Governance Twenty-five years ago, local school boards had some control over local revenues. But now, decisions about how much money to allocate to education, and how to do it, are centralized in Sacramento. These decision are made within the constitutional requirements of Proposition 13 and of Proposition 98, the minimum funding guarantee for kindergarten through community college. The money is accompanied by state and federal laws, rules, regulations, and court decisions that constrain school district expenditures. Contracts with employee groups further affect spending flexibility.
Charter schools are an exception to centralized governance.
Nearly 140 of these publicly-funded schools were formed in California as of 1998. They are exempt from many Education and Government Code laws and regulations. Yet this state spends about a thousand dollars less per pupil than the national average and just over half as much as New Jersey, for example, despite the fact that per capita personal income and personal income per enrolled student is well above average. This concern has led, most notably, to the passage of a new state law requiring that, beginning in the year 2004, all California students pass a high school exit exam before receiving a diploma. At a recent EdSource conference, notable scholars and researchers Laurence Steinberg and Pedro Noguera shared their different and yet often complementary perspectives on the cultural, familial, and institutional factors that have the most potent influence on student learning and academic performance.