Students Trapped in California’s Failed Public Schools Deserve a Way Out

During the pandemic, funding for California K-12 schools and community colleges skyrocketed from $79.3 billion in 2019-20 to $110.4 billion in 2021-22, a 39% increase. Also during the pandemic, California public school enrollment dropped by more than a quarter of a million students. For the first time in 20 years, less than 6 million people study in the state’s public schools, according to education researcher Lance Izumi.

Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted, “We’ve made record investments in education,” as if the increase in spending actually helps kids learn better. But quarantine in schools has shown us that this is not the case.

“The big question is whether all this public spending has produced any significant returns. The answer is no,” said Izumi, senior director of the Pacific Research Institute Center for Education and author of Diversity Choices: How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children, and co-author with Wenyuan Wu and Mackenzie Richards of the New The Great Parent Revolt: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders Fight Critical Race Theory in American Schools.

“While government spending has skyrocketed, student achievement has plummeted, children’s mental health has deteriorated, and schools have become more dangerous, calling for a better solution, such as giving parents more choice in education,” Izumi said.

Izumi said the poor performance in California public schools is so bad that students just don’t show up to class.

The Los Angeles Times reported that California parents are withdrawing their children from school “because they have lost confidence in the education system’s ability to meet their needs.”

“WHO choosing homeschooling right now is just as exciting as why,” says LAT. Overall, the proportion of American families homeschooling at least one child rose from 5.4% in the spring of 2020 to 11.1% in the fall of 2021, according to an analysis by the US Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the number of black families who chose homeschooling increased five-fold during this time, from 3.3% to 16.1%. (As I explain in my story, one partial explanation is that distance learning gave black parents a front-row seat for the first time from the prejudice that permeates so many classes and the education system as a whole.)”

As we saw with the parent rebellion, “parents are not going to put up with poor academic performance, poor campus security, and indoctrination in public schools,” Izumi said at a recent PRI event. “Whether California legislators give it to them or not, they will find a better choice for their children. So, for the sake of the cities of California, let’s hope the politicians give that choice to the parents of our state.”

One particularly egregious example of this indoctrination, as recently reported by The Globe, is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wife, “First Partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom, through her non-profit The Representation Project, has released four films promoting gender justice and is selling them to the California public. schools.

With her husband the governor, who would dare refuse her request?

Jennifer Siebel Newsom is credited as the writer and director of each of these films. Two of the films feature Gavin Newsom himself, and many of the lesson plan activities focus on getting children involved in social and political activities.

The Globe saw Newsom’s High School Misrepresentation. This is a documentary, but it conveys strong feminist and gender messages to schoolchildren aged 11-14.

The film is not age appropriate for middle school students, and it really does not belong in the school curriculum. This is pure propaganda.

One such lesson for middle and high school students involves “gender person” which seeks to show children how biological sex, “gender expression”, “sex attraction” and “gender identity” exist on a spectrum that can be mixed and matched. . .

While kindergartners are spared the gender person in their curriculum, they are offered similar lessons on “gender identity” by introducing genders other than “boy” and “girl”.

Children forced to watch Newsom’s The Representation Project in schools are exposed to more than just gender ideology, sexually explicit depictions and Gavin Newsom’s witticisms. They are given a leftist framework through which they see the world and then encouraged to become social and politically active.

In Newsom Great American Lie The curriculum asks students to take a “privileged walk” by divulging personal information in order to compare themselves to peers in and out of the classroom. “Privileges” include being “cisgender male”, “white”, “born in the United States”, “heterosexual”, and speaking English as a first language.

Is it any wonder that Izumi says, “Historically, students in California charter schools have done better than regular public schools? This is especially true in urban areas such as Los Angeles and Oakland. However, it is important to note that a wider choice of schools offers urban areas more than just better learners,” Izumi added.

School funding scheme

In terms of California public school funding, Izumi says that under Newsom’s proposed 2023 budget, Proposition 98’s per student cost is $17,519, however when all funding sources, including federal dollars, are combined, the per student cost is actually deeds amount to 23,723 dollars.

In addition, former Gov. Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula Spending Scheme greatly increases school spending, but not accountability. Izumi explained, “With LCFF, the money goes to the school districts, but there is no responsibility whether the money goes to old failed programs or new programs. And secondly, most of the money that large areas spend goes to pensions and employee benefits. For LAUSD, the Reason Foundation’s 2018 LAUSD Budget Forecast estimate, they calculated that 57% of LCFF goes to three items: pensions, retiree health benefits, and special education before one dollar is spent in the classroom.”

Izumi recently wrote about the devastating impact of critical race theory on schoolchildren:

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is one of the most divisive doctrines ever to threaten American schoolchildren, and it has sparked an unprecedented mass uprising by parents whose stories of ideological resistance are detailed in our new book. The Great Parent Rebellion.

A philosophy of interdisciplinary education that puts race at the center of American history and culture, CRT is akin to racial Marxism—whites are viewed as the oppressors and non-whites as the oppressed. Philosophy is at the center of high-profile intellectual endeavors such as New York Times’ a controversial 1619 draft that argues that slavery and anti-black racism are at the heart of the entire American experience. IN The Great Parent Rebellionwe tell the story of more than a dozen parents, students and community leaders who have courageously stood up and fought against CRT.

Izumi notes, “There is an example of a universal school choice program right on California’s doorstep in Arizona. Last year, Arizona launched the Universal Education Savings Account program, which allows parents to withdraw their children from public schools and have a portion of their public funds deposited into an account that they can then access to pay for private school tuition. online learning or private learning. tutoring. The amount of funding is set at 90 percent of state funding per student.”

“The Arizona Education Savings Account program is currently the most extensive in the nation and is a role model in every other state, including California. If California does not offer parents and students a broad school choice program, then we will see an increase in homeschooling, especially in urban areas.”

Izumi is also the author of Short Circuit: The Challenges Facing California’s Online Learning Revolution.