After sharply criticizing Governor Gavin Newsom’s unaccountable education spending proposals, I was happily surprised to see my criticisms vindicated in a recent court settlement that will force the state to finally demonstrate that its spending programs actually produce positive outcomes for students.
In Governor Newsom’s proposed 2024-25 budget, he included billions of dollars to address the learning loss of children that were caused in significant part by his policies that forced public schools in California to remain closed longer than in most other states.
In a January article for PRI’s Right by the Bay blog, I wrote that Newsom’s multi-billion-dollar learning-loss spending proposal was inherently defective because it contained no “student outcome measurements and targets.” I asked how would Californians know if the billions he seeks to spend is paying off?
Specifically, I asked, “If one in four eighth graders are proficient in math today, then should one in two eighth graders be proficient in math in five years after spending billions of tax dollars to help them recover lost learning?”
I lamented, “Thus, for all the spending, Californians will never know if they received any bang for their taxpayer buck.”
However, for once, my lamentation was actually premature.
Just a few weeks after I wrote that article, the state settled a lawsuit, Cayla J. v. the State of California, et al, involving learning-loss funds. According to the publication EdSource, the state agreed to “pursue statutory changes that would commit districts and schools to measure and report on student progress using proven strategies.”
The settlement covers a minimum of $2 billion in state learning-loss funds, “would limit funding to the lowest performing student groups” and would require “strategies backed by evidence that they are effective.”
Specifically, reported EdSource, “Districts would create a plan for the money, which is not currently required, and track the outcome of at least one strategy over the following three years.” [emphasis added]
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a number of Oakland and Los Angeles students and charged that the state failed to deliver quality education to underserved students.
In response, the California Department of Education claimed that a huge largesse of state and federal dollars flowed into school districts to address distance-learning issues and learning loss.
However, Mark Rosenbaum, the attorney for the student plaintiffs, told EdSource: “The state cannot just write big checks and then say, ‘We’re not paying attention to what happens here.’ The buck stops with the state. The state’s duty is to ensure that kids get basic educational equality and that the gaps between the haves and have-nots do not widen.”
UCLA education professor Lucrecia Santibanez, an expert witness for the plaintiffs, wrote, “Data collection was minimal to non-existent, and monitoring of the learning and community plans was superficial at best.” In other words, there was no empirical accountability in the state and district spending programs.
The settlement also calls for encouraging school districts to work with community-based organizations “with a track record of success.”
For example, when their public school failed to deliver quality education during the pandemic, several of the Oakland student plaintiffs resorted to tutoring from the non-profit Oakland REACH, which is known for its use of evidence-based instruction such as phonics-based reading.
The settlement will open the way for districts to partner with effective groups like Oakland REACH.
While the settlement’s provisions regarding accountability for student outcomes is heartening, it is important to remember that these provisions only apply to a small part of the state education budget.
Newsom’s 2024-25 budget proposal includes $109 billion in state spending on K-12 education. Since the settlement affects only about $2 billion of that total, there remains little accountability for student outcomes in most state education programs.
Thus, the settlement’s emphasis on outcome accountability should be the lens through which the rest of education spending in California is viewed.
Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. He is the author of an upcoming PRI book on the collapse of academic rigor in America’s schools.
