California is experiencing an overabundance of crises that could rightly be called existential.
We have critical water, electricity and housing shortages, our homelessness and poverty are the worst in the country, and out of control wildfires ravage thousands of homes every year.
There is another crisis looming over California’s future, not as obvious as the others, but potentially just as devastating – shamefully low levels of learning for the nearly 6 million public school students in the State.
Before COVID-19 hit and authorities closed schools to limit the spread of the deadly disease, California students largely failed to meet the state’s own skill standards necessary for productive adult lives. and were performing poorly in nationwide testing. This was especially true for the 60% of these children classified as poor or ‘learning English’.
On Monday, federal and state governments released the latest test results, indicating that the pandemic’s makeshift efforts to teach homebound students have further reduced learning and widened the already ‘achievement gap’. gaping.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Tony Thurmond, the state’s superintendent of schools, tried to put a positive spin on the test results, essentially saying the drops could have been worse, but sugarcoating them doesn’t change the fact. that California has a serious education. crisis that threatens to undermine its social and economic future.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results of 4e and 8e reading and math came first and once again California was among the worst performing states, 12e below and below national averages in all categories.
Newsom selected the data to say that “students in California experienced fewer learning losses than those in most other states during the pandemic,” but admitted that “the results are not a celebration but a call to action. action – students are struggling academically and we must continue to provide them with the resources they need to thrive.
Newsom neglected to mention that students in the two red states he often singles out for scorn, Florida and Texas, scored significantly higher on NAEP tests. Florida was 6 years olde the highest overall and Texas was well above national averages.
State-by-state data also indicated — not for the first time — that there is no direct correlation between academic achievement and school spending.
New York, the nation’s top spending state on education, came out lower than California, while several states at the bottom of the spending list are leaders in achievement. Wyoming, No. 2 behind New York in spending, is No. 1 in academics, while neighboring Utah, the lowest-spending state, is No. 5 in achievement.
California’s educational establishment and most of its politicians tend to limit the academic achievement debate to money, but there are clearly other factors at play.
Later Monday, Thurmond’s Department of Education released the results of last spring’s “Smarter Balance” tests. Initially, Thurmond planned to delay the release until later in the year, but when results from individual school districts showed declining results, Thurmond faced pressure from the media to release them sooner.
Statewide, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards decreased by 4 percentage points (from 51% to 47%) for English language arts and by 7 percentage points (from 40% to 33%) for mathematics compared to the last pre-pandemic tests in 2018-19.
As with other California crises, academic achievement is headed in the wrong direction, and simply spending more money on it probably won’t improve it. We need to learn from other states and school districts in California that are surprisingly successful.
The absence of reform will have disastrous consequences for the children and for the State as a whole.
CalMatters is a public interest journalism company committed to explaining how the California State Capitol works and why it matters.