California was once a leader in education, but its public schools have plunged to the bottom of national rankings. Despite billions poured into the system, the state ranked 44th in 8th-grade reading and 40th in 8th-grade math in the 2022 Nation’s Report Card.
Why? A bloated bureaucracy, ideological agendas, and a reliance on ineffective progressive experiments. Instead of empowering local districts, California’s Department of Education imposes top-down mandates that burden both students and teachers with excessive testing and rigid compliance.
Consider Hayward, just south of Oakland, where officials thought the answer to failing schools was a group called Woke Kindergarten. Funded with $250,000 in federal money, this program trained teachers to "confront white supremacy" and "disrupt racism." The result? Glassbrook Elementary’s test scores hit rock bottom—less than 4% of students were proficient in math, and under 12% met English standards.
Woke Kindergarten’s mission statement reads like activist poetry, boasting programs such as whatchu mean?!, ’lil’ comrade convos, and teach palestine. The group’s founder, identifying as a "cultural organizer and abolitionist early educator," has openly expressed anti-police, anti-capitalist, and anti-American sentiments. A teacher at Glassbrook was even banned from training sessions for questioning the rhetoric.
This is not an isolated case. California’s public education system has become an ideological battleground where activism takes precedence over academic excellence. The price? A generation of students left unprepared for the real world.
Universities: Prioritizing Politics Over Performance
The dysfunction extends into higher education. The University of California (UC) system has turned first-generation status into a political identity, expanding definitions so broadly that even students with parents who attended college qualify under different metrics. The numbers shift depending on the narrative: at UC schools, 46% of students are labeled first-gen; at Cal State, the number varies from 31% to 52%. This inconsistency reflects a broader trend in California’s higher education system—politics takes precedence over clarity and real impact.
Teachers' Unions: A Political Machine Disguised as Advocacy
The California Teachers Association (CTA), boasting 310,000 members, is one of the state’s most powerful political forces. While unions traditionally fight for better pay and working conditions, the CTA’s agenda goes far beyond education. Since 2000, the union has spent over $210 million lobbying for policies ranging from housing reform to criminal justice initiatives. In 2020 alone, it poured $5 million into supporting a commercial property tax hike (Proposition 15), a move that had little to do with classroom quality.
Beyond education policy, the CTA is deeply invested in progressive social causes. It has aggressively backed abortion rights, affirmative action, immigration protections for undocumented students, and reducing prison sentences for criminals. Critics argue that these issues stray far from the union’s supposed mission of improving public schools.
Where the Money Goes
The CTA operates on a $200 million annual budget, primarily funded by teachers required to pay between $600 and $1,000 per year in union dues. Much of this money flows not into classrooms but into Sacramento’s political machine. Between 2019 and 2020, the CTA spent $6.6 million lobbying lawmakers, wielding its influence to shape far more than education policy.
Teachers' unions should advocate for smaller class sizes, higher salaries, and stronger curricula. Instead, California’s educators are funding a political juggernaut that focuses on progressive activism rather than student achievement. Meanwhile, test scores continue their downward spiral.
A State Prioritizing Ideology Over Competence
California’s leaders have chosen ideology over governance, creating an unsustainable political and economic landscape. Public education is failing, homelessness is worsening despite record spending, and unions have morphed into political machines detached from their original purpose.
The state’s progressive "utopia" is, in reality, an expensive and ineffective experiment in top-down control. Californians—especially the middle and working class—pay the price, trapped in a system that values rhetoric over results.
The myth of California’s progressive superiority is collapsing. The question is: how much further will the state decline before its residents demand real change?
This article has been adapted from my new book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version is available now. The full book, paperback and audiobook will be released June 6th.
Endorsements for "The Myth of California"
"California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage.
- Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Nominee
"My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!"
- John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)