Students Trapped in California’s Failing Public Schools Deserve a Way Out

During the pandemic, funding for California’s K-12 schools and community colleges spiked from $79.3 billion in 2019-20 to $110.4 billion in 2021-22 — a 39% increase. Also during the pandemic, California public school enrollment dropped by more than a quarter of a million students. For the first time in 20 years, public school enrollment in the state is below 6 million, says education scholar Lance Izumi.

Gov. Gavin Newsom bragged, “we’ve made record investments in education,” as if spending more money actually helps children learn better. But the school lockdowns showed us that it doesn’t.

“The big question is whether all this government spending has produced any significant bang for the buck.  The answer is no,” said Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute and author of Choosing Diversity: How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children, and the co-author along with Wenyuan Wu and McKenzie Richards of the new book, The Great Parent Revolt: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders Are Fighting Critical Race Theory in America’s Schools.

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