(January 19, 2010) California Chamber of Commerce-supported school reform legislation that also helps California compete for federal education funding has been signed into law.

After several months of debate, the Senate, led by President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Senate Education Committee Chair Gloria Romero (D-East Los Angeles), legislators developed legislation to comprehensively address the federal incentive grants offered as part of President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative.

Faced with a tight deadline, legislators moved the bills swiftly through both houses of the Legislature last week and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed them on January 7.

State Reforms

Together, SBX5 1 (Steinberg) and SBX5 4 (Romero) will:

• Allow districts to tie teacher and administrator evaluations to student performance if allowed by collective bargaining agreements.
• Require the governing board of a school district to implement one of four interventions set forth in federal Race to the Top legislation if one of its schools has been identified as persistently low-achieving.
• Require the state to participate in the Common Core State Standards Initiative consortium sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, or other interstate collaboration efforts.
• Establish a longitudinal data system(s) to aid in educational reform efforts at all levels of government.
• Empower parents to bring meaningful reform to persistently failing schools by requiring districts to take drastic steps to improve persistently failing campuses when more than 50 percent of parents served by that school sign a petition demanding action (limited to 75 schools statewide).
• Allow parents of students in 1,000 of the state’s low-achieving schools, as identified annually by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, to apply for a transfer to a school in another district.
• Establish the Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Career Technical Education Educator Credentialing Program to increase the number of highly qualified teachers in these critical fields.

Better Opportunities

The CalChamber, one of many groups in favor of strengthening the  state’s education system, supported both bills, including the more controversial “parent-trigger” and “open-enrollment” provisions, which will help make school reform a more democratic process and provide better opportunities for the state’s most under-served student populations.

Race to the Top

President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative was adopted as part of the February 2009 economic stimulus legislation.

The legislation used competitive grants to encourage states to develop policies in four areas:

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around the lowest-achievingschools.

Staff Contact: Mira Guertin