It did not take long after I announced a statewide education reform tour as a former candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction and in my role as California Policy Center’s Vice President of Education Policy and Government Affairs to receive an overwhelming and positive response. Parents, educators, school board members, and other concerned community members...

As we transition into 2023, we can see that the field of education will once again be a contentious one, as too many government-run schools are failing, and parents are not happy. In Chicago, for example, great numbers of students are avoiding their local schools. In fact, more than one-third of the city’s public schools...

The number of children in the classroom has no effect on educational achievement. The perennial, “We have a teacher shortage!” canard has a younger and equally bogus sibling known as, “Children do better in a small class setting!” In fact, lower class size is very often on the list of demands when teachers go out...

Earlier this year the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) released a report entitled “Burned Out, Priced Out – Solutions to the Educator Shortage Crisis.” Given the universally acknowledged challenges facing public K-12 education in California, this report merits serious attention. The UTLA represents teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which with over 500,000 enrolled K-12 students is...

The results of the first post-lockdown National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released on June 1, and they showed anything but progress. Most subgroups took a big hit, but Blacks and Hispanics suffered the greatest damage. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, said, “These results are...

It’s no secret that education in America has been in bad shape for some time, and now, low student proficiency has been exacerbated by the hysterical response to the Covid outbreak. Most recently, the results of a Harvard University study, which investigated the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening gaps in achievement by...

America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat from parents, according to the National School Boards Association and Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland. In a story straight out of the “No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t keep up” file, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President...

The bulk of L.A. students are not proficient in math or English, but they reportedly know the difference between a riot and a protest. In a stunningly revealing exposé in Los Angeles Magazine, United Teachers of Los Angeles president Cecily Myart-Cruz told the world what many of us already knew – that her primary concern...

The decision to mask and indoctrinate school children in California has been left to local school districts. The new school year is still weeks away in California, but summer break has hardly been a carefree romp on the beach. On July 12th, the California Department of Public Health, ignoring CDC guidance, announced that all students...

Editor’s note: This is the seventh article in a nine-part series on how to fix California. Read the first article in the series here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here, the sixth here, and the seventh here. Pragmatism. Abundance. Optimism. If these are the principles that should guide public policy...