The State of California's Education

The state of California’s education system—both secondary and higher education—is in decline.

The nonpartisan California Budget Project refers to the last ten years of cuts as “A Decade of Disinvestment” in their report enumerating the ongoing failure of Sacramento legislators to direct our educational system.

Even worse, the secondary system has fallen to the bottom of the rankings in several key indicators for quality of education. California ranks 46th among the states in K-12 spending per student, 47th in terms of spending as a percentage of personal income, and finishes 50th—dead last in the nation—with the highest teacher to student ratio.   

How did it come to this? California was once the gold standard for education in the United States. The answer is simple—fiscal irresponsibility. Budgetary negligence has decimated the financial health of our state, and our children are paying the price. Districts are forced to cut programming and lay off teachers, and universities raise tuition, cut course offerings and reduce the number of spots for incoming Freshman. 

So how do we fix this mess? 

First and foremost, putting the State of California’s fiscal house in order will enable us to put education back where it belongs—at the top of the list of priorities. We must reign in the costs of government in every sector in order to protect vital services like education against economic variability. There is no question we need to increase funding to our schools. We can make that happen if we judiciously spend elsewhere.  

Teacher effectiveness ought to be our top priority. Our schools must institute fair and effective systems of teacher and administrator accountability. We can no longer allow moneyed special interest groups to thwart efforts to establish meaningful rubrics for evaluating the public servants we trust with our children’s futures. 

In September the legislature nearly passed AB 5, a teacher accountability law that the Huffington Post called a “Giant Step Back for Teacher Evaluation.” Even the State PTA opposed AB 5, stating “we believe that there are too many questions left unanswered for State PTA to support AB 5.  While we understand the desire for teacher involvement in the design of any evaluation system, the extent to which local bargaining will determine the content and character of the evaluation system is unclear." 

Furthermore, if California institutes a balanced, robust teacher evaluation system (and AB 5 was not), California will continue to be eligible for federal No Child Left Behind funds. Secondly, it will free California’s teachers from the strict requirements that incentivize them to “teach to the test,” which has caused for a severe lack of flexibility in classroom instruction.    

Finally, by managing our state and national budgets more responsibly and putting education at the top of our list of priorities we’ll be able to afford music, art, and physical education—programs that are integral to the healthy development of our children. Dollars spent on Education should be viewed as an investment in our future, not merely an expense to be cut.