Sooner or later, reality rears its ugly head and that seems to be happening with the state’s very expensive — but apparently failing — efforts to close a yawning “achievement gap” among the state’s nearly 6 million elementary and secondary school students. Early in the decade, as Jerry Brown began his second...
Walters: California’s Big Educational Dilemma
California’s largest, most important — and perhaps most troubled — governmental program is the education of nearly 6 million elementary, middle and high school students. Federal, state and local taxpayers are spending more than $100 billion each year on the assumption, or hope, that the state’s 944 school districts, ranging...
Walters: Holding Schools Accountable
Educational accountability is attracting a lot of political attention — or perhaps lip service — these days in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed two bills touted as bringing more accountability to education. One, Assembly Bill 1505, applies new controls on charter schools that receive public funds but are independently managed...
Walters: Why Is Our 'Achievement Gap' so Stubborn?
California has poured tens of billions of additional dollars into its public schools this decade on the assumption – or hope – that they would close the state’s stubborn academic “achievement gap.” Former Gov. Jerry Brown championed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that gives school districts with large numbers...
Grownups Have Messed Up School Budgets. Turn It Over to the Kids.
California education finances are an unholy mess — with incomprehensible budget formulas, equity funding that doesn’t produce equity, and cuts to schools even during the current economic expansion. And our state’s so-called education leaders refuse to fix the system. We should let the kids fix it instead. This isn’t a...