On Tuesday evening, I was pleased to join my colleagues in the Legislature in supporting a package of bipartisan education reforms that will make California more competitive to receive up to $700 million in funds from the federal "Race to the Top" program. While the federal money is significant and will be helpful to struggling districts, the reforms that have been implemented are important and make progress in improving our failing schools.
Empowering parents is essential to turning our schools around and holding them accountable for how they educate our kids and spend our tax dollars, and this notion is central to these reforms.
The reform plan that we passed truly empowers parents. Under these reforms, parents will be able to demand accountability from local schools and demand that local school boards make changes to improve our failing schools. Parents will also be given greater ability to take their child out of a failing school and send them to a better performing one so they can get the solid foundation they need to succeed in life. This was the idea behind legislation I authored in 2008, AB 2561, which gave parents in low-performing schools a choice in the education of their children.
Through the "Race to the Top" program, the Obama Administration has been working closely with the various states and Governor Schwarzenegger to increase accountability in schools and pass real reforms to improve low-performing schools and better prepare students for the future.
It is important that the Legislature passed this bipartisan reform in order to meet a looming federal deadline to apply for Race to the Top funds and make California the most competitive to receive hundreds of millions in federal dollars for our schools.