Transcript of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Announcing Framework to Bring Accountability to Challenged Schools

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, thank you very much for the wonderful introduction. And it is wonderful to be here today at Northwood Elementary School, and especially to be here today with our Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O'Connell -- thank you very much -- who has been a terrific partner.

And it was very special to arrive here and then to be taken around the school. And the kids have been so proud of showing off their classrooms, and I can see firsthand why this school is doing so well. The classrooms are immaculate, the students are disciplined, the teachers are terrific here. The school principal, Renee Femenella, who is doing an extraordinary job -- thank you very much for the extraordinary job you're doing. And it shows that leadership is really a key issue, and the reason why this school is running so well and why this school is so successful.

The students are enthusiastic, it was really wonderful, a wonderful tour, and so I want to thank the students, I want to thank you for giving us this wonderful tour here. And I think this is one of the things that we are here to talk about, is how do we bring other schools that have been falling behind up to that level, like this school, like Northwood Elementary School? And we, of course, have some really great schools here in California, and we are very proud of those great schools, like this one here, and there are many, many other schools that are terrific. So there's good news, but the real challenge is, how do we make other schools be equally as good?

The fact also is that a recent survey found that 23 of the top 100 public schools in America are right here in California. So we can see that we can do it; we have to now just make sure that we work on those schools that are falling behind. And there are 97 districts that to one degree or the other have not complied with the No Child Left Behind Act for five consecutive years. When this happens, No Child Left Behind requires the state to take action, otherwise we would lose federal funding. And of course this is not just about money, and not just about funding; it is about that those kids in most of those challenging districts have suffered for too long, and we've got to do something about it. They need our help right now.

And this is why in my State of the State address I said that we are going to reform education, and that we are going to start with those school districts that are falling behind, the 97 school districts. So I have joined forces with Superintendent Jack O'Connell to craft individualized reform plans to make sure that the solution fits the districts. And the reason why this is important is because one glove does not fit all. Every district is different; they all have their different challenges.

For some districts, for instance, such as those where there are not enough kids that are taking the standardized tests, minimal actions are necessary, like maybe more after school programs, more tutoring, more homework assistance, or more teacher training.

But in those districts that have persistently failed to educate our children, we will require more significant interventions. This will include turning campuses into charter schools, and replacing personnel and administrators, if that is what the special evaluation teams and the State Board ultimately decide.

I'm proud to say that we are the first state in the union that is really doing something about our failing schools, and to really come up with an individualized plan. And the good news also is that we have 45 million dollars of federal funds set aside specifically for those schools that have failed, to help them and to turn those districts around. We will be working very closely with the legislators to ensure that those funds are allocated. Working together is here the most important thing, so we turn those schools around and so we can help those children. Those children deserve better.

So with that I just want to say thank you again, Superintendent Jack O'Connell, for your great partnership and for working with our office and working with me on this. The great thing here is that the Superintendent is as interested in turning those schools around, and I think if we all work together we can do it.

Thank you very much. And now I would like to introduce the Superintendent to say a few words. Please.

SUPERINTENDENT O'CONNELL:  Thank you very much, Governor. "I think you just took my whole speech here," I just whispered to him. I want to thank you for your support to help these school districts. What the Governor said is absolutely accurate. We've met in his office several weeks ago for over an hour. He's making good on his commitment at the State of the State Address to try and assist these school districts that need a little bit more help.

I also want to thank your outstanding principal here, Renee Scott-Femenella, and her entire staff. I've never been to a great school that didn't have a great principal and a great staff, and this certainly qualifies in that area.

As the Governor so eloquently said, we're here today in support of interventions that are really designed to help these school districts regain their focus, regain their momentum, and provide that more individualized, personalized approach to help ensure student achievement for all of our students. We all support, everybody up here supports the goals of No Child Left Behind. We know that our responsibility is to create a learning environment so each student can learn to his or her maximum potential. And we also know it's our obligation to educate every student that walks through that front door every single day of our public school system.

There have been times in some portions of No Child Left Behind that I've been critical of. I still believe it's overly prescriptive, it's a one-size-fits-all approach, and it still underfunds many segments that they ask us to do. So, when our school districts face the sanctions that they're facing now today under NCLB, we've tried to design what I would characterize is a common sense intervention program. It's interventions that are targeted to help meet the unique individual needs of each of these 97 school districts.

California really does, obviously, have an obligation to uphold federal law, and at the same time I'm pleased that we've made closing the achievement gap a top priority. We want all of our students in this hyper-competitive global economy to not only be able to survive, but be able to thrive. There's no one solution. There's no one magic wand. You're not going to get a pronouncement from the Governor's Office or from my office tomorrow that we've been able to close the achievement gap, nor that we've been able to elevate all 97 school districts overnight. But we are going to maintain high expectations and high standards for all of our students, including the students in these 97 districts. We really have done a lot. We've adopted world-class content standards, we've put in place an accountability system, and we now have our assessment instruments fully aligned to that as well.

You guys okay? Do you want to rest for minute, go get some water? You cool? Yeah, okay. You guys okay? Do you want to spread out a little bit? Can you spread out for a second or two?

We have 96 school districts and one County Office of Education where we're going to recommend the full implementation to adherence to our world-class contents-standards. We know we're going to have to redouble our standards, redouble our efforts, to make sure that we bring this world-class standards-based education to every single student in the state of California. In addition, these school districts that need the most help will be assigned an intervention team. Other school districts will have an opportunity to select an intervention team, and some will simply be able to implement technical assistance, and others will receive resources to remove barriers to our student achievement. As the Governor said, some school districts are on our list simply because they did not have sufficient participation in our assessment instruments.

One school district will, however -- I'm going to be recommending have a trustee. It's one in Riverside County, and that will be part of an agreement that they made independently as a condition of receipt of almost two million dollars; if their test scores did not improve, a trustee would be forthcoming. Ultimately, these corrective actions will affect nearly two millions students in the state of California, including the biggest school district, Los Angeles, with over 660,000 students, and the smallest of our 97 districts will be Lagunitas, 256 students. That's in Marin County.

Again, the goal is not to punish the school district, but help improve and design programs to improve these school districts. We'll be working in a collaborative, constructive manner with each of these districts. Student achievement will occur much more quickly with supportive intervention rather than cutting money, or closing schools, or laying people off.

As the Governor said, approximately 45 million dollars of federal funds will be available for these interventions. I'll be working closely with the Governor, with Secretary Long, with Superintendent Dave Gordon, to make sure that the legislature places these funds so that they're available, and releases these funds so that they're available to our schools as quickly as possible.

It's now my pleasure to introduce a long-time friend of mine, the former chief staff person to one of my predecessors, former teacher, superintendent of Elk Grove, and currently the County Superintendent of Schools for Sacramento County, Dave Gordon. Dave? (Applause)

SUPERINTENDENT GORDON:   Thank you very much, Superintendent O'Connell. It's my pleasure to be here, and today I'm representing the 58 county superintendents who are organized around the state into 11 regions. And we stand ready to help with these interventions, to help organize the teams, to support our districts, as Superintendent O'Connell said. And I want to commend the Governor and the Superintendent for getting away from the one-size-fits-all cookie cutter approach to assistance. I can tell you, I've been the superintendent of a local school district, and districts are different. Their needs are different. So we look forward to working with the Governor, Superintendent O'Connell, all of our county superintendent colleagues in a partnership, and we can get this job done. Thank you. (Applause)

Now I'll throw it back to the Governor to open the questions.

QUESTIONS/ANSWERS:

GOVERNOR:   Yes?

QUESTION:   Governor, you're talking today about improving student achievement. At the same time there are also proposals from your administration to cut funding by as much as four or five billion dollars. How can you do both?

GOVERNOR:   Well, first of all, let me just say thank you very much to David Long, our Secretary of Education, and also Scott Hill, who has been very helpful in crafting all of this. We really appreciate that. And as you know, all of this is very challenging; you know, to bring education back, to elevate the level of the education and various different schools that have fallen behind for so many years. But we are working together on this.

And what we have proposed in our State of the State address, and what I have talked about in my budget presentation, was that we should create a budget system where we never have to make any cuts, period, because there is no reason for us to make cuts on anything when we see that over the years revenues continuously go up. It's just that the system is flawed, that when we have extra revenues -- like right now, we are over-funding education, over-appropriating education by a billion dollars. Next year we are cutting education again. So it is a roller-coaster ride that we are taking our children on that is not fair, and other vulnerable citizens, that is not fair. We have to fix the budget system once and for all.

But we have 45 million dollars set aside in federal funds that is for those schools, so we will help. But as I said earlier, it's not just the funding that will help those schools, it will be also reforming the system and switching our personnel, and helping them in every way possible.

And as the school superintendent has also said, it's not like a hostile takeover. We're going to work with those schools. It's not about punishing anyone. It's working together, and I think if we work together we can really help all those schools, and make every school kind of be on that top level of education and maybe one day we'll have 100 schools listed amongst the top 100 schools of the United States. Wouldn't' that be great? It can be done. Yes, please.

QUESTION:   This question is for Jack. How can you be a critic of the No Child Left Behind Act and yet use it to try to bring schools back into better performance?

SUPERINTENDENT O'CONNELL: The No Child Left Behind, I overall, as does every professional educator here, support the goal of No Child Left Behind, to bring every student up to proficiency at grade level, and to have that goal. Not just wait until 2013. My goal is yesterday. But I am critical of NCLB in terms of the methodology for measuring accountability. It hasn't been fully funded. But this particular program is one that we need to take advantage of, and so that's why the Governor and Secretary Long and I are going to be working with our friends in the legislature to obtain this revenue that's out there.

I think an important point to make is if we don't have legislation passed that the Governor signs by the end of September, we potentially could lose half of this money. So we need to make sure that we get this bill on the fast track with this program, get it to the State Board of Education where we'll be taking it in two weeks -- we'll have a public hearing -- and then we want to get this legislation to the legislature, get it to the Governor's desk, where we'll attract this additional money that will targeted to these schools.

QUESTION:   Jack, you have a budget that's 60, 65 -- you've got a budget that's 60, 65 billion dollars. How can you make a difference with just 45 million dollars?

SUPERINTENDENT O'CONNELL:   This will be targeted. It will be targeted toward those schools that are not meeting NCLB requirements for the past five years. So it's going to be targeted. It is the panacea? No. But is it a step in the right direction? It's a modest step in the right direction where we've scaled this so that the schools that need the most help will get more assistance. They'll get a little bit more money, and they'll get more serious help from our counties' offices of education.

QUESTION:   Governor, a quick question. Can you talk about the peripheral canal? There's been a lot of talk that you may sign some sort of an executive order to begin work on diverting water around the Delta to create more supply in California.

GOVERNOR:   Well, I'm very proud to say that we have for the last 18 months all worked together very hard, all the stakeholders, Democrats and Republicans, to come up with a solution to improve our infrastructure on water, because right now we cannot guarantee the people of California water in the future, if it is 10, 15 years from now, we cannot guarantee that.

We have seen already a one-year drought, and we have most of our reservoirs are down by 50 to 75 percent, so we are really in a crisis situation. We have seen water prices go up, we have seen that permits for businesses and building have been denied because of a lack of water and so on. So it's hurting our economy, it's hurting everyday folks out there in California, and we want to fix that.

And this is why we recommend to redo that infrastructure and to build the new infrastructure on water, to build more above the ground and below the ground water storage, to fix the Delta once and for all, and to build a new delivery system. And we are in the middle of negotiating right now. We were very happy that Senator Feinstein came out last week and helped us with the negotiations, and it kind of inspired everyone again to go in there.

So we're going to all work together. I'm not off doing anything. I'm right now working with everybody and bringing everyone together to make sure that re rebuild our water system so that we can guarantee people not only 20 years from now but 30, 40, 50 years from now water, so when they turn on the faucet there is water coming out, when the farmers turn on and want to irrigate their land, there is water coming out. That's what I want to guarantee.

QUESTION:   Governor, can we expect an executive order from your office in the next week or so?

GOVERNOR:   Right now I have no plans, but I will let you know. As you know, we are like an open book, and everything that is developing in our office, you will always know about it. Thank you very much. Thank you.