California’s k-12 Public Education System Is Ineffective & Unsafe
Although California’s state budget allocates $88.3 billion for K-12 education ($51.6 billion state dollars, the rest is local and federal money), California’s public schools are struggling.
California not only has one of the highest student-to-teacher ratios in the country—35% above the national average—but per-pupil spending has been decreasing steadily in recent years.
In fact, a recent study ranked California’s K-12 public education system as the 37th worst in the Union, in terms of educational quality—and 49th in terms of school safety.
Essentially, California’s public schools are bad and dangerous.
This is a serious problem: it hurts our kids, and our society more broadly. If we’re going to fund public education, it has to be done right.
So what’s the problem?
While academics attribute it to a plethora of marginally relevant factors, like the difficulty in raising taxes, a lack of federal support—even racism—they’re missing the answer that’s right under their nose.
California’s public education system is bad because of illegal immigration.
1,227,000 Illegal Immigrants & Anchor Babies Are Flooding California’s Public Education System
At its heart, the problem is pretty simple: the schools are overcrowded—they’re packed to the brim with students from Mexico and Central America, or anchor babies.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Right now, there are 1,227,000 undocumented children (252,000) or anchor babies (975,000) living in California, presumably attending public schools at state expense.
For whatever reason, they don’t seem to attend fancy private schools in Beverley Hills (nor do I think they’d be let in).
Next, although the California Department of Education doesn’t include undocumented children as a separate statistical group, and therefore doesn’t know how much they cost (big surprise), we do know that total enrollment in California’s k-12 public school system was 6,226,737 in 2016.
A further 573,000 children attend private schools, although this won’t factor into our calculation.
Taken together, this means that 1,227,000 students out of 6,226,737 in California’s public schools are either here illegally, or are anchor babies.
That’s 19.7%, or almost 1 in 5 California students.
This is a massive burden on an already strained system.
California Spends $17.4 Billion Educating Illegals & Anchor Babies
Now let’s look at the financials.
Again, according to the state budget, California spends $88.3 billion on primary education.
Given their proportions, this means illegal immigrants, and their children, consume $17.4 billion in additional educational costs.
There’s simply no way the education system can operate so far over-capacity on and retain its quality—the system’s just not designed to handle this many students, nor do tax revenues reflect these increased burdens (illegals don’t pay much tax compared to citizens).
The sad part is that it’s the kids who suffer.
Of course, this problem isn’t limited to education: illegal immigration is costing California billions.
