Tag Archive for: school choice

Fixing California – Part Eight, Restoring Quality Education

Pragmatism. Abundance. Optimism. If these are the principles that should guide public policy in California—and they are—what the public schools offer is the exact opposite.

Instead of pragmatism, they offer partisan ideology.

Instead of emphasizing the ability, indeed, the obligation, for a modern and prosperous society to deliver abundance, the message is that we must ration everything we use, and treat employment as a zero-sum game, where jobs and opportunities are allocated by race and gender instead of in recognition of merit and passion.

And instead of an optimistic view of the future, the mandated curricula are steeped in pessimism: the climate emergency, the crisis of systemic racism, the catastrophe of capitalist enslavement, a sordid national history., and an oppressive, exploitative society.

It isn’t necessary to engage in yet another in-depth recitation of how California’s public schools have devolved into indoctrination chambers, failing low-income students most in need of a decent education. Rebellion is in the air.

Suffice to say, classroom discipline is replaced with “restorative justice.” Teacher accountability, now more than ever, gives way to “tenure” and a job for life. Measuring academic achievement with standardized tests has become racist, and as redress, the University of California will no longer consider applicants’ SAT scores. Learning multiplication tables and other practical quantitative skills gave way to “Common Core.” Timeless classics may alienate or even threaten young readers, so reading material is selected based on the race and gender of the authors. Lessons in basic concepts of science are contextualized with the horror of climate change, designed to instill panic. Rather than teaching a generally positive sense of history, students have the “1619 project.” And then, starting in the primary grades, there’s agenda-driven “gender” curricula.

Two generations of K-12 students have emerged from California’s public schools with relatively undeveloped skills in math and English, but steeped in the secular religion of class envy, pointless and bizarre race and gender theory, and a host of related maladies that can be accurately summarized as the politics of resentment, and the rejection of personal responsibility for collective victimhood.

This deception works so well because it creates a monstrous mental distraction, a mind-bending narrative that goes something like this: we are all victims of oppression by the white patriarchy, so naturally we’ll assume that our unaffordable homes, lack of good job opportunities, and burning forests are their fault. It won’t even occur to us that the people teaching us to hate the white patriarchy are the same people whose policies are truly to blame for the problems we face.

Putting ideology over practical instruction has consequences. In 2019, only half of California’s K-12 students met state standards in reading, only 40 percent were proficient in math. The solution, according to California’s education experts? Stop testing.

This can change. This must change. Discipline does not oppress misbehaving students, it rescues them. Incompetent teachers need to be fired. Tests matter. A command of basic math is an essential life skill and teaching math cannot rely on short cuts or gimmicks. Classics convey universal ideas and passions. The earth is not dying. America is a great nation and we are all lucky to live here. And little children will do just fine if we spare them transgender theory.

Ways to Fundamentally Improve Education in California

Supporters of education reform in California have never had a greater opportunity than right now. More parents than ever have witnessed the selfish overreach of the teachers’ unions during the pandemic. They’ve lost jobs and businesses while the teachers’ unions kept schools closed. They’ve seen, most of them for the first time, what sorts of material teachers were exposing their children to, as remote learning reached into almost every household. And they’ve experienced, by the millions, creative educational solutions that bypass the traditional public school system.

Change is in the air. Here are some battles that need to be fought.

Implement universal education savings accounts. The reform that would change everything is universal education savings accounts (ESAs), where the money follows individual students to whatever K-12 school their parents choose for them: traditional public school, charter school, parochial school, private school, or even charter/homeschool and private/homeschool hybrids.

Unchaining the torrent of money that currently pours into traditional public schools without competition and with minimal accountability would be an unprecedented breakthrough. Many of the details of how this could be done have been worked out in SB 1344, introduced by then State Senator John Moorlach in 2018. It would allocate education funds mandated under Proposition 98—the 1988 ballot measure that mandates at least 40 percent of the state’s general fund go to K-14 education—into ESAs, assigning an equal amount for every K-12 student in the state. Currently, that is about $14,000 per student per year. Any parent who opted into the program would be able to direct that money to a participating school, whether it’s a public, charter, or accredited private or parochial school. Unspent money would accumulate to be used for college, vocational, or any other accredited educational expense.

Empower charter schools. One of the biggest alternative means of fixing education in California is to empower charter schools. This could be accomplished by broadening the list of entities that can authorize charter schools, permitting charters denied initial opening or renewal applications to appeal to any authorizing entity, removing the cap on how many charter schools can be opened, and prohibiting denial of charter applications or renewals for reasons such as the alleged negative financial impact they may have on traditional public school budgets.

These are big ideas, but there’s much more.

Limit union negotiations to pay and benefits and outlaw strikes. Equally big and disruptive, and beneficial to public education in California, would be to roll back the prerogatives of the teachers’ unions. Currently, to quote a well-informed, indignant reformer who prefers anonymity at this time, “these unions can control what color chalk you are allowed to use on the blackboard.” More to the point, the teachers’ unions include in their bargaining negotiations things that ought to be up to the district superintendents and the elected school board, such as what textbooks to use. A reform that could go a long way towards fixing public education would be to simply rewrite the education code so unions negotiate over wages and benefits, and nothing more. At the same time, take away their right to strike. Defang the unions.

Change rules governing tenure, layoffs, and dismissal. Another reform, certain to attract bitter opposition from the teachers’ unions, would be simply to change some of the work rules. The Vergara case of 2016, which unfortunately failed in the California Supreme Court on a technicality, provides a roadmap. Lengthen a teacher’s probationary period before acquiring tenure to at least five years. Replace seniority with merit as the criteria governing which teachers to retain and which to let go in layoffs and downsizings. And greatly streamline the ability to fire incompetent or negligent teachers, so principals can hold them accountable, rewarding good teachers and terminating bad teachers.

Empower parents to opt out of politicized instruction. A major reform would be to empower parents to remove students from classes that the parents feel violate their beliefs and principles. The new sex education classes, which many parents feel are both inappropriately graphic and tinged with an agenda, are an obvious example, but there are others. Politicized curricula such as the controversial “1619 Project,” or critical race theory, are other examples that many parents already oppose. If it were properly formulated, a parent empowerment initiative could be successful. It would allow parents to prevent the indoctrination of their children.

Many national experts in education reform tend to bristle at the idea of wholesale, sweeping changes. But in almost every case, these are activists and lobbyists who worked with legislatures to enact reform. In those situations, the legislature may not have had a sufficient majority of staunch reform advocates to support dramatic changes. Incrementalism was the only possible way forward.

California is a different case. California’s legislature will never enact reforms. Pro-charter and pro-school choice advocates in California’s legislature are so outgunned that their mission is merely to reduce the speed at which the teachers’ unions accomplish their ever-expanding agenda.

For this reason, the only thing that should matter to education reformers in California is what voters think. California’s ballot initiative process is the one final safety valve preventing a complete takeover of the state government by special interests.

A Model School

The reason California needs education reformschool choice, education savings accounts, charter school empowerment, management reforms, work rule reforms, parental rightsis so more schools like the Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) can open as competitive alternatives.

Despite being one of the most encouraging developments in California’s public education in, say, the last 50 years, it is a sad testament to the times we live in that what OCCA does is considered revolutionary. Here is a brief summary of how OCCA differs from every traditional public elementary school in California.

First, they have scrapped the Common Core approach to teaching English and math, and they are making the sex education curriculum “non-pornographic, age-appropriate, and medically accurate.” Since Common Core and the recently revised state sex education guidelines have been unpopular with parents and are of dubious value if not actually harmful to students, these are big changes. Moreover, the OCCA’s sex education lessons are transparent for parents and the school offers a simple process for parents to opt-out.

Second, OCCA is a licensed operator to use the K-12 curriculum developed by Hillsdale College. Currently, 20 charter schools in 10 U.S. states use the Hillsdale model, which is patterned on the college’s own approach to the liberal arts, with a special emphasis on the traditions of Western Civilization. Specifically, the lessons acknowledge America’s important role in the world, embracing Judeo-Christian principles as expressed by the American founders. These lessons do not apologize for Western traditions, and will allow all of the students early exposure to the greatest thinkers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Augustine, and so on.

The students are even taught Latin as their foreign language, with all the benefits and insights early instruction in Latin facilitates: ease in learning any Romance language, and familiarity with the roots of most medical, scientific, and professional terms still in common use.

Third, the way OCCA has coped with the COVID-19 pandemic is based on expert medical advice and unaffected by the opportunistic demands of the teachers’ unions. OCCA has been open with no requirement for face coverings for either students or teachers, although all are free to wear them if they wish. The school carried on normal classroom instruction without social distancing or distance learning. The policy is based on virtually all medical data so far showing that COVID-19 is not dangerous to children, and is almost never spread by asymptomatic children, combined with the fact that wearing face masks and enforcing social distancing is harmful to the psyche and the social and intellectual development of children.

None of these revolutionary intentions of OCCA would have happened were it not for a long, bitter fight the organizers had to wage with the teachers’ unions and the politicians they control. Charter schools, along with homeschooling, religious schools, and private schools all constitute a mortal threat to the teachers’ union monopoly.

What OCCA teaches, promoting Western virtues instead of claiming the West is the scourge of human history and the scapegoat upon which to blame all travails of “disadvantaged” communities, is equally anathema to the teachers’ unions. OCCA’s focus on classical education is an audacious, uncompromising challenge to the leftist indoctrination that sadly informs nearly everything taught these days in California’s traditional public schools. In an overt slap to the unions, OCCA even intends to include in their instructional materials videos from Prager University, an institution that is loathed by the Left.

Saving Public Education Saves California and Saves America

It’s tough to overstate how much fixing K-12 education in California would change everything, and it is also tough to overstate just how powerful the teachers’ unions will fight against reforms. California’s public-sector unions collect and spend nearly $1 billion, mostly in membership dues, per year. More than half that money flows into the unions representing teachers and other school employees.

But voter sentiments are changing. California’s powerful teachers’ unions spent over $20 million last year promoting Proposition 15, which would have increased taxes on commercial properties. Other unions, mostly in the public sector, spent another $17 million to promote Prop. 15. But voters weren’t buying it. Prop. 15 failed.

Overall, in November 2020, California’s government unions spent nearly $70 million to promote or oppose state ballot measures, and almost all of that spending was unsuccessful. While a couple of union-supported ballot propositions were approved by voters, they weren’t high priorities, attracting only around $200,000 in union spending.

This result presents a paradox. Why is it that public-sector unions, which easily wield financial supremacy over any of their political competitors, and use that money to make or break the political campaigns of nearly every member of the California State Legislature, and which in similar manner control nearly every city council, county board of supervisors, school board, and governing board of transit districts and fire districts and transportation districts. Why couldn’t they impose their will on California’s electorate when it came to ballot propositions in 2020?

Consider these results on key initiatives, all contrary to the will of California’s government unions: 52 percent of voters rejected increasing property taxes, 56 percent rejected “no bail” laws, 57 percent rejected the reinstatement of racial preferences, 58 percent supported the rights of independent contractors, and 60 percent rejected rent control.

In this paradox there is opportunity. California’s voters are no longer the predictable bloc that government unions have relied upon for the past 20 or 30 years. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the rebellion against union power exemplified by voter rejection of union-supported ballot measures may not be the beginning of the end, but it is definitely the end of the beginning. Voters are finally waking up, fitfully shedding decades of indoctrination.

And why shouldn’t they? California has it alla diverse economy, rich natural resources, deep water ports on the Pacific Rim, the best universities, the epicenter of high tech, and the finest weather on the planetand yet its governance is a mess. The public schools are failing, the mismanaged forests are burning up, income inequality and poverty are among the worst in America, housing is unaffordable, and the urban downtowns are overrun with drug addicts and predators.

All of this can be quickly fixed by good governance. The answers for correcting these failures are not elusive, nor are they partisan. Repeal extreme environmentalist regulations that have made it impossible to construct affordable housing without subsidies. Restore laws against intoxication, petty theft, and vagrancy, and watch half the homeless population suddenly find shelter with friends and relatives. Help the rest in inexpensive supervised encampments where sobriety is a condition of entrance. Bring back the timber industry to thin the forests and create jobs. But why aren’t these fixes implemented?

The reason is equally simple: Government unions, government contractors, powerful “nonprofits,” monopolistic corporations, and Big Tech companies acquire power and profit by never solving these problems. And along with the insane sums of money they deploy to manipulate public opinion and fund political campaigns, they rely on a thoroughly indoctrinated electorate to support their dysfunctionan electorate that is the product of unionized public schools.

This has been a brilliant scam. But if you change the schools, you change the future. Maybe, just maybe, Californians are ready to demand change.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Fighting, and Winning, School Choice in California

There is going to be a school choice initiative on the state ballot in November 2022.

While this is not an absolute certainty, the grassroots support for school choice is strong, and the infrastructure necessary to nurture a grassroots effort is now in place. The RecallGavin2020 campaign has proven the model, and fed up parents from Chula Vista to Crescent City are ready to strike.

What is far from certain however is the form a school choice measure will take, or the consequences of having it on the ballot. Evaluating these consequences in advance should guide school choice advocates as they consider what sort of product to hand over to the troops for signature gathering.

Broadly speaking, there are two avenues that a school choice initiative can take. Empowering charter schools, or creating education savings accounts, or ESAs. The California School Choice Foundation is already actively researching an ESA ballot initiative. These two options might be loosely summarized as follows:

SCHOOL CHOICE IN CALIFORNIA – EMPOWER CHARTER SCHOOLS

1 – Charter schools can be approved by the following entities: The state board of education, any county board of education, any school district school board, any mayor, and any public or private accredited university.

2 – There will be no cap established by the state or any public agency on the number of charter schools, or the number of charter school students.

3 – Renewal applications for charter schools that are denied by school districts shall have the right to appeal to any authorizing entity.

4 – No charter school application or renewal shall be denied on the basis of the financial impact it will have on the school district in which it is located.

SCHOOL CHOICE IN CALIFORNIA – UNIVERSAL EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

1 – An Education Savings Account (ESA) would be created for every K-12 student in California.

2 – These accounts would be credited annually with each student’s pro rata share of Prop. 98 funds (40% of the California General fund). This amounts to approximately $10,000 per student per year.

3 – The parents of K-12 students will be able to direct that money to a participating school whether it’s a public, charter, or accredited private or parochial school.

4 – The money, if unspent, would accumulate to be used for college, vocational, or any other accredited educational expense.

A big argument in favor of the charter school option is that the largely Democratic electorate in California is probably more inclined to favor charter schools over education savings accounts. But the danger of a charter school option is that it will attract a retaliatory, competing initiative courtesy of the teachers’ unions, one designed to kill off charter schools.

The appeal of the education savings accounts option is its scope. Allowing public education funds to follow the student to the school chosen for them by their parents means that private schools, religious schools, and all manner of new and innovative pod and micro schools would also benefit, along with charters and traditional public schools. But getting an initiative like this onto the ballot, and winning in November, are very different ballgames.

California’s electorate includes millions of voters who are conservatives, members of religious communities, and nonpartisan education reformers from a variety of communities. All of them will vote for universal education savings accounts. But while these millions are strong supporters of school choice, likely able to muster the grassroots support to qualify an initiative for the ballot and fight tenaciously for its passage, at this time they are outnumbered by voters who have been convinced over the years that traditional public schools must be protected. California’s political landscape is littered with the corpses of failed attempts to bring wholesale reform to public education.

The most recent attempt to convince voters to further school choice options in California was back in 2000 with Prop. 38, “School Vouchers,” which was rejected by voters 70.6 percent to 29.4 percent. The initiative, which would have granted state funded $4,000 vouchers per K-12 student, to be used by the parents for attendance at any private school including religious schools, was actually projected to save taxpayers money, because it would have enabled many parents to pull their children out of the much more expensive public schools.

How the teachers’ unions successfully fought Prop. 38 helps explain why California’s electorate has been soured to the concept of school vouchers. The unions relied on two powerful messages: “Billionaires are trying to destroy public schools so they can make profit with private schools,” and “rich people are collecting payments they don’t need, taking funds away from schools in low income communities.”

Both of these messages rest on fraudulent premises. The problem however is the rebuttals to these messages require more than the 40 words that fit into a 30 second television spot.

For example, demonizing billionaires is good sport for the unions, whenever it isn’t their billionaires. How billionaires use their money for advocacy is what matters, not their status as billionaires. As for “profit,” the presence of for-profit education subcontractors exists everywhere. The biggest financial ecosystem for profiteering in California’s education universe surrounds the public schools, where for-profit venders ranging from construction firms to purveyors of textbooks, computers, and school lunches are all making a killing. But these are nuanced, defensive arguments, lacking both the brevity and the clarity of the union salvo.

The argument that ESAs provide money to people who don’t need it is also a tough argument to rebut, even though it also rests on fraudulent foundations. The great appeal of universal ESAs is that everyone benefits. Low income families have the ability to bypass the failed public school monopoly and enroll in a parochial school, or a charter school, or any number of new and innovative options. Middle class families with children already enrolled in private schools would no longer struggle desperately to pay both property taxes and private school tuition. So what if wealthy families get money they don’t need? Put a cap on eligibility if that’s really an issue.

Imagine the innovations a universal program of ESAs would enable. It would accelerate the development of hybrid schools, blending in-person and remote instruction. Imagine a charter or private school that relied primarily on providing virtual instruction, which would reduce their overhead cost, but then used the money saved to pay for the big screens and high speed internet that low income families would otherwise find unaffordable. Imagine a charter or private school operator sending specialized instructors that would work with homeschoolers or micro/pod schools, instructing a dozen students at a time in a specific subject, rotating between several venues.

These sorts of innovations, already stimulated by the pandemic, combined with the disgraceful performance of the teachers’ unions during the pandemic, may have influenced California’s electorate to feel more favorable towards universal ESAs than they might have felt twenty years ago, or, for that matter, two years ago.

No attempt to put a school choice initiative onto California’s state ballot in November 2020 can fail to anticipate the counterstrikes by the teachers’ unions. Most political observers, unequivocally, consider them to be the most powerful political special interest in the state.

California’s charter schools, enrolling about ten percent of all K-12 students in California, didn’t emerge by accident. These schools were established despite opposition from the teachers’ unions, but there were other education reform offensives occurring at the same time, preventing the unions from focusing exclusively on crushing the charter school movement. Across the state, education reformers introduced litigation, legislation, and local initiatives that drew union fire. Also benefitting the growth of charter schools in California was the presence of powerful charter school advocates within the ranks of billionaire Democrats. Many of those donors have moved on to new causes: homeless, criminal justice, and climate change.

Finding the money to fight for school choice in California isn’t impossible, but the donors that funded previous efforts either need to refocus on education reform, or new donors have to be found. There are an estimated 165 billionaires in California, along with probably thousands of individuals with a net worth in excess of $100 million. These people can spend a million bucks the way ordinary people buy a cup of coffee. Where are they?

Money isn’t enough, however, as Republicrat Meg Whitman proved in her disastrous, and very costly campaign for Governor in 2010. To create favorable terrain for a school choice ballot initiative, brutal communication strategies will make the best use of funds. “Why did the unions let children commit suicide because they wouldn’t open classrooms?” “Why does the CTA defend pedophiles?”

As reform campaigns ought to have learned by now, policy proposals that amount to a frontal assault on public sector union power need to be accompanied by rhetoric that is equally antagonistic. These unions demonize their opponents, yet their opponents are unwilling to reciprocate.

Experienced observers urge an incremental policy approach. Limit ESAs to low income families, or learning disabled children. Just accomplishing that would be a shot heard across the nation. The experts also recommend parallel fights to split union forces. Why isn’t another Vergara case being attempted? Why not introduce legislation, or litigation, to address the need for more transparency and accountability in public education?

The split among Democrats on education reform is mirrored in the State Legislature. Many education reformers are biding their time, cognizant of the 12 year term limits coming taking effect starting in 2024, when 24 incumbents will be termed out of the State Assembly, with most of the rest termed out in 2026 and 2028. Their goal is to get pro-reform Democrats into those seats. But between now and then, a lot can happen.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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School Choice Initiative Quietly Gathers Support

In the November 2020 election, California’s powerful teachers’ unions spent over $20 million promoting Prop. 15, which would have increased taxes on commercial properties. Other unions, mostly in the public sector, spent another $17 million to promote Prop. 15. But voters weren’t buying it. Prop. 15 failed.

Overall, in November 2020, California’s government unions spent nearly $70 million to promote or oppose state ballot initiatives, and almost all of that spending was unsuccessful. While a couple of union supported ballot propositions were approved by voters, they weren’t high priorities, attracting only around $200,000 in union spending.

This result presents a paradox. Why is it that public sector unions, which collect and spend nearly $1.0 billion per year in revenue, mostly from dues, and use that money to make or break the political campaigns of nearly every member of the California State Legislature, and which in similar manner control nearly every city council, county board of supervisors, school board, and governing board of transit districts and fire districts and transportation districts – you get the picture – why couldn’t they impose their will on California’s electorate when it came to ballot propositions in 2020?

Consider these results on key initiatives, all contrary to the will of California’s government unions: 52 percent of voters rejected increasing property taxes, 56 percent rejected “no bail” laws, 57 percent rejected the reinstatement of racial preferences, 58 percent supported the rights of independent contractors, and 60 percent rejected rent control.

In this paradox there is opportunity. California’s voters are no longer the predictable bloc that government unions have relied on for the past 2-3 decades. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the rebellion against union power exemplified by voter rejection of union supported ballot measures may not be the beginning of the end, but it is definitely the end of the beginning. Voters are finally waking up, fitfully shedding years of indoctrination.

And why shouldn’t they? California has it all – a diverse economy, rich natural resources, deep water ports on the Pacific Rim, the best universities, the epicenter of high tech, and the finest weather on the planet – and yet its governance is a mess. The public schools are failing, the mismanaged forests are burning up, income inequality and poverty are among the worst in America, housing is unaffordable, and the urban downtowns are overran with drug addicts and predators.

All of this can be quickly fixed by good governance. The answers for correcting these failures are not elusive, nor are they partisan. Repeal extreme environmentalist regulations that have made it impossible to construct affordable housing without subsidies. Restore laws against intoxication, petty theft, and vagrancy, and watch half the homeless population suddenly find shelter with friends and relatives. Help the rest in inexpensive supervised encampments where sobriety is a condition of entrance. Bring back the timber industry to thin the forests and create jobs. But why aren’t these fixes implemented?

The reason is equally simple: Government unions, government contractors, powerful “nonprofits,” monopolistic corporations, and big tech companies acquire power and profit by never solving these problems. And along with the insane amounts of money they deploy to manipulate public opinion and fund political campaigns, they rely on a thoroughly indoctrinated electorate to support their dysfunction – an electorate that is the product of unionized public schools.

This is a brilliant scam. Two generations of K-12 students have emerged from California’s public schools with relatively undeveloped skills in math and English, but steeped in the secular religion of class envy, pointless and bizarre race and gender theory, and a host of related maladies that can be accurately summarized as the politics of resentment, and the rejection of personal responsibility for collective victimhood.

This scam works so well because it creates a monstrous mental distraction, a mind-bending narrative that goes something like this: we are all victims of oppression by the white patriarchy, so naturally we’ll assume that our unaffordable homes, lack of good job opportunities, and burning forests are their fault. It won’t even occur to us that the people teaching us to hate the white patriarchy are the same people whose policies are truly to blame for the problems we face.

Rescue Education, Rescue California

In the galaxy called California, if government unions are the Death Star, citizen sponsored state ballot initiatives are The Force. And in Southern California, a growing group of experienced activists are using The Force to craft a ballot initiative that will strike at the heart of government union power by implementing school choice.

Moreover, unlike tepid iterations of school choice that have been unsuccessfully attempted in California in the past, or successfully approved in other states, this initiative is crafted to completely blow up the union monopoly on public schools. Proponent Michael Alexander, president of the California School Choice Foundation based in Pasadena, identified four key provisions:

1 – An Education Savings Account (ESA) would be created for every K-12 student in California.

2 – These accounts would be credited annually with each student’s pro rata share of Prop. 98 funds (40% of the California General fund). This amounts to approximately $10,000 per student per year.

3 – The parents of K-12 students will be able to direct that money to a participating school whether it’s a public, charter, or accredited private or parochial school.

4 – The money, if unspent, would accumulate to be used for college, vocational, or any other accredited educational expense.

This is a bold proposal, with a lot still to be worked out. But by taking the form of an initiative constitutional amendment, and with thorough legal vetting, it has the potential to fundamentally transform K-12 education in California. Alexander identified areas of vulnerability that the initiative, once it reaches final form, will need to address.

Popular support for an initiative that rescues public education in California will require it to eliminate some of the current state curriculum mandates. These would include inappropriate and controversial forms of sex education, poorly conceived teaching methods such as Common Core math instruction, and politicized history and social studies curricula such as the 1619 Project.

Alexander also noted the potential of accreditation to be used as a weapon against qualifying schools to receive ESA funds, explaining that the initiative would have to include language prohibiting the state legislature from changing existing accreditation criteria. He also mentioned the threat whereby abuse of due process could be used to shut down new schools set up to compete with the public school monopoly. For example, a cursory examination by a biased state official could immediately lead to a suspension of the school’s right to receive ESA funds, leaving them no ability to operate and retain students.

What makes this school choice concept attractive is its bold simplicity. Unlike more tepid solutions that infatuate the wonks, it doesn’t require “means testing” or some other exclusionary criteria. Every K-12 student is eligible. This rewards low income families that currently must take their chances in a charter lottery, where in most cases their number will not be picked, but it also rewards middle income families that struggle to pay both property taxes and tuition to a private school.

The success of charter schools, from the Alliance Network in Los Angeles, to the Orange County Classical Academy, along with countless others, illustrates how a school choice ballot measure with real teeth could dramatically improve public education in California. Because suddenly fantastic schools like these would be able to rapidly open up, everywhere, competing with the decrepit unionized monopoly system.

The plight of parochial schools which face declining enrollments as fewer families can afford the tuition is something as well that could be transformed overnight by the right school choice initiative. And recent innovations in distance learning, pod schools, and micro schools, necessitated by the COVID-19 lockdown, have taught millions of parents in California that there are preferable learning alternatives to traditional public schools, and they’re getting better all the time.

If Michael Alexander and his team intend to successfully qualify a school choice initiative for the state ballot in November 2022, they’d better not waste a minute. In only a little over a year from now they will need to have an initiative approved for circulation by the state, so they can begin collecting signatures from registered California voters. It may take several months between the time the initiative is first submitted to the state for review and when final approval is granted. That means Alexander already has less than a year, more like nine months, to navigate a complex process that starts with an idea and ends with a product that has survived multiple revisions, legal reviews, all the while earning and retaining support from donors and grassroots activists.

There is a new cultural factor at work in California that makes this effort worth while. Billions of dollars and decades of indoctrination are not having the manipulative impact they once had. California’s voters are ready for hope and change.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Saving California Will Save America

As proven by the torrent of executive orders issued by King Newsom during this COVID-19 pandemic, during a public emergency, constitutional rights and due process go out the window. In the coming years, with California’s one-party state leading the way, expect climate emergencies, systemic racism emergencies, and new health related emergencies to shred what is left of democracy in America.

hese “emergencies” are enabling the onset of political tyranny in California, with Governor Gavin Newsom as the figurehead. His most significant overseers are the teachers’ unions and Big Tech billionaires. These two blocs spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on political campaigns and lobbyists, along with funding powerful nonprofit groups that agitate for politically useful agendas with respect to the environment, homelessness, social justice, and race and gender equity.

All this well-funded advocacy is framed as “for the people” and “for the planet,” but in reality, everything Newsom, his predecessors, and his puppeteers have done has failed ordinary Californians, while delivering more power and more profits to California’s ruling elite.

Instead of rounding up the homeless, sorting them according to their various problems or pathologies, and putting them in supervised tent encampments in low cost areas in the state, California’s homeless advocates and profiteering “nonprofit” developers build taxpayer funded “supportive housing” palaces that cost over a half-million per unit in the middle of expensive residential neighborhoods, solving nothing. Meanwhile, cities descend into filth and anarchy.

Instead of implementing school choice, the teachers union demands more funding for failed models of public education. And instead of going out and finally allowing property owners and timber companies to clear the dead trees out of the overgrown forests – thanks to years of suppressing natural fires and driving away the logging industry – Gavin Newsom issues an executive order to ban gasoline cars within the next 14 years. Meanwhile, the forests keep on burning.

There is only one way to save California, and by extension, save America. The democratic will of the people must reassert itself in a massive realignment of public sentiment. To win these landslides, too seismic to be challenged by executive fiat, political candidates must step forward by the thousands, adhering to a new agenda that openly rejects core premises of the Democratic party, and offers a new political agenda that promises to do the exact opposite.

In three fundamental areas, public education, land use, and energy infrastructure, California’s current policies are destroying lives, livelihoods, and land. And in all three of these areas, California’s Democrats claim the moral high ground. But Democrats do not hold the moral high ground. They are ruining everything, from California’s cities to its forests. How can that be moral?

Union Public School Monopolies Are NOT Moral

The most obvious example, where a realignment tipping point has already almost been reached, is the moral imperative to nurture the next generation. Everyone agrees: Teach the children well, that they might all have a chance at a bright future. But California’s public schools are failing their students, and the problem is the worst in low income neighborhoods where the importance of a good public education is the greatest.

The solution is equally obvious: Public schools need to experience competition. Parents need to be able to choose from an assortment of accredited K-12 schools; public, public charter, virtual, parochial, private, homeschool, and micro-schools.

To implement school choice, education advocates need to stop trying to push whatever baby step their consultants and donors claim is politically possible, and do what is right. They need to demand school vouchers that parents can redeem at whatever school they wish. Voters have had enough. They’re ready to vote for vouchers.

The biggest barrier to vouchers are California’s teachers’ unions, whose state and local chapters combined collect nearly a half-billion in dues each year. These unions use hefty portions of that money to buy politicians and lobbyists, impacting legislation that protects their monopolies.

But they are not doing this “for the children.” The do not hold the moral high ground. They oppose school choice because as a monopoly they can perpetually acquire more members, more dues, and more power. And the parallel moral dimension, at least for the leadership of these teachers’ unions, is they can use their control over the public schools to indoctrinate California’s children.

Packing Population Growth Into Existing Cities is NOT Moral

If there is any area where years of indoctrination have turned ideologically driven opinions into supposed facts beyond dispute, it is in the area of environmentalism. And one of the most fundamental premises of environmentalism, often overlooked, is the delusion that higher density urban areas is necessary to protect the planet. The moral imperative is to save the earth, with “climate change” as the most urgent threat. But no matter what your opinion is about climate change, cramming California’s population into the footprint of existing cities will not have any impact whatsoever on the climate. All it will do is guarantee that housing is unaffordable forever.

If school vouchers is the revolutionary concept that will rescue K-12 education in California, more suburbs on open land is the revolutionary concept that will restore home affordability in California. Almost every premise of the “anti-sprawl” lobby is ridiculous and must be challenged. Single family homes of one or two stories are far less expensive per square foot than multi-story buildings. Building utility infrastructure for new suburbs is less expensive than tearing up streets and easements to retrofit utility conduits to accommodate higher density in cities.

The claim that expanding suburbs contributes to climate change is also ridiculous. Jobs will follow workers to new suburbs. People telecommute. Cars are becoming greener every year.

The idea that land is scarce is equally ridiculous. Using data drawn from 2017 USDA data, only 5.1 percent of California’s whopping 164,000 square mile area is given over to residential, commercial, and industrial use. California’s total urbanized land, 8,280 square miles, is insignificant compared to its 42,498 square miles of grassland, with about half of that used for cattle ranching and dryland farming. To develop a mere 20 percent of this grassland would allow California’s urban footprint to double.

The array of legislation and executive orders designed to prevent new suburban development in California is overwhelming. These laws and executive orders must be overturned, possibly through a constitutional amendment put before voters in the form of a ballot initiative. There is no environmentally compelling reason to block development of new towns and suburbs along California’s major freeways, 101, I-5, and 99, especially if these developments are on rangeland which is of marginal agricultural value and of which only a fraction would be developed anyway.

Expressed as a percentage of California’s vast area, the amount of land necessary to unlock suburban development again on open space is trivial. If ten million Californians moved into homes on spacious quarter-acre lots, four per household, with an equal amount of space developed for new roads and commercial development, it would only consume 1,953 square miles – this would be a 24 percent expansion of California’s urban footprint, i.e., from 5.1 percent to 6.2 percent of all land in the state.

To deny this opportunity to make home ownership affordable to California’s hard working low and middle income residents is based on misanthropic, cruel lies. Allowing suburban development on open land is a moral choice. Until it is again permitted, housing in California will never be affordable.

“Renewable Energy” is NOT Sustainable, Affordable, or Moral

California’s ruling elite has decided that its citizens will bear the brunt of being the bleeding edge of a global transition to “renewable” energy. But by forcing this advance via government decree, they risk impoverishing a generation merely to leave a legacy of obsolete technologies.

A perfect example is Governor Newsom’s recent decree that new gasoline powered cars cannot be sold in the state after 2035, a mere 14 years from today. What if technologies are found to make gasoline powered cars even cleaner? Or what about natural gas powered cars? What about cars like the Chevy Volt, an extraordinary engineering achievement that allows all-electric driving for short commutes, but also delivers 50 MPG in city or freeway driving when in gasoline mode? The Volt died an unwarranted death because California’s green despots did not consider it sufficiently green.

And if California’s energy future is to be exclusively electric, why isn’t nuclear power an option? Why is Diablo Canyon, which could run for several more decades, being decommissioned? Why is California suing the federal government to stop them from increasing the height of Shasta Dam, which would increase hydroelectric capacity?

The selective use of facts to promote “renewables” in California is epic. What sort of analysis has been done as to how much of California’s solar panels, wind turbines and batteries have to be imported? What about the negative environmental impact of solar farms, or wind farms? What about lithium and cobalt, imported from nations where the environmental abuse and labor conditions are hideously worse than anything in the U.S.? Why aren’t mining concerns allowed to exploit the abundant lithium deposits in California’s Mojave Desert?

Then there is the question of what happens to all these “renewable” installations when they degrade and have to be replaced. How long will these solar panels and batteries last, and how will they be reprocessed? Even if California achieves a 100 percent renewable electric energy infrastructure, how can it ever be scaled to be applied worldwide, given the raw materials required and the fact that today solar and wind only supply 3.8 percent of global energy? What about new technologies that may come along and render this massive sacrifice obsolete?

Californians deserve reliable and cheap energy. This means nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and clean natural gas. Doing this makes life affordable for working families, and also makes it easier for manufacturers to come back to California, bringing with them well paying jobs.

Starting a Revolution Against Misery that Masquerades as Morality

Much more can be said about policies in California that harm people and the environment, but these three are foundational. If you fix the schools you reduce crime and enable upward mobility. If you deregulate so you can build new suburbs on open land you make housing affordable, reduce the overall cost-of-living, and reduce homelessness. If you back off these extreme renewable energy mandates you reduce the cost-of-living and stimulate economic growth.

The premises that must be challenged and destroyed, because they are utterly false, are the following:

(1) More money to feed the teachers union monopoly does not help children learn.

(2) Packing people within the footprint of existing cities does not help people or the environment.

(3) “Renewable” energy is not cheap or reliable, and it is not helping the environment.

The policies that must be promoted without reservations or apology, because they are moral choices that will make California livable again, are the following:

(1) School vouchers must be implemented, so parents can choose whatever school they want for their children.

(2) The regulatory barriers to suburban land development must be all but scrapped, so housing that people want will be affordable.

(3) Hydroelectric, natural gas, and nuclear power must be expanded in California, and renewables mandates must be reduced, so energy will be affordable and reliable.

California’s voters are ready to understand that these failed policies are pushed by special interests that benefit from misery. They’re ready to consider new politicians and new policies. But candidates have to be willing to stand up and tell voters the unvarnished truth about current policies, and promise do do the opposite:

The teachers union has a monopoly on education, and the worse things get, the more money they demand.

The major corporations, the investment banks, and the pension funds are all in a position to benefit from artificial scarcity of land, because it pumps up the value of their real estate portfolios.

The tech giants and the public utilities love renewable energy, because it drives a much larger percentage of consumer spending into paying for overpriced electricity, along with creating a mandatory market for the “internet of things” to manage energy consumption.

Politicians that advocate for school vouchers, suburban expansion, and conventional energy will be viciously attacked by self-righteous zealots, backed up by self-serving billionaires. But the politicians with the courage to stick to this revolutionary agenda will win, because it serves the people instead of the bureaucracy and the billionaires.

California’s one-party state can be overcome. The people are ready. Where are the political leaders?

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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How to Realign California Politics

The working class, which still constitutes a supermajority of California’s voters, is being destroyed by the policies enacted by the Democratic party. This is why political realignment in California can happen fast.

In three fundamental areas, public education, land use, and energy infrastructure, California’s current policies are destroying lives, livelihoods, and land. And in all three of these areas, the solutions that will work challenge core premises that California’s Democrats have relied on to claim the moral high ground. But these premises must be defied, because Democrats do not hold the moral high ground. They are ruining everything, from our cities to our forests. How can that be moral?

Dismantling the Public School Monopoly

The obvious example, where a realignment tipping point has already almost been reached, is the moral imperative to nurture the next generation. Everyone agrees: Teach the children well, that they might all have a chance at a bright future. But California’s public schools are failing their students, and the problem is the worst in low income neighborhoods where the importance of a good public education is the greatest.

The solution is equally obvious: Public schools need to experience competition. Parents need to be able to choose from an assortment of accredited K-12 schools; public, public charter, virtual, parochial, private, homeschool, and micro-schools.

To implement school choice, education advocates need to stop trying to push whatever baby step their consultants and donors claim is politically possible, and do what is right. They need to demand school vouchers that parents can redeem at whatever school they wish. Voters have had enough. They’re ready to vote for vouchers.

The biggest barrier to vouchers are the teachers’ unions, whose state and local chapters combined collect nearly a half-billion in dues each year. These unions use hefty portions of that money to buy politicians and lobbyists, impacting legislation that protects their monopolies.

But they are not doing this “for the children.” The do not hold the moral high ground. They oppose school choice because as a monopoly they can perpetually acquire more members, more dues, and more power. And the parallel moral dimension, at least for the leadership of these teachers’ unions, is they can use their control over the public schools to indoctrinate California’s children.

Dismantling the Density Delusion

If there is any area where years of indoctrination have turned ideologically driven opinions into supposed facts beyond dispute, it is in the area of environmentalism. And one of the most fundamental premises of environmentalism, often overlooked, is the delusion that higher density urban areas is necessary to protect the planet. The moral imperative is to save the earth, with “climate change” as the most urgent threat. But no matter what your opinion is about climate change, cramming California’s population into the footprint of existing cities will not have any impact whatsoever on the climate. All it will do is guarantee that housing is unaffordable forever.

If school vouchers is the revolutionary concept that will rescue K-12 education in California, more suburbs on open land is the revolutionary concept that will restore home affordability in California. Almost every premise of the “anti-sprawl” lobby is ridiculous and must be challenged. Single family homes of one or two stories are far less expensive per square foot than multi-story buildings. Building utility infrastructure for new suburbs is less expensive than tearing up streets and easements to retrofit utility conduits to accommodate higher density in cities.

The claim that expanding suburbs contributes to climate change is also ridiculous. Jobs will follow workers to new suburbs. People telecommute. Cars are becoming greener every year.

The idea that land is scarce is equally ridiculous. Using data drawn from 2017 USDA data, only 5.1 percent of California’s whopping 164,000 square mile area is given over to residential, commercial, and industrial use. California’s total urbanized land, 8,280 square miles, is insignificant compared to its 42,498 square miles of grassland, with about half of that used for cattle ranching and dryland farming. To develop a mere 20 percent of this grassland would allow California’s urban footprint to double.

The array of legislation and executive orders designed to prevent new suburban development in California is overwhelming. These laws and executive orders must be overturned, possibly through a constitutional amendment put before voters in the form of a ballot initiative. There is no environmentally compelling reason to block development of new towns and suburbs along California’s major freeways, 101, I-5, and 99, especially if these developments are on rangeland which is of marginal agricultural value and of which only a fraction would be developed anyway.

Expressed as a percentage of California’s vast area, the amount of land necessary to unlock suburban development again on open space is trivial. If ten million Californians moved into homes on spacious quarter-acre lots, four per household, with an equal amount of space developed for new roads and commercial development, it would only consume 1,953 square miles – this would be a 24 percent expansion of California’s urban footprint, i.e., from 5.1 percent to 6.2 percent of all land in the state.

To deny this opportunity to make home ownership affordable to California’s hard working low and middle income residents is based on misanthropic, cruel lies. Allowing suburban development on open land is a moral choice. Until it is again permitted, housing in California will never be affordable.

Dismantling the Renewable Energy Delusion

California’s ruling elite has decided that its citizens will bear the brunt of being the bleeding edge of a global transition to “renewable” energy. But by forcing this advance via government decree, they risk impoverishing a generation merely to leave a legacy of obsolete technologies.

A perfect example is Governor Newsom’s recent decree that new gasoline powered cars cannot be sold in the state after 2035, a mere 14 years from today. What if technologies are found to make gasoline powered cars even cleaner? Or what about natural gas powered cars? What about cars like the Chevy Volt, an extraordinary engineering accomplishment that allows all-electric driving for short commutes, but also delivers 50 MPG in city or freeway driving when in gasoline mode? The Volt died an unwarranted death because California’s green despots did not consider it sufficiently green.

And if California’s energy future is to be exclusively electric, why isn’t nuclear power an option? Why is Diablo Canyon, which could run for several more decades, being decommissioned? Why is California suing the federal government to stop them from increasing the height of Shasta Dam, which would increase hydroelectric capacity?

The selective use of facts to promote “renewables” in California is epic. What sort of analysis has been done as to how much of California’s solar panels, wind turbines and batteries have to be imported? What about lithium and cobalt, imported from nations where the environmental abuse and labor conditions are hideously worse than anything in the U.S.? Why aren’t mining concerns allowed to exploit the abundant lithium deposits in California’s Mojave Desert?

Then there is the question of what happens to all these “renewable” installations when they degrade and have to be replaced. How long will these solar panels and batteries last, and how will they be reprocessed? Even if California achieves a 100 percent renewable electric energy infrastructure, how can it ever be scaled to be applied worldwide, given the raw materials required and the fact that today solar and wind only supply 3.8 percent of global energy? What about new technologies that may come along and render this massive sacrifice obsolete?

Californians deserve reliable and cheap energy. This means nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and clean natural gas. Doing this makes life affordable for working families, and also makes it easier for manufacturers to come back to California, bringing with them well paying jobs.

Destroy the Premises of Misery that Masquerade as Morality

Much more can be said about policies in California that harm people and the environment, but these three are foundational. If you fix the schools you reduce crime and enable upward mobility. If you deregulate so you can build new suburbs on open land you make housing affordable, reduce the overall cost-of-living, and reduce homelessness. If you back off these extreme renewable energy mandates you reduce the cost-of-living and stimulate economic growth.

The premises that must be challenged and destroyed, because they are utterly false, are the following:

(1) More money to feed the teachers union monopoly does not help children learn.

(2) Packing people within the footprint of existing cities does not help people or the environment.

(3) “Renewable” energy is not cheap or reliable, and it is not helping the environment.

The policies that must be promoted without reservations or apology, because they are moral choices that will make California livable again, are the following:

(1) School vouchers must be implemented, so parents can choose whatever school they want for their children.

(2) The regulatory barriers to suburban land development must be all but scrapped, so housing that people want will be affordable.

(3) Hydroelectric, natural gas, and nuclear power must be expanded in California, and renewables mandates must be reduced, so energy will be affordable and reliable.

California’s voters need to understand that these failed policies are pushed by special interests that benefit from misery. The teachers union has a monopoly on education, and the worse things get, the more money they demand. The major corporations, the investment banks, and the pension funds are all in a position to benefit from artificial scarcity of land, because it pumps up the value of their real estate portfolios. The tech giants and the public utilities love renewable energy, because it drives a much larger percentage of consumer spending into paying for overpriced electricity, along with creating a mandatory market for the “internet of things” to manage energy consumption.

Politicians that advocate for school vouchers, suburban expansion, and conventional energy will be viciously attacked by self-righteous zealots, backed up by self-serving billionaires. But the politicians with the courage to stick to this revolutionary agenda will win, because it serves the people instead of the bureaucracy and the billionaires.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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