UCI Head Proposes State Reforms on Education

By Peggy Goetz – Irvine World News – February 24, 2005

Sometimes when you have a Gordian knot in your shoelace you want to take the time to work and untangle it. Other times you want to just cut it off and start over. That's what Morgan Appel called to mind as he sat down to discuss ideas for ways to make education and education funding in California better. As head of the UCI Extension programs that offer classes and services to schools and teachers and working as a consultant in a number of school districts, he has seen many of the strengths and weaknesses in the system.

More than anything else, he said, the state education system needs flexibility. What works well in Irvine may not be what is needed in urban San Francisco or a rural school in the San Joaquin Valley. California is a bellwether state, he said. What happens here is a sign of what will happen across the country. One of the most striking things about California is its diversity - all kinds of diversity - linguistic, geographic, economic, cultural. Great diversity in students means there is a need for great diversity in approaches to teaching and education.

Appel said the ideal role for government is to provide more support and resources than strict limits on how money is spent and cast-in-steel rules about how the teaching should be done. "In my experience, school communities know how to address their circumstances, what is needed and what works for their kids," he said. He said that school reforms usually run in about five-year cycles. A mistake he sees is that the state and school districts tend to spend large sums of money adopting whole packages and to throw out old whole packages. This is inefficient in terms of materials and is also unrealistic. Reforms need time to take root and school organizations are resistant to change. "There's something valuable in every reform. We make a mistake when we don't carry these things across successfully, " he said.

As it works now, many teachers get embittered and tired of "yet another" round of reforms touted as the best method for all educators to use with every child, "No matter how much money you throw at a problem, if you don't give local control to apply it to what works for them, it will be wasted," Appel said. When the public education system was set up in the 19th century, the goal of education was to train large numbers of people to work in factories and to acculturate new immigrants. "Schools and the organization of schools are still tailored to the factory. We live now in an age of knowledge. It's highly individualized. We need people who can evaluate from a broad perspective and make decisions," he said.

He thinks education today should strive to offer equal opportunity of every student to pursue all avenues of learning. In addition, the world needs people trained in innovation, people who can think critically and creatively. People need to be able to work individually and collaboratively. "The people who are in charge of the money, don't really have their eye on the goals," he said. They are too far away, trying to create things like standardized tests and standards for a vast range of students and situations. It's the communities who know how to address their circumstances.

One of the big problems of the state education system stands about six feet high, said Appel. It is the paper copy of the state Education Code, the maze of words, educational and legal jargon, and regulations that governs the schools of the state. "The trouble with the code is that for the most they take nothing away, they just keep adding to it and making it more complex," he said. "There is a lot of it that just needs to be thrown out. We need to provide money smartly, not just follow an archaic code. " The world of today is a highly individualized world, and Appel has seen the program he directs at UCI move in new directions.

Rather than planners just deciding what educators need to be taught, offering the courses and expecting students to show up, his team now goes to school districts and asks what the particular needs of the districts are for training or help. Working now with a number of districts, the program has provided classes to address specific unique needs, as well as helped with assessment and grant writing, and other assistance and training.

Classes and instruction are usually offered at the schools or districts themselves. "We are a land-grant university and too often we don't get off the island. We need to work in partnerships with local districts," Appel said. As for the whole educational funding system, Appel said, "We need to stop and overhaul the way money is allocated to education from both the state and the federal levels." However, he cautioned that making these changes is a bit like turning an ocean liner on a dime. , "Rather than spending more money on making the ocean liner faster and more powerful, we need to get better rudders. We need to be ultimately more flexible."