This office matters far less than it did the last time you voted on it. Under the budget Newsom signed in June, a commissioner appointed by the governor takes over the Department of Education from the superintendent on January 15, 2027. Whoever wins this race is sworn in earlier that month and will run the department for a matter of days.

The superintendent gets a vote on the State Board of Education, which grows from 11 members to 13 and decides what students are expected to learn, approves textbooks, and runs the state tests. The office also comes with seats on the boards that run the community colleges, CSU, and UC, and a platform to speak for public schools.

Why Barrera?

Textbook approval is the biggest lever this office has left, and reading is where California is failing. Only 47% of kids read at grade level, and SFUSD is in the bottom 10% of 287 districts. California's answer in 2025 was a phonics law that districts can adopt or ignore. Mississippi went further, moving from 49th in fourth-grade reading in 2013 to about the national average by 2019 by training teachers in phonics, putting reading coaches in struggling schools, and holding back third graders who couldn't read. Richard Barrera calls it "worth studying seriously."

He would have the Board track a short list of statewide outcomes and report publicly on whether they improve, rather than keep adding goals.

California does not suffer from a shortage of goals. It suffers from scattered responsibility and uneven follow-through.

Richard BarreraSan Diego Unified School Board Trustee

At San Diego Unified, Barrera pushed the district to require every graduate to complete the courses needed for UC and CSU admission, and he says the share of Latino students meeting that bar rose from 25% to 70% within a decade. He did that with a district trustee's power to set graduation requirements. This office doesn't have that power, but it does put him on the boards that run UC, CSU, and the community colleges, where those graduates apply next.

Newman was right

In June we endorsed Josh Newman, partly because he was the only candidate willing to say this job should be appointed rather than elected. He was right.

Under the old arrangement the governor-appointed State Board of Education set policy and a separately elected superintendent carried it out, so when results were bad they deflected blame to each other and nobody was held responsible. A December 2025 report from Policy Analysis for California Education found that the split produced overlapping responsibilities and unclear accountability, and recommended putting the department under a director appointed by the Board while the elected superintendent evaluates whether the system is working.

Both candidates opposed the change. Barrera called it an "end-around attempt to take away responsibility from the person that the voters are electing to improve our public schools," and Shaw called it an "unconstitutional power grab." We think they're wrong, though it doesn't bear much on your vote, because neither of them can undo it.