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I think that we have done for a lot for education this last three and a half years. , if it is giving kids more teachers, or expanding our school day, or creating more counselors and so on.  But the fact of the matter really is, and we have to realize that—and I think everyone has been writing about that lately—that our education system is dysfunctional.  What we are doing with all of those things that we have been doing is great, but it’s really all nibbling away at the edges.  It’s not taking the bite out of the big apple, which we ought to.

And I think this is why it was so important that we created this kind of a test, and studies, in the last 18 months.  We don’t even know who is in charge of education in this state.  We have the legislators that make decisions, we have the State Board of Education that makes decisions, we have the Secretary of Education, we have the School Superintendent, we have the Superintendent of Public Instruction, we have the local leaders, the board leaders, the local superintendents, all of those things.  And I think that Superintendent Roy Romer can tell you how difficult it is in order to really get things done in this state.

So it is a dysfunctional system, and it is really no different, I would say, than many other systems in our state are dysfunctional.  I think that we have seen, when I took over, if it is infrastructure, which was a big, big issue in California, that we didn’t do any infrastructure for three decades, it was just brushed under, and swept under the rug.  If it is, for instance, our health care system that we have, and has been a problem for decades, that has been swept under the rug.  The education system, or prison reform, which we have just completed and done, all of those big issues have been swept under the rug, thinking that we can hide it, and let’s just fix little problems around the edges, which was a big mistake.

That is why 18 months ago I established a committee, which is the Committee on Education Excellence under the leadership of Ted Mitchell, and we went together with Jack O’Connell and also with the legislators.  Everyone came together and said, “Let’s commission, and let’s have them go out and really study this for 18 months.” They have, under the leadership of the Stanford University, 22 studying groups have worked together on that.  And they came out with findings of things that we actually knew, that the system just doesn’t work, and that we need to reform the entire system.  Even though by making all of those great investments in our kids, if we want to have great results, the system needs to be overhauled, and money alone is not going to do it. We’ve got to go and create a system that is really functional.  How can we succeed when we don’t even have adequate data in order to make the right decisions?  Everyone, especially the parents in our state, need the data in order to know if they should go and stay with the school that their kids are in, maybe they’re failing, or maybe there’s a school next to it, maybe there is in another district a school that performs better.  We don’t have that information, parents don’t have that information.  We need to go and do the same thing as when you go shopping for a car.  You should be able to compare one school with another.  Why is this school having bigger dropout rates than this school?  Why is this school having better success with their high school exit exam than this school?  Why is this school spending more money in the classroom versus this school?  All of this information needs to be available in order for parents to make good decisions.  Funding should be based on students’ needs that will lead to higher achievements rather than to the needs of adults that result in bigger bureaucracy.

How can we succeed when we can’t reward, for instance, teachers?  I mean, it is a no brainer.  In the private sector, Eli can tell you that you’ve got to reward people for performance.  You’ve got to reward people when they do well.  When teachers turn a school around from an average of an F to an average of a B, they should be rewarded for that.  They should be inspired in order to work harder.  That is what we need.  How can you have a system that works when you cannot even fire people when they perform badly?  Those are the kinds of things that we have to go and take care of.

And this is why I will do the same thing this year as I have done in the previous two years, where we go, before I now go to our State of the State Address in January and make the announcement of what the changes will be, we will get everyone together.  Now, for all of these months, from now all the way to January, get all of those people together, if it is the ACLU all the way on the left, to the Hoover Institution all the way to the right, to the teachers, administrators, to parents, to academic experts, to reformers, to community leaders, labor leaders, inner-city educators, everyone we want to bring together, Democrats and Republicans.  Because when I lay out that vision in January, I don’t want to be shot down with the vision.  I want to make sure that everyone buys in, and that everyone feels, all of those groups I have just mentioned, will feel that, “We have been part of the decision making.  This is an idea that I gave the Governor.” Democrats may say, “This is an idea that I have given the Governor.” Maybe the teachers union says, “Here is an idea that we have given.” All of the things that I will be talking about at the State of the State, just like I did about health care, or about infrastructure, we’ll bring everyone together, all the stakeholders, so we move forward together.

Excerpted from California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger’s remarks at the Education Writers Association 60th Anniversary Celebration. Link to full text here.