History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
The California Recession: What Do School Principals See?
- 09-23-2009
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By UCLA/IDEA Staff
Themes in the News for the week of February 1-5, 2010
A new report by UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (UCLA IDEA) adds a new perspective to California’s public education troubles. For IDEA’s annual California Educational Opportunity Report (“Educational Opportunities in Hard Times”) researchers interviewed 87 school principals of diverse schools across the state. The San Francisco Chronicle[i] said of the study “. . .[it]offers a timely look through the eyes of principals at what the economic upheaval has meant for schools.”
No one could be surprised by the study’s findings. Each day the media bring new stories of deferred textbook purchases, teacher layoffs, class size increases, erosion of public services, loss of family income, and so forth. However, the principals in the IDEA survey provide a unique and authoritative perspective from inside their schools of the constraints on children’s opportunities to learn and teachers’ capacity to teach.
Most principals interviewed said they had increased class sizes and severely cut or eliminated summer school programs. Schools in low-income communities were hit hardest by budget cuts. “More than 66 percent of principals in high-poverty schools, for example, reported teacher layoffs compared with 15 percent in schools where students primarily come from middle- or upper-income families” (San Francisco Chronicle). “It's the bleakest I've ever seen," said one Los Angeles County school principal, who, like others in the principals survey, participated anonymously” (Los Angeles Times).
The principals spoke of the extraordinary, even desperate, measures necessary to meet students’ needs. “The recession has unleashed an epidemic of student hunger, led some teachers to take in homeless students and decreased access to learning materials…” (Contra Costa Times). The study found that “67 percent [of principals interviewed] reported growing housing insecurity, which includes homelessness, families moving in together and families moving away for economic reasons” (San Jose Mercury News).
IDEA director John Rogers said that the recession and state budget crisis has undermined recent academic gains and widened the disparity between schools in rich and poor communities. “"It's taken California several steps backward on the road to improvement," Rogers said. "It's also harmed the long-term prospects for California to rebuild a quality education system” (San Jose Mercury News). Educators are struggling to keep their core academic programs intact. Atwater Elementary School superintendent Melinda Hennes said, "We are down to baseline curriculum and classroom supplies. It used to be we were worried about our arts program being cut, but now cuts are beginning to grow" (Merced Sun-Star).
Californians seem to recognize the need to increase their support for schools—even at some sacrifice by taxpayers. A report this week published by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found that “two-thirds of Californians would pay higher taxes to avoid cuts in K–12 funding” (PPIC). “Nearly six in 10 Californians want to protect public schools and view that funding as more important than spending on health and human services, higher education and prisons. Two in three adults say they would be willing to pay higher taxes to maintain current levels of school funding” (Los Angeles Times).
Such immediate infusion of funding is a crucial stopgap. And yet, the IDEA report points to California’s need for fundamental school-finance reforms that look beyond the current fiscal crisis. Without schools’ adequate and predictable funding, children’s education—and their corresponding lifelong opportunities—will be subject to the peaks and valleys of economic trends and political expediencies.
A broader set of analyses of educational conditions and outcomes, including reports on each California legislative district and reports on each public high school and middle school in the state, can be found online at www.edopp.org.
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