Rep. Honda Talks Education

It’s no secret that our country—and especially the state of California—is experiencing a serious budget crisis.

Though the backlash is widespread, one of the areas in which Californians can especially feel the brunt is in cuts to public education.

Class sizes are growing larger, teachers are being laid off, arts and sports programs are being cut, and school districts are being forced to hire underqualified teachers.

In an exclusive interview with Patch, Congressman Mike Honda (D-San Jose) took time out to share his thoughts on the state of our country’s public education system. Honda represents the 15th Congressional District, which includes Milpitas, Los Gatos, Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, and one third of San Jose.

A former San Jose public school teacher, principal and school board member, Rep. Honda has made education a major focus of his political career, and was one of the original authors and founders of the federal government’s Commission on Equity and Excellence in Education.

Why Aren’t All Public Schools Equal?

One of the causes Rep. Honda says he is most passionate about is correcting “inequities” in our country’s public education system.

When he uses the term “equity,” he said, he essentially means that each child deserves equal access to an excellent public education.

However, that’s where many schools, teachers and policymakers disagree, Honda says. You can’t offer “all children” an equal education, because all children have different needs, he said. Rather, you must offer “each child” an equal opportunity to be successful in their learning and education.

When you think in terms of a school’s Average Daily Attendance (ADA)—which determines how much funding each school is given—that means the same amount of money is put behind each child, Honda said.

“That implies every child has the same needs,” he explained. “But I say, every child has different needs. The same amount of money behind each child is not equity, it’s parity.”

One of the things that disturbs Rep. Honda the most in his job as a representative of the public—and one of the things his Commission is working hard to correct—is when, in a single school district, he sees schools that vary widely from each other in terms of their quality.

“Sometimes, I see such painful inequities; schools that are so obviously substandard, even just in their facilities, their neighborhoods, the quality of their instruction,” he described. “How can such schools exist in the same district with other schools that are doing average, or better than average?”

Honda said the inevitable question is, why do poor schools exist in poor neighborhoods?

To Californians, the answer might seem to be because our schools are largely funded by local property taxes. Therefore, in poorer neighborhoods the houses are worth less. Therefore they pay less taxes, and then the local schools get fewer dollars.

Honda said, that may be part of it, but in many cases the problem can be tracked back to city planners.

The next logical question is, “How are poor neighborhoods created?” Honda asked.

In his opinion, the answer is zoning.

“Zoning dictates what kind of homes are being built. And local governments determine what kinds of activities are going on in certain zones,” he said. “So, another question is, if we know that local government creates neighborhoods, should we say local government has some responsibility in the distribution of resources in neighborhoods and schools?”

“It’s a rhetorical question, because I think a lot of local governments don’t want to face it.”

The Fight Between Schools and Redevelopment Projects for Money

Congressman Honda theorizes that one of the biggest contributors to the financial woes of our school districts is the fact that local governments are too often diverting funds that could be used to improve schools into local redevelopment projects.

“It all comes back to zoning practices—poor school districts are being eradicated in the name of new developments,” he said.

While he agrees that redevelopment is important, “blight is in the eye of the beholder,” Honda said. While new redevelopments will eventually bring more money into cities, they should not be placed at a higher priority than schools.

“Schools are an important infrastructure of our neighborhoods, too,” he said. “Schools should be an infrastructure of the city, and they should share in the income that redevelopments realize.”

In one example, Rep. Honda shared a memory from his days on the board of education of the San Jose Unified School District. He recalled a time when a city official distributed a waiver he wanted people to sign, that would divert funds from the local school district into new development projects.

He said, the waiver was written in such vague “legalese” that most people who read it did not understand they were essentially signing away money out of their schools’ budgets.

“I told the superintendent, he should absolutely not sign it, and that it was a very bad idea,” he said.

He added, the one question he wished local government officials would ask themselves more often before making budgetary decisions is, “how will this impact our children?”

“We should not compartmentalize our system in ways that does not take any consideration of those entities that make decisions on our children,” he said. “When we make any decisions, we should always ask ourselves, ‘what’s the ultimate impact on our public schools?’ in terms of the distribution of resources and educational equity.”

Proposed Changes to the ‘No Child Left Behind Act’

One movement many in Washington are advocating for is a re-examination of former President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act” (NCLB) of 2001.

NCLB largely focuses on teacher accountability, and was originally designed to be a solution to widespread gaps in achievement between children of different races, incomes, English language ability, and children with disabilities.

However, many, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, are arguing that NCLB focuses too much on test scores, and puts too much pressure on schools to improve standardized test scores, year over year.

“The act’s emphasis on test scores as the primary measure of school performance has narrowed the curriculum, and the ‘one-size-fits-all’ accountability system has mislabeled schools as failures even if their students are demonstrating real academic growth,” Duncan wrote in a U.S. Department of Education online blog on Jan. 8.

In the blog entry, Duncan argues that schools should be measured on how much each student improves from the beginning of the year to the end, thereby encouraging the schools and individual teachers to focus more on the actual needs of each individual child, and helping them improve.

Honda said that is what would truly guarantee an equal opportunity for education for each child—in other words, guarantee each child “equity.”

Honda said, a simple and inexpensive solution would be for teachers to do year-beginning and year-end assessments.

“We do that in special education classes, but we should do that for each child that goes through our education system. Because each child is special,” he said. “If you don’t know the needs of each child in your class, how can you truly be held accountable?”

A Report on the State of Education

Rep. Honda said, his Commission on Equity and Excellence in Education was supposed to have delivered a status report to Congress in December, but that everyone involved felt there was much more work to be done. Now he said he hopes the commission will have a report by mid-year.

“I want this report to be different than [previous efforts] in the ‘80s and early 2000s, which said there had been no changes in the public education system. I want this report to say why,” he said. “I want this document to shake people’s thinking and get them to look at education in a different light.”

For more information on the Commission for Equity and Excellence in Education, click here. For more information on Congressman Mike Honda, visit http://honda.house.gov.

Rep. Honda invites his constituents to participate in a survey that measures how you feel on certain issues that he represents in Congress. To take the online survey, click here.