1.1 California Context: Are California’s Schools Really Behind?

It's easy to think we know more than we do. After all, we lived through our own education, right? But a dose of humility is in order. The education system as a whole rarely changes much from one year to the next, but it changed quite significantly after the Great Recession of 2008, and again after the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Even in ordinary times, myths and outdated ideas have a funny way of sticking around.

Ed100 exists to demystify the California school system. Students have all kinds of different needs. To serve those needs and balance among them, the education system must be simultaneously massive and personal, which makes complexity unavoidable. To work for all students, it has to work for each student — even in a pandemic or a financial crisis. That's a significant challenge.

Let's start with the obvious: the system is really, really big.

There are sound reasons why this mammoth education system has to be particularly complex. Similar to Texas and Florida (and unlike, say, New York), California's population has grown and changed rapidly. The school system has had to grow and change with it.