Could be worse, we could live in California

[Dill]

(06-05-2023, 11:00 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: As you might expect, being that school funding is often tied to property taxes, CA is very much a study in contrasts in this regard.  We have some excellent public schools (I believe we're talking about public schools here, correct?) and some very poor ones.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state
It's definitely a case of the haves and have nots.  I can tell you that the vast majority of LAUSD schools are not ones you'd want your kids attending.  LACOE run school are even worse.  

(06-06-2023, 01:14 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Just googling their ranking, some studies have them in the 40s like this one
https://www.kusi.com/new-study-finds-california-schools-ranking-44-in-america/#:~:text=Researchers%20for%20the%202022%20Student,and%20ranked%20California%20as%20%2344.
This ranking has them at #20 overall, but has their K-12 system ranked as #38
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california
Their college rating was #3.
Which seems to fit well into the idea that if you're wealthy, you're probably well educated in CA, but the vast majority of people are not wealthy.
Apparently the adult literacy rate in California is worst in the country?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/best-states-for-education
I tied it in to the poverty rates in California because so much of education is linked to income and the economic disparity in California is one of the worst in the country. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/income-inequality-by-state
If it isn't as bad as it seems from my brief review of state statistics, that's great. I guess it depends on which metrics you're looking at.

Thanks for the responses and links guys. I was thinking of higher education as well, as CA still has some of the best universities in the world, though facing difficulties of funding and access, as is higher ed everywhere, especially since 2008. 

I don't question the rankings; I am just interested in whether and how  poor results might be linked to policy choices--and whose. I am skeptical that "progressives" are a big part of the problem since, if we are talking about K-12, it is actual leftists who have for decades been arguing against unequal funding for districts and developing analyses and pushing schemes to equalize school spending. School funding is tied to property taxes because these are more reliable for funding; that probably can't change. But every state has mechanisms for evening out school funding with state and federal dollars. The "district" is the key unit here. A district with lots of poor families can often become progressively funded. But a big district with some very poor schools might also have many very rich schools, so the district as a whole does NOT draw the funding a mostly poor district would.* So those poor schools stay underfunded. (At least that's how I understand school funding in the US.)  I have no idea what the policies are for CA. But I do know that the wealthiest state by far is also one of the most economically segregated, and that the vast majority of CA's wealth falls into a mere 30 of its 1,650 zip codes.  https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2019/4093/ca-geography-wealth-090519.pdf

I can imagine rich "liberals" protecting their property values, etc. And some of these might be very visible, like celebrities, but how many of the very wealthy in CA or any state really are liberals?  Or Progressives? I'm thinking, proportionally, not many. Dems are still the party of the poor and middle class pretty much.
SSF's links above to Newsome's attempts to zone affordable housing into being sound like well-intentioned efforts to help people who are not wealthy, though they generate anger by going against "community preferences." Following Bels, it looks like many of these CA debates are registering a class conflict which Americans have not learned to recognize as such.

A final note--CA has also a large proportion of non-native speakers, homeless and other problems not faced by other states not on the Mexican border. That has to affect measurement of educational results too. 

PS C-Dawg, if you are wealthy anywhere you are more likely to be well-educated.  

* This study by the Urban Institute explains this point with a wonderful comparison of Florida, with large, economically heterogenous districts, and New York, where districts tend to be more economically homogenous. https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/