Joint Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education

Access to Quality Education

Summary

In the aggregate, the foregoing recommendations commit the State to providing all students with the resources, instruction, and support necessary to achieve the competencies that standards and college admissions requirements demand, and should be viewed as indicators of students' opportunities to learn that are routinely monitored and reported to the public (see Recommendation 27). At a minimum, the State must enable local schools to provide every K-12 student with all of the following:

The failure to successfully recruit qualified teachers and faculty can have long-term, serious social and economic consequences for both students and the state. Californians understand that well-qualified teachers are key to improving the achievement of all students. They believe that all children should have such teachers as virtually a fundamental right and that low-income students, in particular, have been most often denied that right. The essential components of quality that we have outlined in this section, and to which all California learners should have access, are reaffirmed by a survey of the measures deemed by Californians to be most important to lifting student achievement, as shown in Table 4, following.

Measures to Lift Student Achievement Deemed Very Important
Schools safe from violence 89%
Ensuring a well-qualified teacher in every classroom 87%
Greater parental involvement in children's education 84%
Getting fully qualified principals who can effectively run their schools 79%
The availability of high-quality textbooks and other instructional materials 74%
A challenging curriculum - the subject matter that is taught 73%
Increasing the opportunities for teachers to undertake professional development to strengthen their teaching skills 69%
Ensuring that school buildings and facilities are in good condition 67%
Strict discipline in the classroom 65%
Reduced class size 65%
Student access to computers in school 61%
Source: Recruiting New Teachers, Inc. A Survey of Public Attitudes in California Toward Teaching, Educational Opportunity, and School Reform, 2000

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