Maybe the reason voters keep electing turkeys to office in California is that the state’s schooling system turns out half-literates. The latest:

Statewide, 52 percent of students in grades 2 through 11 tested proficient or advanced in English and 48 percent met those goals in math in the 2010 Standardized Testing and Reporting, or STAR, programs. California public school students took the tests in the spring.

How can you have a functioning democracy with such low achievement?

And the answer isn’t more money. As noted in some of my earlier pieces, California ranks near the top in money spent. Expenditures in fiscal 2007-08 were $12,134 per student, on average, in the state. For a class of 20, that’s $240,680.

For that money, why aren’t they turning out 80% scholars?