Fifth graders take a reading test in Oakland, Calif.

Credit: Photos by Alison Yin / EdSource

In November, Californians will elect a new governor and superintendent of public instruction, making this the most consequential education election in nearly a decade. The multiple candidates vying for both offices have a rare opportunity not just to reform California’s education system, but to rethink it. 

For decades, we have relied on an education reform template born in the 1980s and ’90s: standards, assessments, accountability systems and a singular focus on college eligibility. There were sound reasons for this approach, but the template has grown stale. It will not help California’s millions of students succeed academically or meet employers’ growing need for highly skilled workers, and it is increasingly misaligned with an era shaped by AI.

So, I’m offering three big ideas I’d love to hear the candidates for governor and superintendent discuss. Each is grounded in the overarching goal of improving teaching and learning in our schools, especially for our most underserved students.

End the antiquated practice of a single end-of-year statewide assessment. I have long supported these assessments because they were created to raise public awareness and accountability for student performance. But the ritual of marching students, Pink Floyd The Wall-style, to spend days typing answers into a screen has become more of a political exercise than an academic one. Politicians and superintendents may crow about improved results, but the data arrive in the fall, long after they can help teachers or students.

Replacing the old testing and accountability system, inspired by the federal No Child Left Behind law, was supposed to lower the pressure on schools and districts. But the state dashboard, differentiated assistance model and internal district practices have created similar incentives. In the tested grades, the entire school year is still organized around this culminating event. The pressure on principals and teachers to produce better results guarantees teaching to the test and days of test prep. In the elementary grades, students are subjected to ongoing assessments pitched by vendors as the best way to improve their end-of-year results. And in secondary schools, the tests have no consequences for students, so most don’t take them seriously. 

California should shift to two or three brief assessments at key points in the school year, with results delivered immediately to teachers to improve instruction. Testing should focus on third grade to assess early literacy and numeracy, and transition points such as fifth and eighth grade, which provide crucial information on student readiness to educators at the next school level. In high school, we should eliminate the test and rely on measures that actually matter to students, such as the SAT, ACT or industry certifications. 

Multiple states are already moving in this direction. In 2023, Montana received a federal waiver to test a replacement for its annual summative assessment with mini “checkpoint” assessments and rolled it out statewide.  Texas, Indiana, Maine and others have piloted and even passed legislation to shift to this “through-year” model with results publicly reported for each individual assessment or combined into a summative score. California should join them with our own, even-more streamlined approach. 

Replace the regressive A–G requirements with multiple pathways to college access. California is one of the few states where a student can get knocked off the college track to the state university system with a D or F in a required course. That inequitable model punishes students, particularly low-income students and students of color, for one mistake and mainly benefits tech vendors selling low-quality remedial classes.

In other states, including Colorado, Texas and Florida, students meet baseline graduation requirements and then choose their own pathways. They can take more English, math or visual and performing arts if they want, or pursue industry-recognized credentials, dual enrollment, or work-based learning. Students aren’t tripped up by a rigid template aligned to an archaic vision of college readiness. 

Granted, the UC system and the BOARS committee that sets the A-G requirements are independent bodies. But they are still subject to the power of the state purse, receiving billions each year in public funding. Building from our current graduation requirements and the designs of other state models, the governor, Legislature, and state superintendent can set the parameters of a more modern graduation and college admissions system and condition a portion of our state investment to the University of California system on serious A-G reform.

This reform is vital in the coming era of artificial intelligence (AI) era, which will reward specialized knowledge and require more direct pathways into professions less likely to be automated. It would also give districts, schools and educators the chance to rethink high school for the world California’s students are entering, not the one we grew up in.

Transform the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into an incentive-based model. California needs a middle ground between the complete local control of the Brown era where there was little evidence that districts spent the funds on the targeted students and the gradual return to more restrictive categorical programs like the community schools grant under the Newsom administration. As I wrote last year, the current system has become a mishmash of the worst aspects of both approaches. District leaders now face all the requirements of LCFF — the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), differentiated assistance, and the incomprehensible state dashboard — along with compliance burdens and mandates of the old categorical model.  

We should reinforce local control by retaining LCFF’s weighted funding model and folding all categorical programs, no matter how well intentioned, back into the base funding formula. To ensure dollars flow to high-need schools, policymakers should require that a portion of the concentration grant, say 25%, must flow directly to school sites to be spent at the discretion of school site councils (in alignment with district-level goals), reported in their site plans and aggregated at the district level. In doing so, we could eliminate the LCAP and the tangle of district-level compliance requirements. Instead of new grants, policymakers could create programmatic incentives like the additional weight that Texas offers districts for students enrolled in a dual-immersion schools. We could also award schools with bonuses for each student who is ready for the next grade span, with larger amounts for low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities — again with spending documented in the site plan and aggregated and reported at the district level.  

For policymakers, this would offer a feasible way to incentivize popular new programs. For districts, it would restore real local control. And for schools, it would deliver funding targeted to their highest-need students and incentives for improving results.

These aren’t easy reforms, especially in a difficult political moment. We face real challenges and risks from a Trump administration that is openly hostile to California and to our long-standing commitments to equity. But the next governor and state superintendent of public instruction will lead an education system in a state that has produced many of our nation’s most important innovations including, most recently, AI and robotics.

Instead of doubling down on a system that has not meaningfully improved teaching or learning, they have a chance to chart a different course aligned with California’s history of innovation and commitment to educational justice.

•••

Arun Ramanathan is the CEO of PowerMyLearning, a national non-profit focused on accelerating math outcomes for elementary students through innovative technology solutions and professional learning. He was formerly CEO of Pivot & CORE Learning and Executive Director of the Education Trust-West. 

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.