It\u2019s clear what the next state superintendent will no longer do upon assuming office in January: run the California Department of Education. A new education commissioner appointed by the next governor will take on that responsibility under legislation Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in June.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s unclear is what the next state superintendent will actually do. Whoever wins next month\u2019s election for the job \u2014 either Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board, or Richard Barrera, president of the San Diego Unified\u2019s school board \u2014 will spend the next four years creating a new job template for future state superintendents.<\/p>\n
Four times between 1928 and 1968, voters turned down opportunities to get rid of the superintendent position altogether. Assembly Bill 181 took a different tack: It consolidated responsibility for managing the education department and overseeing school improvement under a new education commissioner. It tacitly acknowledged that the elected state superintendent would remain an independent voice, free to roam California critiquing the state of education, advocating for positions they ran on and lobbying the Legislature to adopt them.<\/p>\n
The bill also granted the next superintendent some additional responsibilities. The person will become the first nongovernor-appointed member of the State Board of Education, and a member of the Community Colleges\u2019 Board of Governors. The law provided initial funding for a small staff of about a dozen deputies and clerical staff.<\/p>\n
But AB 181 was intentionally vague about other, bigger responsibilities, in part because Newsom and key Assembly leaders who authored the bill couldn\u2019t agree on additional roles.<\/p>\n
Changes to the role haven\u2019t been central to either candidate\u2019s campaign. Resolving the uncertainty in the new role will be a big part of the job, and the candidates have so far offered contrasting perspectives on how they\u2019d approach the issue.<\/p>\n
Barrera has expressed ambivalence about AB 181. He acknowledges the need for restructuring and shifting the department to the education commissioner. He said he\u2019s open to discussing new roles for the job. But ultimately, he said, \u201cyou, the Legislature and you, the governor, you don\u2019t get to define my job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, he has been spreading his vision for the job. One idea that could rattle the next governor is for the state superintendent to confer every fall with local superintendents, educators and parents to create a first draft of a state education budget before the governor lays out the full state budget in early January. Being proactive, he said, would be better \u201cthan spending the next six months reacting to what the governor and Legislature propose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shaw charges that AB 181 is unconstitutional, and said she will sue California to keep the state superintendency as it was, though such a case would face over three decades of legal precedent. She has framed the move as retaliatory against her campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cVoters don\u2019t want to just elect a mascot,\u201d Shaw said in an EdSource questionnaire. \u201cThey created this office as an independent voice for kids and parents. Gavin Newsom\u2019s budget trailer bill turns this office into a figurehead and hands the Department of Education to a political appointee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long-standing debate over \u2018double-headed\u2019 system<\/p>\n
The catalyst for AB 181 was a report last December by the nonprofit research center Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) that called for overhauling the education governance system.<\/p>\n
The problem, PACE said, echoing findings of numerous reports over the decades, was a split authority. The governor and State Board of Education created policies and programs, while an elected state superintendent, often legislators lacking in management experience, carried them out. No one was accountable for running programs well.<\/p>\n
In a webinar last week, Brooks Allen, the executive director of the State Board of Education and the governor\u2019s education policy advisor, said Newsom came to recognize this \u201cfragmentation\u201d threatened to undermine potentially \u201ctransformative\u201d programs like transitional kindergarten and community schools. In his state of the state address in January, Newsom adopted PACE\u2019s fix. A commissioner with a management background would oversee the California Department of Education, while the state superintendent focused on other duties. PACE envisioned an independent evaluator of school programs, while Newsom favored the superintendent as a bridge builder for all branches of education.<\/p>\n
AB 181 listed those and other ideas as possibilities and said the next state superintendent and the new education commissioner should spend the first six months of 2027 negotiating a job description to bring to the Legislature in the fall of 2027 for funding and statutory changes.<\/p>\n
Would the next superintendent go along?<\/p>\n
The unstated assumption is that future superintendents would be interested and qualified for what PACE, the Legislature and governor had in mind.<\/p>\n
Shaw declined interview requests for this story, but wrote in an EdSource survey that, if elected, she \u201chas no intention of laying down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would reshape the job around three things the new law still leaves standing: the bully pulpit, systemic accountability and a voice on boards that actually set policy,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
Julie Marsh, a USC professor of education policy who co-authored the influential PACE report, said voters evaluating the superintendent candidates should look for someone who is independent and able to reach conclusions that might rankle their allies. But a superintendent shouldn\u2019t be so independent and isolated that they can\u2019t connect with stakeholders to solve whatever problems they might identify.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan they give constructive criticism while maintaining some of the relationships they need to get these things solved?\u201d Marsh said.<\/p>\n
Barrera said he agrees with much of what is in AB 181, adding, \u201cI want to work with the commissioner to figure out the structure that\u2019s necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI really am looking forward to help build linkages between pre-K to 12 and higher education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he said that as an independently elected state official, he will \u201ckeep an arm\u2019s length\u201d from the Legislature and governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor instance, if part of my job is evaluating,\u201d he said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to do that in an academic way, and I certainly don\u2019t want the Legislature to decide, \u2018Here are the programs that we want evaluated, and you go and hire a researcher and deliver a report back to us, and then we\u2019ll decide what to do with that.\u2019 That is not going to be the way that I approach this role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like past state superintendent candidates, Shaw and Barrera have focused their campaigns on selling voters on their positions on issues and not on the dramatic changes to the role of superintendent. Morgan Polikoff, a professor at the University of Southern California\u2019s Rossier School of Education, doubts the changes will affect how most voters are viewing the race \u2014 if they\u2019re thinking about it at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you surveyed education policy professors in the state of California about the shift, I would be surprised if more than half of them could accurately describe what the change was,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I think the average parent or voter has absolutely no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s clear what the next state superintendent will no longer do upon assuming office in January: run the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7,179,15,181,23,100,180,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-489226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california","tag-community","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-newsletter","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}