Joint Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education, California state legislature
2002
One can never be sure that an education "master plan" will amount to more than the paper it's printed on, but California is at it again. After several years of labor, a joint committee of the legislature has given birth to this 240-page behemoth, which seeks both to overhaul the state's famed (but now four-decade-old) higher-education master plan and to offer the state a 20-years-into-the-future blueprint for K-16 education. Much heavy lifting lies ahead for any of this to become real, including such controversial provisions as turning the state's elected superintendent of public instruction into a gubernatorial appointee. Two years of (voluntary) public pre-school are sought by the authors, as is mandatory kindergarten, an end to "emergency" credentials for teachers, and so forth-all totaling 56 main recommendations and countless sub-recommendations. A few flashes of boldness can be found in these pages but, for the most part, this is a mainstream, "more of the same," "do it within the existing system" document that's long on regulations and resources and exceptionally thin on unconventional ways of doing things. You'll find little here that smacks of results-based accountability, for example, and virtually nothing that calls for choice, competition or the entry of teachers and principals via unconventional routes. You can download the report from www.sen.ca.gov/masterplan/.
