Educators watching which education bills Gov. Brown will sign

Gov. Jerry Brown has hundreds of bills to sign or veto in less than two weeks. Educators say they’re watching the way he acts on education bills, because the governor’s offered few specific ideas about how he wants to improve public education.

One education bill on the governor’s desk clears up parents’ ability to overhaul schools. Another would expand the high school classes students need to qualify for admission to University of California schools.

The most closely watched bill is the one that would do away with the Academic Performance Index. That 12-year-old measurement ranks schools and districts based entirely on test score improvement. California sanctions schools for low scores and failure to improve over time.

The bill on the governor’s desk would create a new index in which test scores make up less than half of the measure. Joanne Fawley, president of the teachers union at the Anaheim Union High School District, said her district’s begun to measure school success with other factors.

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"These are things such as grade point average, graduation rates, participation in extracurricular activities, community service," said Fawley, "in other words looking at the whole student, not just a snapshot of one test on one day."

The API overhaul bill passed the Senate despite 14 Republican "no" votes. Erika Hoffman said her organization, the California School Boards Association, disagreed with critics who said the change is too much, too soon. She added that Gov. Brown hasn’t said much since he took office about specific reforms to improve the state’s public schools.

"This is the first year of his signing and vetoing bills," said Hoffman, "I think we’re all trying to gauge where his policies lie on some of these issues and we just don’t know for sure yet."

State Senator Darrell Steinberg wrote the API overhaul bill. Gov. Brown won’t say publicly whether he supports it. Does that silence and the ticking clock mean a veto is imminent?

"I think that that would be a mistaken interpretation," Mark Hedlund said. Hedlund is Steinberg’s spokesman. "This governor has always played his cards close to the vest when bills come to him."

In recent weeks, Senator Steinberg’s been working the bully pulpit for his API overhaul bill. Three major California newspapers have issued editorials in favor of the change.