A Brighter View of K-12 Education in California?

In contrast to the pessimistic (or, some might argue, realistic) view of K–12 education in California cited in last week's post, Michael Grunwald's "Despite Its Woes, California's Dream Still Lives" in Time presents a much brighter view of California's situation.

Despite current setbacks, Grunwald avers, California's position on "the cutting edge of the American future—economically, environmentally, demographically, culturally and maybe politically" secures its status as "a dream state." He quotes genomic pioneer J. Craig Venter, who calls California "the most dynamic place for change on earth."

Grunwald points out that the law school at the University of California, Irvine, opened this semester and "was instantly more selective than Harvard or Yale." Although he mentions the free tuition, he doesn't note that it likely had more to do with the school's selectivity than anything else.

Virtually buried among his rosy assertions and facts is Grunwald's acknowledgment, toward the end of the article, that California's public schools "have been deteriorating for years" and that, along with expensive housing, they "pose a real obstacle to the dream of upward mobility." He also concedes that the state's recent sharp cutbacks have hit education especially hard. "Fortunately," he optimistically concludes, "help may be on the way" in the form of political reforms and potential "forward-thinking" successors to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So which view of the current state of K–12 education in California is correct—Grunwald's in Time or Judis's in The New Republic? Or do both positions, taken together, present the most realistic assessment of and prognosis for education in the Golden State?

Demise of K-12 Education in California?

Coincidentally, both The New Republic and Time have major articles on California this week. In the former, John B. Judis paints a dark picture of K–12 education in the state. His fact-filled and regretfully pessimistic "End State: Is California Finished?" notes that although in the 1960s California's schools were considered "among the best," with the fifth-highest spending per student and approximately half the state's high school graduates going on to college, at this point California's educational system has "fallen into disrepair."

Several dire statistics support his conclusion, including:

• In 2007, California eighth graders were forty-eighth among 50 states and the District of Columbia in reading and forty-fifth in math on the Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress tests;
• California's spending per pupil is thirtieth among states;
• The state is forty-ninth in student-teacher ratios;
• California ranks fifty-first in guidance counselors and libraries.

Taking a broad view of the state's economic and political situations, Judis concludes that "California's poor performance since the 1960s may not have been due to an influx of bad teachers, or the rise of teachers' unions, but to the growth of the state's immigrant population after the 1965 federal legislation on immigration opened the gates."

He sees little hope for the state, whose best days seem long gone and unlikely to return. Yet despite everything, for many the California dream is as alive as ever, and next week we'll take a look at a very different take on the Golden State.

The Price of Too Much Homework

One of the most worrisome trends in today's schools is the assigning of too much homework. Although what constitutes "too much" varies from child to child (and parent to parent), a good rule of thumb is that if a student has little or no time for outside activities and appears continually stressed, the homework load is too great.

An illuminating book published some time ago by Stanford lecturer Denise Pope, "Doing School": How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, depicts just how great a toll the burden of too much homework can take. Pope spent a year following the lives of five students at an affluent public high school in California. The pressure of too little time and need for top-notch grades severely compromised both the students' love of learning and the quality of their lives, not only during high school but in the years after graduation. Other disturbing findings included health problems and rampant ethical transgressions such as cheating and "playing" the system.

Pope went on to implement the Stanford Stressed-Out Students (SOS) project—now expanded and renamed as Challenge Success—aimed at educating schools and parents about the consequences of too much pressure and competition and need for a broader vision of what constitutes "success."

Challenge Success provides conferences, workshops, and other ways for educators and parents to become involved in helping to effect much-needed change. Perhaps most important, it offers hope that reform is possible—and evidence that, at least in some schools, it has already begun.

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