By Michael Davis Dire were the predictions when our little charter school, Orange County Classical Academy, was approved over three years ago in a famously raucous Orange Unified School District board hearing. The skepticism was forgivable then but not today. In its first year of operation, 50 percent of OCCA’s English Learners achieved English-language proficiency by the...
The Oakland Education Association — the teachers union in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) — is at it again. Last week, the union announced that 88 percent of its members voted in favor of authorizing a strike. The strike is scheduled to begin May 4th, unless the district and union come to a last-minute agreement....
The Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) was recognized this week as a California Distinguished School, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced. OCCA, a high-performing public charter school, was the only school to receive the prestigious 2023 award in Orange Unified School District. “Orange County Classical Academy truly deserves to be recognized as a...
The organization behind some of California’s most out-there education initiatives announced it’s splitting from the national group that helped it promote the “parents are terrorists” campaign. In a low-profile statement, the California School Boards Association says its leadership approved the divorce from the National School Boards Association on March 26. In the press release, the...
California parents are at last in on the joke. They’re seeing (perhaps for the first time) that our public schools are failing our children – practicing invasive therapy as if that’s teaching, carrying out political indoctrination as if that’s education, insisting on vaccine mandates and masking for a population that’s hardly at risk (see the California...
Register for this free online Zoom event HERE. 10 am to 12 pm, Saturday, Jan. 30. Learn about quality school options that are available for K-12 students in California: Local Public Schools Charter Schools Homeschooling Private Schools Alternative Schools Learning Pods Speakers include: Mari Barke (emcee), California Policy Center Andrew Campanella, National School Choice Week...
Editor’s note: A Southern California businessman copied us on his open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Given his reasonable fear of political retribution – from state tax investigators, for instance, or regulators – we honored his request to remain anonymous. Dear Gov. Newsom, I am writing as a lifelong resident of California. I was born...
By Michael Davis This school year, my family will be joining the throng of Southern Californians making long commutes, but for us it will be for the sake of our children’s education. We live in Pasadena, but our kids will be going to Orange County Classical Academy, a new charter school in the City of...
The Pacific Club hosts a distinguished speaker series each month for its members. August highlighted CPC’s President, Will Swaim. If you are having trouble playing the video, click here.
In 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark Janus decision, confirming that it’s unconstitutional for government employers to deduct union dues or fees from employee paychecks without the employee’s permission. In other words, no employee whose workplace is represented by a government union can be forced to pay any part of his or...
Until Gov. Gavin Newsom declared most California schools closed for the fall, he had left school re-openings to local officials. But before that declaration, Orange County Board of Education trustees had voted 4-1 to approve the reopening of schools in that county. California Policy Center helped draft an early version of those recommendations, and though the final...
A conservative response to police-reform protests Intense public protests and riots following George Floyd’s deadly encounter with a Minneapolis police officer in May have caught many conservatives off guard. Because of their overall support for police officers and their respect for public order, conservatives seem generally troubled by the public reaction. They have – at...
Image: San Gabriel (Creative Commons) If you’re looking for dark entertainment, you could do worse than the reality show unfolding throughout California. First, state and local officials supported the nearly total shutdown of the state’s economy as a necessary response to Covid-19. That killed the sales and other tax revenues that are the life’s blood...
Investigating the relationship between stressed public finances and rising misdemeanor fines and penalties By Reiss Becker, David Vasquez, Zane Zovak BACKGROUND California Policy Center analysts have documented the state’s collapsing public finances over the past few decades – not just the rising level of public debt, but the subsequent effects of crumbling infrastructure, slashed government...