Study Urges More Funds for Schools : Education: The think-tank report cites growing enrollments and a need for more teachers. An official says an additional $2 billion a year is required.

In the middle of the state’s escalating fiscal crisis, officials of a university-based think tank on Thursday stepped up their efforts to see that California’s bursting schools--targeted for deep cuts to help balance the budget--get more money eventually.

“We need to add $2 billion per year” to stay even with the rapid growth in the state’s school population projected through at least the end of the decade, said Allan R. Odden, a co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education and a professor of education at USC.

Odden’s remarks came at one of three PACE news conferences around the state to discuss its latest annual report on “Conditions of Education in California.” Coincidentally, the report was released on the same day that Gov. Pete Wilson proposed erasing a projected $12.6-billion state budget deficit in part by cutting at least $1.4 billion from schools.

Among the findings by PACE, which is based at UC Berkeley and has additional offices at Stanford University as well as USC, are:

* California is expected to add 230,000 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students every year through at least the end of the decade, more than in previous projections.

* By 1997 Latinos will make up the largest single group in the school population, already more than 50% minority.

* Nearly one-fourth of public school children live in poverty.

* About 20% of students have limited English proficiency, up from about 12% in 1985.

* The proportion of students enrolled in California private schools, which peaked at 11.7% in 1982-83, continues to decline and is expected to be 8% by the year 2000.

* Class sizes remain the second-highest in the nation.

* About 75,000 new teachers must be added to the current 212,000 by 1995 to keep pace with enrollment growth.

There was some good news. Despite an erosion of per-student spending on education and big increases in the numbers of disadvantaged children, the PACE report found improvement in academic achievement, especially at higher grade levels.

Scores on the California Assessment Program tests have shown an average increase of 4.4% in the eight years since the state’s education reform movement got under way, the report found.

On the most recent figures available for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, widely used for college entrance applications, California students scored five points below the national average in the verbal skills portion of the exam but eight points higher in math.

“We’re right around the national average, yet we spend (per classroom) about $24,000 belowthe national average and about $120,000 less than New York and New Jersey spend. . . . We have been very efficient,” Odden said.

While acknowledging that PACE has no solution to the current budget crisis, Odden repeated the organization’s call for a complete overhaul in education financing as a long-term solution.

Arguing that the hard-pressed state government cannot do everything it is currently charged with, PACE has proposed a mechanism for enabling local districts to regain the revenue-raising authority they enjoyed before Proposition 13 in 1978 slashed the property tax. Since then, schools have been dependent on Sacramento for almost 70% of their annual operating budgets.

PACE has advocated changing the basis for the property tax from assessed valuation, which is not changed until a property is sold or substantially remodeled, to actual market value and giving local agencies authority to raise taxes if a majority of voters approve instead of the two-thirds required now.

Other proposals in PACE’s 10-point plan for improving California education include setting specific achievement goals and expanding ways to assess what students know; providing a Head Start-like program for all eligible preschoolers and coordinating social services for children and allowing parents to choose among public schools for their youngsters. Many of these ideas are similar to solutions proposed by other education experts and embraced by President Bush and Wilson.

Odden said PACE does not intend to get drawn into the current debate over whether to suspend Proposition 98, which guarantees to education about 40% of the state’s general fund. But he added his personal observation that the measure “has not worked. . . . In terms of real dollars, spending on education has actually declined” since voters approved it in November, 1988. Additionally, Odden said, it has created another “obstacle” to fashioning a fair and reasonable system of financing for education and other services.