If one looks carefully, there are some positive signs in a national reading survey that ranks California's students among the worst in the country:

The proportion of under-performing African-American and Latino students has shrunk, suggesting that the state is improving its outreach to inner-city schools.

Only a fraction of California's fourth- and eighth-graders participated in the test, so the dismal results might not be reflective of the entire state.

Still, California students ranked dead last in the survey among the 43 states that participated; only the District of Columbia, Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa fared worse.

Despite vast efforts and tremendous sums of money, the state's public education, as a whole, is still in desperate shape.

The need for serious reform couldn't be any more clear.