By Thomas Ultican 9/8/2026
This post looks at the state of public education in California. It is important to be clear that charter schools are not public schools but are private schools financed by the public. I firmly believe that the great gift from our forefathers was public education for all. It may be surprising for many people but it can be shown that public schools are superior to all forms of privatized schools including charters and high-end private schools. Therefore, the continuing expansion of charter schools in California can only be explained by their superiority over public schools in marketing.
The first step in this evaluation was to download and graph enrollment data. The next six graphics show the rate of privatization and other k-12 school enrollment trends.
Figure 1:
Figure 2:
Figure 3:
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Figure 5:
Figure 6:
Figure 6 is based on data provided by the World Population Review. For the past decade, a right-wing friend (yes, I have a few) has been telling me that people have given up on California and that there is a mass exit occurring. This graph says that my friend is misinformed. In fact, between 2015 and 2025 the state’s population grew by half a million people.
Interestingly, Figure 1 based on data from the California Department of Education shows that California’s publicly supported student population decreased by half a million students between 2015 and 2025. One possible explanation for this decline might be that many children started attending private schools. However, Department of Education data graphed in Figure 5 shows that from 2015 to 2025 private school enrollment only grew by 13,775 students. The Little Hoover Commission reports on two factors that are likely behind the public-school enrollment declines; the population is aging and fertility rates are decreasing both of course leading to less students.
Figures 3 and 4 break out the attendance of the five largest ethnic groupings. Hispanic students constitute about 56% of California’s student population. Their attendance from 2015 to 2025 decreased by 150,000 students. The second largest ethnic group, White students, saw their enrollment fall by more than 370,000 students over the same period. African Americans decreased by 85,000 students and Filipinos by 29,000 students. Asian enrollment grew by 37,000 students marking them as the only ethnicity to expand their numbers.
Growing Privatization
Since their 1994 inception, charter schools have been educating an expanding percentage of California students. Figure 2 is a graph of the percentage of charter school students enrolled in California over past 10 years. The data shows that charter school enrollment has averaged 0.35% percentage growth per year going from 9.7% of total enrollment in 2015 to 12.7% in 2025.
California’s charter school establishment and growth have always been a billionaire financed and led effort. The first California charter school was authorized in 1994. The original charter school law capped the number of these schools at 100; however, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, successfully campaigned to end that limitation.
A powerful proponent of the privatization movement has been the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). It was founded in 2003 with an uncompensated Caprice Young listed as CEO. CCSA’s first tax report was filed less than two months after the founding and showed no activity or appointed board. The next tax report in 2004 listed Walmart billionaire, John Walton on the first CCSA board of directors. He died in a plane crash in 2005 and his billionaire niece, Carrie Walton Penner, took John’s seat on the board. Reed Hastings was a CCSA board member from 2007 until 2015. (TIN: 51-0465703)
There were other billionaires supporting the charter school movement. The history tab at the NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) website states, “NewSchools Venture Fund was created in 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers.” Doerr and Byers are both billionaires. Kim Smith was a friend of John Doerr’s and a graduate student at Stanford when she wrote a two-page paper outlining NSVF which promotes charter schooling.
Bill Gates and the Walton Family Foundation are the largest individual donors to NSVF. In 2020 their grants totaled $226,881,394. Over the last 20 years, billionaires John Doerr, Laurene Powell Jobs and John Sackler have served on the NSVF board.
Research by the Network for Public Education revealed that charter schools are plagued by instability. In the first three years of operation, more than 15% of new charter schools close their doors and eventually half of all charter schools go out of business. Charter promoting organizations like CCSA and NSVF counter that charter schools get better test results, but testing by California’s Department of Education shows the opposite.
Some parents who put their children in charter schools do not recognize the risks. In many states, charter schools are exempt from most state and local laws, rules, regulations, and policies governing public and private schools, including those related to safety, personnel and students. Unlike public schools, charter schools in California are not required to meet earthquake safety measures. Dr. Lucy Jones of the California Seismic Safety Commission was asked if she thought public schools were safer than charter schools. Her simple answer was “Yes.”
The most rigorous and most expensive study of charter school performance commissioned by the US Department of Education found no overall positive effect for charter schools. Maybe the reason billionaires like charter schools is a mindless belief in private business or maybe they see a business opportunity. Whatever is the case, the result is they are undermining that great public education gift from America’s forefathers.
Conclusion
Public education in California is facing two issues, a decreasing student population and attack by the unbelievably wealthy. Like almost every other issue plaguing society, the increased concentration of wealth in a relatively few hands is a significant driver for education privatization. It follows that stopping the demise of public education requires reversing today’s great concentrations of wealth.
Public education in California is relatively healthy but the ongoing charter school privatization drive is creating two problems. Our public schools have been the great training ground for democracy and social cohesion. With more than 90% of students attending public schools, Californians had a common background and a shared understanding of democracy in action. Now that is disappearing. With more than 12% of California students attending privatized schools we are losing commonality and the ideals of a democratic society.
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