Commentary

If you want to see what’s wrong with K-12 education in California, a good place to start is Assembly Bill 938, by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance). It sets “aspirational funding levels” to “raise wages by 50 percent” for teachers and other school workers by fiscal year 2030-31. Or seven years from the 2023-24 fiscal year, which begins this July 1.

Well, I have personal “aspirational funding levels” by then of $1 million a year. But that’s not likely to happen unless I win the lottery, which I don’t even play. Hoping isn’t getting.

Using a compound interest calculator, that 50 percent over seven years comes to 6.5 percent a year. How many people in the private sector who pay taxes will get 6.5 percent yearly raises?

But there’s more. The Appropriations Committee analysis calculates for AB 938:

“Ongoing General Fund costs of an unknown amount, but potentially in the hundreds of millions, to increase contributions to California State Teachers’ Retirement System, depending on how much this bill increases salaries relative to how much salaries would have increased otherwise.”

Moreover, Pensions & Investments wrote May 4, the California State Teachers Retirement System “reported that its funding ratio had increased to 74.4 percent as of June 30, the $306 billion pension fund’s most recent actuarial valuation, from 73 percent the previous year, due to a strong performance in fiscal year 2021.”

That’s actually no great achievement because taxpayers still will have to make up the gap above the 74.4 percent, or 25.6 percent. Indeed, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May Revision to his budget for fiscal year 2023-24, just released, pencils in a $3.9 billion “contribution” to CalSTRS (p. 85). Many non-teachers are in the other major pension system, and Newsom pegs that payment at another $7.7 billion. Total: $11.6 billion. AB 938’s “aspirations” only would add to that.

Funding Formula

The aspirational funding comes under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). It was proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012 and passed by the Legislature in 2013, according to the California School Boards Association. It “shifted state education funding away from a vast array of categorical programs and toward a system in which funding is allocated based on student needs and that would allow for both accountability and maximum flexibility at the local level.”

Basically, it was supposed to shift resources to poor schools to help raise their test scores. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that worked. According to the Nation’s Report Card of the U.S. Department of Education, in 2022 for 8th grade reading, “The percentage of students in California who performed at or above the NAEP Basic level was 67 percent in 2022. This percentage was not significantly different from that in 2019 (68 percent) and in 1998 (63 percent).”

The problem is there’s no incentive for the best teachers to hire on at the worst schools and improve performance. The teachers unions continue adamantly to resist what’s called “performance pay.” Union contracts also mandate, when there are layoffs, that seniority keeps older teachers around, even if they’re incompetent, while letting go of the youngest teachers, even the most brilliant.

It’s also nearly impossible to close bad schools. The 2010 “parent trigger” law, which allowed parents to shut down badly performing schools, and reopen them under new management, almost never has been pulled. Even charter school expansion, a worthy reform, has been slowed by union power—and now teaches 11.7 percent of public-school students for the 2022-23 school year. That has provided some competition, but not enough.

Muratsuchi himself said, “The ultimate goal is to address the crisis of a shortage of school employees by closing the wage gap—rather than focus on an arbitrary number of 50 percent, not only for teachers but for food service workers, who can make more at McDonald’s.” Except McDonald’s is a private company facing daily competition from Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s, and many other eateries. If quality goes down, gourmands eat out elsewhere, or just stay home and cook.

Overflowing With Money

Another problem is one I brought up last week in my analysis of the governor’s May Revision. I calculated it spends $23,483 per pupil. “That means, for a classroom of 25, an average of $587,075 will be spent.”

There’s plenty of money sloshing around California’s education system. It just isn’t being spent prudently. The LCFF, more “aspirational” spending under AB 938, and the other gimmicks arise like clockwork.

Among them were “whole language,” in which students were taught to learn each word by itself, instead phonetically; that at least was ended in 1997. And Republican Gov. Pete Wilson advanced a class-size reduction scheme, the product of another budget surplus, in 1996; that “unraveled at a rapid rate” in 2012 during a budget crunch, as EdSource reported.

The fact is, we know what works: Tough academic standards. Order in the classroom. Competition among schools. Replacing dysfunctional schools with reformed schools. And rewarding the best teachers. Those things just aren’t being advanced in enough places.

John Seiler’s email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com