Anybody Want to be Schwarzenegger's Secretary of Education?

But there seems to be no strong capacity in the governor's shop to track or develop expertise in long-term education policy issues.

With the scheduled March release of a voluminous set of foundation-funded studies on school finance commissioned by senior California officials, that lack of capacity becomes even more critical. In addition to state Superintendent Jack O'Connell, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, the "requesters" of the studies included the Governor's Advisory Committee on Education Excellence and thus, at least indirectly (and reluctantly), Schwarzenegger himself. The studies are supposed to focus equally on adequacy -- how much money is needed for different kinds of students -- and on how effectively the state uses the money it spends now.

Early indications are that, because of timidity and excesses of academic abstraction, the project may generate less in policy guidance than had been hoped for. But it should provide enough material to start the serious discussion about school spending -- how much, where and how -- that the state has never had.

What we've mostly had, at least for the past 30 years, is a series of ad-hoc decisions: when money is available, school budgets increase, sometimes in the form of huge, semipermanent categorical programs, such as class-size reduction, based more on political agendas than research. When it's tight, we cut without reference to priorities or effectiveness.

The reluctance of the governor in commissioning the study -- and the near-total absence of interest from legislative Republicans -- isn't surprising, since it's likely to include some large dollar signs that will, among other things, be useful in any future school funding suit or school lobby ballot initiative.

But, as has become evident in the many other states where adequacy studies have driven up school spending, if the California reports come even close to meeting their goals, bottom-line numbers may be no more important than the recommendations on efficiency. At the same time, almost everyone who's looked at the future of California's economy and labor force -- and at the nation's -- understands that both depend on major investments in the literacy and skills of today's students.

The majority of those students, like California's population, are African Americans and Latino and Asian immigrants and their children, and they'll have to replace and support the boomers who'll be retiring in the years ahead.

The labor market forecasts, from studies by the Public Policy Institute of California, the Educational Testing Service and others, are not rosy. A generation from now American workers will have to support nearly twice as many retirees as they do now.

More important, unless educational achievement increases, the next generation will not have the literacy and skills of those retiring now.

There will thus be two challenges. Because some people still see the education of immigrants and their children as burdens on schools, one is to persuade California's -- and the nation's -- disproportionately older, whiter, more affluent voters that the investment is both necessary and in their own interests. The other is to generate the accountability systems and political will to make certain the investment isn't just spent according to old formulas or according to the power of competing interest groups.

That brings us back to the question of leadership. California badly needs the capacity in the governor's office to oversee what will almost necessarily have to be increased spending on schools and protect California's high academic standards. But that will require both the people to do the job and, more important, the interest.

Peter Schrag is former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. This article published with his permission.