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Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies.

Status-quo power structures don’t want to deal with an engaged, educated, and informed citizenry… that’s one reason why public education suffers. The 6,190,425 k-12 students in 9,888 public schools in the state of California… are organized through the 1,047 school districts, each with its own unique bureaucracy to deal with…Teachers Unions, Charter Schools, Test Scores, and Politicians create a dynamic in public education that often puts the children’s interests down the list. A recent study published by the Los Angels times showed that public schools have improved their scores more than mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s charter schools, that raises some questions about charter schools. As School Board Members are elected, the campaign process has turned into a battle ground for privately run charter schools. The Los Angeles Unified School District has been a visible example of this with the Mayor’s pro-charter agenda leading him to financially and politically support From Charter Schools, to The Parent Trigger, which would allow organized parents of poor performing schools to change the leadership of their school, the Oil Extraction Tax for Education, a ballot initiative that would raise $2 to 3 billion for education, and the Dream Act… the public has been searching for policy that could improve the state of public education. But, the current state of public education isn’t so cut and dry. Because of the constant restructuring brought on by inconsistent funding it is difficult to pinpoint what effect this or that policy had. Before we can plan for the future we must be able to effectively identify the current situation. However somethings are clear: we are graduating kids from high school that can’t read or do math. Our schools actually teach child-like curiosity out of us with regimented regurgitation and a system more focused on a piece of paper that says you can think, a degree, than an actual education that develops the ability to think. And with the California Postsecondary Education Commission losing all of its funding for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, identifying graduation rates for the CSU and UC system will become a little more difficult… it makes sense though, why should we be funding an agency that lets us know that the 6 year graduation rate for CSUs is below 50% With 112 community colleges, 23 CSUs, and 10 UCs, California’s public higher education system is known throughout the world, but the CSU and UC systems just passed the point where student tuition accounts for more of total funding than public input. The fact that student debt has surpassed credit card debt as the largest form of debt in the United States speaks volumes to how young people are assimilated into the system. With all that said, Clown College is starting to look mighty fine.