Education reforms stall in California

Dan Walters:

There's a tale behind the death of California's proposed school funding allocation overhaul. The measure, Assembly Bill 18, was one of the casualties as Gov. Jerry Brown waded through hundreds of bills from the hectic, final hours of the 2012 legislative session. -- Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, carried the bill, a watered-down version of her proposal to overhaul how the $60-plus billion in state, local and federal funds are allocated to California's K-12 school districts each year.

She wanted to streamline state aid and shift more money to low-performing schools with large numbers of students who are poor or "English learners," responding to criticism that the state was not focusing money on its most urgent needs.

The state Supreme Court four decades ago decreed the "equalization" of school finances, which were then rooted in property taxes.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 3, 2012 2:41 AM
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