“CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
FROM FIRST TO WORST”
A Documentary Premiere with Journalist John Merrow
A Forum — January 8, 2004
Today’s forum screened the national premiere of John Merrow’s and John Tulenko’s dramatic one-hour film documentary, FROM FIRST TO WORST, scheduled to begin airing around the U.S. in February on the Public Broadcasting System. (FIRST TO WORST is a production of The Merrow Report, producer of programming for PBS’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and “Frontline.”)
California enrolls one out of every eight American public school students. These six million young people represent a sizable portion of America’s future workers, parents, voters and civic leaders; so what happens in California’s school has major significance for the Washington policy community.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, California’s schools served as a national model. “There was a commitment to excellence,” distinguished education journalist Peter Schrag says in the film. Today, California’s schools rank near the bottom. Since tying with Mississippi and Guam in the mid-1990s, scores have barely nudged upwards. “We basically turned our back on schools,” John Mockler, another policy expert and former state board of education member contends.
FIRST TO WORST takes viewers to some of California’s crumbling schools, and tracks the origins of their troubles to the 1968 court order to equalize spending across the state and to the 1978 “Proposition 13,” requiring local tax hikes to be approved by two-thirds of voters. With inadequate funding and loss of local control, the film argues, most of California’s 1000 districts are in desperate shape, with overcrowded conditions, decrepit facilities and poorly prepared teachers.
The documentary also visits the public schools of a well-to-do suburban community, where parents funnel millions of private dollars into the schools through a local education foundation to make up for the inadequate state funding. Virtually every wealthy community in California raises school funds in this way, contributing to a widening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” and blurring the line between private and public education. (There are 400 such school foundations in the state.)
California is trying to regain its national education eminence but, as FIRST TO WORST documents, progress is painfully slow. Much is at stake for our nation in the future of our largest state.
After the screening of the film, Executive Producer John Merrow joined us for a lively discussion of the California education system. Discussion focused on
- The inherent inequality of some districts using local foundation funding to significantly increase their per pupil expenditure over that of poorer districts.
- How the segregation of children by race and class influences the funding of education.
- The hyper-democracy of California and the unintended consequences of Proposition 13.
- The significance of increased state control over education, particularly in the area of curriculum.
- The increased demands on districts with large numbers of immigrant students.
Extended Interviews from FIRST TO WORST are available on-line at PBS.org.
This brief summarizes an American Youth Policy Forum that took place on January 8, 2004 on Capitol Hill, reported by Nancy Martin.
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) is a non-profit, nonpartisan professional development organization that bridges youth policy, practice and research for professionals working on youth policy issues at the national, state and local levels.
AYPF’s events and policy reports are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, George Gund Foundation, J & M Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, Charles S. Mott Foundation, Joseph and May Winston Foundation, and others.