Newsletter | California Policy Center

Billions in Local Taxes and Borrowing & The Dangers of Direct Democracy – CPC Newsletter

California voters approve billions in local taxes and borrowing: In his latest analysis, CPC contributor Edward Ring summarizes the results of California’s local tax and bond proposals on last week’s ballot. He highlights how the broad support for local tax and bond measures contrasts with the opposition to similar measures in the March 2020 election, which...

By Jordan Bruneau

Pandemic Pod Pushback

The education establishment is losing customers, and it isn’t happy. Teacher union honchos don’t like homeschoolers for obvious reasons. When kids learn at home, it means less control, money, and power for them. Over the years, the National Education Association has adopted resolutions at its yearly convention which stipulate that homeschooling families “cannot provide the...

By Larry Sand

Will the Prop 15 Victory Survive the Ballot Harvest? – CPC’s Weekly Newsletter

Will California’s Election Day victories survive the ballot harvest? Californians seem to have rejected Proposition 15, a massive property tax increase on Golden State employers that would make many low-margin small businesses unprofitable, reduce job opportunities when they’re needed most, and raise consumer prices when so many are struggling to get by. The tax would force...

By Jordan Bruneau

Schools for Scandal

As shown by the 2019 NAEP, most of our students are being badly shortchanged. The latest bad education news comes to us courtesy of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The most recent exam was administered to high school seniors in early 2019, a full year before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The so-called “Nation’s Report...

By Larry Sand

School Reopenings Are Being Determined by Politics and Unions

School lockdowns have little if anything to do with “science.” A working paper released this month by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform reveals that local politics – not the severity of COVID-19 – is the most important factor in determining whether k-12 public school districts opened for in-person learning in the fall. Political...

By Larry Sand

Bugging the Proselytizers

If cops are expected to wear body cameras, teachers’ lessons should be recorded. In Texas, a 9th grade English teacher adorns her virtual classroom with posters professing support for Black Lives Matter and the LGBT lifestyle. In southern California, a teacher regularly tells her students how stupid President Trump is, and that conservatives are destroying...

By Larry Sand

Creative Instruction and Its Enemies

Parents battle the education monolith in the COVID-19 shutdown wars. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the teachers unions and others in the education establishment as a Hydra that will go to great lengths to insure that in-person learning is denied throughout the country. In Boston, the teachers union is suing the mayor and other city...

By Larry Sand

Indoctrifornia

While California’s ethnic studies mandate for k-12ers is dead for now, there is still much in the works to be concerned about. California governor Gavin Newsom is a force of nature. He leads a state which has record homelessness, rising crime and exploding pension debt. But wait, there is so much more! Ruling more like...

By Larry Sand

If Everyone Is Behind, Then No One Is Behind

COVID-19 has further exposed the teachers unions’ disregard for children. In early September, researchers Corey DeAngelis and Christos Makridis released the results of a study they spearheaded, which found that “school districts in places with stronger teachers’ unions are much less likely to offer full-time, in-person instruction this fall.” The authors stress that the results...

By Larry Sand

Cultural Marxism for the Kids

The left’s plan to disfigure America is moving right along. The results of a survey released last week revealed that two-thirds of 18-39 year-old Americans do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. One-half of the respondents could not name a single concentration camp. One-fourth said the holocaust was a myth...

By Larry Sand

My Latest Missive to Randi Weingarten

This is the sixth in a series of open letters to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. (The first five can be accessed here.) Yo Randi! I am really concerned about you, girl! First, at Al Sharpton’s National Day of Action lefty-fest in D.C. a couple of weeks ago, you informed the throng...

By Larry Sand

Private School Primacy?

It’s back-to-school decision time for many parents. With schools set to reopen, it’s time for parents to choose how best to proceed with their children’s education in our Covid-obsessed country. If there is no in-school option, how many will stick with online education from their local public school? And how many will opt to home...

By Larry Sand

Could Parental Choice Swing the Election?

Education issues could be key in the presidential race. While government-run schooling has been the choice for a great majority of parents in recent times, change is on the horizon. The National Home Education Research Institute reports that 23 percent of parents who did not homeschool before the Covid-19 invasion indicated that they are now “very...

By Larry Sand

The Audacity of Woke

While Covid-19 has a shelf life, “Woke-20” shows no sign of abating. With many schools across the country shuttered due to Covid-19, the woke zealots are in a bit of a snit. They can’t indoctrinate students with their one-sided radical views in the traditional classroom because, well, there is no classroom. Doing it online, you...

By Larry Sand