Bold Reform for California Education System Passes First Hurdle

Senator Huff is lead author on legislation backed by Schwarzenegger to reinvigorate education in California

Sacramento — Senator Bob Huff (R – Diamond Bar) announced today his measure Senate Bill 1-5X, was approved by the Senate Education committee.  Jointly authored with three other Senate Education Committee members, the bill calls for bold and innovative reforms to California’s public education system and makes California competitive for much needed federal Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. 

“The status-quo has failed for too many years,” said Senator Huff.  “For too long, while the adults in Sacramento fail to make the much needed changes to our school system, generations of children are lost as they go without a quality education.”

Many schools across California continue to show little progress in student achievement.  In Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) alone – by far the state’s largest school district, with nearly 700,000 students – the district fails to graduate half its high school students and only 11% of the students make it to college.

“Those who would like to protect a failed system are calling for the legislature to slow down this legislation but the kids simply cannot wait any longer,” said Senator Huff.  “These kinds of smart and innovative reforms were needed yesterday.” 

Some of SB 1-5X’s major provisions include:

                       Establishing a plan for turning around the bottom 5 percent of California’s persistently lowest-performing schools.

                       Removes the cap on the number of charter schools authorized to operate in California and establishes a working group to make recommendations on                        charter school financial reporting and audits.

                      Authorizes open enrollment options for students stuck in schools that are identified as low-performing, defined to be those in Program Improvement and                       ranked in deciles 1 to 3.  This provision was modeled after Senator Huff’s SB 266 (2009).

                      SB 1-5X now moves on to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
                     
                      Senator Bob Huff is the Vice-Chair of the Senate Education Committee and serves as the Senate Republican Caucus Chair.  He represents portions of Los                       Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.  You can follow Senator Huff on Twitter @bobhuff99.