California politicians agree on school money, but poor test scores need attention

Historically, the annual process of writing a state budget has often stumbled over how much money California should spend on its public school system and its nearly 6 million students.

However, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders negotiate a final budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, dealing with a multi-billion-dollar deficit, they have only small disagreements on school finance.

Both Newsom’s latest budget and the Legislature’s alternative draft would peg state spending on schools at $80.5 billion, including transitional kindergarten, a new education subcategory.

That’s $4.5 billion less than the current budget allocates, but with anticipated increases in education’s share of local property taxes, total spending would remain roughly even.

With schools off the table, politically, Newsom and legislators are wrangling over more contentious issues, particularly the reductions in medical and social services for poor, elderly and disabled Californians that Newsom seeks to close the budget gap.

The comity on school spending, however, shuns a debate that California’s politicians should be having — what to do about the system’s chronically subpar academic achievement.

This week the Public Policy Institute of California issued a timely reminder that there’s been little progress — and some regression — in such basic skills as reading and mathematics, with wide gaps among students tied to family income, ethnicity and other socioeconomic factors.

In an analysis of state academic tests that were administered last year, PPIC researchers reported that fewer than half of all students “met or exceeded state standards in English Language Arts, while about a third (36%) did so in math.”

The analysis also found that “proficiency rates were highest among Asian students: just above 70% in English and nearly two-thirds in math. White students’ rates were lower, with 60% meeting the standard in English and 50% in math. Proficiency rates were lower on average for Black and Latino students — 24% and 37% in English, respectively, and 18% and 30% in math.”

Also girls fared much better than boys in English. And proficiency in basic skills among low-income students is scarcely half that of those from moderate- or high-income families.

To cap it off, PPIC notes that California students’ rates of proficiency in federal tests continue to lag behind those of other states.

None of these findings is unexpected. California students have been lagging behind the state’s expectations and national norms for many years, even as spending on the school system has continued to climb to well over $20,000 a year per pupil from state aid, local property taxes and federal subventions.

One would think that California’s stubbornly mediocre — at best — education outcomes would sit atop the political agenda, given their negative effects on students and the state as a whole.

However, the Capitol’s discussions of education usually start and end with how much money schools should receive, when it’s obvious that school finances, while important, are just one factor in outcomes.

There are some signs of progress on those other factors, such as a recent agreement to encourage local school systems to use phonics in teaching elementary students how to read, the most important of all academic skills.

While the state is stopping short of mandating phonics, as many education experts advise, it’s a step forward that more or less declares a winner in the very long debate over methodology that’s been dubbed “reading wars.”

However, there’s also been some regression. As PPIC notes in its study, the state Board of Education, which tends to reflect the education establishment’s priorities, has adopted new definitions of academic test proficiency that could obscure embarrassingly low results. For instance, if a student scores below grade level, their performance will be labeled “Developing” or “Minimum.”

“Understanding student scores could be growing more difficult,” PPIC says. That’s not a good thing.