California has cut billions of dollars from its education budget over the past decade. There are classrooms with more than 40 students, with many of them non-English-speaking. It is very hard to teach a large class when there are children who don’t understand the language of instruction and when the students no longer have needed services because they were cut too, such as guidance counselors, librarians, social workers, etc.

Under Governor Schwarzenegger, the state had a board of education dominated by charter advocates. California now has nearly 1,000 charters, most of which are unregulated or only lightly regulated, because the state lacks to capacity to supervise them.

The good news is that Governor Jerry Brown is trying to restore the once-valued status of public education in the state. He is not hostile to charter schools; after all, when he was mayor of Oakland, he created two of them himself. But he knows that charter schools are not a systemic response to the needs of this huge state or to a state school system that counts millions of children who are poor, have disabilities, and/or don’t speak English.

Governor Brown is asking the voters of California to approve a tax increase to restore some of the funding that was taken away from the public schools. In the present political climate, in which some political figures want to starve government, this is a bold move. If California turns it down, it would be tragic. It would mean that the people of that state don’t care about the future of its children.

California has another great asset in its State Superintendent Tom Torlakson. He is a former science teacher with a Navy background. He is one of the most enlightened–if not THE most enlightened state education chiefs in the nation. He understands that rebuilding the public system is a high priority.

California also has more than its share of corporate reformers. They pump millions into charters and they tout the accomplishments of any charter that gets high test scores, regardless of how it was done. They pushed the nation’s first “parent trigger” law through the legislature in 2010, to enable 51% of the parents in any public school to vote to privatize it. The “parent trigger” demand came from an organization–Parent Revolution– funded by the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and the Walton Revolution. The head of Parent Revolution was appointed to the state board by Governor Schwarzenegger and he was one of the board members ousted by Governor Brown. Not a single public school has been converted to charter status since the parent trigger law was passed, but other states have adopted similar legislation (egged on by ALEC). Even the Los Angeles Times (no foe of the corporate reformers) admitted that the parent trigger law had flopped.

So California is a paradox. From the perspective of students and teachers, the schools are in terrible trouble because of unending budget cuts. Even districts like San Diego, which have been trying to lead their own reform efforts, have suffered grievous layoffs that cripple true reform.

But the state has more than its share of privateers, many trained by the Broad Foundation of Los Angeles, many others in the financial sector or the world of high-tech, where entrepreneurs revel in instant solutions to problems. The big money is on the side of the privateers.

And the question in California, as elsewhere, is whether and how public education will survive the onslaught of big money.

The one thing California has going for it in the near term is wise political leadership. That’s more than I can say for most of our states.

Diane