With many thanks to the Pacific Research Institute and executive producers, Lance Izumi and Vicki Murray, and filmmaker Nick Tucker, we had a great Sacramento premiere of the short documentary film, “Not as Good As You Think” on Tuesday evening.

The film is based on the book of the same name and focuses on the California’s education system and the fact that in many middle class neighborhoods where the schools may look nice, the reality is that schools are under-performing and as a whole, our secondary schools are not keeping up with the rest of the world.

The film presents the case that a system of school choice, not unlike what is happening in Sweden, whereby the money the state pays to educate the child follows the child, and gives parents the right to choose where to send their child to school, could work very well here in California and work to improve our public schools by providing them with some earnest competition.

I’m posting the trailer of the film here.  If you are interested in seeing the entire film, please contact me and I will work to get you a copy.

I also recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jaime Garza on Time Warner’s “Local Edition” program to once again talk about the role of community based organizations in light of state budget cuts. There are many holes in state provided services that these community based organizations can fill.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down again with Steve Swatt on the Comcast Newsmakers program to discuss how I believe that in the face of this terrible economy and our state budget crisis, there are many community-based organizations that can fill the gap and provide many of the services that most previously looked to the state to provide. Contrary to the beliefs of many of my colleagues in the Assembly, Government is not the only answer when it comes to providing services. The STRIDE Center in the Bay Area is once such organization and I discuss what they do in the video.