Will public education exist in California a century from now?
Erin Heys PhD, Sarah Swanbeck MPP, and James Hawkins MPP
It is no secret that California’s public education system has been stress-tested by the pandemic with trends like decreasing enrollment and teacher turnover taking root across the state. This on top of broader changes in the economy that demand 21st century learning and skills has raised important questions about the sustainability of traditional public education in the state.
As part of the California 100 initiative, the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans, a research unit at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, published a report that takes a holistic look at how California has governed and funded the early care and education (ECE), K-12, and higher education systems, and identifies the strengths and shortcomings across the different sectors. While state lawmakers have undoubtedly stepped up to improve public education in recent years, we found that structural challenges in the state’s finance system threatens the longevity of the public model.
One major shortcoming of the finance system is that lawmakers do not use an ‘adequacy’ formula to determine funding levels in any of the three education sectors. In its simplest definition, an adequacy formula addresses how much funding students need–accounting for the needs of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds–to achieve a given outcome, such as average performance on a standardized test. Instead of using an adequacy formula, appropriations are largely discretionary and the result of a political process, especially for ECE and higher education.
Progress has been made in K-12 to increase funding for low-income and other disadvantaged students with the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), but LCFF was never designed as an adequacy formula. In the latest year of data available, national finance experts found that 70 percent of students in California attended districts with spending below estimated adequacy levels several years after the passage of the LCFF. Given that researchers have identified a link between school finance and student achievement, it is perhaps no wonder that California’s K-12 reading and math scores are among the lowest in the nation–in other words, you get what you pay for.
Secondly, the stability of the finance system is a major concern. Funding relies on the performance of the state’s General Fund, which ties funding to the boom and bust cycle of the economy. This is problematic during recessions when education funding is commonly slashed, resulting in detrimental, long-term effects for the education sector. Take for example the Great Recession: cuts to early childhood funding resulted in a 25 percent decrease in subsidized child care slots that were not recovered until recently. Rollbacks in K-12 were so severe that per pupil spending was even lower than 1988–89 inflation adjusted funding levels and led to historic teacher layoffs that have resulted in the ongoing teacher shortage crisis; in higher education, state budget reductions resulted in a 63 percent increase in tuition at the state’s 4-year colleges between 2008–2017, with tuition still on the rise today.
Even when the state budget is strong, like now, new education funding is often one-time rather than ongoing, which means that any new strategy to improve each of the sectors–ranging from investing in the educator workforce or putting new dollars into enrollment and retention programs for higher education–are in jeopardy during the next downturn. And cost pressures in education budgets–such as pensions, health care, facilities, and rising enrollment in special education–continue to build, threatening to destabilize K-12 and higher education financing even when the state budget is flush.
Without a plan to tackle these challenges, the sustainability of the public system may be at risk, especially as alternative education models take root. For example, charter schools in K-12 continue to grow in California as parents become disillusioned with what traditional public schools have to offer. Online education and other advances in technology, accelerated by the pandemic, have the potential to upend the entire P-16 system by doing away with traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and classroom practices and instead put in place distance learning spaces. And private platforms like Udemy and Coursera could put the future survival of California’s higher education institutions into question with online coursework that allow end-users to enroll in single skills-gaining courses or earn industry certifications.
As the state sits at the crossroads of change, we encourage Californians to think carefully about what reforms may be necessary to sustain the state’s public education system in the years ahead. What might the future look like if the traditional model of public education fades away–will this risk compromising student equity, education quality, and the democratic purposes of education–and is that a risk worth taking?
