UNIONS KEEP EDUCATION BELOW GRADE.

Byline: Alan Bonsteel

GOV. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed sweeping reforms of California government that would consolidate dozens of commissions with overlapping responsibilities and save taxpayers $1 billion a year. By far the most important of these reforms is his bold effort to impose some level of accountability on our dysfunctional public schools for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

California's system of school governance was characterized as hydra-headed by government reformers as early as the 1920s. While the state superintendent of public instruction is elected, the state Board of Education is appointed by the governor and is charged by the California Constitution to set policy for the state's schools. Since the Board of Education has no effective power over an elected official who ignores it, in recent years both the superintendent of public instruction and the Board of Education have maintained legal staffs to sue one another, with the taxpayers paying for these high-level food fights.

Further muddling lines of accountability are a governor-appointed secretary of education; a state Allocation Board, which doles out money for public school construction; and a California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Most Californians would be unable to name our superintendent of public instruction. His name, however, matters little, because in the last decade it has become impossible to be elected without special-interest money from the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers and the California School Employees Association, the latter the union of school clerks and janitors. The current politician holding the title, Jack O'Connell, spent 50 times as much money as his closest challenger - almost all of it special-interest money from teachers unions - to win the election. He is not the supervisor of our public school teachers, but rather, their employee.

As a result of this corruption, which would be illegal at the federal level under the Hatch Act, the California Department of Education refuses to take even the most minimal steps toward school accountability, such as abolishing the teacher tenure that makes public school teaching a government job guaranteed for life, or even to test our public school teachers to see if they know their subject matter.

The domination of the California Department of Education by the labor unions has also pushed it to disseminate data biased to make our schools' costs appear chintzy and their results far rosier than the harsh reality. The California Department of Education's Web site lists current per-student spending as $6,624 per year; the accurate figure of $9,614 is available only through the governor's secretary of education or the state legislative analyst. Our students are assessed with tests that use mostly the same repeated questions, assuring that test scores will rise year after year. Dropout rates are self-reported by the schools and unaudited, resulting in ``official'' rates less than half the true dropout rate of about one-third of our students.

Permitting the governor to name the superintendent of public instruction, subject to confirmation by the Legislature, is neither a partisan issue nor a power grab. No matter which party controls the Governor's Office and the Legislature, it cannot be held accountable for the most important responsibility of California government - our public schools - as long as the California Department of Education is run by the teachers unions.

Despite all of Schwarzenegger's muscle in Sacramento, it is highly unlikely that he will reform our public schools this year. Right now, the Legislature is controlled by the 900-pound gorilla of California politics, the California Teachers Association.

And, even if Schwarzenegger pulls the rabbit out of the hat and succeeds, his proposals don't address the even larger issue of school accountability. Throughout the United States, our public schools are governed by four layers of interlocking dysfunctional bureaucracy at the federal, state, county and local levels, all of them soaking up tax money and sending conflicting signals to our schools. It is for this reason that America's public schools underperform those of Western Europe, Canada and Japan, despite our much higher per-student funding.

Schwarzenegger, however, has fired a warning shot across the bow. He deserves our support in his quest to return our public schools to the people.