California’s school crisis worsens – Orange County Register

California has no shortage of critical issues — pandemics, water, housing, and chronic poverty.

However, nothing is more important to the state’s economic and social future than the shortcomings of the massive 6 million-student public school system.

Even before COVID-19 entered the state two years ago, California’s overall position on academic achievement tests across the country was embarrassingly low and the academic gap severing between underperforming students. and learning English with their better classmates is huge.

The pandemic has made those negative conditions even worse, as the state’s latest set of academic tests have highlighted.

The “Smarter Balance” math and English skills exams were suspended in 2020 as schools closed and switched to distance learning, rather awkwardly. Last spring, tests resumed, but less than a quarter of the 3.1 million students in grades 3-8 took the test due to irregular attendance.

However, the sample is large enough to suggest that learning will be beaten and Black and Latino students lag behind white and Asian students. High school graduation rates also declined, with Black and Latino students falling the most.

Less than half of those tested met standard on English tests and only a third met standard on English tests.

This drop is not surprising as students who need the most help have the least access to online tools and their families are hit hardest, both medically and financially. , as the pandemic intensified.

However, the woes of the education system extend beyond poor academic performance. Enrollment has been steadily declining due to demographic factors, such as a sharp drop in birth rates, and many local school systems are finding it difficult because state aid is based on attendance.

Enrollment has fallen further over the past two years due to the pandemic, but the state continues to award state aid based on pre-pandemic data. That innocuous gesture is now over, unless extended by Governor Gavin Newsom and the Legislature, with negative consequences for many school systems, even though soaring state revenue has resulted. the overall increase in state aid.

A newly introduced bill will change the current state support-based attendance-based approach to an enrollment-based bill, thereby providing schools with money for children who are not. available in the classroom. The legislation is estimated to provide schools with an additional $3 billion per year, or about $500 per student.

While the bill would require schools to spend an extra half of the final amount to combat truancy, there would be no penalty for not returning missing children to classrooms, which could exacerbate There is an inherently severe gap between enrollment and attendance.

With these issues in mind, educators look to Newsom’s proposed 2022-23 budget, which he revealed on Monday.

Newsom doesn’t ignore education but doesn’t put it on the list of its most important issues – COVID-19, homelessness, crime, climate change and cost of living – the budget addresses.