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In case you were otherwise occupied yesterday when Gov. Jerry Brown was delivering his State of the State address, here’s what he had to say about education.

With respect to education, the strong economic recovery and the passage of Proposition 30 has allowed us to increase spending on public schools and community colleges from a low of $47.3 billion in 2011, to $71.6 billion this budget year. That is a 51 percent increase in overall spending, with significant sums allocated under the Local Control Formula to provide for the unique challenges that face low-income students, English learners and those in foster care.

This pattern of educational spending reverses the historic practice of assuming that all students encounter similar circumstances. They do not. The Local Control Formula, now in its fourth year, recognizes this fact with extra funding to enable educators to overcome the barriers that confront non-English speaking families and those with low and very modest incomes.

I am proud of how California has led the country in the way it is returning control to local school districts. For the last two decades, there has been a national movement to micromanage teachers from afar, through increasingly minute and prescriptive state and federal regulations. California successfully fought that movement and has now changed its overly intrusive, test-heavy state control to a true system of local accountability.