Californians will soon settle the race for state superintendent between Sonja Shaw and Richard Barrera. Shaw is the president of the Chino Valley Unified School District board and received 24.5% of the vote in the June primary. Barrera is the president of the San Diego Unified School District board and received 19.3% of the vote.
The state superintendent has been the head of the California Department of Education but that is set to change in January due to the passage of Assembly Bill 181, which shifts those responsibilities to an appointee of the governor. Barrera and Shaw, then, are running for an office with public visibility but little direct power.
The two candidates recently faced off in a debate organized by EdSource. As is becoming increasingly unavoidable in our elections, the debate quickly deteriorated into a hostile progressive versus MAGA event.
The candidates were asked how they will see their role if elected in light of the changing nature of the office. While Shaw focused on fighting AB 181 in court to restore the superintendent’s powers, Barrera acknowledged that the office will now involve taking charge of a bully pulpit and collaborating with state education officials on reform.
On their priorities, both candidates acknowledged the unacceptable state of literacy and math skills in California and vowed to advocate for greater classroom resources and increased education spending. They did diverge on some of the details with Shaw prioritizing getting trans girls out of female sports, while Barrera spoke on setting clear goals and expectations, shrinking classroom sizes, and addressing chronic absenteeism, which sits at around 20%.
We can debate the efficacy of Barrera’s proposals, but Shaw demonstrated a concerning level of unpreparedness, starting with her oblivious and dismissive attitude about the problem of students skipping a large percentage of their classes.
Shaw had trouble pronouncing “chronic absenteeism” and stated, “Sorry I can’t even speak right now, I’m just so confused on all these buzzwords that Richard keeps throwing around.” Chronic absenteeism is not a buzzword, it’s a legitimate problem across the country and it is significantly contributing to poor academic performance.
Together with her seeming obsession with culture war issues like transgender students in sports, Shaw gave the impression that she’s not appropriately focusing on the more important reasons why our education system is failing students.
If you only went by what she posts on Instagram, you’d think that transgenderism is the only thing she cares about. Transgender students in female sports is a worthwhile conversation to have but given that it happens so rarely and that there are much more pressing problems with our education system, it indicates that she will place an outsized emphasis on relatively unimportant matters.
But, Shaw does get some things right. To her credit, in contrast to Barrera, Shaw did speak on the folly of lowering standards and sending unprepared kids to college. “Richard, you said that we can’t even offer the SAT … You told the professors it’s their job [to teach K-12 math]. It’s absolutely not their job, it’s the job of K-12 to ensure that our kids master reading, writing and math.”
According to Barrera, SAT and ACT exams only work to exclude students from higher education. He added that as a member of the UC Board of Regents, which he would be as state superintendent, he would advocate for college professors teaching elementary and middle school-level math to their students.
It’s not only not the job of college professors to teach elementary school math, they also can’t because they’re too busy teaching college-level math. In a short semester, there is no time to teach students remedial math and doing so would sacrifice instruction for students who are able to learn advanced math and who will need it to further their studies for STEM careers.
Students should not be sent to college to fail, they should receive the help that they need to catch up before entering higher education.
Staying on brand for political debates nowadays, the debate devolved into ideologically motivated attacks. Barrera mirrored Xavier Becerra’s strategy during the last gubernatorial debate in tying Shaw to the Trump administration, and added that she “calls teachers groomers and demons,” and “turns every school board meeting into a circus.”
Shaw claimed that Barrera has Trump Derangement Syndrome and stated that, “you guys even covered up sexual harassment of children.” The federal report she cited attributed the San Diego Unified School District’s failures to address sexual harassment to problems with coordination between officials rather than a cover up, but there is no respect for factuality in today’s political debates.
It looks like the office of the superintendent will be limited to advocacy and persuading others to use their power to effect change.
Shaw does not demonstrate that she can work collaboratively. Instead, she came off as belligerent throughout the debate, which will render her ineffective when the implementation of her agenda relies on others willing to work with her. That would hardly justify her $210,000 salary if elected.
But on the other hand, who’s to say that anyone would have any better luck influencing state education policy now that the office has been gutted of authority?
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group