This week, Marion Joseph will attend her last meeting as a member of the California state board of education, and a column by Peter Schrag makes clear how large a gap her departure will leave. It was Joseph, a liberal Democrat, who in 1994 sounded the alarm that millions of California schoolchildren were not learning to read. Since then, she has spoken out relentlessly on the importance of rigorous curricula and no-excuses standards for all California students. She will be sorely missed, especially at a time when pressure to roll back academic standards is mounting in the Golden State. "Marion Joseph's decade of education reform," by Peter Schrag, The Sacramento Bee, January 8, 2003
