State Superintendent Jack O’Connell and California Teachers Association (CTA) President Barbara Kerr recently held a conference call discussing the Quality Education Improvement Act (QEIA), which will provide an additional $2.9 billion to about 500 low-performing schools over the next seven years. The measure was the result of the lawsuit filed by CTA against the governor charging that the governor had failed to live up to previous promises. According to David Tofosky, an LAUSD board member, the QEIA came out of a backroom deal between the governor, CTA and State Superintendent O’Connell.

In a rare disagreement among the powerful "Education Coalition", not everyone is thrilled with CTA’s solution. The California School Boards Association executive director, Scott Plotkin suggested that his organization is disappointed that the process was driven by CTA. His organization would prefer more flexibility in how the money is used.

QEIA calls for the money to be used for class size reduction, teacher training and additional school counselors. Because of the program’s requirements, for most schools, the bulk of the money will be required to implement class size reduction. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to suppose that this change will provide much in the way of increased student achievement or the closing of achievement gaps.

"Class-size reduction, especially in the magnitude here, just is not an effective intervention," CSBA assistant executive director Rick Pratt said. "The real key is what are the teachers going to do in those smaller classes."

In a review of education reforms throughout the state, University of California, Berkeley education researcher Bruce Fuller called it a “mistake to tie up most of the dollars in reducing class sizes – which yields achievement gains only under certain conditions.”

If class-size reduction doesn’t improve achievement, then why is it such a major aspect of this new reform plan? David Tokofsky, LAUSD board member has the answer:

“Class-size reduction produces more teachers and more union dues,” said Takofsky [sic]. “I hate to be cynical.”

I absolutely agree. The primary benefit of class-size reduction is to line CTA’s pockets, thus providing more money for their lobbying efforts and increasing their already incredible influence in Sacramento. That’s why it is among the first "reform" strategies that CTA suggests each and every time.

Besides being the wrong way to use the money, the program doesn’t really place any additional accountability requirements on participants. Schools will be required to meet the already minimal growth targets required under the Academic Performance Index (API), which can allow schools to meet the targets for decades without actually getting to the state’s goal of 800. Even weirder is that the 800 target isn’t even grade-level proficiency, which CDE places at an API score of 875. If a school doesn’t make this low target, they don’t even lose funding. They get extra help and assistance to get back in compliance.

Even worse, QEIA is really just an updated version of the previous reform efforts for low-performing schools. Under II/USP and HPSGP, schools received additional funding to improve achieve in exchange for 1 point of API growth each year. QEIA requires them to make 5 points or 5% of the distance from their API score to 800, which ever is more, each year. The reality is that is the same growth target that all schools are already supposed to make under API. So, in exchange for receiving this extra money, schools aren’t really being asked to do anything extra.

Evidence from the California Business for Education Excellence and Pacific Research Institute suggests that the $1.25 billion spent on the previous programs had no impact on student achievement, even when schools had much more flexibility on how to use the funding. Why does CDE expect that this new funding will provide school improvement when the previous similar programs did not? The answer is that they don’t really care.

All of the important parties win in this scenario.

• CTA gets more teachers, so they get more money and thus more influence.
• State Superintendent O’Connell gets to appear to be doing something about improving student achievement and closing achievement gaps while at the same time he gets control of about $250M per year to hand out to schools.
• County Offices of Education get additional oversight responsibility which will lead to more money for monitoring how schools implement this program.
• The Governor gets CTA off his back and keeps them from using their extensive resources to fight his policies.
• About 500 school districts get additional resources. They’ll find ways to creatively use them in order to do what they already wanted to do.

Really the only losers here are students, their parents and taxpayers in general. In seven years, after all this money is spent, students will still be dropping out in record numbers. Those that do graduate will do so without the basic skills they need for work or college and the next State Superintendent will be talking about a new "reform" program which will correct the problems with QEIA.

Dave Johnston lives in Ukiah, California.  This previously appeared on his blog, Friends of Dave.