New reports show that six years after Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature approved a sweeping overhaul in how school funds were divvied up, the evidence is mixed that the overhaul is accomplishing its main goal: improving the academic performance of the 1.2 million English language learners in California public schools.

Under the law, known as the Local Control Funding Formula, schools with high percentages of English learners, foster children and poor families get additional funding that in 2013 was described as being specifically to help these students achieve proficiency in key subjects. Since then, about $30 billion in LCFF grants have been distributed.

But a 2015 decision by then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson to allow LCFF dollars to go for teacher raises and other general uses has led to critics such as Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, arguing that struggling students aren’t getting the help they were promised in 2013. Earlier this year, Weber persuaded a legislative panel to have state Auditor Elaine Howle review how the grants are being spent and possibly examine their effectiveness.

Reformers see bad faith in how law was implemented

The pending audit is highly anticipated by education reform groups which have for years accused the state government of showing bad faith in implementing LCFF. 

Defenders of the law have some data that back up claims it is working as intended. An EdSource analysis of the state’s Smarter Balanced test scores released earlier this month showed that schools with high numbers of LCFF students had seen a 9 percent increase in student English proficiency over the last five years. But the same analysis showed little change in the “achievement gap” between white and Asian students and those of Latino and African American descent. 

And a Public Policy Institute of California report released in August found that increased funding hadn’t changed a fundamental problem that makes progress difficult in struggling schools: They still had teachers who were considerably less experienced than those in wealthier communities. These schools are also far more likely to have teachers offering instruction in fields in which they had no training. The PPIC suggested there was evidence that these issues had gotten worse in recent years.

Because of strong teacher job-protection laws, veteran teachers have considerable latitude about where they work. Schools in wealthy communities that often get help from parental and community fundraisers have a huge edge over schools in poor communities where teachers often feel they have no choice but to bring in basic supplies for students from destitute families.

Civil rights lawyers again target LAUSD over spending

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, a formal complaint has been filed by the Public Advocates civil rights law firm that alleges that much of the $1 billion-plus in LCFF money the district gets annually is being used in ways that are not properly documented as required by state law. The complaint includes numerous examples from district records of LCFF grants being spent in questionable ways.

In 2016, Public Advocates filed a similar complaint against L.A. Unified, which some district officials strongly disputed. But the next year, the district agreed to provide an additional $151 million to 50 schools with high concentrations of English learners, foster children and students from poor families.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in the Janus v. AFSCME case that public employees couldn’t be compelled to pay union dues was widely seen as a game-changing moment in U.S. politics.

The coverage on The Atlantic website was typical. It called the decision, which stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Illinois state employee Mark Janus, a “huge blow” to public sector unions and suggested the decision had the potential to “end” such unions in America.

But five months later, the experience of the most powerful public employee union in the nation’s largest state undercuts the assumption that Janus would take a quick toll on unions’ clout. In supporting Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, for state superintendent of public education against Marshall Tuck, the California Teachers Association spent $16 million as of Oct. 31 – $5 million more than it did in the entire 2014 superintendent election, where the union supported incumbent Tom Torlakson over Tuck, a former Los Angeles school executive with deep support from charter school advocates and a loose coalition of tech billionaires.

Torlakson narrowly defeated Tuck. This election, Tuck and Thurmond have been trading the lead in recent days. With millions of votes yet to be counted, no journalism organization has called the race.

The CTA does not issue regular updates on its membership status. But a recent Sacramento Bee analysis suggested that the union, as in previous years, had 90 percent membership among the 325,000 teachers it represented. So while it’s lost dues from the 10 percent of teachers who reject union membership, the CTA still collects more than $150 million in dues annually – making it the most powerful force in the California Democratic Party.

Union clout to be tested in coming fight over funding

The extent of the CTA’s clout is likely to be tested soon – whether Thurmond or Tuck is elected. That’s because both have said they oppose one of Torlakson’s most controversial, union-favoring decisions: His 2015 announcement that the extra funding going to schools with disproportionate numbers of English learners, foster children and impoverished students could be spent on general needs, such as raises for teachers.

Torlakson’s decision, which overrode a directive from a lower-ranking official in the state Department of Education, spurred outrage in education reform circles. The Local Control Funding Formula – the 2013 state law changing how districts were allocated state dollars – had been pitched as creating a lock-box of dollars that would be spent only on helping underachieving students.

But Torlakson’s decision had the effect of turning the local-control funding into a de facto block grant. Many districts have used the funds for employee raises.

If Thurmond or Tuck revive the lock-box theory of how the funds can be spent, that’s likely to create huge headaches for most school districts, which have received an average of $8 billion a year in local-control dollars since the law took effect.

Newsom close with both teachers unions and reformers

A key factor in the coming fight over funding is the position taken by Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, who was strongly backed by the CTA but is also friends with the tech tycoons who want education reform. The governor’s control over parts of the Department of Education’s budget gives him a powerful lever to use on the state superintendent.

On the campaign trail, Newsom said teachers are underpaid and schools are underfunded. But he’s also rejected Gov. Jerry Brown’s claim that education reform is a “siren song” in which trends come and go but schools never get better. In interviews, Newsom has noted the success of education reform in union states like Massachusetts and New Jersey.

It’s unclear when the count of the Thurmond-Tuck vote will be complete. But the recent statewide election with the most parallels to the race offers encouragement for Thurmond, a former social worker.

In the 2010 attorney general’s race, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, took such a substantial early lead over San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris that the San Francisco Chronicle pronounced him the winner on election night. But as millions of provisional and late ballots were counted, the tide turned steadily toward the union-backed Democrat. Three weeks later, Cooley conceded when Harris’ lead topped 50,000 votes. Harris ended up winning by more than 74,000 votes – about 1 percent of total voters.

Five years after Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature passed a sweeping new school finance law meant to provide extra help to struggling students in poor, minority communities, new federal test scores raise difficult questions about the effectiveness of the 2013 measure.

Every two years, at the order of the federal government, the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests are administered to check on fourth- and eighth-graders’ progress in math and reading in all 50 states. While eighth-graders showed gains on reading, California’s overall scores for 2017 released earlier this month remained on average among the worst in the nation, as the EdSource website reported.

But a deeper dive into the data showed that California fourth-graders scored worse on math than any state but Alaska. Poor scores by African-American students caught the eye of Ryan Smith, executive director of the Education-Trust West. “At a time when California is claiming to lead on issues of what’s right in our country, we should see black students improve at far greater rates, not sliding back decades,” he told EdSource.

What made the results particularly disappointing were the high expectations that had accompanied the enactment in 2013 of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) – arguably the biggest change in California public education since Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature approved the hiring of thousands of new teachers in 1996 as part of an ambitious effort to reduce the number of students in first-, second- and third-grade classes to no more than 20 per teacher.

Brown led the push for LCFF, calling it a commitment to social justice and education equity. The measure guaranteed additional funding to districts with high concentrations of English-language learners, impoverished families and foster children. The law’s second main component also eliminated most of the top-down funding edicts imposed on school districts.

Brown argued that local districts had a better grasp on what their students’ needs were than state lawmakers and Sacramento bureaucrats, and that LCFF would give local schools extra resources that would allow them to improve education outcomes for struggling students.

Claims that funds were diverted came early and often

But even before this month’s disappointing test scores, the Local Control program had drawn fire. In January 2015, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said none of the 50 school districts it reviewed had set up adequate standards to make sure the funds were used as they were supposed to be. Soon after, Education Trust-West and other groups which advocate for poor and minority students said funds meant to specifically help these students were instead used for overall district spending, starting with teacher raises.

Brown supported state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson after he formally rejected the criticism – with both saying, in effect, that local control meant local control. Efforts in recent years by lawmakers to force a stricter accounting of LCFF dollars have been blocked by teachers union allies in the Legislature, notably Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, the Long Beach Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. In 2016, the governor vetoed an LCFF accountability measures that managed to win the Legislature’s unanimous approval.

But in January, in presenting his final budget before being termed out, Brown offered an indirect concession to those upset with how LCFF dollars had been used.

“While many districts have seized the opportunities offered under the formula to better serve their students, others have been slower to make changes,” his 2018-19 spending plan noted. “To improve student achievement and transparency, the budget proposes requiring school districts to create a link between their local accountability plans and their budgets to show how increased funding is being spent to support English learners, students from low-income families, and youth in foster care.”

The Trump administration turns out to share the Obama administration’s disappointment with California’s efforts to hold schools and school districts accountable for improving students’ academic performance.

After President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and installed Arne Duncan as secretary of education, California initially participated in their “Race to the Top” program in which states which adopted reforms that used metrics to measure student, teacher and school performance received additional federal education dollars. California’s proposal didn’t qualify for federal grant consideration, however.

But by 2011, when Gov. Jerry Brown replaced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and made changes in the state Board of Education, the state government had lost interest in working with Duncan, with a sticking point being his push to measure teachers based on standardized test results.

In December 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to replace 2002’s No Child Left Behind Act as the framework of how the federal government dealt with states on education. While ESSA contains far fewer of the federal mandates that made No Child Left Behind unpopular with teachers unions and small-government conservatives alike, it did have one accountability provision. It requires every state to identify schools which are in the bottom 5 percent of statewide assessments; graduate less than two-thirds of students; and have minority subgroups with poor and unimproving results. Every state is supposed to help these schools with “improvement strategies.”

Education official faults reliance on ‘Dashboard’ over test scores

But the Trump administration doesn’t believe California has met this requirement with what even state officials acknowledged was a “minimalist” proposal to the U.S. Education Department. The main sticking point is the state’s view that its recently adopted California School Dashboard program – in which schools are rated on a variety of categories, including suspension rates, not just test scores – should be used to determine which schools fall in the bottom 5 percent.

In a Dec. 21 letter, Jason Botel, principal deputy assistant secretary under U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, criticized the idea of using the Dashboard instead of more precise measures of student performance; rejected the state’s plan to give districts discretion in determining how to improve underperforming schools; and noted that the plan failed to disclose how the state would meet its requirement to track the number of teachers who were in the classroom despite inadequate, inappropriate or incomplete credentials. The 12-page letter also cited many other issues with California’s plan.

As the EdSource website reported, the U.S. government’s reaction paralleled the position of education reform groups in California, which have criticized the California School Dashboard as a bad idea that will make it more difficult – not easier – to tell if a school is improving.

But Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and state school board president Michael Kirst strongly defend the state’s proposal and say it should be given a chance to work. This is why the state board voted at its Jan. 18 meeting to only make minor changes in its proposal to the Trump administration, with the exception of considering revising how the dashboard would be used to determine underperforming schools.

$2.6 billion in federal funds at risk if administration plays hardball

The question now is what will the Trump administration do. If it rejects the California plan, in theory it could withhold $2.6 billion of the $8 billion in annual federal education aid that California receives. That’s a little more than 3 percent of Golden State school funding from all sources. Such action would feed the narrative that the Trump White House is picking on liberal California.

But such action could also trigger bipartisan blowback from the Senate, which passed ESSA on an 85-12 vote, and the House, which approved it 359-64. While lawmakers went along with the limited accountability requirement, they also stressed the need for states to be able to figure out their own education needs.

Last February and March, both chambers voted – with White House backing – to block Obama administration rules meant to strengthen accountability provisions under ESSA.

The website of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce depicted the votes as one more message that the federal government needed to stop playing the role of “national school board.”

There is no timetable for when the U.S. Department of Education will respond to California’s actions. So far it has approved more than 30 plans submitted by states while raising questions about plans submitted by other states. 

When Gov. Jerry Brown persuaded the Legislature

The first point has been the subject of contention for years because some school reform and civil rights groups allege LCFF dollars have been diverted to district general funds, in particular to raise pay for teachers. But until this month, the second point – about the gains that would result from local control – hadn’t been the source of significant controversy.

That may change with the release of a report by a high-profile Canadian education expert – Michael Fullan – and colleague Santiago Rincon-Gallardo. Fullan helped the province of Ontario overhaul its curriculum and, like Gov. Brown, is a well-established skeptic about top-down education reform who has been a sounding board for Golden State education officials in recent years, according to the EdSource website.

But the report he co-authored – entitled “California’s Golden Opportunity” – raises profound questions about California’s venture into local control. Its most striking findings focus on the lack of both enthusiasm for and expertise in crafting education reforms at the local level. The reports also notes how powerful a factor inertia is in the school districts that were surveyed. These same problems have been cited by advocates of “top down” education reform for decades.

The researchers were generous with their praise for LCFF’s basic framework and its inclusionary, open approach to figuring out how to improve schools. They also cite superintendents who prefer elements of the landmark 2013 law to previous policies.

“Even though its implementation has been somewhat bumpy and cumbersome, LCFF is viewed positively across California’s education system – from central offices to school districts,” their report noted. “There is a widely shared perception that the new funding strategy is much better than the older one and that the system is moving in the right direction.”

Districts see local reform plans as busywork

But Fullan and Rincon-Gallardo wrote that their interviews showed the most basic LCFF obligation – having each district prepare Local Control Accountability Plans – was often treated more as mandatory paperwork to be filled out in pro forma fashion than the starting point for pursuing reform.

Fullan and Rincon-Gallardo said the state should provide far more help to local districts in crafting local reforms. One reason: County offices of education in the great majority of the state’s 58 counties weren’t up to the task. The California Collaborative for Education Excellence – the state agency set up to help districts with LCAPs – needs far more resources, they wrote.

While the report notes problems with motivating local officials to pursue reform, it also includes a tough view of LCFF implementation from those at the local level. It noted that district officials interviewed “across the board” complained of a disconnect between what county- and state-level educators were doing and actions that would actually yield “improved teaching and learning in the classroom.”

Nonetheless, State Board of Education President Michael Kirst treated the report as more positive than negative in an email sent to EdSource. Kirst wrote that the report amounted to “confirmation that California is on the right track … . We have a lot of work ahead as we complete implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula and appreciate [Fullan’s] thoughtful and pragmatic recommendations.”

The clout of the California Teachers Association was on full display last week when a bill by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, to reform a tenure law that can give lifetime job protections to teachers 18 months into their careers was abruptly

Since her election in 2012, Weber, a former school board president and college professor, has prodded her fellow Democratic lawmakers to not accept the California education status quo. Weber wants to make tenure rules more rigorous and like those in other states, to ensure the Local Control Funding Formula actually does what it was promised to do and helps English-language learners, and to seek state standards that make it easy to gauge whether schools are helping struggling minority students.

But Weber’s push for significant reforms have either been killed in the Legislature or by Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto pen.

Her latest reform measure, Assembly Bill 1220, would have delayed tenure decisions until a teacher’s third year on the job, but would have allowed marginal teachers additional time to establish their worthiness for tenure in a fourth year, and, in limited circumstances, a fifth year. Weber’s bill included a provision intended to make districts put more of an emphasis on professional development of marginal teachers.

The measure won early approvals and initially appeared relatively uncontroversial, with only five Assembly members opposing it in a preliminary June 1 vote. Weber supporters saw the provisions emphasizing helping struggling teachers as a valuable way to reassure teachers unions that the bill wasn’t an exercise in teacher or union bashing.

But later in June, the Assembly Appropriations Committee shaved off the fourth and fifth year tenure consideration provisions – without consulting Weber. Then, on July 6, Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, gutted and amended AB1164, a bill he had introduced about foster care policies, so it offered an alternative to Weber’s bill. Thurmond’s version would in some cases allow struggling teachers to win tenure consideration after a third year.

The bill was knocked by reformers as unnecessarily complex and inferior to Weber’s. But the clout of its prime supporter – the CTA – led Weber last week to withdraw her bill for now in hopes it would have better chances in 2018.

Thurmond then withdrew his bill, suggesting it was only introduced as a way to block Weber and her proposal. Both are members of the California Legislative Black Caucus.

CTA expected to back lawmaker who thwarted bill

The EdSource website connected the maneuvering to Thurmond’s plan to run for state superintendent of public instruction in 2018 when incumbent Tom Torlakson is termed out. That’s because the CTA has already sent signals it will endorse Thurmond, who has established his pro-teacher union bona fides with such measures as proposing that teachers be given subsidized housing.

The CTA’s strong and early support of Torlakson was key to the low-profile Bay Area state lawmaker winning the superintendent’s job in 2010 after finishing second in the primary, and to his narrow 2014 win over fellow Democrat Marshall Tuck, a Los Angeles charter school advocate with backing from school reform groups.

Tuck has already announced he will seek the job again in 2018.

The most expensive contest on the 2014 California ballot is set to return next year. 

“Marshall Tuck, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent schools chief Tom Torlakson in a contentious 2014 race that became a proxy fight over a lawsuit on teacher job protections, will run again for state superintendent of public instruction,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “The former Los Angeles schools executive on Monday announced his candidacy for the 2018 election, citing a desire to bring ‘big change’ to a public education system that has ‘settled for mediocrity.'”

The two tangled last time on opposite sides of many Californians’ sense that teachers unions had often become an obstacle to improving education quality statewide. “They split over the Vergara court decision that held teacher-tenure protections discriminated against poor and minority students,” as CalWatchdog recalled previously. “Torlakson took the side of the unions and supported the appeal; Tuck made sustaining the decision a keystone of his campaign.”

“After Torlakson beat Tuck in a close election, 52 percent to 48 percent, Democrats hoped to unite on education and put their divisiveness behind them. But UC’s tuition hikes reopened the wound, putting officeholders in an awkward political position and pushing instinctively liberal students to oppose policies set by Democrats.”

Shifting agendas

Now, Tuck’s plans have focused around budget oversight and teacher quality. In his campaign announcement, “Tuck said his campaign will focus on ensuring that Gov. Jerry Brown’s new school funding formula – which provides additional money to districts with large numbers of poor children, English learners and foster youth – is really funneling money to the neediest students and that its accountability measures are more understandable for parents and the public,” the Bee noted.

“He also said California’s efforts to address its teacher shortage ‘so far have been way too small.’ He would consider raising compensation and changing training programs to get more potential teachers into the profession.”

More conciliatory

The rhetoric reflected a desire to stake out reform territory that would not prove as bitterly divisive as in 2014. “Tuck, 43, said he continues to favor revising the state’s tenure law, granting due process rights in less than two years, and revising the state’s teacher evaluation system,” according to EdSource. “But the issues of overriding importance, he said, are the need to establish ‘phenomenal’ training and mentoring programs for principals and new teachers and ‘for more support for students with the greatest needs.’ There was an overemphasis in the last campaign on the 10 percent of the issues that were divisive and less on the other 90 percent, he said.”

Tuck’s words also worked to calibrate expectations to the reality of the superintendency. “The position has little direct authority over California’s schools, but Tuck said he would use it to set a direction for the governor, State Board of Education and Legislature,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Tuck previously led Green Dot Public Schools, a Los Angeles-based independent charter school chain that operates with a teachers union contract, and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a school turnaround organization. He has spent the last two years working as an educator in residence at the New Teacher Center.”

Torlakson’s own time has been consumed of late with education issues affecting undocumented residents. He recently “urged the state’s immigrant students not to be fearful of applying for the California Dream Act, a college financial aid program dedicated to helping undocumented students attend state universities and community colleges,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “As of last Friday, the number of California Dream Act applications has declined by 42 percent this year, due to President Trump-spurred unease over possible deportations, according to the California Student Aid Commission, which receives applications from students.”

In a shock critics had warned against, Golden State schools discovered that their nation’s largest pension system, CalPERS, was on track to force substantial budgetary cutbacks on core education spending. 

“Public schools around California are bracing for a crisis driven by skyrocketing worker pension costs that are expected to force districts to divert billions of dollars from classrooms into retirement accounts, education officials said,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The depth of the funding gap became clear to district leaders when they returned from the holiday break: What they contribute to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, will likely double within six years, according to state estimates.”

Bad grades

The controversy hit as a fresh study brought unwelcome news about California’s nationwide education standing. The report, by Education Week, “looked at multiple ways that states are educating and preparing children for school,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “For pupil achievement, for instance, the magazine considered 18 measures such as graduation rates, reading and math tests, Advanced Placement exam results, equity and achievement gaps.”

“In academic performance — as measured by the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress test and by poverty figures — California earned a D-plus. But in improvement over time, the state posted a C. In equity, California scored a relatively high B-minus — but that was still 41st in the nation, and below the national average of a B.”

A spokesman for California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson called the data behind the survey “outdated,” the Mercury News added, although it was no older in California’s case than any other state. “California is moving in a positive direction,” the spokesman insisted. “We’ve dramatically increased our investment in education.”

Underperformance

But that investment, according to new estimates, has been placed at risk of being consumed by pension costs. “There is a predicted shortfall among all state retirement accounts of at least $230 billion based on what’s owed to current and future retirees. The pension funds, including CalPERS, haven’t made as much money from the stock market and other investments as they had hoped,” the Chronicle noted. “CalPERS officials had hoped to gain a 7.5 percent annual return on investments, but they didn’t come close in either of the last two years.”

Despite optimistic predictions, underperformance has been a constant for the fund: “Over the last 20 years investment returns averaged only 6.9 percent, with the current annual return bringing in only 2.3 percent,” Pepperdine professor Joel Fox observed in the Orange County Register. “Facing market realities, the board lowered the estimate to 7 percent, a mark that still may be unattainable.”

“For taxpayers, the number change likely means more dollars from state and local government budgets will be directed to cover pension liabilities and less will be available to meet services supplied by government. The city of Los Angeles already dedicates 20 percent of its budget for pension obligations, Anaheim 13 percent, Long Beach 11 percent and San Jose as high as 27 percent.”

Double burden

At the same time, school districts have howled over the additional adverse impact of the state’s other pension liabilities. “In 2014, the Legislature adopted Assembly Bill 1469, which seeks to pay down CalSTRS underfunding over about 30 years by relatively small increases in contributions from teachers and the state, and by increasing school districts’ contributions over seven years by 10.85 percent,” former Piedmont USD Board of Education member Richard Raushenbush wrote in the East Bay Times. “In 2020, school districts’ CalSTRS contributions will be 19.1 percent of teacher payroll!”

“This is not sustainable. School districts are funded by the public to provide free public education; they do not make profits that can be devoted to paying off the Legislature’s CalSTRS debt. The Legislature did not provide any new funds to pay the significant CalSTRS’ increases.”

No Child Left Behind, championed by President George W. Bush and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, was enacted in 2002. It included a long list of mandates that states had to follow to receive federal funding. But it quickly became a lightning rod because of its heavy emphasis on testing. It was also criticized for setting unrealistic goals.

Last year, the House and Senate moved to pass a new federal framework that included far fewer requirements. But accountability advocates did manage to win a provision that they believe will force states to step in and improve poorly functioning schools. It mandates that states must intervene with schools which repeatedly fail to graduate two-thirds of students, fall in the bottom 5 percent of academic achievement or have chronic problems with low scores for ethnic groups.

U.S. Department of Education officials charged with drafting rules for this provision want states to adopt simple metrics based mostly on test scores that provide one number for each school, making it easier to assess academic performance.

California State Superintendent of Public Schools Tom Torlakson

But Gov. Jerry Brown, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson (pictured) and state Board of Education President Michael Kirst have for years disapproved of the single-score rating. This view — and the aggressive lobbying of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers — led to the scrapping of the Academic Performance Index that had previously provided snapshot looks at school performance.

Instead, the state Board of Education earlier this month unanimously adopted a system that rates schools on several factors, including math and English test scores; graduation, suspension and absenteeism rates; and effectiveness of English-learner courses. Kirst and Torlakson wrote a letter to a U.S. Department of Education officials urging that California’s multi-metric standard be accepted.

State evaluation ripped as confusing, unhelpful

But the proposal has come under fire within California. While it was being finalized, the state evaluation system was blasted in a Los Angeles Times editorial as being confusing and unhelpful. The Legislature was also skeptical. At the behest of Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, the Assembly and Senate passed a bill with almost no dissent that had a similar variety of metrics for schools — but also a bottom-line, single score on academic performance, as the U.S. Department of Education wants.

Last weekend, Gov. Brown vetoed the bill — AB2548 — saying the standards developed by the state Board of Education were superior.

This sets up a confrontation with the Obama administration in the short term and with the administration of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump after Jan. 20, 2017.

Brown, Torlakson and Kirst may be hoping for a more sympathetic ear from Clinton. A high-profile education reformer earlier in her career, in recent years she has echoed teacher unions’ criticism of assigning so much importance to results of standardized tests.

And then last week, when a video with similar claims was released by the “No” campaign, The Bee doubled down on its assessment that the commercial contains “inaccurate claims about school funding and omits information to mislead voters.”

Making no value judgement about the pending measure, while happily admitting that the fact-checker sites generally perform good work and a valuable public service, CalWatchdog decided to fact-check the fact-checkers.

Full disclosure: I grew up in Virginia and smoked from age 12 to 28. While I loved smoking, Newports especially, in the end I preferred playing soccer, walking up the stairs at a normal pace, falling asleep without violent coughing fits, waking up without puffy eyes, and yes, having money in my pocket. 

Ad transcript

Davina Keiser, a Long Beach Math Teacher says to the camera: “Good schools are important to my students, and California. That’s why voters passed a law to ensure that schools get 43 percent of any new tax revenue. I was astounded to learn that Prop. 56 was written intentionally to undermine that guarantee. Prop. 56 raises $1.4 billion a year in new taxes and gives most of that money to wealthy special interests, like insurance companies. But not one penny goes to improve our kids’ schools. That’s just bad math.”

As The Bee points out, “The words ‘cheats schools of $600 million a year’ appear on the screen.”

Since the three fact check stories are largely the same, we’ll analyze the most recent Bee story.

The Bee writes: “Similar to an earlier ad funded by the tobacco companies, the new commercial contains inaccurate claims about school funding and omits information to mislead voters. It is a stretch to say Proposition 56 ‘cheats schools of $600 million a year.’ Nothing in the measure reduces school funding from current levels. If the measure passes, the education budget doesn’t decrease.”

We agree that “cheat” is a stretch. Cheat implies there is intent on the part of the Yes campaign to either deceive voters or go outside the normal framework to achieve its objective. Since the proponents are going through the legal, democratic process and are not hiding the fact that the measure is exempt from education-funding requirements, “cheat” seems like normal political hyperbole. 

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a diversion of funds, or at least a diversion of potential funds. In 1988, voters passed Prop. 98, which Prop. 111 then amended the following election. These policies earmarked a certain amount of new revenue for education funding. While the number changes depending on many factors, it could be between 40 and 50 percent (we found conflicting numbers in our research, but this range should suffice).

Voters have the power to amend the Constitution to waive this requirement, as would be done in this case. But that doesn’t change the fact that we currently live in a world where a certain amount of all new funding is earmarked for education.

Even if everyone says it’s fine to do this, the money still won’t be going to education. If this wasn’t true, proponents wouldn’t have had to write the Prop 98 exemption into the Prop 56 language. 

For The Bee to write Prop. 56 would not cut funding is a red herring. The ad says “cheat,” not cut. And while “cheat” itself is misleading, there is an unquestionable loss of potential revenue. 

The Bee writes: “While Keiser says she was ‘astounded’ to learn that the measure works around Proposition 98, she shouldn’t be. It isn’t unusual. The last two increases in tobacco taxes approved by voters shielded the money from the Proposition 98 education funding guarantee.”

To be clear, you can’t fact check whether or not someone should or shouldn’t be astounded. But since The Bee speculated on Keiser’s level of astoundedness, we’ll speculate it’s possible she wasn’t aware of the prior measure’s exemptions. It’s even more possible that she’s just reading from a script.

To continue our speculation, we believe there is a significant percentage of voters who are unaware that prior tobacco taxes were exempt from Prop. 98. Again, we’re just speculating, but doesn’t it seem more logical than assuming every voter is fully-versed in budgetary minutiae and constitutional law?

In fact, Judge Michael Kinney agreed when he said in August that “Voters don’t know the numbers.” According to the Los Angeles Times, that was Kinney’s justification when he ruled the attorney general needed to be more specific in Prop. 56’s summary, to make clear to voters the connection between Prop. 98 and school funding.

The Bee is correct that the last two tobacco-tax ballot measures were exempt from Prop. 98. But the original tobacco excise tax, passed in 1959, has been contributing a certain amount to education funding since Prop. 98 was approved in 1988. So it’s not unprecedented. We can sympathize with Keiser or any other voter who doesn’t know all of this. 

The Bee writes: “It’s also wrong to say ‘not one penny’ of the funding goes to improve schools. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that up to $20 million of the new tax revenue would to go the Department of Education for school programs to prevent the use of tobacco among young people.”

Anti-tobacco programs in school will do little to give teachers raises, reduce classroom sizes, improve academic performance, improve graduation rates, increase the number of kids going to college, or implement any other meaningful suggestion policy makers and advocates have for improving California’s schools.

While steadily increasing, only 23 percent of voters think California schools have improved over the last few years, while 30 percent say schools gotten worse (35 percent say it’s stayed the same, which could either be negative or positive), according to a recent poll from Policy Analysis and California Education/University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.

These programs may deter some kids from smoking and encourage others to quit (although it never worked on me), and maybe a tobacco opponent would make an argument that lowered-tobacco/nicotine usage actually improved a school, but it would be stretch. To claim it’s “wrong to say ‘not one penny’ of the funding goes to improve schools” is absurd, unless The Bee is being both narrow and creative in its understanding of improvement.

It’s possible that proponents aren’t as concerned with the loss of potential education funding because of another measure on the November ballot, Prop. 55, which would extend a temporary tax on personal incomes of $250,000 or more to education and health care funding. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates this will generate between $4 billion and $9 billion per year until fiscal year 2030-31, with a little more than half going to education.

Tom Torlakson, the state superintendent of public instruction, co-wrote the ballot measure argument in favor of Prop. 55, arguing it would fund the hiring of more teachers, help with college affordability, help restore arts and music programs and help stave off cuts, among other things. “We can’t go back to the days of devastating cuts and teacher layoffs,” Torlakson and others wrote.

But despite the sky-is-falling argument on Prop. 55 (there would be a substantial loss of revenue if Prop. 55 fails), Torlakson wrote a letter in favor of Prop. 56, which, as the PolitiFact California fact-check noted, said: “Make no mistake, Proposition 56 will not divert a dime away from schools. Rather, it will raise revenues for school based tobacco prevention and intervention programs.”

The state’s top educator pleads with voters to bolster education funding to fight off “devastating cuts,” while he’s cavalier about the loss of a potential $600 million. There’s a chance the prospect of Prop. 55 passing helped him leave $600 million on the table.

The Bee writes: “This time around, Proposition 56 directs most of the tobacco tax revenue increase to Medi-Cal to raise reimbursement rates, which critics have long blamed for the state’s health care conundrum. Doctors say the financial reimbursements they receive for providing care to California’s most impoverished patients are too low to maintain a practice. The ‘wealthy special interests’ the ad refers to are doctors, clinics, hospitals, managed care plans and any other health-related group that get Medi-Cal payments because they provide services to eligible patients.”

There is big money at stake here. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates Prop. 56 could generate between $1.27 billion and $1.61 billion in revenue next fiscal year.

The ad says “most of this money goes to wealthy special interest groups, like insurance companies.” Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for low-income residents, would receive the bulk of the Prop. 56 revenue, after certain requirements and programs are paid for.

Depending on how the money is actually divvied up in the budget process will determine whether “most” of the funding goes to insurance companies, like managed-care plans, although other health care providers, like doctors, clinics and hospitals, will get their share as well. 

In February, the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that in 2016-17, 75 percent of Medi-Cal beneficiaries are enrolled in managed care.