UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access

Ortiz begins with research showing that safe, healthy, and uncrowded school facilities are a basic ingredient of a good educational program. When teachers work in well-designed and highly functional school buildings, they are able to be more effective than when they must teach in inadequate facilities. Ortiz sets these findings against the evidence that a high proportion of California’s educational facilities are inadequate because they are crowded, old, and in need of repair and modernization. She finds that pressures from increased enrollment in the state due to demographic changes and class size reduction, an average age of the state’s school buildings of over 25 years, and the high cost of facilities have all contributed to the current inadequacies. However, the State’s responses to the many problems with educational facilities have been severely limited by flaws in policies establishing the state’s relationships with local districts with regard to funding, inventory, and oversight of educational facilities. The State has failed to establish a system of state financing to ensure that funds are available to and used by districts with schools in the poorest conditions. It has failed to promulgate minimum standards for school facility conditions and maintenance, develop systematic ways of monitoring conditions in schools throughout the state, or maintain effective investigation and correction processes when serious deficiencies are reported.

Timar examines the institutional framework for California’s educational governance from historical and contemporary perspectives. While the Court has affirmed the state’s responsibility for the quality of educational services in schools, the state has delegated to schools the responsibility for delivery of educational services. The conditions alleged in the Williams case raise concerns about the capacity of this governance structure to provide California’s students with an adequate and equal education. Consequently, the question that frames this study is how do state structures and policies support or constrain the capacity of schools to deliver an adequate and equal education. Specifically, the paper addresses the following questions: Who is responsible for ensuring that schools have adequate resources? What means are available to determine if schools’ curriculum, personnel, facilities, and instructional materials are inadequate? What means exist for determining if a school is performing satisfactorily? What means exist for remedying deficiencies in schools? The paper’s major theme is that the irrationality, incoherence, and limited efficacy of California’s increasingly state-controlled system of governance are major contributing factors to the substandard conditions in many California schools.

Gandara and Rumberger investigate the extent to which California’s English Learners—one-fourth of the state’s public school population—have access to the teachers, instructional materials, and facilities that will enable them to succeed in an English-only, standards-based policy system in which they must learn and compete for grade-to-grade promotion and high school graduation along side (and on the same terms as) their English speaking peers. Gandara and Rumberger conclude that that these students receive a substantially inequitable education vis-à-vis their English-speaking peers, even when those peers are similarly economically disadvantaged. They demonstrate that California has failed in its duty to guarantee that EL students have the teachers, the curriculum, the instruction, the assessment, and the support services they need to achieve meaningful access to the same academic content as native English speaking students. Furthermore, when the state has become aware of specific substandard learning conditions for English Learners it has failed to act effectively to correct these problems. Furthermore, with an ill planned class size reduction program and the poorly articulated implementation of Proposition 227, the state has worsened the learning conditions for these students.

Grubb and Goe examine California’s funding policies through the lenses of established approaches to school finance and the “new” school finance perspective. They draw upon historical evidence, empirical research on school funding, and analyses of policies in other states. They find that while California has made some progress in equalizing funding across districts (largely through litigation and legislation), significant disparities remain. Additionally, the state’s use of categorical funding reduces flexibility, and creates a finance system unresponsive to particular school needs. The state’s funding decisions are often uncoordinated; they are usually made in isolation from other policy decisions and without regard to instructional conditions in classrooms. Consequently, funding policy changes meant to bring improvement are often undermined by school conditions that are not taken into account. In contrast, Grubb and Goe argue that California should adopt a “new” school finance perspective that allows educators and policy makers to determine effective practices and resources at the local level. Funds can then be allotted to these instruments according to their effectiveness. The Williams Case offers an important opportunity to reconceptualize these questions, since its focus of attention is the level of educational opportunities actually experienced by students.

About 6% of California’s students attend schools that operate on a multi-track calendar known as Concept 6. On this calendar, three tracks rotate throughout the school year, with two tracks in session at any given time and a third on vacation. This results in the school year being broken up into separate blocks by two two-month long vacations, which occur at different times for different tracks. This calendar provides for the maximum enrollment given a school’s existing space. However, students who attend schools operating on the Concept 6 calendar suffer several clear disadvantages. These schools remain large, even with the implementation of this calendar. Students at Concept 6 schools also lose instructional time, since they have fewer days of school compared to other students, fewer nights for teachers to assign homework, and delays due to the need to review material at the beginning of each block of instruction. Furthermore, because of uneven distribution of curriculum across the different tracks, students have limited access to courses (including Advanced Placement courses) and specialized programs; the ill-timed breaks mean students have less access to extra-curricular activities. Students in Concept 6 schools have poorer academic performance than their peers in other schools. Likewise, busing seeks to address the negative effects of overcrowding, but creates inequities of its own. Students who are bused to school due to overcrowding suffer several disadvantages, including reduced parental involvement, an incentive to skip kindergarten (to avoid having to ride the bus), limited access to after-school programs, and poorer academic performance. Overall, students who attend schools on the Concept 6 calendar, as well as students who are bused to relieve overcrowding, receive a significantly lower quality education than that provided to the overwhelming majority of students in California.

Drawing on research in Oakland, California over a twenty-year period, Noguera considers how poverty and racial isolation have contributed to the problems confronted by schools in that district and other inner-city communities around the state. He illuminates the factors that hinder the development of social capital in low-income communities, and, in doing so, demonstrates why local control does not make it easier for school systems to address the academic needs of poor students. The wide variation in the ability of different communities to generate revenue and other support for schools at the local level creates inequalities in the learning conditions and opportunities that schools provide students. The design of the state’s public education system exacerbates these inequities. Specifically, the state’s current approaches to local control make it possible for advantaged parents and communities with a vested interest in the affairs of public schools to monitor conditions in their schools. However, this form of local control is inadequate as a mechanism for holding schools accountable in high poverty areas. Noguera concludes that in order to improve reform efforts and policy implementation, the state must enact measures to mitigate the effects of poverty and racial isolation. Rather than presuming that all schools can be treated the same, the state must develop strategies to build the social capital of parents and cultivate the civic capacity of communities in low-income areas. Without such measures, local control will remain little more than a guise through which the State can shirk its responsibility for insuring that all students have access to quality education.

This report synthesizes the findings of a set of expert reports analyzing the plaintiffs’ claims in Williams v. State of California, and it presents the implications of those reports for changes in state policy and practice. It examines California students’ access to three basic requirements for educational quality and opportunity: qualified teachers; adequate textbooks and other relevant instructional materials; and clean, safe, and educationally appropriate facilities. It reviews the role of these resources and conditions in providing or limiting access to students’ opportunities for achievement, and, more specifically, it places the availability of these basic requirements in the context of California’s current standards-based education policies. This report considers both the overall availability of these essential conditions to California students and patterns in their distribution among schools serving different student groups. This synthesis also supplements the material in the expert reports with information from documents produced by the California Department of Education (CDE) and other State agencies, information generated by California schools and districts, and reports of independent organizations. Finally, it assesses the past performance of state education policies and officials in providing California’s students with the educational essentials they require, and suggests policy alternatives that would bring considerable improvement.

Rogers explores the role of parents, ordinary citizens, and local school boards in preventing or detecting and thus helping to correct substandard conditions in California’s schools. California has constructed an elaborate accountability system for insuring school quality and promoting school improvement that includes substantial references to parent participation. Rogers seeks to make sense of the State’s commitment to and practice of engaging parents in its accountability system. It answers the following questions: Does the State of California offer a clear vision of how parents can help insure that their children’s schools offer the full range of learning opportunities promised by the State? What conditions are necessary for parents to play such a role? Does the State provide for these conditions? Rogers’ offers a four-part analysis. He first considers the meaning of parent involvement in educational accountability, focusing on the role of parents in accessing, contributing to, and acting upon information about students’ opportunity to learn and school quality. Second, Rogers draws on a wide array of State policies on parent involvement in public school accountability and school improvement to lay out a comprehensive overview of the State’s commitment to parent participation in educational accountability. Third, he uses empirical evidence from two case studies to assess whether California provides parents with the opportunities that its own framework claims to provide. Fourth, building upon the State of California’s own vision of parent participation in accountability, Rogers points to the requirements of an educational accountability system that allows parents to play a meaningful role in insuring safe and quality learning conditions for all students.

Michelle Fine examines how facilities’ problems, exposure to high levels of under-credentialed teachers, substantial teacher turnover, and inadequate books and materials produce adverse psychological and academic effects on children and adolescents attending schools with these characteristics. Using multiple methods of data collection across a diverse sample of elementary, middle school, high school, and college youth, Fine uses the voices of students to expose the adverse consequences of substandard schooling. She reveals that schools are not neutral institutions through which students pass without being affected. Indeed, the conditions in the schools that are the subject of Williams v. California have psychological, academic, and ultimately economic consequences that substantially worsen already existing social inequities. Despite the fact that poor and working class youth are asking for clean and safe school environments, quality educators, and rigorous instruction, the evidence suggests that the more years they spend in their schools, the more shame, anger, and mistrust they develop, and the more their engagement declines. Fine concludes that these schools are educating low-income youth and youth of color away from academic mastery and democracy and toward academic ignorance and civic alienation.

Koski and Weiss examine California’s educational content standards and related high-stakes accountability measures. They pose the following questions 1) Are higher content standards and stiffer accountability enough to ensure that all children achieve at high levels? 2) Can we be sure that all California students and schools—particularly those in low-income minority communities—enjoy the necessary support, conditions, and resources to succeed? Koski and Weiss answer these questions with an in-depth analysis of California’s K-12 standards and other related state policies, looking specifically at the minimum level of resources and conditions required for students to meet the state’s standards. Their analysis makes clear that California’s standards-based reform strategy and accountability scheme require the provision of basic educational tools, including teachers with particular knowledge and skills and appropriate instructional materials and facilities. However, the state’s policies do not address these requirements explicitly. No standards or accountability mechanisms currently exist to ensure that all children in California have the educational conditions and resources necessary to achieve at the high levels prescribed by the state. Koski and Weiss conclude that the state must analyze its curriculum frameworks and content standards systematically to create parallel standards that delineate the minimum educational resources and conditions required at each grade level for all students to have an adequate opportunity to learn the state’s standards.