Tuesday, 28 July 2026, 3:46
On July 10, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 181, a landmark piece of legislation that restructures California's TK-12 education governance. The law, co-authored by Assemblymembers David Alvarez (D-San Diego) and Darshana Patel (D-Poway), merges the policy-making State Board of Education with the implementing Department of Education, creating a single, accountable system. This reform, long recommended by experts for over a century, aims to streamline decision-making and improve outcomes for California's nearly 10,000 schools and six million students. Critics have long argued that overlapping authority between the governor-appointed State Board, the elected superintendent and the Department of Education has hindered coherent policy implementation. State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond called the reform necessary for coherence and continuous improvement. The bill passed the Legislature last week after multiple hearings.
AB 181 establishes an appointed Education Commissioner who will manage the Department of Education under the State Board of Education's oversight. This change ends the historical division where the Board set policies and the Department implemented them separately, often leading to inefficiencies. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction will retain an independent role as a statewide voice for students, families, and educators across TK-12 and higher education. Newsom emphasized that the reform creates a more effective system with greater accountability for taxpayer investments.
Starting Jan. 15, the California Department of Education will be led by the Education Commissioner, a newly created position appointed by the governor with confirmation by the Senate. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction will no longer oversee the CDE. The bill describes the superintendent’s new role as an “independently elected nonpartisan voice for the public interest.” The Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) supported the restructuring, with Legislative Advocate Kordell Hampton noting that the SPI will continue to advocate for education by calling attention to performance gaps and attendance recovery efforts. The bill also tasks the new Education Commissioner with developing recommendations for a second phase of education governance consolidation, with an interim report due by June 30, 2027, and a final report by Oct. 1, 2027.
Other components of the bill include expanding the State Board of Education from 11 to 13 members, adding one member appointed by the Senate President pro Tempore and one by the Speaker of the Assembly, and replacing one expiring nonstudent member with the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The bill also creates a new Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and authorizes additional staffing. The Education Commissioner will replace the SPI on several bodies, including the California School Finance Authority and the State Allocation Board, while the SPI will be added to the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges. Additionally, the State Superintendent will gain voting membership on the State Board of Education and all three major higher education governing bodies, including the University of California Board of Regents, the California State University Board of Trustees, and the California Community Colleges Board of Governors.
A December 2025 report from Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) concluded that, “We must take on the challenge of modernizing our governance system now.” The bill language cites a century of critiques of California’s “irrational” education governance structure. Some have criticized the timing of the changes, right after voters in the June primary supported two State Superintendent candidates with the assumption that their role would remain the same. Candidate Sonja Shaw called it an “unconstitutional power grab,” although the provisions have broad support from organizations including the California School Boards Association and Children Now. Support also came from the California County Superintendents, EdVoice, and equity organizations.
ACSA made several recommendations on the reorganization proposal, including to create stronger checks and balances. In March, then ACSA President Dr. Daryl Camp participated in an Assembly Education Committee informational hearing about the restructuring, where he provided a critical lens for what LEAs need from state educational leadership. Hampton said schools and districts would not see immediate changes as a result of the bill. “I think it’s going to be a very slow, but a transformative thing for the education field,” he said, adding that more unity between CDE and SBE would make things easier for administrators.
The bill also replaces the SPI with the Education Commissioner on specified bodies, including the Healthy Start Support Services for Children Program Council, the K–12 High-Speed Network advisory board, the School/Law Enforcement Partnership, the California Broadband Council, the Interagency Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship, and the State Council on Developmental Disabilities. Additionally, the Education Commissioner will be added to the California Academic Partnership Program, the California Education Interagency Council, and the governing board of the California Cradle-to-Career Data System.
The legislation has sparked criticism from incumbent State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and others running to succeed him. Thurmond, who is termed out of office this year, said he heard few details until the Legislature passed AB 181, which was sponsored by Assemblymembers David Alvarez and Darshana Patel as part of a budget package late last month. He told The Sacramento Bee that while he thought it would be a good idea to overhaul the office, he preferred voters approved it, instead of Newsom doing an “end run on the Constitution.” “What they’ve proposed as the alternative duties for the state superintendent are a complete weakening of what’s already a very weakened position,” he said. Richard Barrera and Sonja Shaw, the top two candidates running to succeed Thurmond in November, have also slammed the plan. Shaw, a conservative activist who is president of the Chino Valley Unified School District board, pointed out in an X post that voters had previously rejected four attempts to reshape the superintendent’s office. “He (Newsom) snuck in a backdoor budget bill to gut the elected State Superintendent and hand its responsibilities to a governor’s appointee,” she wrote. Barrera, the San Diego Unified school board president, previously criticized the bill’s sponsors for not including teachers and other educators in the legislative process. “I call on those who pushed this legislation to bring those representing classroom educators into the process for implementing this bill,” he said.
Shaw has vowed a court challenge, warning that the bill strips voters of their right to hold the schools chief to account. Steve Campos, a teacher and member of the Perris Union High School District board of trustees, told Fox News Digital, “As a teacher and voter, I am completely against this undemocratic power play.” Campos expressed deep concern over the timing, saying, “As a school board member, I am extremely disappointed in the fact that he is trying to take away the will of millions of voters who are parental rights supporters. Californians deserve the opportunity to elect someone who supports their values statewide, since the passage of AB 1955 took away some of their local control. The governor was also in support of taking away their local voice through AB 1955. My hope is that the governor’s plan will be legally challenged and overturned.”
With new authority granted by AB 181, the Superintendent will now serve as a voting member on all three higher education governing bodies and the State Board of Education and will be able to foster needed alignment and coordination of education policies from early childhood through postsecondary education for the betterment of California’s students. The measure also adds two legislative appointees to the State Board and clarifies roles and responsibilities.
Before being adopted by the Assembly and Senate last week, the proposal was the subject of multiple hearings over several months in both houses of the Legislature. The informational, policy, and budget committee hearings included hours of questions and testimony from a wide range of experts, including elected state and local education leaders and representatives of nearly all statewide education associations and major education equity organizations.
“California has inherited one of the most fragmented education governance structures in the nation, which challenges our ability to implement efficiently the transformative initiatives that move our schools forward. Our work as education leaders requires that we adopt a continuous improvement approach to ensure that our system is coherent, effective, and responsive to the changing needs of our students and our society,” said State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond. “The signing of Assembly Bill 181 will help us build on the meaningful progress the state has made in recent years to support greater equity and excellence in our public schools.”
The presentations from the Legislative Analyst’s Office and others highlighted the many studies and reports over the years that have uniformly found that, in the words of the Legislature’s 2002 Master Plan for Education: “California’s K-12 education system is governed by a fragmented set of entities with overlapping roles that sometimes operate in conflict with one another, to the detriment of educational services offered to students.”
“This reform is long overdue. For nearly a century, independent reports have called for fixing our fragmented education governance system,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez (D-Chula Vista), Chair of California State Assembly Subcommittee No. 3 on Education Finance. “Past leaders failed to act, and our students have paid the price, as reflected in the persistent and unacceptable achievement gaps experienced by Black and Hispanic students. AB 181 is a call to action that begins by aligning authority, accountability, and resources. I thank Governor Newsom for his partnership and for recognizing that the status quo is not good enough. I am committed to ensuring this transition is transparent, accountable, and focused on the only thing that matters: improving student outcomes.”
“The current system has regularly prevented the state from aligning policy and administration of our public schools, and creates confusion for our local communities regarding the state’s goals,” said Dr. Darshana R. Patel (D-San Diego). “My own constituents have consistently asked for better implementation and oversight of state programs to ensure their children’s educational success. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different outcomes.”
During the Assembly floor debate before voting on the proposal, supporters noted that more than half of California students do not meet state English language arts standards, nearly two-thirds fall short in mathematics, and Black students continue to post among the state’s lowest proficiency rates. They argued that the current governance structure has blurred accountability for educational outcomes and that the new model creates clearer responsibility for improving those results. Critics counter there is no evidence indicating that a reorganization alone will raise student achievement.
Marshall Tuck, chief executive officer of EdVoice, said, “Aligning the California Department of Education more closely with the State Board of Education creates clearer lines of authority, increased accountability, and greater coherence across California’s education system.” He said the change will strengthen support for California’s more than 1,000 school districts and improve student outcomes.
Troy Flint, chief communications officer for the California School Boards Association (CSBA), told California Black Media, “AB 181 is a needed reform that creates a clearer and more streamlined model with the potential to enhance coherence and transparency in state government, but it is merely the first step toward an improved system of education governance.” Flint said California still needs an operational framework that establishes statewide goals, measures progress and evaluates results. “Fixing the org chart alone will not address these issues,” he said.
SSPI Tony Thurmond told California Black Media he supports improving California’s education governance system and said having an Education Commissioner who reports to the Governor “is not an unusual thing.” However, Thurmond said, “the governor and the backers of this proposal have never articulated a single outcome measure.” “I’d rather be talking about things that we know are proven to help kids do better,” he said, including literacy, dyslexia screening, high-dose tutoring, phonics and the science of reading. He also said “the effect and the outcome of this is to weaken” the office of the State Superintendent.
The reforms were included in the California 2026 Budget Act signed into law by Governor Newsom on July 10. That budget provided over $150 billion in education funding for pre-K to grade 12 students, a record amount for California. The reforms are intended to unify authority over development of educational policy that currently is made by the governor, the legislature and the state Board of Education with the administration of programs and oversight of school districts that is currently the purview of the state Department of Education headed by the state superintendent of public instruction. The distribution of education policy, budget, and administration roles has been criticized by state leaders since shortly after they went into effect in the 1920s. Today, the most persuasive voices within the state educational establishment, school district leaders, lobbyists, philanthropic groups, and other experts have concluded that the existing system promotes confusion at the local level because the state Department of Education regulators lack input into the policies they are administering, have little influence over funding decisions made by the governor and the legislature, and are largely insulated from them. As Superintendent Thurmond noted, jurisdictional or bureaucratic changes do not guarantee or even suggest any improved educational outcomes for California public school students. The new law, set to go into effect in January when California will have elected a new governor and superintendent of public instruction, vests “all executive and administrative functions of the Department [of Education]” in the education commissioner who will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by a majority of the 40-member state Senate. The state superintendent of public instruction, still elected by the voters, will be relegated to managing a handful of deputies and serving on the State Board of Education, University of California Board of Regents, and Community College Board of Governors. One of the major California teacher unions made this point in being one of the few major opponents of the bill. Tony Thurmond, the current state superintendent of public instruction who leaves office in January, has complained of his almost complete exclusion from the governor/legislature deliberations that produced the changes and stripped his successor of traditional authorities. Richard Barrera and Sonja Shaw, the two candidates running in November for the largely hollowed out office, have also criticized the change. Shaw has blasted it as defying the will of the voters while Barrera has optimistically focused on the continued value of the office as a bully pulpit for education and children, particularly as a member of the state education boards. Neither Xavier Becerra nor Steve Hilton has publicly commented on the reforms; primarily they were enacted after the June primary vote. The Becerra campaign website does not currently discuss education among his priorities, while the Hilton website promises to “ensure that 100% of students meet state math and education standards,” attacks teacher unions, vows to “protect parental rights,” and decries “the failure of our government-run schools [a]s an outrageous scandal we cannot tolerate any longer.” The legislative reforms make selection of the education commissioner one of the next governor’s most important appointments. As Superintendent Thurmond noted, however, jurisdictional or bureaucratic changes do not guarantee or even suggest any improved educational outcomes for California public school students. In the short term, they enable the current governor and legislature to point to the reforms as their response to poor educational outcomes, and still be able to ask future voters for more time for the reforms to be implemented and take effect. Similarly, adoption of the reforms at the state level permits local school districts and educators to make the same “let’s wait and see” response to parents and communities who want better educational outcomes from the record amount of dollars being spent on education. Meanwhile, the state superintendent of public instruction, the one statewide elected official focused solely on education, has significantly less clout.
In a related move on July 9, Newsom signed California's 2026 education budget at Willett Elementary School in Davis. The budget includes a $2.4 billion increase to the special education base rate—a 43% rise—along with funding for inclusive instructional practices, diploma pathways for students with significant disabilities, and support for districts with extraordinary special education costs. Assemblymember Patel called these investments unprecedented, noting they address critical needs for students with disabilities.
This $2.4 billion allocation is part of a larger financial strategy within Newsom’s proposed 2026 budget, which includes an unprecedented investment of over $151 billion in public education from transitional kindergarten through 12th grade. The funding aims to ensure that all educational agencies across California have equal access to resources aimed at boosting per-student spending in special education programs.
The education budget also provides paid family leave for teachers (14 weeks of pregnancy leave), expanded dual enrollment opportunities for high school students to earn college credits, and investments in community schools and middle/high school modernization. Assemblymember Alvarez stressed that these measures help teachers start families and prepare students for a changing workforce.
In addition to the governance and budget changes, several new laws took effect on July 1, 2026, focusing on student safety, mental health, and reducing distractions. These laws require all California schools to adopt cellphone policies limiting use during school hours, provide at least one gender-neutral bathroom, and implement stronger child abuse prevention measures.
Assembly Bill 3216, renamed the Phone-Free Schools Act, mandates that every school district, county office of education, and charter school adopt a policy limiting student cellphone use during the school day. The law aims to curb classroom distractions, bullying, and addiction to devices. At least 35 states have enacted similar laws or policies. Governor Newsom stated, “We know that excessive smartphone use increases anxiety, depression and other mental health issues — but we have the power to intervene. This new law will help students focus on academics, social development and the world in front of them, not their screens, when they’re in school.” A 2024 survey by the Association of American Educators found that 70% of teachers ranked cellphone use among their top five concerns, with more than half citing distraction and 26% citing mental health concerns.
Senate Bill 760 requires all California school campuses—except those with only one male and one female bathroom—to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom, clearly identified and kept unlocked during school hours. The purpose is to allow any student to use a bathroom without shame or stigma, according to the California Department of Education.
Senate Bill 848, authored by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Alhambra, expands background checks for job applicants at schools and requires training for teachers, administrators, and students on recognizing signs of grooming or potential abuse. The law requires districts to adopt and post safe-environment and abuse-prevention policies, including standards for employee interactions and prohibitions on inappropriate electronic communications. By July 1, 2026, the state superintendent must provide resources for age-appropriate abuse prevention instruction, with an opt-out for parents. The law also broadens mandated reporter definitions to include school board members and some volunteers, and establishes a statewide data system for tracking substantiated employee misconduct investigations, to go online by July 1, 2027. The new law is expected to cost the state about $2.5 million, primarily for staffing at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The signing ceremony in Davis, Yolo County, highlighted the local impact. Davis Joint Unified School District Superintendent Matt Best noted that schools face staffing shortages and high student needs, making every dollar count. Assemblymember Patel, representing Poway in San Diego County, tied the reforms to her community's expectations for accountability and outcomes. The legislation directly affects school districts across California, including those in Poway and Davis.
California's education governance has been criticized for decades due to the split between the State Board of Education and the Department of Education. Recommendations for unification date back to the early 20th century, with multiple task forces and commissions calling for reform. The current move follows Newsom's State of the State address proposal and builds on prior efforts to improve school funding and oversight. A 2002 Master Plan for Education highlighted fragmented governance operating “in conflict with one another,” and similar calls for reform appeared as early as 1921.
The change makes California the latest in a long line of states to shift power over schools to the governor. At the start of the 20th century, around two-thirds of states elected their chief state school officers. After California’s change takes effect, that figure will be down to 11. After California’s change takes effect, 19 states will have their top school officers appointed by governors. The remaining 20 are appointed by state boards of education, according to 2026 Ballotpedia data. Ohio made a similar change in 2023, when it stripped a superintendent appointed by a state board of its power to run the state education agency, placing that power instead with a governor-appointed director. Before that, Indiana switched from an elected state superintendent to an appointed one after a 2017 law change.
The decision comes out of a desire for a more “integrated, internally consistent” educational system, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
The president of the California Teachers Association, David Goldberg, called the shift undemocratic in an interview with ABC10 after the law changed. “When people have a right to vote on some things, you can’t willy-nilly take that right away,” he told the local news station.
Lupita Alcala, a researcher at Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), praised the reform, noting that PACE research by Jeannie Myung, Heather Hough, and Julie Marsh helped inform the conversation about strengthening coherence, alignment, and support across California's education system. Alcala emphasized the role of rigorous, nonpartisan research in informing public policy and expressed gratitude to Governor Newsom, Assemblymembers Alvarez and Patel, legislative leaders, education partners, and the many educators, researchers, and community members who engaged with the work. She stated, “Bringing greater clarity to governance, roles, and responsibilities has the potential to strengthen implementation, improve support for districts, and ultimately better serve California's nearly six million students.”
During an interview with CBS News Sacramento, Newsom defended the legislative changes, stating that they reflect a response to widespread calls for reform within the public school system. “Change has its enemies, and I’m for change,” he declared. He acknowledged his disagreements with the current state superintendent, Tony Thurmond, stating his approval of the new direction. He expressed pride in responding to the demand for a fresh approach to public education. However, these changes have sparked controversy. Republican candidate for California State Controller, Herb Morgan, condemned the alterations as “shameful” and harmful to democratic processes. Reflecting on previous unsuccessful attempts to achieve similar reforms through voter propositions, Morgan criticized the legislature’s approach, suggesting it undermines the will of the electorate. CBS News Sacramento sought commentary from Superintendent Thurmond regarding Newsom’s assertions, to which Thurmond reiterated his belief that such significant decisions should be left for voters to decide, rather than being enacted through legislative maneuvers.
AB 181 and the accompanying education budget represent a significant shift in California's approach to public education. By unifying governance and investing heavily in special education, the state aims to deliver better results for students and educators. These changes are expected to improve accountability and support for California's diverse school system. The reforms take effect in January 2027, coinciding with the next governor and superintendent taking office, with transition planning and reporting requirements in place. Meanwhile, new laws on cellphone policies, gender-neutral bathrooms, and child abuse prevention are already in effect, further shaping the school environment for the 2026-27 school year.
