The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the largest number of voters, 76 percent, cited equity in school funding in deciding whom to vote for, with 76 percent saying it was “important” and with 50 percent considering it “very important.” That latter group favored Torlakson by 57 percent to 43 percent for Tuck, according to the study.

Voters in both major parties favored making school funding more
equitable moving — 90 percent of registered Democrats, 69 percent
of registered Republicans and 78 percent of voters who declined to give a party preference.

Torlakson was the teachers union candidate while Tuck was backed by so-called education reformers. Both their campaigns received record-breaking financial support — an estimated $30 million — from their respective backers, making it the most expensive political contest in the state, almost three-times more expensive than that of the governor’s seat.

The report also showed that 70 percent of voters said that “Stopping Wall Street and corporations from taking over schools for profits” was important in their decision-making process, with 56 percent rating it as a top priority.

But the public seemed split on the issues around teacher tenure and due process. Two-thirds of voters reported that “removing teacher tenure protections” was important in casting a ballot. Yet, nearly the same number said that “preserving due process protections for teachers” was important.

Nearly 4 of 5 Tuck supporters, 79 percent, said they wanted to eliminate teacher tenure protections while 69 percent of Torlakson voters said preserving due process protection was a higher priority.

Other key issues for voters were reducing standardized testing, which 61 percent of voters agreed should change, and increasing the number of charter schools. More than half of voters said they would like to see a boost in charter school options.

Dani Klein Modisett

Via Mom.me | By Dani Klein Modisett

If you walked in the backdoor of my house this week unannounced, the one right next to the refrigerator, you may have found yourself looking straight at my ass. That’s because, more than once, I was bent over the freezer, my hand trolling around in my son’s Halloween candy bag for a “fun” size Snicker’s — or 6. I was aware that if my kids knew I did this they would not be happy, so I had a candy excuse strategy in place if they caught me and challenged me on my choice to pilfer their stash.

“My eating this candy is in your best interest,” I’d say. “It is better for you on a few levels. Number one, it makes me happy, and if I’m happy, then I will be a better mother. Number two, the more I eat of it the less you will be eating, which means less sugar coursing through your small veins and less tooth decay. My eating your Halloween candy, despite what it looks like, is a win-win situation for everyone.” Obviously I knew eating their candy was a mistake, but I took comfort in knowing it’s a common one. Heck, Jimmy Kimmel has had an ongoing bit about it for at least three years.

I was unexpectedly reminded of my crafty Mom spin this past Thursday morning while in a bit of a sugar fog, having polished off everything but the Laffy Taffy the night before. I was settling in to read the paper, jolted awake seeing the Los Angeles Times’ figures on how much the race for State Superintendent cost. Over $31 million dollars. Let me repeat this figure: THIRTY ONE MILLION DOLLARS for a position described by more than one source as having very little clout. Immediately incensed, I went looking for more details.

One article I found, “The most expensive political contest in California is for an office nobody’s heard of,” described the limitations of the position.

“The superintendent post has little political power. The governor appoints the state Board of Education and typically has his own education advisers. In any case, the state Department of Education doesn’t directly run California’s schools and has limited policy sway.”

Call me naive, but $30 million dollars is a lot of money to spend on anything, let alone an elected office with very little power. This news wouldn’t have hit me so hard if I hadn’t just been at a meeting at my son’s middle school, Thomas Starr King in Los Angeles, where they were assigning shifts for parents to don plastic gloves and show up with buckets of ammonia to clean the bathrooms. Apparently, there is not enough money in the school’s budget to hire adequate custodial staff. That fact made this quote I read from incumbent and victor Tom Torlakson, and a lot of the other soundbites from teachers’ union members, sound a little insincere and a lot like my Halloween candy spin.

“We are all committed to making our schools better and helping our students achieve their dreams. No one wants that more than California’s teachers.” Huh. Tough to buy that helping students “achieve their dreams” is their priority given that the teachers’ unions spent over $10 million dollars keeping Torlakson in office. They could have paid for a lot of dreams with that money.

Among all these presumably brilliant business minds and passionately committed educators on Torlakson’s side, couldn’t someone have pulled out of the maelstrom of campaign excess and said, “Hey, guys and gals, maybe we could take a few million and help an actual child!”

But it’s not just the unions that are to be held accountable in this spending debacle. If making the schools and curriculum better for students was No. 1 on everyone’s list, wouldn’t someone in this insanely expensive campaign on either side have interjected some reason? Torlakson’s opponent, Marshall Tuck, raised most of his money through wealthy independent donors, including Steve Jobs’ widow, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and L.A. philanthropist Eli Broad.

Among all these presumably brilliant business minds and passionately committed educators on Torlakson’s side, couldn’t someone have pulled out of the maelstrom of campaign excess and said, “Hey, guys and gals, maybe we could take a few million and help an actual child!”

Clearly the answer is no. And that, for those of you kicking yourselves for slipping a Hershey’s bar in the pocket of your bathrobe while no one was looking, is by far the biggest mistake of this week.

LA Unified board member Steve Zimmer

Steve Zimmer was the only member of the LA school board with a public response to yesterday’s victory by Tom Torlakson, who won a second term as state Superintendent for Public Instruction.

In it, Zimmer makes clear his disdain for the wealthy funders who backed the losing candidate, Marshall Tuck, congratulating the state teacher unions for standing up to them and urging them to continue, with a particular eye on next year’s LA Unified school board elections.

At the same time, Zimmer decries the millions of dollars spent on the campaign, arguing that the money could have been better used for programs benefitting students.

While Zimmer argues that “collaboration trumps conflict,” his disregard for Tuck supporters is, nonetheless, unequivocal, as he points to the “corporate education reform billionaires who have an endless magazine of resources to shoot at folks trying to solve the problems facing our schools.” 

Here is his complete statement:

“The results of yesterday’s election once again confirm that public education is not for sale. Against a gale storm of unprecedented funding, Tom Torlakson, State Superintendent of Instruction narrowly won re-election.

This was the most expensive State Superintendent race in U. S. history. I congratulate Superintendent Torlakson and urge him to continue his collaborative approach to transforming outcomes for all students in California. I look forward to continuing our close working relationship so that the Department of Education expands the resources available to classrooms in support of student learning throughout our District.

I also offer my best wishes to Marshall Tuck whom I have known well for many years. I know that Marshall will continue to be a passionate advocate for schools serving students in the most peril.

While it is tempting to feel exhilarated in the wake of this important victory, I mostly feel exhausted. I am sick and tired of dodging bullets from corporate education reform billionaires who have an endless magazine of resources to shoot at folks trying to solve the problems facing our schools.

There must be another way we can have this important conversation. Instead of reflecting on how the millions we spend distorting truths, attacking and bullying one another could help real kids in real classrooms today, the California Charter Schools Association is simply reloading their guns for the Spring School Board elections.

I am sure CTA and our other labor partners will gear up their defense systems again in response. I have a long list of programs we could fund in LAUSD with the close to $20 million dollars that went into this latest battle. More and more it seems like a zero sum game in which kids lose every time.

The solutions to the problems facing our kids are never simple. They require us to roll up our sleeves and work together to find the difficult answers in policy, in pedagogy and in practice. Finding solutions starts with listening. Teachers listening to parents, parents listening to teachers, school leaders listening to the community and everyone listening to our students. The last half dozen election cycles have had a ton of screaming. Close to $50 million dollars worth. And barely an ounce of listening.

I still believe that collaboration trumps conflict and that we can find common ground. I still have hope that we can transcend the power struggles in the name of the promise that public education still holds for families who dream of a better life for their children.

If we remember that we hold those dreams in our hands, maybe we can do more than dust ourselves off and prepare for the next battle.”

By clicking here, you can access the breakdown of the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction, in which Tom Torlakson won a second term. The statewide result is at the top, and below it are the county-by-county results. Click on any county to see the vote.

In Los Angeles County, Torlakson won by a slim margin over Marshall Tuck, with 50.8 percent of the vote to 49.2 percent for Tuck.

Overall, Torlakson won 30 counties, Tuck 28.

“Education has now surpassed the economy as the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds in this election, so it’s a race that’s being conducted outside the confines of partisanship that marks the other down ballot races,” Drew Lieberman of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research said on a call with reporters yesterday, discussing the poll. “It’s also a race that sort of features an issue on which people are particularly concerned and aware, but have not yet made up their minds.”

One topic at the heart of the race is the state’s reform movement, which is backed by deep-pocketed supporters and aims to expand charter schools, versus the power and influence of the teacher unions.

Torlakson, the incumbent, has the backing of the political establishment and the state’s two large teachers unions, while Tuck was a charter school administrator and has the backing of reform groups as well as editorial boards throughout the state.

“The argument can be made that this is the most important election on the California ballot this year. That’s not because the superintendent’s office is particularly powerful. But no matter what the outcome, this represents a very important step in the growing debate over education policy in California,” Dan Schnur, director of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll, told reporters.

Schnur added that the superintendent’s race “is one of those rare campaigns that is much more important than the office itself.”

Dave Kanevsky of American Viewpoint theorized that the reason there are so many undecided voters despite education being the top issue is because people can’t fall back onto any partisan lines, and that both sides have spent about the same large amount of money getting their message out.

“There’s a lot of information on both sides, but [voters] don’t know how to vote and they in essence don’t want to make the wrong vote,” Kanevsky said.

So, if you are one of those undecided voters out there and you still haven’t voted, below is a roundup of LA School Report‘s important stories about the state superintendent race:

• Top Five issues in Tuck vs. Torlakson race
• Poll: Minorities, Republicans key in close state superintendent race
• Vergara appeal (or not) divisive issue for Torkalson and Tuck
• Marshall Tuck: ‘We need fundamental and urgent change’
• The debate — Torlakson vs.Tuck — that only a few people noticed
• Race for California school chief a referendum on change
• Garcetti endorses Torlakson in state superintendent race

Polls in California close at 8 pm.

“There’s going to be a coalition of Republicans and minority voters if Tuck is going to do well on election day,” said Michael Madrid, an Unruh Institute fellow, on a panel conference call with reporters discussing the the latest results from a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll. Only 10 percent of Latino voters in California are registered Republicans and only 1 percent of blacks are Republicans, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

The poll shows Torlakson ahead of Tuck 32 percent to 29 percent with likely voters, with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points and a huge percentage of likely voters, 28 percent, still undecided. The election will be held tomorrow.

“This race could easily go either way,” said Drew Lieberman of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research on the conference call.

Torlakson, a former teacher and state legislator, has the backing of the Democratic establishment and the state’s two large teachers unions. Tuck was a charter school administrator and has the backing of reform groups as well as editorial boards throughout the state.

Both candidates are Democrats, but Tuck has a 20 percent advantage with Republicans, according to the poll. Combined with the fact that the Latino vote tracks almost the same as likely voters, 33 percent favoring Torlakson to 28 percent for Tuck,  the two other groups are key to Tuck’s chances, according to Madrid, who is an expert on Latino voting trends and a former political director for the California Republican Party.

“I know there has been a concerted effort to make the argument, especially with the Vergara decision, the charter schools argument, where Marshall Tuck was overseeing some of those charter schools, there’s clearly going to be a push to turn out ethnic minority voters,” Madrid said. “That’s an area where you are seeing Marshall Tuck gain some more support than you might otherwise envision in a traditional Democrat on Democrat race.”

Click here to learn more about the Tuck vs. Torlakson race.

Tom Torlakson (left), Marshall Tuck (right)

* UPDATED

A new Field poll shows that the race for state Superintendent of Public Education is tightening. Some might say it’s now nip and tuck.

A survey conducted over the last two weeks in August of 467 people who said they were likely to vote in November found that the incumbent, Marshall Tuck, a former charter school executive, now leads the incumbent, Tom Torlakson, by 31 percent to 28 percent.

It’s not only a slim and un-projectable lead, there were another 41 percent of voters who said they were undecided, making this race appear a virtual tossup.

As the better known candidate, by virtue of his incumbency, Torlakson registered a 40 percent favorable rating with voters and a 14 percent unfavorable rating. Another 46 percent had no opinion.

Tuck’s favorable/unfavorable ratings were 27 percent and 11 percent, with 62 percent expressing no opinion.

Previous Posts: Marshall Tuck to Oppose Torlakson for State Superintendent

* An earlier version inverted the results for who is leading.

Tuck was said to be considering a run for State Assembly, but has instead decided to challenge Tom Torlakson, who will be running for a second four-year term.

“The current state superintendent has been an elected official for 35 years,” Tuck said in an interview with LA School Report. “He’s been part of the education establishment for a very long time. While certainly well intentioned, he’s not making the fundamental changes we need to help our state.”

As an example, Tuck cited Torlakson’s resistance to certain reforms, such as using student test scores to evaluate teachers, which helped cost California a federal waiver from No Child Left Behind regulations. That led eight school districts within the state to join forces, seeking a federal waiver on their own, which was granted earlier this month.

“For the first time ever, the federal Department of Education granted a waiver to individual entities,” said Tuck. “That’s because our State Superintendent wasn’t leading. We needed to go and do that ourselves. Think about the amount of time spent by those districts going around the state.”

Tuck’s campaign sets the stage for another showdown between teachers unions and “school reformers.” As the LA Times‘ Howard Blume pointed out this morning, unions spent $3.9 million to elect Torlakson in 2010.

The primary for State Superintendent will be held in June 2014. The two top vote-getters will then face off in the November general election.

Previous posts: Partnership Head “Exploring” Run for Public Office; Joan Sullivan to Head LA Partnership Schools