Education
Classroom Ideology
America’s Math Collapse: Harvard Institutes Remedial Math
America’s amazing technological achievements, such as SpaceX’s recent rescue of stranded astronauts, mask the death spiral of math learning in the U.S., which has reached an ignominious low with Harvard’s decision to offer remedial math. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, 73 percent of eighth graders ...
Lance Izumi
April 14, 2025
Blog
Will Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Cure the Woke Flu Infecting U.S. Medical Schools?
More than two decades ago, I co-authored a Pacific Research Institute report entitled “Facing the Classroom Challenge,” which analyzed the teacher-training curricula at schools of education in the California State University system. Many of these schools openly stated their left-wing bias. At California State University Dominguez Hills in the Los ...
Lance Izumi
March 25, 2025
California
Assembly Member Blanca Rubio – How to Reverse the Collapse of Learning in California’s Schools
Parents, students, and taxpayers are growing increasingly frustrated by the inability of California’s schools to educate our kids for the future, and they are even more frustrated to learn why our schools are doing so badly – outdated and ineffective learning models. From PRI’s 2025 Sacramento policy conference, hear a ...
Pacific Research Institute
March 24, 2025
Education
Fighting For School Choice
Leland and Mark talk with Lance Izumi, senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute about fighting for school choice here in California. Listen to the entire interview here.
Lance Izumi
March 21, 2025
Commentary
California parents must be able to choose the education that best suits their child
When public school advocates argue against giving parents and their children more educational choices, one is reminded of the Boston Tea Party, a revolt against Britain’s tea monopoly and the taxes levied as a result of it. Now, as then, Americans are not buying the pro-monopoly claims. We are demanding ...
Lance Izumi
March 18, 2025
Commentary
Give students a chance, revive the parent trigger law
Just over a decade ago, parents and students trapped in failing schools had a way out, known as the Parent Empowerment Law. Unfortunately, the law was murdered in the dark and has been almost entirely forgotten. Read the entire op-ed.
Matthew Fleming
February 24, 2025
Classroom Ideology
The Retreat From Euclid And America’s Great Math Collapse
When average people think about classical education, they tend to think about students reading the great works of Western civilization such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Those same people probably do not think about mathematics and its classical origins, yet it is the movement away from mathematics’ classical heritage that ...
Lance Izumi
February 18, 2025
Blog
Latest test scores show CA's public schools continue to fail kids
The California Classroom Collapse Hits the Middle Class
Last year, Bret Daniels, the mayor of the middle-class Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights, announced that he was quitting his position as mayor and moving to Kentucky, in part because of the quality of education his seven-year-old daughter was receiving. Recently released test scores show that California’s education decline is ...
Lance Izumi
February 11, 2025
Classroom Ideology
Elon Musk needs H-1B workers because math education fails our students
When entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines with his vociferous comments supporting the H-1B visa program, the ensuing debate focused on the implications of his position on immigration. But this debate obscured the reason America even has such a program in the first place: its homegrown students are being poorly educated ...
Lance Izumi
February 3, 2025
Commentary
Give fire victim families emergency school choice
As Gov. Gavin Newsom stood near a burned-down school, Pacific Palisades mom Rachel Darvish pleaded with Newsom: “That was my daughter’s school, what are you going to do?” Newsom offered no real answer for the distraught parent at the time. Well, here’s the answer he should have given: all families ...
Lance Izumi
January 31, 2025
America’s Math Collapse: Harvard Institutes Remedial Math
America’s amazing technological achievements, such as SpaceX’s recent rescue of stranded astronauts, mask the death spiral of math learning in the U.S., which has reached an ignominious low with Harvard’s decision to offer remedial math. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, 73 percent of eighth graders ...
Will Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Cure the Woke Flu Infecting U.S. Medical Schools?
More than two decades ago, I co-authored a Pacific Research Institute report entitled “Facing the Classroom Challenge,” which analyzed the teacher-training curricula at schools of education in the California State University system. Many of these schools openly stated their left-wing bias. At California State University Dominguez Hills in the Los ...
Assembly Member Blanca Rubio – How to Reverse the Collapse of Learning in California’s Schools
Parents, students, and taxpayers are growing increasingly frustrated by the inability of California’s schools to educate our kids for the future, and they are even more frustrated to learn why our schools are doing so badly – outdated and ineffective learning models. From PRI’s 2025 Sacramento policy conference, hear a ...
Fighting For School Choice
Leland and Mark talk with Lance Izumi, senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute about fighting for school choice here in California. Listen to the entire interview here.
California parents must be able to choose the education that best suits their child
When public school advocates argue against giving parents and their children more educational choices, one is reminded of the Boston Tea Party, a revolt against Britain’s tea monopoly and the taxes levied as a result of it. Now, as then, Americans are not buying the pro-monopoly claims. We are demanding ...
Give students a chance, revive the parent trigger law
Just over a decade ago, parents and students trapped in failing schools had a way out, known as the Parent Empowerment Law. Unfortunately, the law was murdered in the dark and has been almost entirely forgotten. Read the entire op-ed.
The Retreat From Euclid And America’s Great Math Collapse
When average people think about classical education, they tend to think about students reading the great works of Western civilization such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Those same people probably do not think about mathematics and its classical origins, yet it is the movement away from mathematics’ classical heritage that ...
Latest test scores show CA's public schools continue to fail kids
The California Classroom Collapse Hits the Middle Class
Last year, Bret Daniels, the mayor of the middle-class Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights, announced that he was quitting his position as mayor and moving to Kentucky, in part because of the quality of education his seven-year-old daughter was receiving. Recently released test scores show that California’s education decline is ...
Elon Musk needs H-1B workers because math education fails our students
When entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines with his vociferous comments supporting the H-1B visa program, the ensuing debate focused on the implications of his position on immigration. But this debate obscured the reason America even has such a program in the first place: its homegrown students are being poorly educated ...
Give fire victim families emergency school choice
As Gov. Gavin Newsom stood near a burned-down school, Pacific Palisades mom Rachel Darvish pleaded with Newsom: “That was my daughter’s school, what are you going to do?” Newsom offered no real answer for the distraught parent at the time. Well, here’s the answer he should have given: all families ...