Does crowning California’s governor the education czar mean academic results will improve?

In late June, after only a few minutes of discussion, both houses of the Legislature completely overhauled how California manages the nation’s largest public school system and its nearly 6 million students.

The votes for Assembly Bill 181 — 21-4 in the Senate and 52-4 in the Assembly — reflected a bipartisan consensus, rare for major issues, that the system has been failing California’s children. The votes were based on an implicit, perhaps even desperate, hope that streamlining administration might raise the state’s mediocre levels of academic achievement.

The measure demotes the elected state superintendent of schools from the head of the state Department of Education to a member of the state school board and replaces the superintendent with an “education commissioner” appointed by the governor.

Assemblywoman Darshana Patel, a San Diego Democrat, research scientist and local school board member, cogently expressed that hope during the Assembly’s brief floor debate.

“We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different outcomes for our students, our schools and our communities. They are the ones who are the real victims of this misalignment of our systems and structures,” she said, adding, “The proposal before you today would promote a more coherent policy making. The change will allow policy makers and the public to hold the governor accountable for educational outcomes.”

The last sentence of her remarks is the key element. While the governor has always been an important member of California’s complex education leadership structure, the multitude of other participants has made it easy to pass the buck when academic test results and other measures expose academic shortcomings.

Suddenly undoing many decades of managerial status quo, as first proposed in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state of the state address last January, is a remarkable feat unto itself. Doing so over the opposition of the California Teachers Association elevates it to a minor political miracle.

“The proposal would divert attention away from the real needs of students and schools by introducing a significant governance change that is both unnecessary and counterproductive,” the powerful union wrote in a statement before AB 181’s approval. “This proposal does nothing to improve student outcomes or strengthen public education.”

For decades, the teachers association and other education unions have easily gotten their favored candidates for state superintendent elected. And those chosen officials have faithfully echoed the unions’ position that the key to increasing outcomes is allocating more money.

School funding has increased sharply since the turn of the century, but test scores have not followed suit. Some categories, such as elementary school reading levels, remain embarrassingly low.

The first hint that change was on the table came late last year, when Policy Analysis for California Education, a consortium of education faculty at five major universities, issued a lengthy critique of the current system. The report said California’s complicated mélange of state and local authority “often results in overlapping responsibilities, fragmented authority, and challenges in ensuring streamlined decision-making.”

By design, the consortium’s recommendations closely resembled Newsom’s proposal and the final legislation.

The obvious question is if streamlining education governance and making the governor accountable, at least on paper, for academic outcomes will merely rearrange chairs on a sinking ship, or actually generate more achievement for the $25,000-plus that the new state budget will be spending on each public school student.

California’s education establishment has been reluctant to change its mantra that more money is needed to boost results and equally reluctant to embrace improvements in instructional techniques, such as using phonics to upgrade elementary reading ability.

The onus will be on Newsom’s successor, most likely Xavier Becerra, to become the new schools sheriff in town.