Frank Xu, who lost his campaign for a seat on the Palomar Community College Board in the Nov. 8 election, said the state’s failing school systems will lead to California’s next generation’s inability to write, read, and understand math creating a decline of overall competence, which he said would be a “disaster” for the entire society.
He blamed what he calls a decline in California public schools on the state’s inability to hire qualified teachers, today’s recent push by educators and the mainstream media regarding diversity, inclusion, and equity, the suppression of those who call those concepts into question, and what’s known as “grade inflation,” where students receive higher marks than deserved.
Xu, who moved to the United States from China in the mid-2000s and eventually landed in San Diego in 2009, said he first became concerned about the state’s public schools when his daughter’s 3rd-grade teacher was unable to solve a simple math problem during a parent-teacher conference.
“My wife and I were shocked, because it was an easy problem,” he said.
He said later, his then 8th-grade son and his friends would routinely pose questions for their math and physics teachers, believing they could not answer the questions.
While he said he discouraged his son from playing such jokes on his teachers, he realized public school was failing his son.
He also said that at the onset of the pandemic, he realized his daughter who was in 6th grade at the time, was having difficulty computing simple math problems like addition and subtraction of fractions.
“Something is not right,” he said. “To me this was like 3rd or 4th-grade stuff.”
Consequently, he said he worked with her over the summer of 2020 using a different curriculum than her public school and he “immediately saw her improvement.”
Ultimately, Xu said he moved both his children to private schools.
“I gradually learned, the curriculum in public schools is quite different than in private schools,” he said.
During the 30-minute interview, Xu pointed to recently published standardized test scores for California students, which indicated two out of three did not meet standards in math and more than half were unable to meet English standards. The results were from tests given in the spring of 2022.
According to Xu, he believes the low scores are due, in part, to the state’s inability to hire talented teachers, especially in STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math.
If this continues, he said it will be “disastrous [for] our next generation and will be a disaster [for the] competence of our country.”
He said during his now-failed election campaign, a San Diego area high school student reached out to him saying his Advanced Placement Biology teacher didn’t actually teach, but only showed videos during class.
As a consequence, the student said he, as well as every student in the class, had to rely on outside tutoring in an effort to pass their AP exam.
Xu said the student’s story made him realize that those with fewer resources, like an inability to hire tutors, suffer the most. Poor teachers, he said, “actually creates more disparity ... instead of reducing disparity.”
According to Xu, teachers are more concerned with reducing standards for everyone in the name of equity and inclusion. Such is bringing on what’s known as “grade inflation,” where all students receive high marks.
He said that schools today are “advocating for equity … because they cannot provide quality education. … The only solution for them,” he said, “is to reduce the standard for everyone so that everyone can pass. Everyone can get an A.”
He said today’s teachers are, therefore, not preparing students for society and for the workforce.
“And that’s scary,” he said.
He said the current push of transgenderism, LGBT issues, and what’s known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in California’s public schools don’t allow some to speak out against such ideology.
He cited an example in the Poway Unified School District, when two parents objected to a book within the school system they said contained pornography.
He said the Poway school board acknowledged the parent’s concerns, but the media, when it reported on the issue, said the parents were anti-LGBT.
“The mainstream media just blasted those two brave parents,” calling them homophobic, he said.
Xu also questioned educators’ belief that teaching ethnic studies in today’s classrooms will help students both academically and mentally.
“The scores [have] already told us the opposite,” he said. “The more they push diversity and inclusion, the wider the racial gaps in the student’s achievements.”
He said results of recent student achievement tests demonstrate the widening divide.
“It’s so obvious,” he said, “it’s a failing policy.”
He also said those who blame declining scores on such ideology are labeled as bigots, which he said makes him feel like he is living under the Chinese Communist Party, China’s ruling party known for its authoritarianism and censorship.
A loss of educational excellence, he said, is a slippery slope.
“If our next generation loses the capability to read and write by themselves, they will lose the capability to think for themselves. That’s the critical thing. And then they are easier to be manipulated and that will make our democracy, the future of our democracy miserable,” he said.
Xu lost to San Diego Miramar College professor and counselor Judy Patacsil, 62, in the Palomar Community College District Governing Board Trustee for Area 1 race, who received 53.7 percent of the Nov. 8 vote, compared to his 46.3 percent.
He was also the finance chair for the No on Proposition 16 campaign in 2020, which if passed, would have allowed local and state governments to use race and gender as factors in determining college admissions, government jobs, and in local contracting. The measure failed with a 57 percent vote by Californians.
