California. 5th largest economy in the world. 37th state in Pre-K-12 education.
According to the 2024 US News and World Report, California’s education system is currently ranked 37th in Pre-K-12 education, and this ranking process compiles five factors for the cumulative report, including High School Graduation Rate, College Readiness, Preschool Enrollment, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Reading Scores and NAEP Math Scores.
In response to this low ranking, Placer County Department of Education County Superintendent Gayle Garbolino-Mojica stresses the distinctions between various states.
“(Education ranking reports are) comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges and not comparing apples to oranges. Because public education is really a state issue, many states, their public education looks very different,” Garbolino-Mojica said.
US News and World Reports is not the sole ranking list with California ranked in the bottom half of the states; various other reports have acknowledged California’s poor performance statewide.
Conversely, states like Massachusetts have consistently ranked at the top of similar lists. From initiating early education programs such as the Department of Early Education and Care to top-rated safe school systems to professional work environments to top-performing universities, Massachusetts boasts the highest-performing state in terms of education, setting students up for success.
Due to its vast population and size, what plays to California’s strengths in the economics arena has been its Achilles heel when it comes to education.
“California is such a huge state, and it’s a super diverse state too. So it’s so big that it’s very hard to move up the ladder on [education]. Just even the tiniest little change requires a Herculean effort,” Carolyn Jones, head of K-12 reporting at CalMatters said. “California has a lot of extremes too. There’s a lot of really wealthy parts of the state where schools are funded really, really well because of local bonds and parents kick in money and donate and stuff. And then there’s other parts of the state that are really poor, and they just don’t have that extra money for after school programs and tutors and all the things that kind of really help kids do well in school.”
As it currently stands, California is the most populous state by 9 million residents and serves 5.8 million students. Because of its size, it operates education differently than most other states, delineating almost all control of education to respective local government and school boards.
With 58 counties and 1165 school districts, California faces a major contributor to its internal diversity. Certain counties have certain resources and house certain residents. Statistically, Garbolino-Mojica references the California School Dashboard as a mechanism to view California school district performances on a micro level. This state government-regulated tool emphasizes progression, listing categories such as academic subjects, career readiness, among other factors.
“(The California School Dashboard) really looks at growth,” Garbolino-Mojica said. “All the school districts in the state of California are given a metric, and they’re a color, so (they’re) either red, orange, yellow, green or blue. And that indicates whether or not, over a period of a time, … (they’re) making progress.”
Both Garbolino-Mojica and Jones attribute socioeconomic diversity through the state of California the primary contributor to its low educational ranking.
“I think that there has been a correlation (between socioeconomic status and education performance). And I want to stress that a correlation not a causation,” Garbolino-Mojica said. “A correlation between the ability to provide resources, financial resources to a family and level of educational attainment that parents have is directly correlated to maybe the values that children have, and the desire to maybe prioritize education at a different level.”
For instance, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the largest school district in the state, relies on government subsidies for low-income students, according to Garbolino-Mojica. For the Central Valley, school districts in that area house residents primarily in the agricultural sector, where wages are not as high; consequently, education levels tend to be less. In the Bay area, the tech industry provides prosperous opportunities for education, attributing it to its higher educational progress. By glancing at LAUSD, the Central Valley and the Bay area, the diversity in circumstances already creates educational progress scattered across the scatter plot.
Other than diversity in socioeconomic status, California’s passed legislation to address educational funding could be a contributor to its educational progress as well; California’s education rankings are ranked 37th despite the revenue the state brings in and the approximate 40% of the state budget allocated directly to education.
The downward curve of California’s education ranking originates with the 1978 Prop 13 initiative, which drastically reduced the funding of individual schools. Before Prop 13, school funding was majorly sourced from local property tax—when Prop 13 put a cap on property tax, the government lost most of its revenue used for education and schools lost amenities, staff and programs.
In the late 70’s California voted on Proposition 13, Prop 13 reformed tax measures which ended up leaving public schools with less funding.
Prop 13 was passed in 1978 and for 20 years after the state still struggled to fund public schools adequately. With the proposition being passed with 65% of the vote, it is easy to say it was popular, with lower property taxes and a limit on how much assessments could increase. Prop 13 lowered property taxes to 1% of the properties value; this had the adverse effect of causing a funding problem.
“We’re doing a lot better on funding than we used to do, but it kind of takes a long time to undo all that harm,” Jones said.
A major factor in the success of some schools is that the funding is not evenly distributed across the state which leaves some areas unable to provide extracurriculars that students may find engaging and helpful.
A good way to gauge if a state is on the right track with their education is looking at the test scores, yet California saw decreases in certain subjects due to asynchronous learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. While California saw an increase in math and science test scores, ELA scores dipped 0.4% from the 2021-2022 years to the 2022-2023 years to land at only 46.7% of kids reaching the standard. However, ELA test scores saw a jump in the 2023-2024 year to land at 47%.
Specifically for the US News and World Reports, test scores are determined using NAEP.
“(The government and statisticians can) use the scores to just see how well kids are doing, like to see who’s struggling, so that kid can get some extra help, you know, and see if they’re learning the material. It’s supposed to be just a tool for families and for teachers to just kind of see who needs some more help and who’s getting it, who’s not getting it,” Jones said.
Test scores are a huge contributor to education rankings, but they can be taken out of context. Nearly half of all California residents speak a language other than English at home, and many students are not yet fluent in English.
“California has everybody take the test, and other states don’t. I mean, they’re supposed to have everyone take the test, but they don’t,” Jones said.
Non-English speaking students still take standardized tests; newly immigrated students take standardized tests—and the schools must meet the needs of all of them and do so with the capacity of local government.
On paper, California seems to have a problem with English/literacy scores as 53% of people do not meet grade level expectations. However, this fact becomes a lot more understandable considering that 51.8% of foreign-born Californians “speak English less than very well.”
Last year, California approved a revised math framework with the goal to improve “Equity” in the subject. The state wants to accomplish this by focusing around the “big idea” as opposed to only focusing on the “isolated” concept being taught. After the COVID-19 pandemic pushed schools into distance learning, test rates dropped drastically, while each year the gap between pre-Covid levels and today is closing the gap. Specifically, math and English rates sit at 37.1% and 51.7%, respectively, for the number of students with standard test scores that are met.
Jones also expressed how the state of California lacks proficient math teachers who set up students for success.
However, when it comes to specific counties, Placer County (and specifically Roseville Joint Union High School District and even more specifically Granite Bay High School) performs exceptionally well. In fact, Garbolino-Mojica stated that Placer County has consistently ranked in the top three counties in the state, competing alongside Marin County and Santa Clara County, out of California’s 58 counties.
“There are a lot of teachers (at GBHS) that come to mind that really work really hard,” John Pichon, GBHS assistant principal, said. “I just think the work we put in as a student is probably one of the biggest reasons why we see the success that we do.”
