The real crisis in California schools is low achievement, not cultural conflicts

When Gov. Gavin Newsom unexpectedly voiced opposition to allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports, he was throwing gasoline on an issue that was already burning in state and national political arenas.

“I think it’s an issue of fairness,” Newsom told right-wing iconoclast Charlie Kirk on the inaugural segment of the governor’s new podcast. “I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair. I’m not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you.”

The remark generated a tsunami of media commentary about Newsom’s motives and a torrent of criticism from fellow Democrats, particularly LGBTQ rights advocates. It also focused attention on two Republican bills that would ban transgender women from women’s high school and college sports.

Ordinarily, given Republicans’ lack of legislative clout, Democratic leaders would just dump both bills in the wastebasket, as they have done innumerable times.

However Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas is allowing Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez of Rancho Santa Margarita and Assemblyman Bill Essayli of Corona to present their measures, Assembly Bills 89 and 844, to the Assembly’s Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism.

That’s probably as far as the measures will go. The Legislature’s influential LGBTQ caucus will see to that. But the maneuver protects Rivas from allegations that he was not willing to have at least a discussion on the issue that Newsom, for whatever reason, chose to highlight.

While these well-orchestrated events feed political junkies’ voracious appetite for cultural conflict, they also underscore the pathetic lack of interest Capitol politicians have in a real crisis, the shamefully low levels of academic achievement in California’s schools.

California fares very poorly vis-a-vis other states in federal academic testing — seventh from the bottom — and there’s a yawning  achievement gap separating low income students from their more privileged classmates. Moreover, California is one of several states whose students still lag behind pre-pandemic achievement levels.

A few days ago, the Washington Post published an article by Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago and chief of staff to President Barack Obama, about the neglect of educational achievement.

Emanuel called it a “Sputnik moment in education” and declared that “almost no one among the nation’s purported adults seems to want to solve the problem.”

Emanuel continued, “On both sides of the aisle, we’re caught in wild and beside-the-point education debates — whether the Education Department should be closed, which students should change in which locker rooms or participate in which sports, and whether curriculums should be stripped of diversity, equity and inclusion. All those disagreements deserve a hearing. But they are shiny baubles distracting us from the real crisis — namely, our children’s failure to meet basic standards in reading, writing and arithmetic.”

That’s precisely what’s happening in California.

Emanuel cited examples of states that have taken educational achievement seriously, one being Mississippi, where deep poverty is a way of life.

“Mississippi’s early embrace of  ‘the science of reading’ — that is, the restoration of phonics in teaching literacy — has led to what some call a miracle: The state’s reading scores for fourth graders rose from 49th nationally in 2013 to ninth in 2024,” Emanuel noted. “We ought to be bringing these approaches to scale with urgency.”

Phonics has made some inroads in California, but unlike Mississippi, California has not fully embraced it, despite ranking 33rd in fourth grade reading.

That could change if the Legislature adopts AB 1121, a newly introduced measure by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a West Covina Democrat, with support from EdVoice and other education reform groups.

The bill would encourage school districts to adopt “evidence-based means of teaching foundational reading skills.”

It deserves at least as much legislative attention as the transgender bills.