I have first hand observational experience with what they call "teaching" in the California school system (my horrible ex-wife became a school teacher in the last few years of our so-called marriage). What I personally saw was a joke. I honestly believe that the entire CA public school system should be done away with. In additional to being criminally negligent, poor performers who churn out students having virtually zero measurable skills, they are a financial nightmare.
Lets see how the California public school system is doing:
Out of all the states in the union, it is estimated that the California Public School system was rated 37th. Hey, thats not very good. Maybe we aren't spending very much on education?
Wrong. We are spending a "crap ton".
Although Gavin Newsom recently said that the California average expenditure per student in public education is at $12,143 per year per pupil (which would place California in 20th place among the states), that number was later proven to be a lie. Less than a year after Newsome's statement, LAUSD officials admit that they spend $18,788 per student. Well, that's not good. That means the amount Newsome used was off, by about 50%. Must have been a rounding error.
More likely, Newsom learned math at a school within the California school system. Or maybe he was told that "there wasn't going to be any math".
But wait, it is actually worse. In reality, total spending (including the addition of Prop. 98 funds and other funds from the governor’s budget), along with the state’s CalSTRS payment and payment on school bond debt, the actual estimate of total spending is approximated as being $137.6 billion.
This equates to $20,642 per pupil per year.
I wonder what a Charter School could do with that type of money? We will never know, because they don’t, but if they did it would go a long way towards debunking the narrative that charter schools are the cause of financial problems for traditional public schools. It would also document a reality that is inconvenient for advocates of ever higher K-12 education spending: spending for traditional public schools, once charter school allocations and enrollments are deducted from the calculation, are even greater than $20,642 per pupil.
But hey, that means it costs California taxpayers an enormous amount of money to turn out low-performing students who lack basic skills (but who, of course, are well-versed in the latest woke issues).
But the best is yet to come. Newsom actually wants to increase the amount California taxpayers have to shell out to these institutes of (at best) mediocrity. Apparently the logic is that since paying way too much provides crappy results, maybe paying even more money will be a great investment (throwing good money after bad money). Will that help? Nope.
It makes no sense to spend (even) more on California's K-12 public school students, because money is not the issue. There are many other reasons for the problems. Maybe we could start with restoring some type of discipline in public schools, instead of applying racial quotas to how many students can be suspended or expelled? What about reforming union work rules such as were attempted in the Vergara case, such as rules governing tenure, layoff and dismissal criteria, so great teachers could be fairly compensated, good teachers could be retained, and poor teachers could be fired? [Note - in California it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to terminate the employment of a tenured teacher, regardless of their performance.]
What is the Vergara case? Vergara v. California was a lawsuit in the California state courts which dealt with a child's right to education and to instruction by effective teachers. The suit was filed in May 2012 by lawyers on behalf of nine California public school student plaintiffs. It alleged that several California statutes on teacher tenure, layoffs, and dismissal violated the Constitution of California by retaining some "grossly ineffective" teachers and thus denying equal protection to students assigned to the teachers. Furthermore, according to the complaint, the statutes had a disparate impact on poor and minority students, who were more likely to be assigned to a grossly-ineffective teacher.
So, lets pay even more for "grossly ineffective" teachers. Hey, that is California politics at its finest.
And then there is the unfunded liability ...
At the end of fiscal 2019, the state of California had $186 billion in unfunded liabilities for state workers and teachers. Teachers unions are private enterprises with private-sector employees who are organized into staff unions. They negotiate contracts with their bosses, but their bosses are the elected officers and executive managers of the teachers unions. What a scam.
And now - they want to extend this same model to "free college".
God help us.
