| California’s kids count on their fingers, but could graduate with a 6.3 |  |  |  |
| San Diego Government - School Districts |
| BY |
| SUNDAY, 04 APRIL 2010 16:47 |
 San Diego Unified will have no part of Obama and Duncan's reforms, or their cash. According to the US Dept. of Education, last year California’s eighth-graders ranked 46th in the country in math. Good thing we can cushion the blow and look down upon Alabama, Mississippi and the District of Columbia. But, it sure hurts when kids in Bogalusa, Louisiana tell jokes about how Californians can’t count. There are three types of people in this world—people who can count and people who can’t count. California’s math weakness is reinforced by a system consistently producing reasonably-educated kids who graduate high school with GPA’s inflated to meaningless levels like 6.3, who then go on to mediocre colleges and earn B’s and C’s. In fact, California’s high schools send a lower proportion of graduates to college than all but three other states. According to philanthropist Eli Broad, the problem is rooted in our dysfunctional education governance, with elected school boards made up of “wannabes and unions,” and the fact that California has the most powerful and “most regressive” teachers union in the nation. Over the past decade, the California’s Teachers Association (CTA) has blasted roughly $210 million in political expenditures—more than any other group in the state. The CTA is the biggest donor to the state Democratic Party, but it spends money on initiatives as well. The CTA outspent advocates of reform to defeat a ballot measure for school vouchers (which would have helped California’s most disadvantaged kids) and one to reform teacher’s tenure rules (with sickening transparency in preservation of teachers’ job security to the detriment of students). According to Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, DC education think tank, the CTA has caused California to maintain quality control among our educators using “laughably easy teacher tests.” Although education is the largest part of California’s budget, spending per pupil is also 46th in the nation, and at 23.4 students per class, we suffer the largest |