning options that would feature online instruction. More importantly, the budgeting and resource allocation functions can move from central offices (where politics and collective bargaining agreements hold sway over school decisions) to schools, giving principals the ability to make decisions; it could even lead to a weighted student funding system in which dollars actually follow the student.

If the school board fully moves away from managing schools, it would even allow for greater school choice to be fostered; the school board would take on the role of charter school authorizers, bringing in high-quality charter operators into the county and offering greater choice. For poor and minority parents in South Fulton, greater options would be especially welcome.

What’s happening in Fulton County could offer Atlanta politicians some thoughts on what to do about Atlanta Public Schools (whose academic problems were chronicled by Dropout Nation even before the testing scandal erupted this year). One possibility lies with the city’s new mayor, Kasim Reed, following the path of mayors such as Richard Daley and Michael Bloomberg by taking control of the district. But that would mean convincing Fulton County’s legislative delegation (which can put a stranglehold on any reform effort, as they did during the 1990s with efforts by residents in what is now Sandy Springs to form their own city government), as well as working with the Republican-dominated legislature and new governor Nathan Deal (who is no exemplar on school reform). (By the way: Maureen Downey, the education commentator for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution argues against the idea). Another possibility would be to essentially convert the Atlanta district into a charter system as it is happening in Fulton County (and in eight other school systems in the Peach State), and relegating the school board (or the mayor) into an authorizer and regulator role.

Fulton County and Atlanta may find themselves on the path to the Hollywood Model of Education and the end of traditional district operation of schools. Which for the kids and parents, would not be a bad thing at all.

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At the State Level Education Governance teacher quality

Accountability? We Don’t Have Enough of It

RiShawn Biddle

January 29, 2011 5:38 pm January 29, 2011

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Your editor says little about a lot of news items these days largely because, in all honestly, given what really matters, those items are not worth discussing. Every argument about…

Your editor says little about a lot of news items these days largely because, in all honestly, given what really matters, those items are not worth discussing. Every argument about whether Finland is or isn’t an epitome of high-quality education doesn’t matter because Finland doesn’t resemble the United States in any meaningful way (and therefore, few lessons can be derived from it).

So I have little to directly say about the whole hullabaloo about Washington Post scribe Nick Anderson’s latest piece on No Child Left Behind. Anderson is a fine reporter (contrary to what Democrats for Education Reform political guru Charlie Barone may think right now), but Andy Rotherham and Sandy Kress rightly called him out for buying Fairfax County’s anti-No Child line (the one typically used by suburban districts that aren’t all that interested in improving how it educates poor and minority children). Anderson also doesn’t fully look at the fact that state laws allow for some gamesmanship on proficiency (the biggest problem with the law). Enough said.

What I will say is that Rotherham, Kress and Barone indirectly hit upon an issue everyone should discuss: The need for even greater, wide-ranging accountability in overhauling American public education — especially in the recruiting and training of teachers.

No Child has been the single-biggest advance in education policy, both at the federal level and among states and local governments, since the Defense Education Act of 1958. For the first time in the history of American public education, set clear goals for improving student achievement in reading and mathematics; it finally focused attention on using data in measuring teacher quality; it made it clear to suburban districts that they could no longer continue to commit educational malpractice against poor and minority children; and it focused American public education on achieving measurable results instead of damning kids to low expectations. Through its Adequate Yearly Progress measures, the low quality of education across the nation’s public schools — including urban districts and in suburbia — was exposed while it gave researchers the impetus to look at the nation’s high school graduation rates (and present in clear, stark terms the high school dropout crisis). Without No Child, there is no Race to the Top, no teacher quality reform movement, no discussion about value-added assessment and no real national focus on stemming achievement gaps.

But No Child is only the start of accountability and not the end. Besides the fact that No Child (or actually, the U.S. Department of Education’s implementation of AYP) has allowed for gamesmanship by states, the law also doesn’t hold fully hold accountable important elements in improving the quality of teaching, curricula and school operations. The Highly Qualified Teacher provision, for example, didn’t require the use of student test data in measuring teacher quality; it still focused on certification and other qualifications that have no positive correlation to student achievement. The definitions were also too wishy washy, meaning that the whole mess was quality-blind, allowing states and school districts to simply allow laggard teachers to keep their jobs at the expense of students and taxpayers alike. It took Race to the Top to fully push for the use of student test data in measuring teacher quality and bring quantifiable, quality-based definitions (and objective data) to the table.

Another area that No Child didn’t cover was university schools of education, which train all but a smattering of the nation’s teachers. Given the importance of recruiting and training teachers, this was a terrible oversight. One reason why it happened: Ed school quality was supposed to be governed through the reauthorized versions of the federal Higher Education Act, which requires states to hold teacher quality programs accountable, identify laggard schools, and assure the U.S. Department of Education that ed schools were meeting the needs of districts and teachers. But because it isn’t an element in the main law governing American public education, it has allowed ed schools to slip under the radar of accountability.

The results have been predictably terrible. As the National Council of Teacher Quality, the Center for American Progress and former Teachers College president Arthur Levine, have pointed out in numerous studies, the quality of teacher training in ed schools remains lackluster in the main. But this isn’t just the fault of ed schools alone.

As the Education Sector points out this week in its study of state regulation of ed schools, it is rare that state teacher licensing agencies — the departments that oversee ed school quality — shut down an ed school, even when its peers call it out for being a waste of student and federal dollars. Twenty-seven states have not identified an ed school program as being low performing within the past decade; this includes Colorado (which has been cited for its poor monitoring of ed schools). Twelve more states have only identified between one to five ed school programs as laggards. Just three states — New York, Ohio and Kansas — have actually gone so far as identifying 20 or more programs as being of low quality. Only two percent of all ed school programs have ever been cited as being ineffective; and in some cases, the states actually step in to keep the worst ed schools around even when they’ve lost accreditation.

Meanwhile the nonprofit that are supposed to oversee ed school accreditation — the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (and the groups whose merger formed it, the National Council for Accreditation in Teacher Education and TEAC) — also hasn’t stepped up to the plate. Eleven of the 18 laggard ed schools as identified by states still maintained their accreditation, according to the Education Sector report.

The reality is that, contrary to the views of defenders of traditional public education (and libertarian and conservative school reformers of an anti-No Child bent), there isn’t enough accountability — especially in the areas that count. Even AYP doesn’t cover such areas as the overuse of suspensions and expulsions or the overdiagnosis of learning disabilities (and the amount of time special ed students spend outside of regular classroom instruction). In short, those who complain that No Child is too prescriptive either don’t know what they are talking about or simply want to ignore reality.

What is needed is a wider form of accountability that accounts for teacher training and for other aspects of teacher quality. This includes requiring the use of Value-Added data in evaluating ed school programs; this can come naturally as states begin requiring the use of student test data in evaluating teacher performance and in the development of school data systems. Another solution lies in education governance reform: Moving ed school oversight (along with teacher licensing) to state education departments, where the responsibility rightfully belongs.

None of this will fully solve this aspect of the teacher quality problem; after all, the problem is also tied to the iron triangle relationship between state universities, teacher licensing agencies and teachers unions. But expanding accountability will at least shed the light needed to force even more reform. And it can’t come soon enough.

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At the State Level Education Governance Giving Parents Power This is Dropout Nation

Reform School Funding, End Zip Code Education

RiShawn Biddle

January 28, 2011 8:00 am January 28, 2011

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This week, we have seen poor parents fight fiercely to improve the quality of education for their children — and run up against institutional and political obstacles that should never…

This week, we have seen poor parents fight fiercely to improve the quality of education for their children — and run up against institutional and political obstacles that should never exist.

In Ohio, Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of violating the law by placing her two daughters in the relatively high-performing Copley-Fairlawn school district(where few of the black students drop out) instead of keeping them in the woeful Akron district (whose Balfanz rate for young black men and women, respectively, is 62 percent and 76 percent) in which her family resided. Her case has gotten national attention because few parents are ever convicted of what is laughably called tuition fraud, and because of her willingness to even risk prison to get her kids the high-quality education they deserve.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, East Orange resident Lisa Brice joined other parents to stare down state legislative Democrats and get them to approve a bill that would allow 40,000 poor kids a chance to escape the worst of the Garden State’s well-funded dropout factories. They face a tough battle thanks to the National Education Association affiliate — which needs a victory after Gov. Chris Christie has clubbed them senseless politically this past year — and school funding equity advocates (who demand that the state pour more money into districts covered by that state’s Abbott decision despite evidence that past spending increases haven’t improved student achievement).

Kelley and Lisa have taken different approaches, legally and otherwise, to improving education for their children. But they shouldn’t have to fight so hard in the first place. Asking children and their families to be shackled to dropout factories and failure mills is absolutely criminal. They should have the ability to escape those failure factories and attend any high quality school available to them. And we should reform how we fund education — both in the sourcing of those dollars and how they are packaged — in order to make choice a reality.

The philosophical reasons why defenders of traditional public education (and some centrist Democrat school reformers) oppose more-expansive school choice — from the belief that vouchers will lead to the end of public education as they prefer it (government-run and no private sector players) to the queasiness over funding parochial schools — is well-known. So is the general reason why suburbanites oppose school choice — because they have already exercised what they think is adequate choice by buying into their homes. These qualms, however, would have little staying power if not for the critical systemic problem in making school choice a reality: The hemming and hawing among states about taking over the full funding role that they need to undertake in order to make choice and other reforms a reality.

Thanks to decades of battles over equal funding of schools and efforts at property tax relief, states now provide the plurality of all school dollars, accounting for 48 percent of all school revenues nationwide (with Ohio providing a bit less — 45 percent — and New Jersey at the national average). Given that adequacy and equity remain key issues in education, and that property tax relief still remains a goal in many states, that percentage will increase. Replacing all local funding with state dollars would certainly begin improving equity in education if done the right way: Essentially turning the dollars into vouchers that follow every child to whatever school, public, private or parochial, they so choose. It would also spur the next steps in reform; districts can no longer use the argument that reforms will cost them in terms of local tax dollars as their justification.

Yet governors and legislators — especially those of a school reform orientation — haven’t fully embraced moving towards full state funding, even though it isn’t that hard to do politically. Part of the problem is that doing so can be fiscally difficult to do; increasing state income in exchange for reducing local property taxes — the common way states have used to take over education funding (as part of property tax relief efforts) — does mean funding education with a less-stable source of revenue. That problem, however, can be mitigated by financing education with a basket of different revenue sources. The bigger problem is political will. The fact that some still believe in the myth of local control despite evidence that states dominate education policymaking also means that they believe that education funding should also be a local matter. Teachers unions and suburban school districts also oppose a state takeover of education funding because it will lead to some logical steps, including weighted student funding formulas that will lead to the creation of school vouchers.

This stalemate over the direction of education funding has consequences. Districts can justify opposition to school choice; after all, they can oppose school choice because they still collect local property tax dollars and parents outside their boundaries don’t provide those funds (even though they are financing the same schools through their state income taxes). At the same time, the districts can even deny choice to the children they are supposed to serve by continuing zoned school policies. All children no matter their economic status — but especially those from poor families such as the kin of Kelley and Lisa — pay the price.

The only way school choice can become a reality is by overhauling school funding. This means state governments must pick up the tab, and ensure that funding follows children by ditching program-based formulas. Taking these steps will ultimately open up opportunities for improving the educational destinies of the children of Kelley and Lisa. And improve opportunities for all children.

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At the State Level Education Governance

Why Bother with State Education Governance?

RiShawn Biddle

January 23, 2011 12:15 am January 23, 2011

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This is the statement California Gov. Jerry Brown made earlier this month as he proceeded to get rid of the Golden State’s (admittedly useless) secretary of education job, appointing seven…

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press

This is the statement California Gov. Jerry Brown made earlier this month as he proceeded to get rid of the Golden State’s (admittedly useless) secretary of education job, appointing seven new members to the state board of education (and ousting in the process, Ben Austin and Ted Mitchell, the two school reform-minded folks already in place). And it is the wrong statement to make given that he will now have to figure out how to cut $12 billion in cuts to the state budget (much of which must come from education).

The question Brown should have asked was this: Why do we continue to have a byzantine structure of governing California’s schools and teacher pensions in 2011? This should also be the question every governor in every other state should ask as they begin dealing with $140 billion in budget shortfalls, $600 billion in long-term pension deficits and unfunded retiree health, the need to jump-start (or continue) reforms of their public school systems and any effort to expand parent power and school choice. When it comes to school reform, the structure of school systems can be as much a culprit for what doesn’t happen as it can be a reason for why tough action can happen swiftly.

For most of the nation’s incoming reform-minded governors and for those who reformers already in governor’s mansions, the structure of school governance in their respective states will be as major an impediment to their efforts as the opposition of teachers union affiliates and school boards. All but seven states allow their governors to wield line-item veto powers when it comes to budgets, giving them some tools in controlling state education spending. But in most states, the real authority over schools lies in an array of state boards of education, elected superintendents, teacher licensing boards and other authorities. Although just 14 states have elected school superintendents, only 12 states allow for the governor to appoint chief state school officers; and only 33 governors have the power to appoint the majority or all of the members of state boards of education. This means that in many cases, the governors must either hope for state boards of education to appoint reform-minded education czars or the public will care enough about education to elect the right people to chief school officer (and state board of education) posts.

The byzantine structure of education governance is mostly a legacy of the efforts of political reformers during the Progressive Era of the 2oth century to guard against centralized power and to isolate education from the perceived threat of politics, The idea was simple: Diffuse power among a group of players and therefore, folks can focus on what is perceived to be the common good for students (and keep cronyism to a minimum). But the problem is that it has never really worked. Education has always been in the crosshairs of politics largely because it is government-funded; the fact that for most of the past two centuries, education has been more about inculcating a Unitarian-influenced civic religion (not to mention the influence over its operations by teachers unions for most of the past six decades) also meant that the separation of politics from schooling was destined to fail.

As a result, education governance at the state level is a shambles. Competing bureaucracies battle to control their respective budgets and justify their existence; for example, teacher licensing agencies continue to exist in many states in spite of the fact that their teacher certification and ed school oversight operations should fall under state education departments. Policymaking over such matters as simply setting cut scores on standardized tests end up in different bodies instead of in a unified outfit. And the results can be seen in muddied policies, turf-battles over policymaking, and stalled efforts on any sort of reform (including anything involving developing school data systems).

California stands out as the ultimate example of wasteful educational governance. A state education superintendent (and the department of education the office oversees) and the state board of education remains, as does the Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT), which oversees school finance and manages one of the state’s school data systems, the state’s teacher certification agency, and the 58 county-based departments of education that handle services to the state’s school districts. (This kudzu doesn’t include the boards for the state’s three university and community college systems, the boards for the state’s 72 community college districts, and the faculty senates that share governance with each of the University of California and California State campus administrators.)

What has resulted for the state can be seen in the fact that the state’s school data systems remain a shambles; the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (a subject of my reporting) remains a work in progress nearly a decade after the state began working on it. Save for a McKinsey report and a new online too l for teachers, efforts to tie state K-12 data to college data in order to form a P-16 system is still in slow motion.

Meanwhile the governance structure has simply done little more than slow efforts to actually push any meaningful school reform. Brown’s predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had to go around the California legislature and the state’s school superintendent to push for unsuccessful efforts to reform tenure. Arnold’s own battles with the (now-former) superintendent, Jack O’Connell, also meant that there was little that could be done to come up with a unified reform strategy. The fact that the Golden State has made some major advances in school reform — including the passage of the Parent Trigger law and the tying of teacher performance and student test data — has less to do with any work by players in state education governance than with the effort of Schwarzenegger, and the state legislature to finally get together to take advantage of federal Race to the Top funding.

Unfortunately, this is typical in all but a few states. Governors who don’t have a governance structure that places education under their control will struggle to make things happen. Occasionally, as seen in the case of George W. Bush during his time as Governor of Texas and Mitch Daniels in Indiana, the governor can overcome the byzantine structures. But that is because in most cases, the conditions for reform are already in place. The efforts in Texas began with Bush’s predecessor, Anne Richards; while in Indiana, the work began with now-former Commissioner of Higher Education Stan Jones and an education roundtable dominated by the state’s reform-minded chamber of commerce that went around the status quo-minded elected school superintendent of the time, Suellen Reed.

The reality is that the most-successful school reform-minded governors are ones who either have strong control of the education governance structure (Tennessee under Lamar Alexander is one example) or have enough clout and appointment power to actually make things happen (as in the case Florida governors Lawton Chiles and Jeb Bush). But in an age of budget-cutting and the need to improve the quality of education for all kids, it isn’t enough to just cultivate clout. Especially when it comes to budgets, the players in education can work strongly to complicate any effort to either make cuts or to pass reforms in teacher compensation and school practices that can save dollars.

So governors, reform-minded or not, will have to take steps to get educational governance into their full control. Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire is taking an imperfect step with her own proposal to consolidate the state’s education agencies into one organization. Other governors will have to go even further by campaigning against the election of school superintendents, putting state pension boards under education department oversight (since the agencies are already fiduciaries) and even abolishing boards of education (which often seem to be as useless as the local school boards they oversee). These consolidations would both save some money and also allow for governors to start targeting the more-expensive aspects of education, including state laws and regulations that govern collective bargaining, and pushing for the end of school districts( and the fostering of the Hollywood Model of Education that will devolve school decision-making to the schools and parents).

While Brown’s move helped save a few pennies, it didn’t do anything to make education governance and decision-making any better-focused or more efficient. He needs to take a step back and actually campaign for an end to California’s ridiculous school governance structure. And the same is true for his fellow governors in similar governance predicaments.

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