California Is Failing My Generation And Sacramento Keeps Rewarding Failure

A STUDENT'S VIEW - California tells students like me that we are the future. Then it sends us into that future unable to read or do math at the level the state itself says we should.

The latest test results are devastating only 38.4% of California public-school students met or exceeded state standards in math. In English language arts, just 49.3% did.

Think about what those numbers actually mean.

Most California students aren’t meeting the state’s math standard. More than half aren’t meeting its English standard. And somehow, Sacramento is talking about progress.

Officials can celebrate a roughly one-percentage-point improvement in math and half-point improvement in English. But students don’t have decades to wait for government to inch its way toward competence.

We get one childhood. We get one education. We get one chance to be prepared for adulthood.

As a young Jewish student, I come from a tradition that treats education as something sacred. We are taught to read, study, debate, and question. We are taught that asking difficult questions is not disrespectful, it is part of learning.

So I have a difficult question for California’s leaders:

How can one of the richest and most technologically advanced places on Earth be satisfied when most of its students aren’t proficient in math?

This is the home of Silicon Valley. California builds artificial intelligence, launches rockets, develops lifesaving medicine, and creates technologies used around the world.

Yet our education system struggles to ensure children can master basic reading and mathematics.

That’s not merely disappointing. It’s a scandal.

The pandemic made the crisis worse. California students endured prolonged disruptions to classroom learning, and many never fully recovered academically. Families with money or flexibility could turn to private schools, tutors, learning pods, or homeschooling.

Millions of families didn’t have those choices. Their children paid the price.

There are finally signs that California is willing to admit some approaches haven’t worked. The state’s embrace of stronger evidence-based reading instruction, including phonics, is a welcome development.

But phonics alone cannot repair a system that has become accustomed to explaining failure instead of demanding success.

And this is where California’s political establishment needs to hear something it rarely wants to hear:

Public education exists for students not politicians, bureaucracies, unions, or political movements.

Teachers deserve respect, competitive salaries, and good working conditions. Great teachers change lives, and students know the difference between teachers who simply show up and those who refuse to give up on us.

But the California Teachers Association also wields enormous political influence in Sacramento. Like every powerful special-interest organization, it should face scrutiny when its political priorities affect education policy.

Students cannot be the least powerful people in a system supposedly built for us.

When adult interests collide with student achievement, students must come first. Every time.

California also cannot ignore the staggering differences between schools. Some students receive an excellent education while others, sometimes only miles away, attend schools where proficiency rates are catastrophically low.

A child’s ZIP code should not determine whether that child learns to read.

California should identify schools that consistently succeed, determine what they are doing differently and replicate it aggressively. Expand tutoring. Restore academic rigor. Demand discipline in classrooms. Measure results honestly. Reward excellent teachers. Intervene quickly when schools repeatedly fail.

And stop lowering expectations to make failure look better.

Because students know when adults are making excuses.

We hear politicians tell us about equity, opportunity, and justice.

But there is nothing equitable about promoting a child who cannot read. There is nothing just about handing a diploma to a student who was never properly prepared. And there is nothing compassionate about protecting a failing system from accountability while another generation falls behind.

My generation is being told that we must someday confront artificial intelligence, global competition, housing unaffordability, climate change, wars, and an economy transforming faster than perhaps at any point in modern history.

Then prepare us.

Don’t give us slogans. Teach us.

Don’t tell us the numbers are improving when most students still aren’t meeting the standards. Demand better.

Don’t ask students to wait another decade while adults debate whose fault it is. Fix it.

California has tried variations of the same approach year after year while expecting students to somehow produce dramatically different results.

There is a word for that:

Insanity.

But students shouldn’t be the ones forced to live with the consequences.

Sacramento’s adults built this system.

My generation deserves better than inheriting its failures.

(Shoshannah Kalaydjian is a young Jewish student who writes about education, identity, and the challenges facing the next generation. Growing up in today’s climate, she has witnessed firsthand how rising antisemitism affects young people in classrooms and on college campuses. She is committed to sharing the perspectives of Jewish youth, amplifying student voices, and encouraging leaders to create safer, more inclusive environments for all students.)