DA: I was nine years old, and I do not remember the decision at that point. I vaguely remember in the years after that when people began to talk about schools in the South—that it’s a problem of the South. We knew “better” in the Northeast where people didn’t attend segregated schools in the sense that schools were segregated in the South. Of course, as I got older, I began understanding how housing patterns created some of the same effects in the North and throughout the rest of the country. I think we just said, “Isn’t it terrible that the South has never figured out that the Civil War is over. This is how they do things, but it’s not a problem of the country.” When I [was] a child, people in other parts of the country just saw the South as kind of backwards. It took the force of the federal government to actually make change, but it was change for the South, not change for the country.

MR: Do you think the promise of the Brown decision has been met when we look at educational resources in California schools today?

DA: Since Brown, no government body has forced children to attend separate schools, but if you look at the spirit of what happened, I think we really haven’t come very far at all. That’s a sad thing because we are a half a century later. The progress has been small — nowhere near as significant as people would want to have or want to believe. When you think that we’re 50 years past and we’re not doing the job. We’ve not yet provided the equality.

MR: Is the general public aware of this ongoing inequality?

DA: Sometimes, I don’t think parents are aware of what their children have been missing. If there’s never been a counselor, parents might not know what a difference a counselor could actually make to their children. They may never have seen what a difference quality actually makes; what a difference proper staff makes. When you look at librarians, counselors, or nurses per child, California winds up being 49th or 50th [of the 50 states] in the country. Some people would argue that poor children receive extra federal and state dollars so that there’s possibly more dollars going into their schools. And, yet, what we find is that so often teachers assigned to those schools are under-qualified, or uncredentialled, [or] teaching out of subject areas, or are new and inexperienced. So resources are not being applied equally. I would argue that parents need to know if extra funds are coming into the school, and what are they being used for. Are they actually being used to improve student learning?

MR: From your perspective as a state senator, what are some solutions to the present concentrations of underqualified teachers in low-income areas?

DA: I think we could spend more money to encourage highly qualified teachers to teach in low performing schools—to make a 4 or 5 year commitment so as soon as they improve their skills they don’t head off to another school. I do think money is a part of it. Down here in San Diego, we’ve talked to teachers in some of the low performing schools, and they tell us that [improved working conditions] would help them even more than, “combat pay.” They need the school to be safe, and they want support for families who need more than just education services, so they, the teachers, could expend their energy on the teaching. I’ve talked to a lot of teachers who get burned out because they spend their evenings trying to find [their students] a doctor, trying to find someone who will provide the child with eye glasses, trying to call about domestic violence in the home. Teachers can’t do it all, we need some other people to support them.

MR: You have spearheaded the legislature’s development of a new Master Plan for California education. How does the Master Plan propose to address these inequalities?

DA: The Master Plan starts by trying to achieve equity of opportunity when children are born. Whether we’re looking at universal pre-school or diagnostic centers that we’re proposing, we’re trying to do less remediation and see that at each point along the way we provide high-quality. In a state like California, the first places to spend the money are in those areas where we know there are the serious deficits in children’s educational opportunities. We would start universal pre-school in poor areas of towns where there are low performing schools. Then, we go right on through the list of all schools. I would say that the dream is that we start with the ones who are suffering the most, and in 20 years everybody gets to go to pre-school and all schools are taught by fully qualified and credentialed teachers. That’s the best way to move towards equity. I think that the Master Plan kind of gives us that long-range vision, and it allows us to go step by step to get there.

MR: What do you think are the barriers or the challenges to getting the Master Plan implemented into binding legislation?

DA: We have a grand vision; a 20 year vision. Change is hard because people like the way things have worked for them. It’s always easier in the legislative process to block something and leave something the way it is than to move forward to something new. Often we use the excuse of money and the fact that we don’t have enough money to do all of this, but the point of the Master Plan is to take those first steps. I think it’s getting real people engaged and making them know that a plan could make a difference for their own children. We’re going to have to just keep plugging, and as with many other things, the legislature needs to hear from groups whether it’s unions or administrators or business managers. We need pressure from the outside, from real people who say they want change.

MR: Where are the most effective places that parents and teachers can create that outside pressure?

DA: We need many people who are willing to testify and talk in Sacramento, and people who are willing to put pressure on their own local districts.

MR: And putting pressure is writing a letter?

DA: It’s writing letters, and in some ways, it’s demanding information from a quality education commission to become aware of how it could change things for education and education finance in California.