How Broken Is The Education System in California?

This broken, according to the major Sacramento newspaper:

California’s education dilemma can be stated rather simply, to wit:

The state has 6 million kids in its K-12 public school system, 60 percent of them are classified as either poor or English-learners and as a group they trail badly in educational accomplishment.

The state’s political leaders and education officials acknowledge what they call the “achievement gap” and say they are working to close it, mostly by appropriating more money for instruction.

However, they also have minimized it by adopting an accountability system, called “the dashboard,” for schools that makes academic achievement only one of several measures of their competency, and leaves improvement largely in the hands of local school officials...

“The dashboard system rates districts in several categories that impact student learning. But – mirroring a nationwide shift away from a narrow focus on tests – it offers special help to ones with sagging academics only if they also suspend a high number of students or graduate too few of them.

“If extremely low, declining performance on math and reading exams alone were enough to trigger state support, the number of California districts that could expect it would almost double from 228 to more than 400, a CALmatters analysis shows.”

In other words, the dashboard, as critics had predicted it would, masks the true extent of California’s education crisis and implicitly makes the situation look better than it is...

This hide-the-pea strategy is quite purposeful. The education establishment shuns responsibility for low academic achievement and battles constantly with an “Equity Coalition” over accountability issues, including more transparency in how extra money allocated to help “high-needs” students is being spent.

The situation is particularly galling because there’s no inherent reason why disadvantaged kids can’t learn, graduate from high school, go to college and otherwise become successful members of society.

It's almost as if the people running our education system in this state don't truly want to identify the problem, and hence, don't truly want to fix it.