The state of California has long badly mismanaged its K-12 education system.
Just 85% of students graduate from high school in four years, with the averages lower for Black (77%) and Latino (82%) students.
In its most recent round of standardized testing, California reported that just 49% of students met the state’s standards on English language arts, while fewer than 34% met them on mathematics. On the California Science Test, fewer than 29% met the state’s standards on science.
Socioeconomic disparities exist even within the context of these abysmal numbers. Among Latino students, fewer than 38% met the state’s standards on English language arts and just over 20% met them on math. For Black students, fewer than 34% met the English language arts standards and fewer than 18% met the standards on math.
If this were the state of Florida or Texas, progressives would be condemning this as a racist system.
It’s no wonder enrollment in California’s K-12 schools continue to plummet. EdSource recently reported that statewide enrollment dropped 110,000 this year on top of 61,000 last year.
With such mediocre outcomes and the ongoing stifling of charter school alternatives, who can blame parents for pulling their kids from this system?
This is the consequence of ceding power over the K-12 system to teachers unions like the California Teachers Association.
They are the ones who have spearheaded efforts over recent years to gut school choice.
They are the ones who ensured that a modest proposal by then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, to reform teacher tenure, was defeated.They are the ones who want policy makers to ignore the fact that most Black and Latino parents support school vouchers, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
It is disappointing that two recent efforts to place measures on the ballot to establish Education Savings Accounts to allow parents to send their kids to the school of their choice fizzled out.
But the fact remains that as long as the teachers unions call the shots, and as long as Democratic politicians ignore the plight of California’s kids, the fight for school choice must go on.
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April 17, 2022 at 11:11AM
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The fight for school choice must go on - OCRegister
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