This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
The single largest item in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently proposed budget — and arguably its most important — is the $91 billion (plus $60 billion in local and federal funds) it would spend to educate the state’s nearly 6 million students, from transitional kindergarten through high school.
How well they are educated, prepared for higher education or the job market, will be a big factor determining whether California’s economy, and thus its socioeconomic whole, succeeds or fails.
Not surprisingly, given the amounts spent on education and its importance, it ranks very high in the Capitol’s annual give-and-take over the budget. That’s certainly true this year, as Newsom’s last budget shorts the state constitution’s mandatory allocation for schools by a few billion dollars, with a promise to make it up later, which drew opposition from school officials throughout the state.
Education perennially ranks very high in surveys of voters’ priorities. The school lobbies, including the very powerful California Teachers Association, will use that as they press the Legislature to raise their share of the revenue stream.
With the high stakes of education financing and its place in Californians’ hopes for a prosperous future, one might think that those who aspire to succeed Newsom would happily volunteer their intentions.
That would be especially helpful given that Newsom, as a parting gesture, wants to all but eliminate the elective office of state superintendent of public instruction and vest nearly all education oversight in the governor’s office.
If that rearrangement of duties is enacted, the next governor would be a virtual czar of the nation’s largest public education system.
However, the silence about this among the leading candidates for governor is deafening. They are more than happy to exchange personal insults during debates and in campaign ads, and to hold forth on such issues as gas prices, housing and homelessness. But they leave a vacuum when it comes to how, or if, they would change the school system.
Only one candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, repeatedly brings up this issue during debates, noting that he is a former teacher. The other candidates’ blackout is compounded by the eagerness of debate mediators to interrogate the candidates on other issues while failing to bring up education.
A new study by Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project verifies other data indicating that California’s public schools are falling well short of the academic achievement needed for the state’s future.
The study catalogued 2025 reading and math test scores throughout the nation and found that, almost everywhere, achievement is lower than it was 10 years earlier — reading is down in 83% of local school systems and math is lower in 70%.
Most disturbingly, not only is California not immune from the trend but it is one of the states with the greatest declines. Only eight states and the District of Columbia experienced deeper declines in reading than California.
The New York Times, in reporting on the study, created a website that allows readers to find out specific results in individual school systems.
It reveals, for instance, that while Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second largest system, showed fractional gains in reading and math, Oakland Unified experienced declines in both and San Diego fell in reading and gained in math.
After years, even decades, of ignoring its deficiencies in those foundational skills, California has lately done something that it should have done long ago — embracing phonics in teaching reading. Also, legislation to diagnose and treat deficiencies in math is moving in the Capitol.
The next governor needs to build on those and other efforts to restore California’s public schools to their former glory. The people vying for that job should tell us if and how they intend to do what’s necessary.
