Where Have All the Good Schools Gone?

Alan S. Miller

February 13, 2005

When Barbara and I moved to the Bay Area in 1965, we chose to live in Marin because of the high quality of the public schools.

“California schools are now near the bottom of the quality standard listing in almost every category.”

We understood that not only the welfare of our children but the overall wellbeing of the nation depended to a very large degree on the character of our educational system.

California schools then ranked high overall in comparison to the rest of the nation. Marin, however, was always something very special. We still do relatively well within the state school complex.

But our state has now plunged to 48th in national rankings. A Rand Corporation study shows that only Mississippi and Louisiana have poorer schools overall than does California.

California schools are now near the bottom of the quality standard listing in almost every category. Our scores on standardized tests are below average as are per pupil expenditures and teacher salaries. Drop out rates—especially in inner city and rural areas—are a tragedy.

And things are not getting better. If Governor Schwartzenegger’s budget priorities for 2005 take effect, we may well be at the very bottom of the list within a few years.

How could this possibly have happened? How could it be that the citizens of California have allowed special interests and people seemingly indifferent to the quality of life in our state make the decisions about funding our schools? There are a host of reasons for our decline into the academic abyss. Proposition 13 began the downward spiral by providing limited property tax revenues to the school system.

The state exacerbated the problem by intercepting local revenues to help cover its own deficit. Non-funded mandates from the federal government have forced the state to pay for often unnecessary programs. There are many other contributing factors in the decline.

Even so, how can politicians like our governor have the temerity and the arrogance to say, as he did, on January 10,

“Of course we would like to spend much more money on ... education, but the fact is that’s all the money we have.”

Of course, that is not true. It is not all the money we have. It is only the amount of money we have so long as we continue to provide every possible favor to the traditional special class interests in the state and the large political contributors.

The governor also said:

“There is great virtue in providing services to the people, but it is also virtuous to be wise and responsible with the hard earned money people paid to the state in taxes.”

Sometimes I am astounded at the historical ignorance of so many “no new taxes for anything” advocates. Do they not remember that this nation was structured on the assumption that, at least to some degree, social contracts between the well to do and the poor are the only things that finally keep the society from descending into chaos?

How dare this governor preach to us about the “virtue in providing services to the people” when he seems neither to comprehend the efforts this nation has made to share the burdens of citizenship nor to care about the consequences to our children and the poor of his fiscal policies.

Many of us also seem to ignore the fact that the question of national security is directly related to the quality of our schools. So, in the name of security, we spend millions to body search old ladies at airports and check people’s library records and pay columnists to tout the President’s record and buy sophisticated anti-terrorist hardware for isolated rural sectors.

All the while, we ignore the consequences to our real security by allowing our schools to sink to levels that would not be tolerated in most developed nations. Do the governor and the anti-tax people even comprehend what it means to the state to allow masses of ill-educated young people to flood the streets and the state’s unemployment and welfare rolls every year?

The great American ethicist John Rawls, in his classic study, A Theory of Justice, lays down a kind of moral plumb line. He notes that, of course, there has never in the history of nations been a society where there has been anything approximating an equal distribution of the goods of the society.

There are always rich and poor, good schools and bad, with routine access to quality goods and services for some that are denied to the majority of the people.

But the time comes, says Rawls, when a society that presumes to be civilized must make the decision to rearrange state policy so that increased assistance can go to those who are the least advantaged.

The leaders of any just society must be prepared to say to the disadvantaged, “No, you may never have what we have, but we contract with you to at least provide good schools and health care and the basic amenities needed for a just and decent life.” That is not happening in California, in any sector of the society.

In the last budget year, the governor made a deal with school authorities to pare $2 billion from funds guaranteed by Proposition 98 in exchange for guarantees to make up the difference this year and next. Having now broken that promise, those funds will now be re-directed to help solve the overall state budget crisis.

Either we continue on the downward slope to minimum standards in our schools and at all levels of social services or we make a new social contract that will at least try to take care of the real needs of our people.

That contract is not difficult to figure out. It simply requires more care in budgeting and an agreement to both redirect and increase state revenues by instituting a truly progressive system of taxation where everyone finally pays their fair share of the costs of a civilized society.

We assume that because we live in Marin, we will always be okay. And thus far in the fight for educational dollars we have done pretty well. Our school districts have by and large continued the struggle for excellence in education.

Hopefully we will be able to continue to take care of our own kids. But the combination of occasional local taxpayer reluctance to provide the tools our teachers need and the lessened priority for education at the state level are even now casting a shadow over our Marin schools.

It’ll be sad for all of us if the time comes when K-12 in Marin shows the academic erosion so evident in other places. Cracks are already apparent in some traditional programs in art and music and science.

But things are much worse on the state level. We’ll muddle through in Marin, but our school system statewide is approaching a point of no return. We are all in this together and it’s time to do something about it now!

Copyright © 2005 Alan S. Miller
Last updated: March 20, 2005