Lance Izumi
Classroom Ideology
Military schools have cracked the code for educating diverse students
America’s military schools are ranked the best in the nation. California should take note. The U.S. Department of Defense, through its Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) program, operates 160 K-12 schools in the U.S. and overseas. These schools at American military installations serve around 67,000 very diverse students who ...
Blog
Read the latest on fraud in California government
Fraud in California Community Colleges Spurs Congress to Act
Across the country, financial aid fraud in higher education has skyrocketed, causing big budgetary hits for colleges and negative impacts for law-abiding students in true need. Perhaps the biggest explosion in financial aid fraud has taken place in the nation’s largest system of higher education—the California Community Colleges. With 2.2 ...
Blog
How a Private Scholarship Fund Makes a Difference for Kids at a California Catholic School
Based in Oakland, The BASIC Fund is California’s largest non-denominational PreK-8 organization that gives needs-based scholarships to low-income children on a first-come, first-served basis to help pay for tuition so they can attend private schools. The BASIC Fund gives families the opportunity to choose from among more than 250 private ...
Blog
Newsom’s Proposed Ed Budget: Big Spending, Little Results
Under Newsom’s proposed budget, state and local education funding under Proposition 98 would come to $121.4 billion. If one combines funding from all sources, including federal dollars, then the budget would include $149.1 billion in total funding for all TK (transitional kindergarten)-12 education programs. These huge budget amounts translate into ...
Blog
New Study Shows Success of School Choice in Action
Recently released scores on California’s state tests in English and math show huge proportions of students failing to achieve proficiency in the basic subjects. More than half of California students taking the 2025 state English exam failed to score at the proficient level. On the state math test, more than ...
Blended Learning
The Double-Edged Sword Of AI In The Classroom
With the new school year started, one of the growing challenges facing students, parents, and teachers is how to address the classroom uses of AI, which has become a double-edged sword in the education process. Read the op-ed here.
Blog
In America’s Education Darkness, Catholic Schools Are a Bright Spot
On the 2024 NAEP eighth-grade reading test, Catholic-school students scored 20 points higher than public school students. On the eighth-grade math test, Catholic-school eighth graders scored 21 points higher than their public-school peers. According to education policy analyst Matt Ladner, the academic advantage for Catholic-school students has been growing over ...
Commentary
Obscuring the forest for the trees: Most LAUSD students still below standards
Recently, Los Angeles school superintendent Alberto Carvalho held a celebratory press conference to trumpet the incremental increase in the district’s student test scores, but while he was focusing on some bright trees, the dark forest remains—a large majority of Los Angeles students still fail to meet state grade-level standards in ...
Blog
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students by Lance Izumi | July 14, 2025 A bill plowing through the State Legislature is using fiscal accountability as a fig-leaf issue to hide its real intentions—crippling California’s popular charter-school sector in order to bolster regular public schools that are seeing ...
Classroom Ideology
Students left behind?: San Francisco tried to bury this radical school policy – it backfired
While San Francisco’s recently halted equity grading scheme sparked national uproar and derision, the real lesson of this fiasco is the near-total lack of transparency in the school district’s education decision-making process. Equity grading, which has been adopted by school districts across the country, is basically grade inflation dressed up ...
Military schools have cracked the code for educating diverse students
America’s military schools are ranked the best in the nation. California should take note. The U.S. Department of Defense, through its Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) program, operates 160 K-12 schools in the U.S. and overseas. These schools at American military installations serve around 67,000 very diverse students who ...
Read the latest on fraud in California government
Fraud in California Community Colleges Spurs Congress to Act
Across the country, financial aid fraud in higher education has skyrocketed, causing big budgetary hits for colleges and negative impacts for law-abiding students in true need. Perhaps the biggest explosion in financial aid fraud has taken place in the nation’s largest system of higher education—the California Community Colleges. With 2.2 ...
How a Private Scholarship Fund Makes a Difference for Kids at a California Catholic School
Based in Oakland, The BASIC Fund is California’s largest non-denominational PreK-8 organization that gives needs-based scholarships to low-income children on a first-come, first-served basis to help pay for tuition so they can attend private schools. The BASIC Fund gives families the opportunity to choose from among more than 250 private ...
Newsom’s Proposed Ed Budget: Big Spending, Little Results
Under Newsom’s proposed budget, state and local education funding under Proposition 98 would come to $121.4 billion. If one combines funding from all sources, including federal dollars, then the budget would include $149.1 billion in total funding for all TK (transitional kindergarten)-12 education programs. These huge budget amounts translate into ...
New Study Shows Success of School Choice in Action
Recently released scores on California’s state tests in English and math show huge proportions of students failing to achieve proficiency in the basic subjects. More than half of California students taking the 2025 state English exam failed to score at the proficient level. On the state math test, more than ...
The Double-Edged Sword Of AI In The Classroom
With the new school year started, one of the growing challenges facing students, parents, and teachers is how to address the classroom uses of AI, which has become a double-edged sword in the education process. Read the op-ed here.
In America’s Education Darkness, Catholic Schools Are a Bright Spot
On the 2024 NAEP eighth-grade reading test, Catholic-school students scored 20 points higher than public school students. On the eighth-grade math test, Catholic-school eighth graders scored 21 points higher than their public-school peers. According to education policy analyst Matt Ladner, the academic advantage for Catholic-school students has been growing over ...
Obscuring the forest for the trees: Most LAUSD students still below standards
Recently, Los Angeles school superintendent Alberto Carvalho held a celebratory press conference to trumpet the incremental increase in the district’s student test scores, but while he was focusing on some bright trees, the dark forest remains—a large majority of Los Angeles students still fail to meet state grade-level standards in ...
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students by Lance Izumi | July 14, 2025 A bill plowing through the State Legislature is using fiscal accountability as a fig-leaf issue to hide its real intentions—crippling California’s popular charter-school sector in order to bolster regular public schools that are seeing ...
Students left behind?: San Francisco tried to bury this radical school policy – it backfired
While San Francisco’s recently halted equity grading scheme sparked national uproar and derision, the real lesson of this fiasco is the near-total lack of transparency in the school district’s education decision-making process. Equity grading, which has been adopted by school districts across the country, is basically grade inflation dressed up ...