From the SacBee comes this fascinating tale of the frightening squabbles between California's State Board of Education and Bonnie Reiss, the senior adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:
The disaffected board members have told friends that Reiss, an entertainment lawyer with Kennedy family connections, knows little about education - or about government - and because she has too much on her plate, she doesn't have time to learn. (The governor's education secretary, ex-Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles, another novice on state education policy, is often out of the loop altogether.)
For the frustrated board members, there have already been worrisome consequences. One is a provision in the new state budget specifically exempting some $30 million in textbooks and other new instructional materials for English language learners (ELL) from review by the state Curriculum Commission. It's the kind of policy change that has no business in the budget act.
By itself it's no big deal. But because it opens a loophole in the state's curricular standards and, in the board's view, could easily be the start both of watered-down standards and of curricular resegregation of minority students, it's something that encroaches on its authority and that it very much opposes.
Also on the table is a bill that would place the authority for deciding curriculum standards in the hands of the elected state superintendent of public instruction, instead of the board - and subject to the lobbying of the teachers' unions.
Board members are meeting with the Governator today. This story ought to be interesting.
Posted by kswygert at August 25, 2004 02:38 PM