John Mockler on the relevance of Prop 98

11-23-2010

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

This year, the Legislature suspended Proposition 98 because revenues actually increased, and lawmakers and the governor didn’t want to pay K-12 schools and community colleges all that they were legally owed. Next year, they can meet the Prop 98 minimum while slashing at least $2 billion for K-12 education. Is Prop 98 still useful – or is it working to schools’ disadvantage? Is there something better? I posed these and other questions to John Mockler, the architect of Prop 98 and the man who best knows its arcane details (he may be the only one). Mockler is president of John B. Mockler and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in education policy and finance. He’s the former executive director of the California State Board of Education in the Davis administration and served as interim secretary of education. For more than three decades, he has worked in both the public and private sectors, including a decade working for the Legislature on education funding and educational achievement. What follows is a partial transcript of our conversation (my clarifications are in italics). (more…)

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John Mockler on the relevance of Prop 98

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