Sacramento, CA -- Education is like music. If you don’t know it but try to fake it, the truth comes out sooner
rather than later. Consider the revelations from the California State University system, the nation’s largest,
with 22 campuses and 344,000 students.

A full 54 percent of students entering the system need remedial work in math, and 47 percent need remedial
English, according to figures released March 26. In the state’s largest city, it’s even worse.

More than two-thirds -- 66 percent -- of the students entering the system in the Los Angeles area lack the math
or English skills they should have learned in high school. At Cal State Dominguez Hills, an astonishing 80
percent of those enrolled last fall needed remedial English, and an incredible 87 percent needed remedial
math.

Bear in mind that in the state’s master plan for education, the Cal State system is set aside for the top
30 percent of high-school graduates. If nearly all entering students at some campuses need remedial work in
the most basic subjects, what must be the record of those in the lower ranks?

“This ought to be a wakeup call for everybody in California,” said CSU chancellor Charles B. Reed. While
mustering the requisite outrage, that too misses the mark. Californians have known for some time that their
massive K-12 system is not doing the job. Students in the University of California system, designed for the top 12 percent of students, also need remedial math and English. Beyond that, high-tech industries reports that they must retrain college graduates, and that students from foreign countries arrive better prepared.

With each new revelation of failure, educrats sound the same note. The problem is not enough money, they say. Lately, state superintendent Delaine Eastin has been complaining about “Third World budgets,” this in a state with three levels of educational bureaucracy (state, county and local), and in which education is the biggest
single expenditure. If money were the issue, the problem would have been fixed long ago.

Since the 1960s, California students have been subjected to a jihad of junkthought: self-esteem programs, social promotion, native language instruction, dumbed down curricula, “whole language” reading, touchy-feely
evaluations. California education has been more concerned with making students “feel good about themselves” rather than teaching them to read, write and cipher. Tough standards, after all, might make some students not feel good about themselves. Superintendent Eastin not only rejects the new and tougher math standards but tells educators to ignore them.

California students go to school less than half the year, a paltry 180 days, much less than in the foreign
countries that are trouncing the United States in math competitions. Firing incompetent teachers is nearly
impossible thanks to the teacher unions that resist regular evaluations, merit pay, and a longer school year.
They also resist charter schools, one of the few meaningful reforms in recent times.

The time has come for officials in charge of this massive fraud to face the music and step aside. Parents must be given the option of leaving this failed system, taking their money with them, and choosing a school that will
equip their children to cope with college and the workplace in the 21st century.

-- K. Lloyd Billingsley