When Gavin Newsom ran for governor in 2018, education was front and center of his campaign. His central pledge was to create a hugely ambitious “cradle to career system of education,” beginning at birth through college and into the workplace.
Yet in this election season, education has been a non-issue. It has barely come up in any of the debates – in fact, none of the moderators asked a single question about it. Go to the candidate’s web pages, and almost all make a range of pledges on education. Yet I can’t recall seeing any candidate’s television ads focusing on the issue.
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, elected twice to his statewide office, is on the ballot for governor. But his candidacy has barely registered with voters.
This is worth sitting with for a moment. About 40 percent of California’s general fund, roughly $127 billion in the next school year, will go to K-12 schools and community colleges under Proposition 98. The next governor might well inherit more direct authority over education policy and spending, because of legislation being considered in Sacramento that would place the California Department of Education in the governor’s office rather than under the direction of the State Superintendent.
And yet the candidates have largely treated education as a campaign footnote.
Ensuring California’s future
The absence is even more striking because of its contrast with the last two governors, for whom education was a critically important part of not only their campaigns, but their terms in office as well.
Gov. Jerry Brown made the radical reform of school finance the signature achievement of his final two terms, championing the Local Control Funding Formula, which far more than any other state has directed substantially more state dollars to schools serving the highest-need students.
In close collaboration with State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, Newsom went further. He led efforts to expand Transitional Kindergarten to all 4-year-olds. He also introduced massive multibillion initiatives – notably the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, subsidizing expanded preschool, after-school and summer enrichment programs, at a cumulative cost of about $18 billion so far. Another is the $3 billion Community Schools Partnership Program, creating “schools within schools” providing a range of support services to students as well as families. That’s in addition to the $4 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, to improve children’s mental health.
Both governors understood that education was not a line item to be managed. It was an argument for ensuring California’s future.
So what to attribute education’s invisibility in this year’s campaign?
Not a major concern
One is that voters in general give their local schools positive ratings. They generally approve of the way the governor, and the State Legislature are handling TK-12 education, according to the latest PPIC poll conducted in late March. That’s especially the case among Democrats who comprise by far the majority of voters in the state.
Voters with children in public schools are even more positive, saying their local public schools do an excellent or good job preparing students for college.
In a Feb. 2026 PPIC poll, one third of voters listed cost of living, inflation, jobs and the economy as the most important issues for the governor and the Legislature to address. Only 2 percent placed education, schools or teachers at the top of their list.
There is also the fact that less than one in four California voters have children in public schools. Candidates may thus be responding to the realpolitik that, for the majority of voters, education is not a major concern.
Another factor is that California has made huge progress during the Brown and Newsom governorships in boosting funding to its schools. School funding has been a perennial priority for voters especially since Prop. 13, the 1978 initiative that eviscerated local school boards and the state’s taxing powers.
When Gov. Brown returned to the governorship for a second time in 2010, average spending on education per student was a mere $8,340, putting California dead last in the nation. During the current school year, average spending per students is $24,500, an enormous increase, putting California at the national average, after adjusting for high labor costs in the state. That’s according to an analysis from the exhaustive Getting Down to Facts initiative issued last month.
“We are in a lot better shape in terms of the money, and the services kids had before than we were before,” said Michael Kirst, the Stanford professor emeritus who was Gov. Brown’s closest education advisor for all his four terms as governor.
Kirst points out that the last time schools were a matter of intense statewide concern was during the pandemic, when most students were out of school. Now the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, and the controversies about school closures have receded.
Finally, the culture wars around issues like book bannings, parental control of the curriculum, and transgender rights have not caught fire in California to nearly the same extent as they have in other states, except in some more conservative districts like Temecula.
Reforming education reforms
On one level, education’s absence from the campaign could be regarded as good news, because it could reflect the significant progress made in recent years. But that ignores the fact that schools still face major challenges the next governor won’t be able to avoid – and candidates should be pressed on.
Principle among them is the crisis brought on by declining enrollments, which is not unique to California but is especially acute here because of lower birthrates, decreased immigration, and high housing costs forcing many families to move to other districts or out of state. Fewer kids mean less funding for schools, often resulting in school closures and layoffs. It also threatens to undermine promising education reforms introduced over the past decade.
As Pedro Noguera, dean of the USC Rossier School of Education says, declining enrollments threaten a “financial catastrophe which will have implications not just for education, but for our economy, and our society.”
Voters have a right to know what the candidates would do in response — and whether they will continue to back the multiple education reforms currently underway, or whether the reforms should themselves be reformed.
Another major decision the next governor will have to make is whether California will participate in the Trump Administration’s stealth tax credit scholarship scheme inserted into the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill without any hearings.
Beginning on Jan. 1, taxpayers can contribute up to $1700 to “scholarship-granting organizations” — and get every dollar back as a tax credit. These organizations can then dole out the funds to parents for private and religious school tuition. Some funds, however, could go to public school parents to cover expenses not normally covered by state and local funding.
States have the choice to participate in the program. So far, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado are the only Democratic governors to have said they will opt in. By contrast, Newsom, and most Democratic governors, are avoiding the issue.
Voters are also bombarded, and understandably confused, by conflicting reports on test scores — some showing improvements, others saying the state is falling behind. After a deep analysis, Stanford professor Sean Reardon in Getting Down to Facts produced this overview of where California is at:
“Test scores in California grew faster than the national average from 2003-2019 and have declined less than the U.S. as a whole from 2019-2024. California students’ academic skills are, on average, still slightly lower than the national average.”
An inflection point
Despite progress, there is still work to be done.
“California is at an inflection point in its long arc of education reform,” argues Getting Down to Facts’ lead researcher Susanna Loeb.
Over the past two decades, she notes, “the state has built stronger foundations: more equitable school funding, stronger standards and assessments, expanded early childhood education, improved data systems, and new investments in community schools, early literacy, and the educator workforce. Those changes matter.”
Yet, Loeb argues, “California now faces a different question: whether those stronger foundations can support a public education system prepared for a very different future.” That includes the impact of artificial intelligence, and the erosion of federal commitments to civil rights, student welfare, and holding states accountable for student achievement.”
California’s role, she says, “has become more consequential as states carry greater responsibility for protecting educational opportunity and advancing equity.”
Education could still surface this fall during the general election, when debates between the two final candidates will allow for deeper probing of their views.
“Hopefully, this will be a topic in the fall given the central role of state education policy and the importance of education outcomes for California’s future,” said Mark Baldassare, the veteran PPIC polling director.
We shall see. “Politicians generally tend to avoid discussing easy solutions, and the problems facing California public schools are incredibly difficult,” said Carl Cohn, the esteemed former superintendent in Long Beach and San Diego. “So I’m not surprised that the candidates haven’t waded in with solutions.”
But how successfully we educate our students does affect everyone. With nearly 6 million public school students in California — 1 in 8 of all students in the US — how well they do in school is key to the nation’s economy and its future.
Be the first to comment