Commentary
In sports, there’s a saying: “If the playbook has not been working, get another playbook or head coach.”
I’m asked frequently, is it time for a reset or transformational change in the education of our children in California? My reply is overwhelmingly a positive response and is based on my 30 years’ experience as an elected county board of education member in the state.
California leads the country or has higher-than-average homelessness, crime, gas prices, poverty, unemployment, wage stagnation, housing costs, and government spending. Our state has a failed multi-billion-dollar bullet train and regular water shortages. Our state budget features a $6.2 billion budget deficit for Medicaid services—because California is a sanctuary state—shocking unemployment fraud, and a runaway state legislature focused on the status quo, including nonsensical laws and irrational governance.
Sacramento’s elected majority has advanced non-academic, politicized curricula and programs in the last three decades rather than focusing on academic deficiencies and direct academic instruction. Prior to the devastating government-mandated COVID-19 school lockdowns, California’s academic measurements and test scores were in the lower one-third tier in the United States. In our state, fewer than half of children can read or write at grade level, and in the inner cities, the academic dashboard and data are even worse. We must secure our children’s future with good laws and common-sense governance.
Correcting Education Mission Drift
The academic focus from Sacramento has pushed for the politicization of the classroom with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theories, and social justice curricula. Sadly, their priorities have extended education mission drift, and Sacramento has not demonstrated any intention to change its collective efforts.Our education system has failed California’s families and children. For the last three decades, our elected Sacramento representatives have relied upon repetitive failed policies, unproven curriculum instruction like gender studies, social-emotional learning, and other widespread political-social-cultural oriented priorities. To the detriment of our children’s education, they have implemented policies and governance that safeguard and prioritize special interests, union chieftains and activism, and Marxist critical pedagogies and curricula.
Unproven harmful education policy has caused California’s historic learning inequities, lost academic seat time and learning, and greater mental health issues. Despite California’s significant increase in the amount of per-pupil investment from decades ago, in state performance testing, California’s academic test scores continue to get worse.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, school spending in the state has been above the national average since the 2018–2019 school year.
Advancing Parental Choice: Empowerment Scholarship Accounts
A republican constitutional government should empower parents in the education and upbringing of their children. It should not prioritize unions and public union employees like it does now. Parents have the right to choose what’s best for their family and have their education tax dollars pay for the school that meets their child’s needs.In Arizona, children have public education funds that follow them in the form of education choice. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) follow the children for their K–12 education experience. Arizona’s program provides students with 90 percent of the funding their local school district would have received had they enrolled in a local public school. These funds, rather than going directly to the public school district, are placed in a financial account to pay for eligible education costs.
ESAs are very popular, especially in historically disadvantaged communities, and are an exciting possibility for California families. This program has been successful for over a decade, and the state funds follow the student to each school the parents choose. ESA dollars cover multiple education expenses such as private or religious school tuition, curricula, educational supplies, tutoring, and more.
An ESA would be an account administered by the California Department of Education and funded by state dollars in California’s Pre-K to K–12. The ESA program would be overseen by the State Board of Education, and these funds could be used by foster youth and children with disabilities. It does not constitute taxable income to the parents of qualified students. The ESA funds would be stored in and spent with a digital wallet operated by a financial government platform.
Restoring Parental Rights: Enforcing FERPA
As the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case involving the rights of parents, the U.S. Department of Education Student Privacy Policy Office in March launched an investigation into the California Department of Education for alleged violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The office is also reminding states of compliance obligations under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA).At issue is a 2024 Sacramento bill signed by Governor Newsom, Assembly Bill 1955 (AB 1955), which prohibits school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools from adopting or enforcing policies requiring the disclosure of a child’s gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation to that child’s parent or anyone else without the child’s consent.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a March 28 letter to chief state school officers and local and county superintendents that receiving federal funds is dependent upon schools not violating FERPA and PPRA laws. McMahon said in a statement that hiding information about a student’s mental and physical health and wellbeing from parents and guardians “is not only immoral but also potentially in contradiction with federal law.”
Many school districts have policies that parents are not told of their child’s new gender social identity. Under the umbrella and protection of AB 1955, schools and school districts have socially transitioned public school children without parental knowledge and consent.
Destroying Title IX and Women’s Sports
Current California state law, approved in 2013, permits biological boys to compete against girls in sports. This law is not based on medical science, genetics, and fairness, but is based on the politics of gender identity, and a majority of Californians do not support it. No parent wants their daughter in a locker room undressing with a biological male, or competing in a sport where male genetics give physical advantages over our daughters.Two common-sense bills in Sacramento were rejected recently by Sacramento Democrats that would have banned athletes identifying as transgender from girls’ sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms. State Assembly Bill 89 would have required the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) to exclude male athletes from participating in girls’ sports. Another state bill, Assembly Bill 844, would have required K–12 students and universities to use facilities and participate in sports that align with their sex at birth. These two bills failed in party-line votes to move out of committee.
Academics Based on Merit: Eliminating Illegal DEI Mandates
Our state’s education system is built upon the concept of DEI, which is simply a race-based public policy, principally discriminatory, and illegal by definition of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In my opinion, DEI is a novel replication of an old system of discrimination, but it uses a new identity built on the roots of divisiveness and exclusion. DEI is simply bad for people, and it will destroy California if we continue its goals and implementation.For decades, research has shown consistently that merit-based performance is a better predictor of future success. As stated by Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, “Merit is actually a combination of natural talent and effort. Although not flawless, it is infinitely better than a return to ancient aristocracies ‘founded on wealth and birth.’ It is also fairer than the fashionable paradigm of equity, which treats Americans as representatives of their identity groups and deprives us of agency.”
Supporting Parental Choice: Charter Schools
The most direct pathway to empower parents with greater choice in educating their children is charter schools. Advancing parental choice by replicating Arizona’s ESAs is a good start, but expanding magnet and charter schools is also important.Public charter schools are non-sectarian, were implemented in the early 90s, and are funded by taxes based on student enrollment, similar to traditional public schools. They do not charge tuition and are open to all students. Charter schools are funded the same way public schools are funded, according to enrollment numbers or average daily attendance. California’s charter schools in 2024 enrolled about 709,630 children, or 12 percent of all students.
Charter schools traditionally operate their schools using fewer public funds and have smaller budgets. California’s public charter K–12 education has lower operational costs than traditional public schools and offers greater opportunities and diverse educational experiences for children. Charter schools are the biggest bang for the buck. The biggest challenge is the need for more classrooms, school campuses, and infrastructure. For charter schools, the single biggest challenge is the state funding formula, the Local Control Funding Formula, which tends to favor traditional school districts. California needs more school facilities and classrooms for charter schools. We need to increase funding for the School Facility Program fund for school and classroom construction.
K–12 charter schools use privately leased facilities and often pay market-rate rent. Very few charter have constructed their own facilities because of the prohibitive costs of construction and property values, and school district elections are swayed by union activists and union chieftains who oppose charter schools. In response, a state law passed by California voters in 2000, Proposition 39 (Prop. 39), requires school districts to make facilities (both classroom and non-classroom spaces) available to public charter schools. Charter schools can lease public school classrooms from school districts, but strong resistance from locally elected and anti-charter school elected trustees prevents charter schools from expanding.
Public union or California Teachers Association funds are used to thwart charter schools’ success. Anti-charter school trustees are aligned with union bosses and oppose charter schools. What does not make sense is that school districts are losing state funding because of declining enrollment and could backfill their budgets by leasing empty classrooms, closed schools, and partially used school sites to charter schools.
It is reasonable for state lawmakers to establish a database for surplus school sites from existing school districts and create a mechanism outside of Prop. 39 funding for charter schools to expand facilities. I propose a state-like Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) entity to identify the sale or lease of surplus government or school properties for charter school growth.
Strengthening the Role of Fathers Amid the Absence Crisis
According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, children are harmed by the absence of fathers in the family. Government policies and laws must be balanced with public policy that makes California’s families stronger and encourages fathers to be involved in their children’s lives. According to the 2023 U.S. Census Bureau, 17.6 million children, nearly one in four kids, live in single-parent families led by single mothers and are without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home. This leads to the corrosion and weakening of the nuclear families and the well-being and future of our children.Fatherlessness leads to many social pathologies and includes poor school performance, a greater risk for poverty, behavioral and mental health problems, a higher likelihood of going to prison, an increase in teen pregnancy rates, and an increase in drug and alcohol use. California policymakers must acknowledge and create common-sense laws that compel men to be present in their children’s lives and strengthen families.
Protecting High-Risk Children
There are 391,000 children in the United States currently in foster care, according to the Adoption Network. Some states have taken action to better address the unique needs of foster parents, to prioritize placing children with relatives, and to increase permanency for foster children.According to the America First Policy Institute in an issue brief, inadequate support of foster children and families, combined with low rates of kinship placement with relatives, has led to much trauma and many placements for foster children. California should provide timely placement with relatives, utilize private-sector services to reduce the number of children entering foster care, and implement innovative training models and response services for foster parents to better support foster families.
Children with disabilities also represent a challenge in education, as an increasing number of children require a specialized individualized education program (IEP) and support. In California, about 13 percent, or 800,000 students, have an IEP, reported EdSource. Disabilities that qualify for an IEP are children with blindness, autism, developmental disabilities, brain injuries, deafness, or speech or language impairments.
Reducing and Eliminating Government Waste
Waste, fraud, and abuse are rampant in every government department. Between 2018 and 2024, California’s K–12 funding increased by almost 32 percent, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Approximately 80 percent of education spending is on staffing, personnel costs, and other benefits like pensions. In 2021–22, California spent per pupil about $19,548, or roughly $1,800 more than the average in the rest of the nation ($17,783 per pupil).In the 2025–2026 budget, we will spend about 36 percent on K–12 education. Revised estimates of General Fund revenues for the 2024-2025 education portion of the state budget are about $106 billion.
California Governor's Budget Summary—2025-26
Similar to Elon Musk’s efforts in Washington, D.C., California needs a DOGE czar to reduce waste and fraud. This would be accomplished by an immediate freeze on hiring and salary increases and cutting the government workforce by 10 percent. By the elimination of wasteful grants and contracts, millions of dollars can be redirected back into the classroom or into ESA accounts, or passed along to the taxpayer in the form of lower taxes.
Focusing on Career and Technical Education (CTE)
As many college graduates from prestigious universities are realizing their degrees are of little economic value, vocational education is returning to its past demand. This education pathway is less expensive and often offers job training and education with higher wages.Career and Technical Education (CTE), sometimes referred to as vocational education, is a training program gaining in popularity because jobs in health fields, agriculture, and trades like electricians, plumbers, and other high-wage careers are in great demand. Trade schools or CTE training offer students classes and experience. The education pathway begins in high school and community colleges, and Californians deserve greater investment in CTE by the state.
Classroom Safety and School Resource Officers
The placement of School Resource Officers (SROs) should be a state priority for all junior and senior high school campuses. SROs provide safe learning environments in our nation’s schools, providing valuable resources to school staff members, fostering positive relationships with youth, developing strategies to resolve problems affecting youth, and protecting all students. Rather than fund divisive non-academic programs, our schools require a strong element to provide student safety. We need to fund SROs for all junior and senior campuses.Summary
Parents used to send their children to public schools to acquire academic knowledge, observe civil behavior, and be safe around adults. Those cherished memories vanished decades ago, because Sacramento has abandoned its role as a responsible policymaker and protector of the innocence of children. They created policies and laws that violate federal laws to the detriment of parental rights, like FERPA.A reset in California’s education priorities and restoration of American or Western values in K–12 education are necessary. We need to strengthen families and parents, and not force divisive education policies and politics.
Over the last two decades, elected leaders and unelected bureaucrats have continued to go back to the same playbook and mindset, hoping for change. In my opinion and observation, this is the definition of insanity. We need meaningful changes, and as the old saying goes, “If the playbook has not been working, get another playbook.”
Now more than ever, change is the raison d'être, or reason for systemic education changes, and reinstituting the core purpose of education by correcting California’s educational mission drift. To survive in a global economy, we must transform our California K–12 public schools by integrating proven academic programs and strategies that prioritize students, parents, families, and educators. Dramatic governance and policy changes are necessary to prevent our children from occupying a permanent status equivalent to third-world countries.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
