Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
Auditors are investigating the spending of $30 billion in grants used to improve the California education system which despite the high price tag, has not seemed to do anything. And yes, that is billion with a ‘B’.
The law, known as the Local Control Funding formula, was designed to give funding to schools with more poor students and English learners. It sounds nice in theory, but like every other government spending plan, it didn’t work. At all.
It failed to bridge the “achievement gap” between Latinos/African-Americans to something more resembling Whites/Asians, while at the same time improving English literacy rates so little that it may be unrelated completely. A nine percent increase in five years is hardly a massive success and due to the fact that the study this figure came from only measures five years and nothing before, it’s impossible to know if this was the primary cause of improvement.
Once again, this is California’s Democrat-run government throwing money around while not solving anything. This is simply Democratic officials putting a lot of kind thoughts—and other people’s money—into the effort of not doing anything. It fails to address the two real drivers of lack of achievement among minorities in education which are 1) awful teachers, policies, and administrators protected by monolithic unions with a stranglehold over the government and 2) due to school funding being based on property tax, schools in low-value neighborhoods are consequently low-value schools.
We must end the corrupt and self-interested teacher’s unions and allow a voucher system if we want California to do better than being 47th ranked in education in the United States.
California is notorious for having poor money management, but this is not something that can merely be swept under the rug. To put this number into perspective, it is 10 times Donald Trump’s net worth, 125% of the GDP of Iceland, and nearly double the GDP of Jamaica. Despite this massive waste of money, no one in the educational system has the slightest idea as to where the money went or if it actually helped.
If heads don’t roll for this, it will show that California’s government is not only inept, it is also the most corrupt institution America has seen since Tammany Hall. It’s time to audit the Ed.
