By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee

As chronicled here and in other venues, there’s a fierce battle under way between competing factions over how to spend billions in extra state school funds to improve the education of poor children.

Dan Walters

The education establishment is demanding “flexibility” in rules being considered by the state Board of Education, while civil rights and business-backed reform groups want more specificity and tighter monitoring.

A subset of the larger conflict is how the targeted students are being defined, because their concentrations govern how much extra state money school districts would receive. The new law defines them as those eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, “English-learners” and foster children, and by offering big bonuses, the state is creating a financial incentive for districts to beat the bushes to qualify as many as possible.

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