My friend Lance Christensen’s run for state superintendent of public instruction always was a long shot. He’s an expert on school finances and curriculum, and I got to know him well when he was the chief of staff for state Sen. John Moorlach and I was press secretary. Christensen was going up against not just incumbent Tony Thurmond, but the state’s most powerful political force, the California Teachers Association (CTA).
Despite that, Christensen garnered about 36 percent of the vote on Nov. 8.
“I gave it a good fight. I ran a hard race,” he told me in an interview. “One of the problems is we have an electoral system that doesn’t build confidence. We can’t count ballots for weeks. This is the case for a lot of school board races right now. A lot of the candidates I supported are on pins and needles finding out if they’re actually going to win or lose. That’s unfortunate. It’s a sad state of affairs that we can’t get a better outcome quicker.”
He spent eight months crisscrossing this immense state, talking to thousands of teachers, parents, and students.
Union Intimidation
I asked about parents confronting the powerful teachers unions.Christensen: “They don’t confront them. That’s the problem. And this is a real fear for parents. They don’t want retribution on their kids. I know plenty of parents who came up to me and said, ‘Our union is out of control. They’re going after my kid, punishing my kid.’
“I had several stories of bullying, of intimidation, of threatening to fail kids into oblivion. I had parents calling me crying because of the way these unions would treat them. And so you have a situation where your kid is in real dire straits, and they are there in school and you don’t want to raise a fuss, because you don’t want your kid to be threatened, abused, or intimidated anymore. Or harassed.
“I just got a message from a major parents’ rights advocate in California. Guess where she was texting me from?”
I guessed Texas.
Christensen: “Her new home in South Carolina. I was just with her a few months ago. Last night I was with people who told me, ‘We’re done,’ and they’re pulling the plug and leaving California. It’s not just in the dozens now, it’s in the hundreds of people I have personally known, good friends of mine, who have left the state the past several years. And that accelerated the past two years during COVID.
“But if I go back five years, I could probably name 200 people, easily. And not just minor people I know. But people I’ve broken bread with, who’ve been to my home. We’ve been friends. At church, at school, in the community. I have a feeling, after the Nov. 8 election results, the people who really are contributing to the state of California see this as a completely wasted affair. I think we’re going to see another wave of people that leave the state. It won’t be a loud bang. It’ll be just a quite hush, ‘We’re out, we’re done.’ It’s so sad.”
COVID Lockdowns
I asked what parents across the state were saying about the long school lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.Christensen: “I learned that a lot of parents had been absent from their kids’ education for a long time and just suddenly realized how important it was. In a lot of these schools, such as Sacramento Unified, the unions put teachers first above the needs of the students.
“A lot of people are realizing, too, that public school isn’t what they remembered it to be and what they think it could or should be. There’s going to be a lot of innovation going forward. And unfortunately, California won’t lead the nation. [It] will be a follower and watch other states be more successful at it than we are.
“Parents are irate. But there’s some sort of cognitive dissonance. Because Tony Thurmond could have been the guy who said to Newsom, ‘We’re going to open the schools.’ He could have said, ‘Gavin, my kids are public-school students. I know your kids are in private schools because you don’t really believe in public education. But these kids need to be in school, just like your kids. So we’re going to get these schools open.’
“The kids of California have sure been punished because of Thurmond’s leadership the past four years.
“But it’s really back to the local schools. This is what I argued all along the campaign trail. People electing good trustees of school boards is going to make all the difference in a lot of school districts. Where they can enact curricula that work, and reading strategies that work. The L.A. Times mocked me for saying that. Yet it’s reflected in all the news on the test scores we saw. But the mainstream news have got to protect the CTA.”
Charter Schools
California 30 years ago led the nation in implementing charter schools. I asked about the recent stagnation from union pressure.Christensen: “There’s still a big misperception about what charter schools are. Charter schools are public schools, and they operate with 75 cents on the dollar for their local neighborhood schools. And often they have a higher result.
“I had an exchange yesterday with a person on Twitter. We were going back and forth on this issue. I reminded this person that, when a charter or private school performs poorly, the parents boycott it and it shuts down. But when the same thing happens the district school, it gets more money.
“So there is a measure of accountability that doesn’t exist within our public schools. And unless and until we have that kind of accountability, we will have no improvement in our public schools.”
Literacy 50th Among the States
A recent study by the World Population Review found California was 50th among the states, dead last, in literacy.Christensen: “The other thing too that surprised me at the end of this campaign was just how bad our literacy training for teachers and implementation is for our students in the classrooms. With the caveat that we have some incredibly gifted and talented teachers throughout the state of California, there are a large number of teachers who shouldn’t be within a mile of students in a public school. And just for the basic reason of teaching literacy.
“Put aside all the important subjects that are out there—math and science, which are very important, of course. But our kids can’t even read to understand their assignments, let along read for pleasure, or for critical thinking, or for analysis. And so our current public-school system has consigned a generation of kids to abject failure that will result in a poor economy, and fewer family formations, and a continued public-school-to-prison pipeline. Those aren’t my words. Those are Tony Thurmond’s words.”
Christensen: “I’m sad that I couldn’t win, because it would have taken a leader at the top to destroy some of these shibboleths progressives have put up at the top of our California institutions. But I think it’s going to take another four years of failure to understand their kids have been completely robbed of an education they could have been forgiven.
“The most stunning statistic I have is we’re 50th in the nation in literacy, which a lot of people just couldn’t believe. I would say that, and their mouths would drop. And that Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, has way better literacy rates than we do, and is improving at a far faster rate than the rest of the nation.”
$23,000 a Year Per Pupil
The state budget enacted in June for fiscal year 2022-23, which began on July 1, includes this on page 4: “The Budget includes total funding of $128.6 billion for K-12 education, reflecting $22,893 per pupil.”Christensen: “The fact that got everybody every single time was that we are spending almost $23,000 a year per pupil right now. That’s in the budget. The governor brags about it. Somebody challenged me about it the other day, and I say, just go to the budget document.
“But here’s the problem. Most of these people have never read a budget document. They don’t know what to look for. Extrapolate that the average size of a classroom in California is 25 students. Just do the math. It’s just under $600,000. What on earth are we doing in the classroom? I don’t see it. I’m happy to pay good teachers a significant, six-figure salary. I have no problem doing that. None whatsoever. But that means we should have some ability to get rid of poor teachers easier. And we can’t. If you’re a teacher after two years, you basically have tenure.
Curriculum
I asked about the dumbing down of the curriculum in recent years.Christensen: “We’re lacking rigor. These kids are going to college, and a large percentage of them have to take remedial classes. The community colleges and the Legislature used to require these kids to take remediation classes. Two out of every three kids had to take them, both in math and English. And the Legislature got rid of all those.”
Christensen: “We just socially promote the kids. They get worthless degrees, then graduate. And we’re watching what’s going through with tech right now. Tech is going through laying people off in droves by the thousands. They’ve realized these kids can’t do much but complain.
“I’m not casting aspersions on the kids for what they were taught. But for heaven’s sake, there’s not any rigor any more. If you go to most students and ask them to name all 50 states, and they probably couldn’t do it. A lot couldn’t even tell you there are 50 states.
“They couldn’t tell you our basic form of government. I’ve gone to many classrooms where it’s a struggle to tell you how the branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—are built out. They have no idea of the size and structure of the Legislature. Again, I don’t hold that against them. Because most adults in California don’t understand it. Most people in California don’t understand the difference between Congress and the California Legislature. And go down the list.
“One of the issues I felt most strongly about, and which became more clear as I went on in the race is, we have an educational system we built in the nineteenth century. And it has not changed since then, I think at all. It’s not that our kids aren’t as smart. They’ve become more dependent on devices to run their lives. If you ask a kid to go and read a book, and do some analysis on it, such as a book report, I can almost guarantee you the first thing they did is go to Google and just hit the Wikipedia page. There is a societal problem we have now that isn’t going to be overcome just because we teach kids to read better.”
Achievement Gap
I asked about the decline in test scores during the COVID lockdowns. CBS News reported Oct. 24, “Most California students did not meet standards in math and English this year, state officials announced Monday in another example of test scores continuing to fall after the pandemic—including notable declines for Black and Latino children.“Two out of three California students did not meet state math standards, and more than half did not meet English standards. … The numbers were worse for students of color, as 84 percent of Black students and 79 percent of Latino students did not meet math standards in 2022.”
Vaccine Mandate Pandemonium
Finally, we discussed something Calmatters reported Oct. 27, “CDC paves way for California to require school COVID vaccines—but lawmakers have given up for now.”Christensen: “A lot of parents are frustrated and concerned about possible COVID vaccination mandates. That is not a conservative thing only. I can’t tell you how many Democratic and Independent women who have said, that is their line. And so, if the governor and the Democratic Legislature try to bring up a series of vaccines that will force that, or change the consent age, or require that for all kids going to a public school, I think they’re going to see an absolute pandemonium with parents.”
