Walters: Newsom wants to overhaul state oversight of California schools. Will students benefit?

"It's long overdue that we modernize the management of our educational system, Newsom said, and so in the budget I'll be submitting tomorrow, I'm proposing that we unify the policymaking by the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, allowing the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to align our education policies from early childhood through college. The budget's passage on this was longer, but still failed to explicitly say what Newsom had in mind."

"The proposal cited two reports that bemoaned the multiple, often overlapping and sometimes competitive, state and local entities that govern the schools. One was California's so-called Master Plan for Education, published in 2002, and the other was from Policy Analysis for California Education, or PACE, a multi-university think tank, that had been issued just weeks earlier. The budget proposed to move oversight authority of the management of the state Department of Education and local districts under the California Board of Education."

A brief budget proposal would unify policymaking authority between the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, enabling the State Superintendent to align education policies from early childhood through college. The budget language was vague and did not explicitly detail intended structural changes. The proposal cited the 2002 Master Plan for Education and a recent PACE report criticizing multiple overlapping state and local education entities. The budget would transfer oversight of the Department of Education and local district management under the California Board of Education, effectively removing managerial authority from the elected superintendent. The current superintendent said he was not consulted.

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