Lance Izumi says that low student performance is the result of poor government decisionmaking. Last month, Education Week, the school trade publication, issued a much-publicized report that gave California low grades in several education categories, including student achievement. Unfortunately, the report came to the tired conclusion that poor student performance is due to inadequate government spending on education.
Trouble is, the empirical data tell a different story.
That's a real increase of more than 130 percent. According to an upcoming study by the Pacific Research Institute, blame can be laid to poor decisionmaking by state lawmakers and government education officials. For instance, billions of state tax dollars are funnelled into approximately 50 special interest categorical programs that benefit only a relatively few students. The Legislature's own analyst has criticized these programs for their high cost, Byzantine rules, stifling of innovation, and lack of benchmarks for success. Further, government education officials now admit that their decision a decade ago to deemphasize phonics reading instruction was a disaster.