Gov. Gavin Newsom devoted most of his final State of the State address last week to touting what had been accomplished during the past seven years, and one boast was about California’s public school system educating nearly 6 million kids in grades K-12.
Newsom said his new budget would increase spending on the system to $27,418 per student, which includes federal money. He highlighted expansions in pre-kindergarten, programs before and after school and the melding of education with social and health care programs in “community schools.”
“These multi-year investments in education, they are paying off,” Newsom told legislators. “Just this year, we’ve seen improved academic achievement in every subject area, in every grade level, in every student group, with greater gains in test scores for Black and Latino kids. These gains are particularly pronounced in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district.”
It sounded great but must be placed in a not-so-wonderful context.
Overall, California’s public school test scores not only fare poorly in comparison to those in other states, but have lost ground in some key areas, as latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed in September.
In fourth-grade reading skills, a vital area since reading comprehension is the door to mastering all other subjects, California ranked an embarrassing 37th among the states in 2024 tests. Just 29% of its students achieved proficient levels, down two points from 2022. Black and Latino fourth-graders appeared to struggle the most.
California’s low reading scores should not be a surprise to anyone who has observed the state’s decades-long conflict over how it should be taught, dubbed the “reading wars.” For too long, California’s education leaders insisted on experimenting with trendy theories of reading instruction, such as “whole language,” while dismissing advocates of time-tested phonics as old-fashioned and even reactionary.
Other states acted while California fiddled around, having concluded that the way previous generations of students mastered reading was still valid. One of them was Mississippi, one of the nation’s poorest states.
As the New York Times recently reported in great detail, Mississippi was 49th in fourth-grade reading proficiency in 2013, but state leaders acknowledged the damage and decided to do something about it. Central to the state’s reform was adoption of the “science of reading,” the current name for phonics, while targeting efforts on kids in the early grades in an effort to prepare them for learning at all levels.
“Science of reading is really important; it was a key piece of what we did,” Rachel Canter, who heads an education reform group Mississippi First, told the Times. “But people are missing the forest for the trees if they are only looking at that.”
Mississippi also set tough academic standards and state political leaders made improvement a top-drawer issue — not just one of many. The latest national assessments found that Mississippi now has the ninth-highest fourth-grade reading scores.
It’s odd that, as Newsom ticked off points of educational pride, he didn’t mention the most important one: California’s adoption of phonics as its primary reading instruction last year. The new law enjoyed strong support from a governor who struggles with dyslexia.
Newsom’s boast about per-pupil spending exemplifies the Capitol’s focus on money in its education debates, rather than results. While a much smaller state, Mississippi spends scarcely half of what California does yet does a better job of teaching children to read.
Over the next few years, we’ll learn whether California’s educational establishment will finally embrace phonics, and whether we can catch up with Mississippi.
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.
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