Time to Rally for California Students

Yesterday parents, students, teachers, and other supporters of education gathered at rallies all across the state to protest further cuts in state support of education from K-12 to community colleges, Cal State universities and the UCs. Many are participating in a "99-Mile March" that will take them to UC-Davis and from there to a rally at the state Capitol on Monday.

These proposed cuts are nothing new; in fact, the disinvestment in public education has been taking place for the past ten years, with cuts increasing dramatically over the past four years.

The Governor's proposed $1.4 billion dollars in cuts translate not only to higher tuition but also to fewer spaces for California students who want to go to college.

This past academic year, the college student population declined by 165.000, with most of the decline taking place in community colleges. Their enrollment decline was the biggest since 1993.

The shrinking student populations also have affected the state universities as well. Last year Cal State-Long Beach enrolled only 9% of applicants, fewer than UC-Berkeley. In cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Beach, and San Jose, growing numbers of students are finding themselves shut out of the system all together.

Many of them and their families have been shocked and dismayed to find that it is increasingly difficult to transfer from community college to the Cal State or UC systems, as all of these schools raise the academic bar for admission and trim the number of entering students., ensuring that more and more students have no other choice but to go to private schools or out of state.

For K-12 students, the situation is equally grim. At a rally yesterday, California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel noted that California is now 47th in per pupil funding, and last in the nation in the number of counselors, librarians, and nurses per student.

These trends are particularly troubling when California is just showing signs of emerging from the Great Recession, and when just about every job that pays a living wage requires some form of college training.

Even if tax revenues begin to increase as the economy improves, it will take years for schools, colleges, and universities to repair the damage that has already been inflicted. And that means lost time and lost resources for all the students currently attending public schools, colleges, and universities.

I find it particularly reprehensible that politicians like Rick Santorum feel justified in sneering at the value of a college degree and comparing public schools to "factories," particularly when his statements reek of hypocrisy. Does Mr. Santorum want to disavow the college and law degrees he holds? Is he planning on reimbursing the Pittsburgh school district for the more than $73,000 it paid out to an online charter school for his "home schooled" children while they were living in a suburb of Washington, D.C.?

Our politicians should be supporting education as the best means of offering social and economic opportunity to all citizens. I don't think it any accident that our first six presidents (apart from Washington) all attended college either at Harvard or William and Mary in Virgina, the very kinds of institutions that Santorum claims "brainwash" our children.

It is time for the public to reject the strong anti-intellectual, anti-education current running through the political rhetoric of our time. Education isn't just an issue for those of us with school or college aged children; it affects everyone whose taxes continue to fund the school to prison cycle for many poor and disadvantaged children. Education plays a crucial role in our economic future, and it will make the difference between our ability to continue as a world leader and to remain globally competitive in the 21st century.

We can either pay up for a good educational system for all our children now, or pay a much higher price for the lack of it in the future condition of our citizens.

I encourage anyone who can to join the protests in Sacramento on Monday, and for those who can't, please write your state representatives to make your support for education clear. Give what you can to your local schools and to those organizations that support under-resourced schools. And finally, please support the Governor's initiative to raise taxes on the wealthiest Californians, since this appears to be the only way we can stave off even more draconian cuts in the future.

As Horace Mann wrote, "Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of the conditions of men." If Americans still truly believe in the idea of social mobility, they will recognize that education is the great catalyst that makes it possible and that benefits all of us in the process.