For years, the argument seemed straightforward: California’s public schools weren’t performing well because they didn’t have enough money. Give them more, the thinking went, and student achievement would follow.
That theory has now been tested — and the results aren’t encouraging.
Despite pouring billions of additional dollars into K-12 education over the past decade and a half, California continues to rank near the bottom nationally in reading and math proficiency, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Achievement gaps between white students and their Black and Latino classmates remain stubbornly wide, even as state leaders have specifically earmarked funding to close those disparities.
Under Govs. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, California has steadily ramped up education spending. The 2026-27 state budget, signed into law in June, allocates $151 billion in state and local funds for public schools, with additional federal dollars pushing per-student spending to nearly $30,000 — an increase of roughly 50% since Newsom took office.
Yet money alone hasn’t solved the underlying problems. Several California school districts are now teetering on the edge of insolvency, including Sacramento City Unified, not because state funding has dried up, but because districts have repeatedly overspent under pressure from labor unions representing teachers and staff.
Compounding the issue is a governance structure that spreads responsibility across so many elected officials and agencies that no single person or body can be held clearly accountable when students fall behind. When parents or journalists try to pin down who is actually in charge of fixing the problem, the response is often a shrug — or officials pointing fingers at one another.
There was a modest step toward clarity this year. Acting on recommendations from a coalition of university education researchers, Newsom and state lawmakers agreed to strip real authority from the elected state superintendent of public instruction, turning that position into a largely advisory role. Going forward, the state Department of Education will be run by a commissioner appointed directly by the governor, who also selects members of the state school board.
In theory, that consolidation means the governor’s office can no longer dodge responsibility for how the state’s schools are performing. Whether that accountability actually materializes remains to be seen — especially once a new governor, likely Xavier Becerra, takes office and inherits the job.
Recent legislative action offers a preview of how difficult that accountability push may be. The California School Boards Association backed a package of four bills this year designed to hold state government to the same performance standards already expected of local districts, particularly when it comes to shrinking the achievement gap.
All four bills cleared the Assembly. But three of them quietly died in the state Senate, with no vote taken and no public explanation offered. Only one survived: Assembly Bill 2225, which would establish a six-member commission tasked with developing a strategy to improve student outcomes statewide. It now awaits action from the governor.
The fate of the other three bills suggests that, even as legislative leaders were willing to hand the governor more direct control over the education bureaucracy, they were far less eager to expose state government itself to the kind of accountability now demanded of local school boards.
California’s persistently weak academic outcomes deserve to be treated with the same urgency as a natural disaster — a wildfire, an earthquake, a flood. Instead, the problem has simmered for years, resistant even to historic increases in funding.
Making matters more precarious, sustaining current funding levels won’t be easy. The state has faced repeated multibillion-dollar budget deficits in recent years, and delaying payments to schools has become one of the go-to tools lawmakers use to help close those gaps — raising the uncomfortable possibility that the resources devoted to fixing California’s education crisis could shrink just as the need for reform becomes more urgent.
Original source: CalMatters
