The North County Times, September 1, 2006

State Superintendent Jack O'Connell gets the Lipstick on a Pig Award for declaring he is "extremely pleased" with California's latest school test score results. He applauds what he calls the "steady gains" of the last three years, with the number of students scoring at or above proficiency this year rising to 42 percent in English and 40 percent in math.

That's progress, all right, but hardly enough to meet the federal No Child Left Behind mandate that all students be proficient in both subjects by 2013-14. At the current rate of improvement each year, only about half of California students will reach proficiency by that time.

The outlook is especially dismal for Latino and black students, whose statewide test scores continue to trail whites by about 30 points, a gap that has not narrowed at all since the testing program began.

In the face of these cold, hard facts, the state superintendent's optimism is astonishing.

O'Connell promises to address the achievement gap problem by making it his top priority and exhorting everyone to "work harder, faster and with more focus."

His concern is long overdue. According to a November 2005 California Budget Project Report, 61 percent of California's school-age population will be Latino or black by 2013-14.

When North County school administrators give their own spin to local results, you won't hear much talk about what classroom teachers already know: Comparing grade-level test scores from year to year or among schools may reveal more about family income than quality of instruction. For proof of that, compare San Diego's results with Oceanside's.

This year's celebration of a marginal improvement in test scores has been dampened by a No Child Left Behind progress report issued recently by the U.S. Department of Education. California's plan to have highly qualified teachers in every core academic subject by the end of this school year, as required by law, has been rejected by a federal peer review committee. The importance of doing so was underscored by a 2003 Pacific Research Institute study that found less than half of the state's eighth-grade math teachers majored in math.

But the most discouraging of the committee's findings is the state's failure to submit a written equity plan showing how California will ensure that poor and minority children are not taught by inexperienced and unqualified teachers at higher rates than other children are.

The state is required to correct the plan's shortcomings before resubmitting it by a Sept. 29 deadline. Failure to comply could result in the loss of federal funds.

By touting small improvements in test results each year, our state superintendent fails to convey the urgency for more aggressive school reform.

In his best seller, "The World Is Flat," Thomas Friedman provides graphic examples of why we don't have the luxury of gradual improvement to be competitive in an increasingly global economy. If all we do is stay the course, before California can boast of leaving no child behind, the rest of the industrialized world will have passed us by.

Richard J. Riehl, North County Times columnist, is a former administrator at Cal State San Marcos. Contact him at RiehlWorld2@yahoo.com.