Bill Honig : Bringing a Passion for Change to Classrooms in California

SAN FRANCISCO — In his third term as California’s Supt. of Public Instruction, Bill Honig remains passionate about education. “If you’re not excited about what you do, if there’s not the passion, nothing’s going to get done.”

Honig’s commitment is longstanding. He left a law practice to teach in an inner-city school in San Francisco, then braved political odds when he challenged Wilson Riles, a three-term incumbent, in 1982.

During his first term, Honig crafted a broad coalition of Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, minority educators, school administrators, teachers and parents. Such support enabled passage of SB 813, an ambitious bill linking money for higher teacher salaries, new textbooks and other improvements to reforms like a longer school year, more homework and tougher high school graduation requirements.

Gov. George Deukmejian reluctantly signed the $800-million bill. But Honig’s coalition splintered along partisan lines, and his disagreements with the governor degenerated into a personal feud. Many politicians and the media criticized both sides in that fight, saying it was getting in the way of carrying out the reforms.

That didn’t stop Honig. He took his pitch to the voters two years ago to get them to guarantee a chunk of the state budget for education. Californians narrowly passed Proposition 98, a landmark school-funding initiative that mandated roughly 40% of discretionary state tax revenues for public schools and community colleges. Honig had won again.

Commitment to education is a family affair. Honig’s wife, Nancy, a former businesswoman, founded the Quality Education Project, which strives to get more parents involved in schools. Honig taught his son, Steven, when the boy was 9.

Honig, always animated, reels off statistics about the progress California’s students have made since he took office, but he readily concedes much more remains to be done. What’s next on his agenda? Governor? Honig quickly answers: “Superintendent for four years.”

Question: What can the new governor do to make a difference in every classroom?

Answer: Establish the vision of where education’s going. That’s important, because it’s a big system, a lot of different parts--teachers, administrators, school boards--and if we can get agreement--here’s the game plan for the 1990s, and have it general enough so that we can fill it in but specific enough so that it gives us a focus--then it sets the climate under which we can improve the schools.

Q: What do you mean, “Here’s the game plan”?

A: After President Bush set (education) goals for the nation, we had a California summit, (with) representatives of the business community, educators, and so forth. There was a good deal of consensus on what we had to do: More kids who graduate from a four-year college; more youngsters who qualify and graduate with a technical preparation degree as transition to work; fewer dropouts. Then there’s a strategy to get there: a thinking, active, engaging curriculum for all kids. (Then there were) all the different initiatives that had to happen for that to occur: The frameworks that embody those ideas had to be beefed up, staff had to be retooled ‘til you get teachers up to speed, the science framework . . .

Q: By framework, you mean curriculum guide?

A: You have a new way of teaching science that is concept driven--it gets kids to think. But you have to bring teachers up to speed in that. You have to change the methods by which classes are presented: more hands-on, cooperative learning. You have to change some of the organizational patterns in schools--more teamwork of both teachers and kids. . . . You have to have better textbooks. You have to have better leadership. You have to use technology a lot more.

Q: Governor-elect Pete Wilson has hired your former adviser, Maureen DiMarco, to head his new cabinet-level department. What does this appointment hold for the children of California?

A: I think it’s a very positive sign. In my conversations with the governor-elect and with his staff, they want to keep lines of communication open. . . . And they looked around for a person who had credibility in the educational community, intelligence and creativity, and a track record. . . . It’s a very good sign that there is going to be a different atmosphere.

. . . What happened is that the political consensus and community consensus on school reform that we worked so hard to develop in ’82 and ‘83, when I first ran and then we got SB 813, all broke down about ‘85, ‘86, ’87. (It had been) bipartisan, there were Republicans in favor of it. . . . (That consensus broke down) when the governor--it’s my reading of it--intentionally tried to make it a partisan issue, (and) went after me personally.

Q: Why do you think that happened?

A: I think it was intentional.(In 1987, Deukmejian) said, in his state of the state (address), that schools are my No. 1 priority. The next day, he cut them by $800 million in the budget and gave them only 10 cents on the dollar of new money. That started the fight.

Q: You won that fight. Proposition 98 . . .

A: It doesn’t feel like it.

Q: Proposition 98 guarantees 40% . . .

A: (Deukmejian) actually held back (school) money that year (1987), then the money showed up and he rebated it. That was his undoing. When people saw that he was willing to give back small dribs and drabs of money and hurt the schools to do it, (voters) made up their minds that that’s not what California needs. The next year we were able to go to the public and get a guarantee.

. . .There has been a lot of disinformation--intentionally--by this administration saying, writing, calling the health people in, calling the other services in, calling the police in, saying the schools got all your money, that’s why you’re broke. That is just not correct.

. . . When we round up all the different services from the state in the last four year--prisons, schools, welfare, UC, state colleges--there’s 11 major services that are the bulk of the budget--we were just in the middle. When we discounted for per capita--for growth--we were fifth out of 11. That’s assuming that we get all this money that they’re holding up. If we don’t get that money, we’ll be seventh out of 11. So this whole argument that we’re taking the colleges’ money or we’re taking the health money or that we’re taking other kinds of funds just isn’t correct. . . .

The real issue is that (California) schools are substantially underfunded in comparison with other states. We give our schools a much lower priority. . . . We are willing to discuss how to get over (the short-term problem) and do our part as long as it’s fair. We will argue strenuously that you shouldn’t use schools--money from education--to solve the state’s problems . . .

Q: Do you think they’re going to have to raise the income taxes?

A: . . . In the past 10 years, there has been about $450 billion in family-income after-tax growth. Who got it? It wasn’t distributed fairly. If you divide families into five groups, (you’ll see). The bottom fifth actually are worse off; they have less income than they did before. Your next 20%: They’re about flat. The next 20% went up just a very minor amount. So 60% of the people are either worse off or basically the same.

The next group went up maybe 8% or 9%, a good gain. Then you’re left with the last fifth. If you divided that fifth into two groups, 19% and 1%. The 19% got about $200 billion of that $450 billion, and the top 1% got about $200 billion of it. So 41%, 42%, 43% of all revenue income increases in the ‘80s went to a very small number of people who are well-off.

I’m not saying that we should go get it from them, because that’s not the issue. The issue: If there’s a trade-off between cutting schools and crippling our ability to invest in the future, cutting back on education or some of these other important services--and getting a fair tax from these people--it’s clear to me what the trade-off should be.

Q: They would be investing in their own future?

A: You talk to these people, they understand that. (They would say:) asking a little bit more income from me to get over this hump, sure . . . .That seems to be off limits for the political discussion.

Q: So some leadership could put that into the political discussion?

A: I would think so. Now, I’m not the leader in this. That’s the governor and the Legislature. My job, I think, is to say what the consequences of cutting back are.

Q: Is money the only answer?

A: No. For many of these things, money isn’t the answer. Homework policy. Team building. Assessment is so small . . .

Q: Assessment meaning testing?

A: Assessment meaning a testing strategy that’s consistent with performance goals: What do you want a senior to be able to know and do? And have an agreement with the business community and the universities on what that is. What do you want an eighth grader to know and do? And authentic testing--writing samples, for example, instead of filling in the blanks.

Money isn’t the issue, although small amounts of money are needed, but the obverse is that if you start wholesale cutbacks and throw districts in turmoil and all they can think about is making it through the next three or four months, the teachers get all upset, you distract people from this task of improvement.

Q: . . . Several states--Ohio and Maryland--are taking special steps to help the academic achievement of blacks. What can you do so that we don’t continue to lose this group?

A: (An expanded) Head Start, prenatal care, working with family-support services are going to make a difference. There are also programs, such as reading recovery, that can get kids who are falling behind right at the start and assure that they stay on target. That means our special programs have to be much more focused; boys especially are ones we lose.

Thirdly, I think you have to have a much stronger effort of bonding kids to school. Schools don’t like to talk about things like emotions and connections. But football and debate--people get excited about things like that. . . . Kids need to feel connected, particularly where there’s an aggressive street culture that’s hostile to that. The only way you get kids like this--I taught in Hunters Point . . .

Q: You taught for four years in inner city schools . . .

A: And we had kids with real hard attitudes, housing-project kids. They’re suspicious, they’re hesitant, but eventually you get this magic moment in a classroom when the youngsters become part of a group. They care about the other kids in the classroom, they care about the school, then they’re just natural kids and you can teach them, and they put out the effort.

. . . Now, what I’m wary of are attempts to isolate black males because you’ve given up on every other way. That is the same kind of segregation that we used to fight against. Now we say it’s OK because there’s a good purpose. I just think in this country in public schools you do not want to get into a situation where you are segregating kids by race.

Should there be activities in a class that bolster black history, black culture, roots? Yes. Every group should get that. But the idea that you can only learn through a black-oriented, Afrocentric curriculum I think is wrong. That should be part of it, but that’s not all. Black kids should be able to learn from white exemplars--Abraham Lincoln. White kids should be able to learn from Martin Luther King.

Q: What roles should business people have? They complain that they have to pay for training costs down the road after youngsters have graduated from high school. They say they’re interested--

A: The first thing they can do is back off trying to suspend (Proposition) 98. 98 has become a political symbol for “schools are getting too much money.”

Q: Do you get to go to schools very often yourself?

A: You have to, because you tend to lose an idea of what you’re doing this for until you see real kids, real teachers, real programs. It gets so abstract in Sacramento.

I visited a school in Fontana, Almeira School. It’s a middle school, great principal. . . . When I walked in--this is lower-middle-class area, so there’s a lot of diversity in the schools--they had those kids so turned on. They were having science and mathematics experiments. . . . The teachers had worked all summer long. It was a new school. It had just opened. You asked about some of the problem boys. They had them working in different roles in the school. Everybody was working together. I came out of that school so happy. It is workable.

. . . Teachers, at least at these schools, are excited, they’re interested, there’s a lot of energy, the morale is high.

Q: (They need better supplies.) There are not adequate books. . . . I’m talking about classrooms where children are physically sharing books.

A: Yes. There are overcrowded conditions. Kids don’t have enough books. There are holes in the roof.

Q: How do you address that issue of overcrowding?

A: . . . If we don’t build the buildings in the state, it’s going to hold us back (from the reform efforts). We are growing at over 200,000 kids a year. Many kids are in conditions that are not conducive to learning. . . . More than that, we’re not building smart buildings the way industry is doing. Those are the ones that are wired for technology, that save money over the long haul because they have automatic climate control. We’re building cracker boxes (according) to outmoded codes. . . . And we can’t even build the buildings because we’re two years behind.

Q: It takes forever, it seems, to build a school.

A: . . . We hand out $20 billion of money for operational expenses and just have the districts sign off and monitor them if they get in trouble. Why don’t we do the same thing for buildings? Have a general sign-off and things that they have to agree to, but why try to micro-manage it from the state? . . . If during World War II, we’d built our carriers that way, we’d still be at war. A lot of them wouldn’t have gotten afloat yet.

Q: Kids seems to have little idea what it’s like to get a job, or lose a job, and how to adapt. What do teachers do for them?

A: You have to start in the elementary schools with career awareness--visits to places, talking about jobs, interviewing people, interviewing your own parents about what they do. Then in junior high you have to get the parents involved, what do you want to do, what options do you want to keep open? Here’s the level of performance expected.

. . . These kids are living in never-never land. They think that they’re going to go out and be doctors and lawyers. They have no sense of what the world is like. They don’t understand that if you don’t turn in your homework and get in the habit of not doing your work--when you go out and not turn in your assignment on the job, you’re canned.

Q: Many Americans feel we should aspire to the Japanese model. Is that the answer for California?

A: I don’t think we should wholesale adopt anything from another culture. . . . Our strengths are creativity, individuality, pragmatism, common sense, the caring that we have for one another, our diversity. . . . We should have a school system that fits into those strengths. There’s no reason why we can’t get some of the group feeling that the Japanese have from their culture in a school and build that sense of community in but still keep our individuality.

The Japanese have things that we don’t tolerate in this society. They’re one cultural group, and they look down on other cultural groups. That’s not going to work here. There’s huge group pressure--they’re afraid to stand up to the group. And we don’t like that.

. . . I think we’ve got a lot more going for us than anybody gives us credit for if we could ever get it focused. Our kids have to work harder. We have to get our system organized. We have to have more community support. Mothers and fathers have to pay more attention. Let’s build an American or California way of doing it instead of just looking at (the) Japanese.