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EVERYTHING ABOUT CALIFORNIA’S school system is complicated, starting with the question of how bad its public schools are. Comparisons show that students in California fare worse than the national average in mathematics, reading, science and writing. But the numbers are unfair, says John Mockler, an expert in Californian education who has been following its fortunes since the 1960s. For instance, half of California’s pupils are Hispanic, and 40% of those hardly speak English. Most other states don’t face this problem.
Nonetheless, there is a broad consensus that California’s public schools are not what they could be, nor what they used to be. California ranks 47th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in spending per pupil ($7,886, against an average of $11,397). It ranks last in the number of students per teacher: California’s legislative analyst estimates that most classes have 28-31 pupils. And it ranks 42nd in the proportion of pupils who graduate (63%, against a national average of 69%).
Indeed, it would appear that California, at some point in the past generation, must have decided to disinvest in its children and to reallocate resources to such things as prisons. When Mr Mockler first started examining school finance in the 1960s, California spent about 5.6% of personal income on schools. It now spends 3.5%. For a state that sees itself as a pioneer of the global “knowledge economy”, that seems bizarre.

A. 어휘
mediocrity 평범, 凡庸(범용). complicated 복잡한.
fare 대접받다, 되어가다. Hispanic 라틴 아메리카 사람.
Nonetheless 그럼에도 불구하고. consensus 의견의 일치.
the District of Columbia 워싱턴市. legislative analyst 입법 분석가.
proportion 비율. pupils 학생. disinvest 투자를 중지하다.
reallocate 재할당하다. bizarre 奇怪(기괴)한, 별난.