My Goals and Priorities

As State Superintendent of Public Instruction, I will be the leading advocate for restoring and increasing the state's investment in our schools. I will tirelessly use this platform to speak with the people of California about the urgency and magnitude of what is needed to fix the crisis facing our schools and our children.

I want to ensure parents can send their children to a safe, quality school in their own neighborhood. I want to expand career and technical education for high school students, protect college-prep courses and arts and music programs, and make sure the management of local school districts measures up to the highest standards of excellence. We need to invest in rigorous career technical education programs, green school buildings, and making sure our students are prepared for the green jobs that will be featured in the green-collar economy.

My overall goal is to achieve--through multiple pathways--success for all our students. I want to help all of our students gain the skills they need, and the mind-set required, to succeed in either career or college. I want to combat and lower the disgraceful drop-out rates and close the horribly persistent "achievement gap."

To accomplish these overall goals, I will fight to:

Ensure California public schools are amply and securely funded so our state can have one of the very best pre-K-14 systems in the country.

Our state's retreat from funding our schools, and our current rank of 47th in the nation (and dropping) in per pupil spending, is a disgrace. When California ranked among the top five states in per pupil funding, it was hardly a coincidence that our schools were among the best performing as well. I will fight to bring our schools back to the top five in the nation in performance and in funding.

For example, returning to the proportionate level of funding California schools enjoyed in the early 1970s would bring in billions in desperately needed resources which could be used to improve each of the other topics I will discuss below.

I believe we must work towards this goal by: (A) maintaining the integrity of Proposition 98, and treating the Proposition 98 standard as a floor for education funding, (B) expanding the guarantees on Proposition 98 to increase certainty and continuity of school funding, and (C) developing ways to bring more revenue into state and local education budgets.

Ensure all of our public schools are safe and high quality.

Many districts around California are stepping up with innovation to improve their neighborhood schools. We must encourage this and share these reform ideas with the most challenging districts and those with the greatest needs. Other legislators suggest parents should be allowed to send their children to other schools in other districts, regardless of where they live. They call this choice. I don't consider this a true and fair "choice" system because it abandons the community public schools most in need of parental involvement and reform.

I believe public schools in every neighborhood should be safe and provide high quality education so parents do not have to shop around for schools in other areas. Education is and must be a local, neighborhood priority.

What every parent wants is to know that their local school is a high quality and safe school. I'm not going to give up on our neighborhood schools. I'm going to work to make sure that each of them is safe, healthy and has breadth of programs we need so each child can achieve success and be ready for college or career.

Support a competitive 21st century school environment.

This includes support for:

• more career technical education and individualized pathways to success for students; 
• 21st Century digital learning environments and using technology as a way to better engage students to provide them with more hands-on, applied learning, while providing teachers with powerful technology to help boost student achievement overall; 
• providing the professional support systems necessary to encourage and aid excellent teachers in every classroom-this includes the full school support team: classroom aides, bus drivers, secretaries, cooks, maintenance staff (such as electricians and plumbers), janitors, computer and information technology specialists; 
• ensuring California's public education system provides students with the tools and skills needed for success in the global economy; 
• a continued state commitment to funding 50% of local school building costs for complete 21st century schools and for paying its full share for the modernization and rehabilitation of our older schools; and 
• ensuring the cost of 21st Century technology is included in our funding of school facilities.

Ensure our children have a healthy start, including access to good food, adequate health care, and quality physical education.

I know from first-hand experience, as well as from comprehensive research, the impact the state of a person's health can have on the mind's ability to learn. Hungry, sick, or depressed children cannot reach their highest potential.

As a high school teacher, I taught classes on health and nutrition, sponsored a running club and hiking club, and promoted the connection between a strong mind and a strong body for all my students. My classroom strategies are now backed by research that shows health problems significantly impact our students: obesity, depression, asthma, and cavities rob our kids of years of seat time and learning. Furthermore, these health problems are most likely to impact our students of color and lower socioeconomic status. We must address student health to fully fight the achievement gap and the drop-out rate.

Improve our commitment to the support systems and programs that support our teachers and students, and that can address the disgraceful and growing drop-out rates.

These programs include safe after school programs; gang intervention and violence prevention programs; enhanced career technical education classes; partnerships with business to bring relevancy to our middle and high school education; funding more counselors to address students academic, emotional, social, and mental health needs; ensuring access to health care for all our students to identify learning disabilities early, to offer preventive care to reduce health problems that keep our students out of the classroom via the curriculum; restoring funding for school nurses; and organizing access to health care plans such as MediCal and Healthy Families.

Empower parents to get more involved with their kids schools.

I'm a strong believer that character counts. We need to support teaching-in home and at school-that character is important and promote trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and good citizenship. We need to do this right from the start, giving our kids a foundation for success. I believe that we can and should do more to promote increased parental involvement in local school campuses, particularly in our most challenged schools-where getting parents involved can be a challenge for many personal, economic, and institutional reasons.

Hold charter schools accountable, just like other public schools.

Charter schools can serve an important role in our educational system, and responsible ones can encourage innovative instruction. At the same time, I believe they must be held accountable by being subject to oversight and demonstrating success, just like any other public school must do.

Charter schools, however, are not a panacea. As the results from a recent study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford showed, students in 37 percent of charter schools performed worse than their public school peers, while only 17 percent showed significant academic gains.

The charter schools that ensure the best student outcomes have the support of their community and have appropriate oversight of student outcomes, health and safety issues, instructional quality, and financial accountability. Audits, board transparency (disclosure), and requirements to meet the same academic standards as public schools are key accountability components.

As State Superintendent of Public Instruction, I will ensure the best practices and successful programs of charter schools are shared with all public schools.

Restore the promise of California's higher education systems. 

Higher education, and the California State University system, are extremely important to me-and they must be priorities for our state. Our outstanding higher education systems have been a foundation for our state's economic and educational successes.

I believe we must begin to rebuild our state's higher education and stop breaking the promises we made to our students in the Master Plan for Higher Education.

We need to stop the state's defunding of our higher education systems. We are creating an increasingly private system, one with costs that are rapidly outpacing the ability of our younger people to pay.

We should work to restore the level of public funding in our higher education system to levels closer to their historical levels. We should also take steps to protect, and enhance, CalGrants as a way to ensure the dream of a higher education remains possible for as many of our younger people as possible.

Just as I will for our K-12 public education system, I will use the platform provided by the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction to argue for a reinvestment in our higher education system. I will lobby members of the State Legislature and other members of the CSU Trustees and UC Regents about the harm spending cuts and fee increases are doing to our state's future.