Why California Parents Are Frustrated With Schools | Nicole Canion

Me moving from this state to another one, I didn't really see how bad it was until I left. How are the classes run? They don't cultivate a community that is let me try harder so that I can do better. It's let's bring it down so that they feel good about themselves. What is the result of this kind of class? There was no value assigned to homework. So you can either not do it, and if you do do it, there's no value assigned to any of it. So you could be wrong on everything and not learning, but you still did it so you get full credit. Well, how do you know what you're learning if you're not realizing that there's a difference between there's a right answer and a wrong answer? My guest today is Nicole Canyon, former California resident and parent. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. We want to make sure we level the playing field for everybody. And that's not reality. What happens when they want something really bad in life and they don't know how to follow through to get it? Why are some parents leaving the state to seek better education for their children? Are our current state policies affecting our children's educational potential? Keep watching to see a parent's perspective on why people are leaving the state for better public schools. I'm Siamak Korami. Welcome to California Insider. Thank you so much for the opportunity. We want to talk to you about people living in California, and you have left because of schools. Can you explain to us why? Well, my child's always been in a private school setting for the most part, based on some of the things that I experienced in my own education, being born and raised in California and going through the public school system. I just don't really, especially after COVID and seeing how everything changed in the landscape of education, I just really wasn't interested in having my daughter go through education here in California. Did you have to put her into public school? It was an option to put her in public school. The last two years before we moved out of the state, I actually homeschooled her myself. Why did you not put her in public school? We had put her in public school for a short period when she was in third grade. And mind you, my daughter is very advanced. In fourth grade, she was tested with the private school that she was at, and she tested in the ninth to twelfth grade percentiles across every subject. And that being said, a lot of the schools here in California, they don't cater to the upper echelon of talented students. They kind of cater to the middle to the bottom. And it's hard as a student who is talented and or very gifted to even be engaged in a class, much less do well, especially if you notice in a lot of high achievers, they have to be engaged to be able to meet their max capacity. And she just wasn't engaged at the public school level because she was, I don't want to sound cocky or anything, but she was just very much bored with the subject matter, with the way that the classrooms were run, a lack of standards in general. Can you explain that? So how are the classes run? So at the school that we were at, there wasn't really assigned seats or even seats that, you know, faced a teacher. They had workstations where they could have bean bags or different types of seating that didn't engage children and allowed them to check out. And so the teacher would just talk at the class, wherever they may be around the classroom. And I just, me personally, didn't feel like that was an environment to engage children at that age level, to be able to pay attention and stay focused on what was being taught. What grade was it? Third grade. And so they would let kids come and just do whatever or sit wherever? I think they wanted to call it free range school. It was this free range idea that, you know, chickens can go free range and they produce great eggs. Well, let's let our kids go free range and see what they produce. And how many kids were in the class? There was about 32 kids in the class. So to me, I mean, the small setting, maybe. If I'm being open-minded, I'll say maybe. But with that many children having free range, how do you keep control of a classroom and keep people focused on the objective? And that's learning. So what was the interaction? Did you ever go to the class to see how it was or did you ever? I went one or two times. And me being as affirming of a person as I am, I try to keep an open mind about everything and not just jump to conclusions. But just based on me taking, now my daughter is in seventh grade, seeing how many years it's taken me to undo behaviors that she learned and attributed to that period of time where she was in school. It's to me, for my situation and my child, it's not conducive to the type of learning that she does. The other big thing where the public schools here in California are concerned are the curriculum. I've always been a curriculum person. Going through, I'm like almost 40. So we learned the traditional method of school memorization. None of this common core stuff was big when we were growing up. And even through college, I tutored all the way up to calculus. I couldn't even help my own daughter in her math at third grade because I taught her the way that I learned. There was no way for me to even understand the logic if there is even logic behind common core in teaching her. So I couldn't even personally help her. I actually got to the point where we had already had, always had her in private school. We were paying $800 a month for her to finish up school outside of the classroom that year on independent study. $800 a month for a tutor just to teach her the math according to the common core standards. And at that point, it was like, I'll pay $600, $700 a month to send her to private school versus pay $800 to go to a subpar school and pay for a tutor. So what was the difference in your experience? Because you saw what you went through and what she's going through in terms of common core. The answers don't matter or is it? So she would get all the answers right on her math, but she would fail the test because she didn't show work. Well, if you learn through, let's just say it's a multiplication and you learn from memorization, you know that five times five is 25 and you can just put 25. But they want you to draw blocks and pictures to show how five times five equals 25. I don't understand how that's relevant, but I understand that some kids learn differently. But from what I see with schooling in Florida versus schooling in California is, you know, Florida, I want to say Governor DeSantis did away with common core. And or if it wasn't him, it was somebody within the state. They decided common core was not going to be taught in Florida. And I think that common core is valuable, but to a certain subset of students, I think generally, and this is my opinion, most students learn the way that we did. So they are kind of making students learn a specific way. And if you even get the answers right, but you didn't go that specific way, then you're failing. Yeah, you may get the answer right. But if you didn't show your work and show your work the way that they asked you to show your work, which could vary on each different problem, then you fail. Doesn't that put just kids into a box? It does. And I think the school of thought behind common core was that they thought the traditional method of education put kids into a box. But I feel like the box for common core is much smaller of the amount of kids that actually think in that way. Because I understand, you know, learning is very different amongst children. Some people learn auditory, kinesthetic, or verbally, not verbally, visually, visually kinesthetic and auditory are the three main types of learning. And I get that. But I still think, I always tell my daughter, I'm like, you know, you need to have whatever you decide to do with your education after high school is fine. But I want her to have a very great base for education, great foundation, so that if she ever decided to pick up and do something else later on in life, that she wouldn't be lacking those basic skills to be able to allow her to pick up and do something more. And I feel like common core is, there's no, there's nothing tangible there where traditional methods, like I said, five times five is 25. But in common core, the basis is, well, it could be 25. It could be Apple. I don't know. Just to me, from a traditional sense of learning, it didn't make any sense to me. And you mentioned some behaviors that you saw in your daughter that you're undoing, like what is the result of this kind of class? So when she was in third grade, homework was not essential. Essentially, it was what, like I said, entrepreneurial. So if you did your homework, because you wanted to, there was no value assigned to homework. So we leave public school, go back to private, and I'm seeing my daughter's missing homework. She's got answers wrong. So that was the other thing. So homework was entrepreneurial in public school. And when we went to private school, it was, you have 20 questions. You get a percentage based on however many you get right on your homework. And that's your grade for the homework. Well, in public school, it was, you can either not do it. And if you do do it, there's no value assigned to any of it. So you could be wrong on everything and not learning, but you still did it. So you get full credit. Well, how do you know what you're learning if you're not realizing that there's a difference between there's a right answer and a wrong answer? So can you explain, so what do you mean homework was entrepreneurial? Did it matter doing it or not matter? To get a better definition of that, entrepreneurial to me is, when people talk about entrepreneurial spirit, it's like, it's a spirit behind it. You know, the freedom, it's me being me on my own terms. But where entrepreneurial meets very successful, I would say would be, you go from entrepreneurial to purposeful. There could be purpose behind your entrepreneurial spirit. But if you don't become intentional on making sure that you understand and you follow through with your actions, then you can be entrepreneurial all you want. It doesn't mean you're going to be a success. So essentially, they just want to see you put effort in. It doesn't matter you get it right or wrong. Well, yeah. And I think that feeds into the whole, you know, after, I mean, after I grew up, the generation beyond and generations since have all been, we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. We want to make sure we level the playing field for everybody. And that's not reality. So I feel like kids that go through school in this manner, they think that, well, they don't really have to put in the effort and be purposeful with their education as long as they're just there and they're showing up, they get credit. But what happens when they have to buy for a job? What happens when they want something really bad in life and they don't know how to follow through to get it? And then we have these generations here now that are struggling with depression and all of these different mental issues. And it's like, well, how are you set up to absorb reality? How how did you how did your parents and or your school set you up to make you realize that you're not going to get everything you want just by showing up? You're going to have to put forth that extra effort to be able to achieve the things that you want. And no one's just going to give you a trophy because you showed up. Is that what's happening to kids based on the experience you had with your daughter after being through this process? Did you see in your daughter that she's kind of developing this behavior or like thinking that everything is going to be OK as long as you put in effort? I think I think that's been that way for a while. And I think now we're at this apex where especially if you look at young adults in our society right now, a lot of things in society is catering to their feelings. Well, everybody can have feelings about whatever they want, but it doesn't make them either true and it doesn't make them doesn't make anything of them. Well, you have these feelings, that's fine. But what are you going to do with those feelings? How are you going to use those feelings to bolster you to do something better or get yourself out of that situation? And I feel like the way that our schools here are being modeled is that free to be, like I said, you and me, free to be you and me, free range, parenting, and education, where it doesn't set standards because we now have become a society of, well, if we set standards and people don't meet them, then they're going to be upset that they didn't meet them. Well, yeah, we need to bolster the ideology that you didn't get what you wanted this time around. Great. What are you going to do to get that next time? How are you going to change your behaviors to achieve what you want? And when I, like I brought up before, entrepreneurial to purposeful, that separates people who just want to be entrepreneurial to people who are successful. And I think that's missing with what I've done in real estate and how I've built my company. I speak a lot at events throughout the United States. I actually was a spokesperson for the National Association of Realtors, their Financial Wellness Institute. I was their inspirational speaker and shut down their first inaugural events by, you know, me speaking and telling my story. And I see it all the time with even just training adults is you could have the same adult sitting in your class every single week, but they don't go and they don't apply what they learn to their business. And they're just perpetual learners, but they never actually achieve because they don't know or they don't actually want to put in the effort to get to where they want to be. It's that whole romanticized notion. Everybody watches Gary Vaynerchuk. They watch all this media where people are successful. Grant Cardone, all these different people that are standing up there talking about how success is so sexy and it's to be coveted. But how many people actually buy into it and then do what they need to do to get there? So you don't think the schools here, the public schools, are teaching any of that? No. Essentially with the process they're taking. No, I don't think with the lack of standards, you're not going to teach anything to anybody. You can teach information, but what are people going to do with that information? How do they process that information and build on it is where they're lacking here in California. And did you ever ask the school system? So you noticed that since the other was very advanced you noticed that she was getting bored. Does the school system accommodate kids that are much better in certain areas? And why not? So the justification I got for them not catering to her as a gifted child was that they have far too many students who are lacking across the board to be able to give resources to the children who are excelling. So they cater to the lower end of the spectrum versus cultivate the upper end. So that was just basically a synopsis of what they told me. So you mentioned that the schools are catering towards the lower performing kids. How are they doing that? What do they do for them? Well, in general, I think the level of instruction is down at a lower end. I think they feel that the better part of kids are probably on the lower end of the spectrum so that they need to teach to that level versus teach to a higher level where kids who are on the upper end could actually be engaged and understand. So I just think in general the school experience is catered down to. So by that you mean it's a lot easier? It is a lot easier. So they make it easier so that? They make it a lot easier. They make it so that you don't have to try as hard to feel good about yourself for doing, you know, not understanding and things of that nature where they don't cultivate a community that is let me try harder so that I can do better. It's let's bring it down so that they feel good about themselves. Do you think this is going to hurt the kids after they get into the real world? I think so. And I think it's seen right now in just how society is when, you know, people of a certain generation don't get their way. They take to social media and they complain or they do this and they do that. They do a lot of belly aching, but there's no action behind it to actually fix it and figure out how to move past it and learn from it. It's just I feel like that is what society is catering to. It wasn't like this before, was it? No, I remember when I was growing up, we had GATE programs. We had programs that helped cultivate kids to achieve more that if they if they were a special if they were special, I want to say that on the end where they were just very astute, talented, they had a little bit more behind them naturally. There was programs here that would help those people move forward and do more. And they'd still be within the same class, but they would leave and go to or after school programs like GATE or things of that nature. Now, I don't really see those opportunities at all. Whereas in Florida, where my daughter just she's just starting her first she started her first year back to school in person just last August. And with her being an advanced student, they have her in all advanced place seventh grade classes. The fact that they had advanced placed seventh grade classes just blew my mind. It was like something out of a nonfiction book. Like, wait, what? You guys actually help and bolster children who are advanced. So she has a whole group of classes, her science classes, advanced place, math, advanced place, math, I'm sorry, science, math and English, all advanced place. And she's with a group of peers in those three classes that are core classes that are of the same mindset and of the same standards and probably the same family values. And I see that so much more in our small little military town of Florida than I ever did in the Bay Area of California that's supposed to be progressive. And this is a public school in Florida, right? It is a public school. And you could ask anyone that's closely related to me how much anxiety I went through of even thinking of putting my daughter in public school. It was like, oh, no, my daughter, she has to go to private school. And then when I started actually getting into the school and learning that they actually have ways to promote higher education in kids and help bolster the talented children, then it was like, wow, OK, this is unheard of. It's almost like being in an abusive relationship. You just get so used to being like, oh, I can't ask for too much because it's, you know, I'm going to get some negative commentary back. But going and seeing how they put education first, they put these values and don't just try to pigeonhole all the kids in one box in the school system in Florida is it's a huge benefit for me and my family. Did you interact with the public school here much with the principals and teachers? And did you talk to them much? What's funny is that me growing up through the same school district. So I my daughter went to public school one year in the school district that I went through myself. My grandfather was instrumental and a pioneer in developing our town of Discovery Bay in northern California. And he had his hand in pretty much everything we knew. I knew the principal growing up. We knew the superintendent. The values have changed from when I was a child up through now. And so I did. And at the time, I want to say my daughter was at that school. There was a huge upheaval with between the teachers and the superintendent. The superintendent was being investigated for gross misuse of funds to be able to redecorate her office. Yet the district was, you know, having issues in terms of paying teachers more and compensating the people who were there to teach our children. So there was a lot of political stuff surrounding that year that we were in school as well. So they weren't even remotely interested in hearing what I had to say about my child's education. What do you think has changed from when you were going to school? You mentioned your grandparents were involved in the system among the educators. Has there been a change? I think a lot of not just in education, but I think a lot of our issues as a society now stem from the fact that people have gotten away from the fact that the home is where things start, where values are taught. You know, parents, I feel like used to be way more involved with kids when I was growing up, whereas now they just send their kids to school and hope that the school produces great citizens for them. And I think a huge, huge part of it in general is just not having the family values that surround the education system. I don't think there's a lot of families that are supportive. I know a lot of my friends are teachers, and they feel like a lot of the parents just drop their kids off and just pray for the best. They don't have help with homework. They don't engage with their child's education. They just drop their kids off and think, well, someday they're going to go to college and make me proud. My mother actually used to work for a private Christian school as a teacher's aide for a number of years. She just recently moved to Florida as well. But before, just from even what she saw, even at a private school level, still parents not being engaged in their kids' education. Kids would go home and they'd have things in their folder and they'd be back the next week because the parents didn't sit and look at what the kids did that week. When I was initially talking to somebody from this organization, I said, you know, my daughter, she calls. I'm like, I'm very stealth Asian. So nobody knows I'm Asian, but I'm like, I'm that Asian mom. Like, I am that typical Asian mom. I'm going to be like, what'd you do today? Let me see your work. And let me see your test. And did you miss stuff on your test? OK, cool. Give me the test. Let's go over it. And we're going to do the problems until you understand the process. Like, this is just a recent thing I did with my daughter. And the one thing, too, that I love about Florida is that every child has an online portal and it's called Focus. And the parents create a login for each child or for themselves. And you have multiple children. They're all under one login. I can see what my daughter did at school every day. I can go in and see if she was tardy from one class to the other. I can see if she had any absences. I can see what she did that day where her major assignments are awaited, where her minor assignments are awaited. I can see her tests. They all get logged into a system. So you as a parent can log in at any given time, see where your child's at and not wait for your child to come home and whether or not they want to show you those grades or not. You can see them. And I always tell my daughter, don't ever lie to me because I know more than you know. And you can come home and say, oh, I got an A on my test and I can see you got a D. Let's go over why you got a D. So it seems like what you see in Florida is that this school, the schools and parents are working together such as a partnership. But here it seems like the parents are dropping the kids to schools and the schools are doing their thing and parents are doing their own thing. Is that? I definitely don't feel the connection in California between the schools and the parents. I feel that in Florida, absolutely. I mean, I'm not saying I know that every single parent's like me that goes in and logs in to see what their kid does every day or every couple of days. But I don't feel like here there's a lot of focus on what children are doing. And that's just speaking from my experience with what I've seen with my daughter's education. I was very much the parent that was PTA president and I'm going to do all these these great events for the kids and, you know, make I'm a very experience based person. So like I want experiences in life to mean something so that when my daughter looks back on her childhood, I didn't necessarily have things, but I experienced this and I experienced that. And so that's I feel like I'm a minority these days in terms of parenting, where I take it actually seriously. There's this life that I brought into this world and she depends on me to teach her what's right in this world and how to be a productive citizen. I don't just put that on to somebody else because they have the hat of being a teacher. I still have that responsibility to my child in our home. You know, we are spending over $20,000 per student public schools a year. We're also in California. We're also ranked among the lowest in the country in terms of the proficiencies, different math and English. Do you have any thoughts for the educators or the leaders in education? Is this fixable? So obviously you left the state because of this. Do you have any thoughts for educators? So I remember back when I was in school and we had tax bonds that were being passed in our area and my grandfather fought against them because originally Discovery Bay was a retiree's neck of the woods. Most retirees would move to Discovery Bay and they didn't have the disposable income to be able to spend on all these different tax initiatives. So he actually got painted a very bad picture because he didn't want to pass a million dollar tax benefit to the schools to get flat screen TVs in every classroom. And call me crazy, but I don't think technology has, I think it has too much of a bearing on kids now. I think that if a lot of schools get back to basics and they focus on their curriculum and they focus on things that are tangible, especially at a young age where you learn your basis and as you progress and you get older, have your computer classes, have, I mean, my daughter's in seventh grade. She's got a career clusters class. That's her elective. And in that class, she's learning typing. She's learning all of the different Microsoft things. There's a time and a place when those should be brought in. I'm sure everything that we do now is based on technology. But if you don't have that basic foundation for education and you only have technology, how are you going to move forward from that point on? I think that a lot of the schools are so focused on, we want this tech, we want that tech, we want all these different things for our students. But if kids can't even add, subtract, multiply and reason on their own or critically think, then you're just creating a whole another generation of zombies. And that's kind of where I feel like, you know, my fiance and I are very much where our kids are concerned. We raise them. We don't have technology to raise them where, OK, did you do what you're supposed to do to be able to earn your time on your tablet or on your phone? OK, great. It's it's something that they earn. It's not a certainty. They don't get it just because. And I think a lot of the schools are so into this whole, we want tech, tech, tech, tech. Tech's going to drive the future. But you have to have a basis first. And I think where we've gotten away from having the solid education system here in California is that the basics aren't even being administered correctly. And if they take a step back and saw what actually worked in the past, because California used to be very high rated in terms of education and me moving from the state to another one, seeing how much really you don't. I mean, I didn't really see how bad it was until I left. And then, like I had said before, you know, it's like you go into the situation with a new school and you see all the things that are these resources that are actually available to you and and to your kids where I didn't see any of that here. And I like I said, born and raised here. And I was blown away by the possibilities and the things that my daughter can do with her education in Florida. And was it difficult for you to leave? It was very difficult to leave. I love the landscape here. Most people that are leaving California would say that, you know, the landscape, the weather is second to none and you can go to any other state and they'll agree in California in that regard is amazing. But in terms of opportunity and in terms of finances, it's just become a hard place to coexist and actually have a full life where you're not just working to make ends meet and pay whatever you need to survive where we have a life in Florida. We we aren't house poor. We have a nice house, but we're not just paying the mortgage and hoping to get by just because gas is through the roof. And I mean, talking this morning, gas is just just below $3 in Florida right now. And here I'm looking around at the signs and it's over six. How does that? How does that help somebody build a life and create a living here in this state? So do you have any other thoughts for audience? I would just say for anybody who cares about your child's education as much as I do. I mean, it's very something that I've always held near and dear to me because I'm teaching my daughter how to live without me. If if I can't be here for her for some reason, I know I'll have done my job if my daughter can be educated, be able to create a life that she is happy living on her own terms. And I would say for parents to really make sure that they fight for those rights for their kids, where they get to stay at the forefront of their child's education, where that power isn't being taken away from them. And that could go on to a completely different subject. But the one thing I can say about Florida, where it varies from California, is that Florida is very much parent focused, where the parents keep their power and they're where they should be over their own children. They are not advocating kids get shots or advocating that they have these different hormones being injected to them at ages where they're not supposed to even be thinking about that. They should be able to be kids. Well, parents have that right still in Florida, where that is still at the forefront, as it should be. You give birth to these children and someone else is going to tell you what you can and can't do with them, because there's something in the media that draws them to think that there's something this week and next week there's something else like the power, whether it be education, medical, any of those different aspects stay with the parent. And that's one thing I do appreciate in states like Florida, where you actually have power to make sure that your kids move forward in life the way that you intended them to. Nicole Fritz Canyon, it was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you so much again. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for watching. Please click the icon on the left to subscribe to our channel. We bring you the most pressing issues California is facing with straightforward and in-depth interviews. See you in the next video.