Related: In the German state of Baden-Württemberg they were miscalculating the number of active teachers for 20 years due to a software error, causing the state to employ 1440 fewer teachers than actually intended.
Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted with mass layoffs this year and next, and the miscalculation looks like 2/3 of the budget shortfall, hiding such a basic and impactful error requires a much better explanation than I see in that article. It looks like it was done to stifle debate about budget allocations, which would be necessary in the circumstances.
The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.
True, a kid who has had too much screen time is not good, just like a kid who has had too much lunch is not good. That doesn't make lunch bad, it just means the kid needs the right amount.
Screens can be helpful for kids (mine have learned a ton from Khan Academy and other online tools), but kids will have different thresholds. Some will only be able to learn a little from screens because they can't work independently. Others can learn a lot. Blanket statements like "kids lean better from humans than machines" are not helpful. They obscure the fact that there is typically one teacher for 25 kids, whereas there might be 25 screens. Even if a screen is only 1/10 as good as a teacher, it could be that learning from a screen is better than learning from a teacher (who is busy with your classmates almost all of the time).
My kid learned more math when she was doing AoPS for 2 yrs than when she was in class listening to lectures she already knew, followed by worksheets she had already mastered. Machines enable much more differentiation.
In my country every few years a bunch of people invent some new method to teach kids how to read.
Completely ignoring that humans have been doing exactly that for at least 5000 years.
It shouldn't be surprising when you see what the educational technology money is actually spent on. Ive seen like a dozen "smart boards" purchased by my schools from the 00's and never once seen one used. Or how about the completely dog shit computer testing software that fails one-two word answers based on random capitalization or punctuation with no indication on what they expect. Each thing sold as the solution to all the past problems, but introducing more problems itself without actually solving any old ones.
My 1,500-student public California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director.
34 administrative hires. One per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.
It’s because there are tons of laws and regulations regarding minors in school, and administration tends to be homegrown (initial expertise in teaching) rather than explicitly developed to navigate the social, political and legal landscape. I’d wager that more than half of those positions are “best practice” staffing decisions in response to this landscape. A handful might also be due to expressed needs and wants of parents. Likely wasteful overall, but students, teachers and families would likely feel the impact and not be satisfied if any positions were axed.
> Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?
Food-services manager (it's all oursourced to Aramark), data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior clerical assistant, one of registrar or attendance, two of site maintenance, one of the network specialists (probably both–one across the district is plenty), and probably at least one of the counselors and the separate social science & athletics person, who should just be one of the physical education teachers. That's about ten people, or a million dollars–minimum–in annual savings.
As a full-time position? Aramark literally ran the lunch counters. I could see it being a district-level position, though it would be better positioned as a general procurement role.
> Data-processing specialist and print-center technician both sound like fancy names for secretarial roles
I agree. I was suspicious when I didn't see a secretary for each of the assistant principals listed.
> You're honestly saying schools need fewer counselors in what has been generally regarded as the worst generation for child mental health in years?
I am. Unless the counselors are constantly doing actual therapy I'm deeply sceptical you need that many for a student body of that size. The fact that they're assigned based on the first letter of your last name versus anything remotely thematic or behaviour based seems to emphasise that hypothesis, for me at least.
(When I went to the school, there were bullshit jobs everywhere. One of the counselors didn't deign to meet with students. Her role was "strategic" or some nonsense.)
> One of the counselors didn't deign to meet with students.
Why would she? That'd distract her from the actually important work of fabricating the reports that make her looking amazingly competent.
My mom is a retired teacher and her main complaint during the last 10-15 years of work was that with all the bullshit paperwork they're required to fill, the teachers literally don't have the time to just plain interact with the students. You want to make an odd, unscheduled extracurricular event? Waste a small pile of paper before organizing it, arguing for how amazing it will be for the students' education, and the an even larger pile of paper afterwards, bluntly telling just how amazing it all worked out and checked some tick boxes the upper management cares about.
This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before.
Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time?
There is a lot of research out there showing worse educational outcomes as class sizes increase. This is one of the areas where wealth disparities in education manifest; rich areas tend to have smaller class sizes, and historically the very rich would pay for private tutors for their kids, whereas poor kids are stuck with bigger class sizes, less individual attention from educators, and typically average worse educational outcomes.
>This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before.
There's plenty of drudge work teachers do that's not "fostering the development of inquisitive minds". Grading papers, preparing lesson plans, etc. I don't see why not at least some of that can be offloaded to AI.
> Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time?
Khan Academy showed that one great teacher distributed to millions does that pretty well. It doesn't make sense for every teacher in the country (the worst and the best) to create their own syllabus and teach the same thing over and over again.
Sure, let's have 100 child classes which are hell on earth for everybody involved, starting with the little kids who will literally be scarred for life from it.
Teacher costs should be going up as much as we can afford, to keep reducing class sizes as a fundamental part of quality education.
I agree that admin is ripe for efficiency gains. A local school district cut dozens of teaching roles, not even one person from their extremely bloated central administration. It's also out of touch with the schools with no campus visits, and serves mainly as a hindrance to any sort of actual work going on inside the individual schools. It's a horrible caricature of bureaucracy.
> Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.
It can't.
The only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes.
Every study and every practical example of doing that ever done shows that it negatively impacts student outcomes.
Not because the teacher is failing to be whatever it is you imagine "more productive" to be but because there is a minimum amount of attention needed per student for them to not fall through the cracks and one person's attention is not scalable.
> only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes
And hours in class. Or productivity of time in class. I'm not saying the former is desirable or latter feasible. But the education "production function" has three inputs.
Oh, it definitely can, in a way very similar to the way you can dramatically increase doctor's success rates by being selective about who you treat.
Specifically: take the most disruptive students and eat them. (Be stealthy about it, the point is not fear of punishment.) The productivity difference between a classroom that spends 90% of its time on instruction vs 90% of its time on classroom management is massive.
That's why you have to be careful about applying business notions like "productivity" to governmental duties like education and mail and highways. (I dearly wanted to include healthcare or at least hospitals in the list, but I live in the US.) Businesses can and should be selective and take higher risks. For governmental tasks, productivity isn't even well-defined. If you're failing (or eating) 20% of your students but the other 80% are doing amazingly well, is that better or worse than 99% of everyone doing just okay? How about if everyone's test scores go up and practical ability goes to shit? (This is not a hypothetical, not where the kids have figured out how to use ChatGPT even for the tests. Which is a lot of places.)
Teaching is nowhere near Pareto optimal right now, so I'm not arguing in favor of the status quo. I'm just saying you have to be very, very careful when pushing for "productivity".
You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year, but you would increase costs; and in some parts of California, you would need to rebuild schools with air conditioning to hold classes effectively in the summer.
Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem to work, either.
>You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year
Productivity is output divided by some input, either labor or money. Working for longer isn't going to magically increase productivity.
>Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem to work, either.
Right, I don't have a specific solution for increasing teacher productivity, but it's not obvious that it's a law of economics that it can't increase. People thought lawyers and doctors couldn't be automated away, then came chatgpt.
> People thought lawyers and doctors couldn't be automated away, then came chatgpt.
Form contracts and will generators and what not was automation for lawyers. Plenty of enter symptoms to get a diagnosis stuff out there for doctors; or the more paletable, enter symptoms for charting, get a suggestion and enter medicines and get alerts about interactions.
in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled.
--
California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the state’s Department of Finance projection of only 10,000 students.
The decline is driven by lower birth rates and a reduction in immigration, with the latter exacerbated by families fearing enforcement actions. Los Angeles County accounted for nearly half of the state's total loss, losing 32,953 students, largely due to a decrease in newcomer students within the LAUSD.
Private schools saw a steeper drop of 6.6%, while homeschooling declined by 3.7%.
The enrollment drop is causing budget deficits, leading to staff layoffs, program cuts, and potential school closures.
Hispanic students experienced the largest numeric loss (48,064), while white students saw the largest percentage decline (2.68%).
English learner enrollment fell by 8.2%, partly due to reclassification and partly due to out-migration.
From glancing at the numbers it looks pretty similar, but there's been a huge drop in births in California in the last 10-20 years so it's probably the last few years where that will be true.
Peak birth year was 1990 after booming through the 80s, births started falling off a cliff after 2008 and last year there were about the same number of births as in 1980 despite the population increasing by 80%.
A quick google search of the UNSECO target is "at least 15% of total public expenditure (or 4–6% of GDP)" and both the US (~5%) and California (~4-5% of gdp) already pass that criteria.
It is just a fact that California schools are laying off a large percentage of personnel and getting rid of many programs. Pink slips by the thousands have been sent out that will take effect in a couple months at the end of the school year. If you don't know that, you are not informed.
Those links are completely irrelevant because they are out of date. Budget had temporarily increased due to the availability of COVID funds, and now there is a very harsh snap in the other direction. Shortfalls are directly linked to actions by the Trump administration, and their downstream impacts. Every state needs to step up and deal with it.
If you want a vivid illustration (from an adjacent state) about the impact of pessimistic fiscal projections: Oregon has an infamous "kicker" law that refunds income taxes collected in excess of projections (plus a 2% margin). The state faces the same budgetary challenges as California... but can't project too pessimistically lest it leave money off the table.
Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly. It essentially means that in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions, which is half of the point of a state-level political entity in the first place. Balanced budgets and pay as you go are fabulous over the medium term, but over the short term of a year or two during a disaster or recession, governmental spending is critical as a counterbalance to reduced investment and general employment income.
California is also required to refund taxpayers if it accumulates too much revenue. The state's spending is capped at some limit set in 1979 with adjustments for inflation and population.
Well maybe they should "project" a certain amount of revenue that goes to savings every year automatically, instead of waiting for a boom year windfall.
> in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions
Genuine question: have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?
The alternative is borrowing in downturns. That works because during recessions interest rates are low. The opposite problem then manifests, however, which is the state continuing to borrow through the recovery.
Maybe instead of citing shortfalls and surpluses, such laws should cite unemployment and income growth.
> have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?
"Let's give the money back to voters because they will like that and we'll figure out something else in tough years" is, like, the quintessential example of "raiding these coffers."
It's basically like big tech companies turning profit into stock dividends because investors love it and the CEO will be handsomely rewarded, and who cares about long-term R&D. When big companies do that we blame MBAs and capitalism.
Oregon has a biennial budget, so some Oregon employee predicts how much money Oregon will earn over the next 2 to 3 years (which is basically impossible to do), and then Oregon leaders have to come up with a spending plan equal to or less than that revenue estimate.
However, Oregon's costs have no relation to the revenue that the state predicted it would get, so it is constrains the solution space when unforeseen costs or cost trends happen. For example, Oregon predicts a certain amount of revenue, but gets 3% more than the predicted revenue, but that is because prices for everything went up 3% more than expected, now Oregon has less money than it needs to pay its expenses (since it has to return any revenue which was 2% over the estimate).
Oregon is the only jurisdiction I have ever heard of with this kind of strict refund law, and its rigidity seems to be the main issue, along with the 2 year forecast requirement (since forecasting even 1 year is hard enough).
The article doesn't really explain the overall budget, for scale it looks like in the 2025-2026 budget year CA planned to spend about $228B compared to $216B revenue ($227B in the previous year).
This is wild. A mistake of this magnitude should result in several positions becoming vacant and many politicians being ineligible for any future offices.
If a government can’t budget accurately everything else they do is likely even less competent. Every number and statistic they report should be treated with suspicion. Without clear data who is to say they are doing anything helpful at all?
The errors were all within the CalPERS pension fund. The pensions are guaranteed by the state, so the fund is notorious for a complete lack of fiduciary duty, and these types of errors track with the general quality of their operation.
Alternatively, since we're spit balling, the administrators and/or accounting staff decided to strategically error on the side of a shortfall because its politically impossible to get the state to fully fund the pension obligations or to stop effectively raiding it.
Recall that funds like this are one of the largest owners of the hedge funds that drive up property values for American homes via their reckless speculation. The state (well states really -- CA is not alone) desperately needs to make more than market returns to guarantee their unfunded pension liabilities.
People understand that everyone makes mistakes and firing anyone who does only leads to people prioritizing hiding their mistakes vs. fixing them.
It’s helpful, whenever you find yourself saying something like, “the only real explanation to me”, to think of a good faith version before assuming that the most cynical take is reality.
I think there are mistakes and then there are mistakes.
There is a point where the postmortem needs to stop being blameless.
Getting things like this wrong is an existential risk to a important institution. We can’t be genuinely concerned about lost faith in institutions and also not hold them to the highest levels of accountability.
"Gov. Newsom in January projected the state would have to grapple with a $2.9 billion shortfall. The confirmed miscalculation means that shortfall could be much smaller."
So, the title is just plain misleading.
California is less in deficit than they earlier calculated.
Correction: This is a correction to the forecast - not the budget.
By the state's own admission, there could be as much as an $18 billion dollar budget deficit if the state economy fails to grow as projected. It could also be a smaller shortfall if the economy is even better than expected.
Miscalculations are pretty common and this is why they are revised several times a year.
> "This isn’t a calculation error – it’s revision to better estimate how these payments are made," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Newsom's Department of Finance.
Nice excuse. Reminds me of "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is".
"The memo stated Gov. Newsom's administration made two errors. The first involved double counting CalPERS contribution rates for the upcoming year, which the LAO said was a $1.6 billion miscalculation. The second issue involved incorrect contribution rates when the administration calculated how much money the state would need to contribute to CalPERS in the years ahead. The LAO stated that mistake amounts to about $450 million. "
...
"This isn’t a calculation error – it’s revision to better estimate how these payments are made," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Newsom's Department of Finance. "We told legislative leaders and the LAO back in February that we would update how we estimate these payments once this issue was identified. We’ve already made that adjustment, and it will be reflected in the revised budget next month."
Can someone please explain to me how double-counting isn't a calculation error? Best attempt wins.
When a political organization has no qualms about putting out a statement like that, it's a sign that they do not respect you.
Anyone who thinks this is a glitch in the system, or an honest mistake, should shift their mindset and start thinking more like a detective and less like a politician.
California has been steadily declining for years, now. Waste, mismanagement, fraud are commonplace. This needs to be investigated by impartial third parties that can't be bought and paid for whose commitment must be verified via polygraph. Those that are found guilty need to be prosecuted and jailed.
Being that this is California, what will end up happening is that the politicians will end up investigating themselves and miraculously be found not liable.
> California's legislative leaders have known for months but did not make the issue public.
Why would they give up a chance to make more money from the people? The government never misses an opportunity to pad its coffers. Reminds me of the
CA State Parks department, which squirreled away millions of dollars and then was crying about lack of funding and hence wanted to shut down some parks.
Fun fact: I recently vacationed in Hawaii and couldn’t help but notice, despite groceries costing about 2x, gas there is a dollar cheaper than at home in California. California just can’t get enough tax money.
When you include all taxes (eg property tax), there's surprisingly little variation between states: For example, TX is 6th-lowest at 8.6% of income, while CA is 46th-lowest at 13.5% of income. Hawaii is 48th-lowest at 14.1%
Not really a fact, more of a bad anecdote. Currently HI gas is just $0.17 cheaper than CA, and I see many CA gas stations at $5.09, just like HI. A decent chunk of that comes from strict CA low pollution refining, you know, to help you breath better...
Related: In the German state of Baden-Württemberg they were miscalculating the number of active teachers for 20 years due to a software error, causing the state to employ 1440 fewer teachers than actually intended.
https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/bildung/baden-wuerttemberg-s...
How is that related? That's a long term calculation error vs short term forecasting error.
From my point of view, the Jedi are a state-funded militia coded as a tax exempt non profit!
Why does tax exemption matter if they are state-funded?
Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted with mass layoffs this year and next, and the miscalculation looks like 2/3 of the budget shortfall, hiding such a basic and impactful error requires a much better explanation than I see in that article. It looks like it was done to stifle debate about budget allocations, which would be necessary in the circumstances.
The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.
Technology needs to form a union if it wants to fight existing union structures.
It turns out that our kids learn better from humans than machines.
Ever dealt with a kid who has had too much screen time? It’s fucking awful.
True, a kid who has had too much screen time is not good, just like a kid who has had too much lunch is not good. That doesn't make lunch bad, it just means the kid needs the right amount.
Screens can be helpful for kids (mine have learned a ton from Khan Academy and other online tools), but kids will have different thresholds. Some will only be able to learn a little from screens because they can't work independently. Others can learn a lot. Blanket statements like "kids lean better from humans than machines" are not helpful. They obscure the fact that there is typically one teacher for 25 kids, whereas there might be 25 screens. Even if a screen is only 1/10 as good as a teacher, it could be that learning from a screen is better than learning from a teacher (who is busy with your classmates almost all of the time).
My kid learned more math when she was doing AoPS for 2 yrs than when she was in class listening to lectures she already knew, followed by worksheets she had already mastered. Machines enable much more differentiation.
In my country every few years a bunch of people invent some new method to teach kids how to read. Completely ignoring that humans have been doing exactly that for at least 5000 years.
Education is a business.
Sick first order of reasoning failure
in this thread: people discover Baumol's cost disease
It shouldn't be surprising when you see what the educational technology money is actually spent on. Ive seen like a dozen "smart boards" purchased by my schools from the 00's and never once seen one used. Or how about the completely dog shit computer testing software that fails one-two word answers based on random capitalization or punctuation with no indication on what they expect. Each thing sold as the solution to all the past problems, but introducing more problems itself without actually solving any old ones.
Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper?
The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.
> vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers
My 1,500-student public California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director.
34 administrative hires. One per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.
One of the key problems with schools is that everyone thinks they can run them better because they went to school once and have an idea.
If we left it to domain experts and got politicians to back off, it would be neat to see what educators could achieve.
It’s because there are tons of laws and regulations regarding minors in school, and administration tends to be homegrown (initial expertise in teaching) rather than explicitly developed to navigate the social, political and legal landscape. I’d wager that more than half of those positions are “best practice” staffing decisions in response to this landscape. A handful might also be due to expressed needs and wants of parents. Likely wasteful overall, but students, teachers and families would likely feel the impact and not be satisfied if any positions were axed.
Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?
> Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?
Food-services manager (it's all oursourced to Aramark), data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior clerical assistant, one of registrar or attendance, two of site maintenance, one of the network specialists (probably both–one across the district is plenty), and probably at least one of the counselors and the separate social science & athletics person, who should just be one of the physical education teachers. That's about ten people, or a million dollars–minimum–in annual savings.
Someone still has to coordinate with Aramark.
Data-processing specialist and print-center technician both sound like fancy names for secretarial roles.
You're honestly saying schools need fewer counselors in what has been generally regarded as the worst generation for child mental health in years?
Bring food same time everyday? Here's a weekly food menu, repeat weekly? Whew, that's a lot of work. Email me if you need me. I'll be in Hawaii.
Counselors aren't qualified to deal with mental illness.
you can tell this is someone who hasn't been in an operations role^
and sure, counselors aren't qualified to deal with mental illness
but what exactly do you believe is a child's path to qualified help if their parents are unengaged or the source of the problems?
> Someone still has to coordinate with Aramark
As a full-time position? Aramark literally ran the lunch counters. I could see it being a district-level position, though it would be better positioned as a general procurement role.
> Data-processing specialist and print-center technician both sound like fancy names for secretarial roles
I agree. I was suspicious when I didn't see a secretary for each of the assistant principals listed.
> You're honestly saying schools need fewer counselors in what has been generally regarded as the worst generation for child mental health in years?
I am. Unless the counselors are constantly doing actual therapy I'm deeply sceptical you need that many for a student body of that size. The fact that they're assigned based on the first letter of your last name versus anything remotely thematic or behaviour based seems to emphasise that hypothesis, for me at least.
(When I went to the school, there were bullshit jobs everywhere. One of the counselors didn't deign to meet with students. Her role was "strategic" or some nonsense.)
> One of the counselors didn't deign to meet with students.
Why would she? That'd distract her from the actually important work of fabricating the reports that make her looking amazingly competent.
My mom is a retired teacher and her main complaint during the last 10-15 years of work was that with all the bullshit paperwork they're required to fill, the teachers literally don't have the time to just plain interact with the students. You want to make an odd, unscheduled extracurricular event? Waste a small pile of paper before organizing it, arguing for how amazing it will be for the students' education, and the an even larger pile of paper afterwards, bluntly telling just how amazing it all worked out and checked some tick boxes the upper management cares about.
> Someone still has to coordinate with Aramark.
The deputy principal for the administrative and provisioning work, whatever it's called in English? The superintendent?
Can some of the roles be done by fewer individuals? Do you really think there's 0 waste in ever growing schools administrative staff?
>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.
Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.
This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before.
Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time?
There is a lot of research out there showing worse educational outcomes as class sizes increase. This is one of the areas where wealth disparities in education manifest; rich areas tend to have smaller class sizes, and historically the very rich would pay for private tutors for their kids, whereas poor kids are stuck with bigger class sizes, less individual attention from educators, and typically average worse educational outcomes.
>This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before.
There's plenty of drudge work teachers do that's not "fostering the development of inquisitive minds". Grading papers, preparing lesson plans, etc. I don't see why not at least some of that can be offloaded to AI.
There is already a robust online market for lesson plans, both free and paid.
> Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time?
Khan Academy showed that one great teacher distributed to millions does that pretty well. It doesn't make sense for every teacher in the country (the worst and the best) to create their own syllabus and teach the same thing over and over again.
Sure, let's have 100 child classes which are hell on earth for everybody involved, starting with the little kids who will literally be scarred for life from it.
Teacher costs should be going up as much as we can afford, to keep reducing class sizes as a fundamental part of quality education.
I agree that admin is ripe for efficiency gains. A local school district cut dozens of teaching roles, not even one person from their extremely bloated central administration. It's also out of touch with the schools with no campus visits, and serves mainly as a hindrance to any sort of actual work going on inside the individual schools. It's a horrible caricature of bureaucracy.
> Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.
It can't.
The only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes.
Every study and every practical example of doing that ever done shows that it negatively impacts student outcomes.
Not because the teacher is failing to be whatever it is you imagine "more productive" to be but because there is a minimum amount of attention needed per student for them to not fall through the cracks and one person's attention is not scalable.
> only axis upon which teacher "productivity" could increase is by increasing the size of their classes
And hours in class. Or productivity of time in class. I'm not saying the former is desirable or latter feasible. But the education "production function" has three inputs.
Oh, it definitely can, in a way very similar to the way you can dramatically increase doctor's success rates by being selective about who you treat.
Specifically: take the most disruptive students and eat them. (Be stealthy about it, the point is not fear of punishment.) The productivity difference between a classroom that spends 90% of its time on instruction vs 90% of its time on classroom management is massive.
That's why you have to be careful about applying business notions like "productivity" to governmental duties like education and mail and highways. (I dearly wanted to include healthcare or at least hospitals in the list, but I live in the US.) Businesses can and should be selective and take higher risks. For governmental tasks, productivity isn't even well-defined. If you're failing (or eating) 20% of your students but the other 80% are doing amazingly well, is that better or worse than 99% of everyone doing just okay? How about if everyone's test scores go up and practical ability goes to shit? (This is not a hypothetical, not where the kids have figured out how to use ChatGPT even for the tests. Which is a lot of places.)
Teaching is nowhere near Pareto optimal right now, so I'm not arguing in favor of the status quo. I'm just saying you have to be very, very careful when pushing for "productivity".
You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year, but you would increase costs; and in some parts of California, you would need to rebuild schools with air conditioning to hold classes effectively in the summer.
Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem to work, either.
>You could increase per teacher productivity by running 12 months of school per year
Productivity is output divided by some input, either labor or money. Working for longer isn't going to magically increase productivity.
>Covid showed distance learning doesn't work for most kids. So you can't eliminate real estate costs or hire educators in low cost areas. Computerized education doesn't seem to work, either.
Right, I don't have a specific solution for increasing teacher productivity, but it's not obvious that it's a law of economics that it can't increase. People thought lawyers and doctors couldn't be automated away, then came chatgpt.
> People thought lawyers and doctors couldn't be automated away, then came chatgpt.
Form contracts and will generators and what not was automation for lawyers. Plenty of enter symptoms to get a diagnosis stuff out there for doctors; or the more paletable, enter symptoms for charting, get a suggestion and enter medicines and get alerts about interactions.
> You could increase per teacher productivity by running
Many would quit. The only perk is having the holidays free.
What I observe as a parent; 95% of the teacher's job cannot be scaled with technology.
Not to mention there are more students.
in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled.
-- California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the state’s Department of Finance projection of only 10,000 students.
The decline is driven by lower birth rates and a reduction in immigration, with the latter exacerbated by families fearing enforcement actions. Los Angeles County accounted for nearly half of the state's total loss, losing 32,953 students, largely due to a decrease in newcomer students within the LAUSD.
Private schools saw a steeper drop of 6.6%, while homeschooling declined by 3.7%. The enrollment drop is causing budget deficits, leading to staff layoffs, program cuts, and potential school closures. Hispanic students experienced the largest numeric loss (48,064), while white students saw the largest percentage decline (2.68%). English learner enrollment fell by 8.2%, partly due to reclassification and partly due to out-migration.
That's surprising. Surely there are still more than there were 30 years ago?
From glancing at the numbers it looks pretty similar, but there's been a huge drop in births in California in the last 10-20 years so it's probably the last few years where that will be true.
Peak birth year was 1990 after booming through the 80s, births started falling off a cliff after 2008 and last year there were about the same number of births as in 1980 despite the population increasing by 80%.
$2 billion dollars is a pretty small piece of the $90 billion the state pays towards schools.
The budget cuts are because enrollment is down.
> Given that school budgets are absolutely gutted
What now?
https://edsource.org/2026/how-california-compares-to-other-s...
https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
Compared to cost of living though?
Your own link says CA spends less than UNESCO’s 15.0% standard.
Also, you could frame this in a much more information dense way by making an active claim about something instead of just spamming a bunch of links.
A quick google search of the UNSECO target is "at least 15% of total public expenditure (or 4–6% of GDP)" and both the US (~5%) and California (~4-5% of gdp) already pass that criteria.
The UNESCO target is calibrated for developing countries. Few developed countries spend that much on non-tertiary education: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/public-spending-on-e.... Canada spends about 3.3%, less than California.
(I think your numbers include tertiary education. My numbers are K-12 only. I’m not sure which of those the UNESCO target is based on.)
The confusion/disconnect between those two benchmarks suggests something about the size of CA's public expenditure...
The UNESCO standard is meant for developing countries.
In 2021, California spent about $121 billion on K-12, out of a GDP of $3.4 trillion, or about 3.5% of state GDP. That puts it above the OECD average of 3.3%, around the same as France at 3.5%. blob:https://www.oecd.org/702dcc03-0749-41b6-af41-112fd1af1bfb. (This is the parent page: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/public-spending-on-e.... You have to select non-tertiary education, which is basically what we call K-12.)
It is just a fact that California schools are laying off a large percentage of personnel and getting rid of many programs. Pink slips by the thousands have been sent out that will take effect in a couple months at the end of the school year. If you don't know that, you are not informed.
Those links are completely irrelevant because they are out of date. Budget had temporarily increased due to the availability of COVID funds, and now there is a very harsh snap in the other direction. Shortfalls are directly linked to actions by the Trump administration, and their downstream impacts. Every state needs to step up and deal with it.
Here is one example of how that is happening, it is a far more significant problem than just this: https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr25/yr25rel35.asp
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If you want a vivid illustration (from an adjacent state) about the impact of pessimistic fiscal projections: Oregon has an infamous "kicker" law that refunds income taxes collected in excess of projections (plus a 2% margin). The state faces the same budgetary challenges as California... but can't project too pessimistically lest it leave money off the table.
Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly. It essentially means that in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions, which is half of the point of a state-level political entity in the first place. Balanced budgets and pay as you go are fabulous over the medium term, but over the short term of a year or two during a disaster or recession, governmental spending is critical as a counterbalance to reduced investment and general employment income.
California is also required to refund taxpayers if it accumulates too much revenue. The state's spending is capped at some limit set in 1979 with adjustments for inflation and population.
https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/qa-why-hitting-gann-li...
Well maybe they should "project" a certain amount of revenue that goes to savings every year automatically, instead of waiting for a boom year windfall.
> in boom years the state can't accumulate any general funds for recessions
Genuine question: have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?
The alternative is borrowing in downturns. That works because during recessions interest rates are low. The opposite problem then manifests, however, which is the state continuing to borrow through the recovery.
Maybe instead of citing shortfalls and surpluses, such laws should cite unemployment and income growth.
> have states had the discipline not to raid these coffers in the boom years?
"Let's give the money back to voters because they will like that and we'll figure out something else in tough years" is, like, the quintessential example of "raiding these coffers."
It's basically like big tech companies turning profit into stock dividends because investors love it and the CEO will be handsomely rewarded, and who cares about long-term R&D. When big companies do that we blame MBAs and capitalism.
> Oregon's kicker law is a textbook example of bad economic policy, sadly
You must be talking about non-economic textbooks, otherwise this makes no sense.
Oregon has a biennial budget, so some Oregon employee predicts how much money Oregon will earn over the next 2 to 3 years (which is basically impossible to do), and then Oregon leaders have to come up with a spending plan equal to or less than that revenue estimate.
However, Oregon's costs have no relation to the revenue that the state predicted it would get, so it is constrains the solution space when unforeseen costs or cost trends happen. For example, Oregon predicts a certain amount of revenue, but gets 3% more than the predicted revenue, but that is because prices for everything went up 3% more than expected, now Oregon has less money than it needs to pay its expenses (since it has to return any revenue which was 2% over the estimate).
Oregon is the only jurisdiction I have ever heard of with this kind of strict refund law, and its rigidity seems to be the main issue, along with the 2 year forecast requirement (since forecasting even 1 year is hard enough).
The article doesn't really explain the overall budget, for scale it looks like in the 2025-2026 budget year CA planned to spend about $228B compared to $216B revenue ($227B in the previous year).
https://ebudget.ca.gov/2025-26/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSummary/Sum...
This is wild. A mistake of this magnitude should result in several positions becoming vacant and many politicians being ineligible for any future offices.
If a government can’t budget accurately everything else they do is likely even less competent. Every number and statistic they report should be treated with suspicion. Without clear data who is to say they are doing anything helpful at all?
The errors were all within the CalPERS pension fund. The pensions are guaranteed by the state, so the fund is notorious for a complete lack of fiduciary duty, and these types of errors track with the general quality of their operation.
Alternatively, since we're spit balling, the administrators and/or accounting staff decided to strategically error on the side of a shortfall because its politically impossible to get the state to fully fund the pension obligations or to stop effectively raiding it.
That's what California's Parks department did, 15 years ago: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/State-parks-director-res...
Recall that funds like this are one of the largest owners of the hedge funds that drive up property values for American homes via their reckless speculation. The state (well states really -- CA is not alone) desperately needs to make more than market returns to guarantee their unfunded pension liabilities.
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Or!
People understand that everyone makes mistakes and firing anyone who does only leads to people prioritizing hiding their mistakes vs. fixing them.
It’s helpful, whenever you find yourself saying something like, “the only real explanation to me”, to think of a good faith version before assuming that the most cynical take is reality.
I think there are mistakes and then there are mistakes.
There is a point where the postmortem needs to stop being blameless.
Getting things like this wrong is an existential risk to a important institution. We can’t be genuinely concerned about lost faith in institutions and also not hold them to the highest levels of accountability.
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"Gov. Newsom in January projected the state would have to grapple with a $2.9 billion shortfall. The confirmed miscalculation means that shortfall could be much smaller."
So, the title is just plain misleading.
California is less in deficit than they earlier calculated.
Correction: This is a correction to the forecast - not the budget.
By the state's own admission, there could be as much as an $18 billion dollar budget deficit if the state economy fails to grow as projected. It could also be a smaller shortfall if the economy is even better than expected.
Miscalculations are pretty common and this is why they are revised several times a year.
This but for government:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/z4meh0/game_design...
> "This isn’t a calculation error – it’s revision to better estimate how these payments are made," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Newsom's Department of Finance.
Nice excuse. Reminds me of "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is".
"The memo stated Gov. Newsom's administration made two errors. The first involved double counting CalPERS contribution rates for the upcoming year, which the LAO said was a $1.6 billion miscalculation. The second issue involved incorrect contribution rates when the administration calculated how much money the state would need to contribute to CalPERS in the years ahead. The LAO stated that mistake amounts to about $450 million. "
...
"This isn’t a calculation error – it’s revision to better estimate how these payments are made," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Newsom's Department of Finance. "We told legislative leaders and the LAO back in February that we would update how we estimate these payments once this issue was identified. We’ve already made that adjustment, and it will be reflected in the revised budget next month."
Can someone please explain to me how double-counting isn't a calculation error? Best attempt wins.
When a political organization has no qualms about putting out a statement like that, it's a sign that they do not respect you.
Agree completely. You can say "it was this kind of error not that kind of error" but not "it's not an error it's a revision".
They made a revision to fix the error.
A little “bank error in your favor” sitchu. We love to see it.
"See what?" --Gavin
Didn't something like this just happen last year (or year before) but in the opposite direction?
Oops! They're still far easier to deal with than any federal agency.
They should have used Claude Code for Excel.
it’s less than 1% of the budget, and the state keeps overspending. Don’t get too optimistic
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2 billion surplus? that's good for about 150 linear feet of high speed rail track in the middle of Salinas.
Another indicator that the administration hasn't got a fucking clue what or where their (your) money goes.
My Opinion:
Anyone who thinks this is a glitch in the system, or an honest mistake, should shift their mindset and start thinking more like a detective and less like a politician.
California has been steadily declining for years, now. Waste, mismanagement, fraud are commonplace. This needs to be investigated by impartial third parties that can't be bought and paid for whose commitment must be verified via polygraph. Those that are found guilty need to be prosecuted and jailed.
Being that this is California, what will end up happening is that the politicians will end up investigating themselves and miraculously be found not liable.
******
Unbiased-AI Deep Dive:
https://archive.ph/jdyO4
Give it back?
> California's legislative leaders have known for months but did not make the issue public.
Why would they give up a chance to make more money from the people? The government never misses an opportunity to pad its coffers. Reminds me of the CA State Parks department, which squirreled away millions of dollars and then was crying about lack of funding and hence wanted to shut down some parks.
Fun fact: I recently vacationed in Hawaii and couldn’t help but notice, despite groceries costing about 2x, gas there is a dollar cheaper than at home in California. California just can’t get enough tax money.
The best comparison is probably "overall tax burden": https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/tax-burden-by-state...
When you include all taxes (eg property tax), there's surprisingly little variation between states: For example, TX is 6th-lowest at 8.6% of income, while CA is 46th-lowest at 13.5% of income. Hawaii is 48th-lowest at 14.1%
Not really a fact, more of a bad anecdote. Currently HI gas is just $0.17 cheaper than CA, and I see many CA gas stations at $5.09, just like HI. A decent chunk of that comes from strict CA low pollution refining, you know, to help you breath better...
https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/