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  • It’s time to repair our fractured math system

    It’s time to repair our fractured math system


    A teacher helps a student with a math problem.

    Credit: Sarah Tully /EdSource

    Deep, active learning of mathematics for all students.

    We applaud this goal of California’s new math framework, an increasingly urgent priority in our data-rich, technology-enhanced age. However, the framework is only a guideline. Ensuring that schools and classrooms have the resources — including appropriate policies and high-quality teachers — to achieve the goal entails repairing fractures in our education landscape.

    Consider high school graduation requirements, which are literally all over the map:

    • Students in San Francisco and Palo Alto complete a minimum of three math courses, including Algebra II. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, East Palo Alto students attending Sequoia Union high schools can finish with just two years of math, and just one year of algebra. So can students in Sacramento.
    • Los Angeles has a three-year math requirement and permits Algebra II alternatives for the third year. In nearby Long Beach, all graduates complete four years of math, including Algebra II.

    This disarray is possible because California requires just two years of math to graduate from high school. It is one of only three states with such a low requirement. Admission to the state’s public universities, however, requires at least three years of math, preferably four. A majority of districts have set a higher bar that matches or approaches college admission criteria.

    But for many California students, the framework’s vision of all students completing three or four years of math remains just that — a vision, not a reality. Too many of them are being left out of the math opportunities that are increasingly important for participating in 21st-century professions and civic life. Research links taking four years of high school math to college access and success. But a quarter of California seniors take no math at all.

    The gap in requirements, however, is just one barrier to deep math learning — one that won’t be solved without bridging a second gap, a teacher gap. Doing that demands a commitment from our public universities.

    Two decades ago, California State University and University of California teacher preparation programs collectively enrolled more than 38,000 would-be teachers per year. The two systems now produce fewer than 10,000 teachers a year. Teacher preparation enrollments declined by 76% from 2001 to 2014 and have not recovered since.

    The Covid-19 pandemic didn’t help keep teachers in math classrooms. In a 2021 national survey of 1,200 school and district leaders, 46% of districts reported shortages of qualified secondary mathematics teachers. In California, nearly half of new math teachers enter the classroom without a credential, according to teacher supply reports.

    These shortages fall hardest on poor schools — those serving students with the greatest needs — which have 40% more teachers lacking qualifications than the richest schools do. One of us has witnessed this firsthand as a teacher, coach and professional development leader. In Los Angeles, some schools have few to no permanent mathematics teachers. In one middle school, for example, every math teacher was a long-term substitute. Students had multiple teachers each school year, sometimes for three years in a row. This continual churn of uncertified teachers virtually guarantees that little math will be learned and exerts a devastating impact on students’ preparedness for college,

    Confronting the crisis directly means building a teacher pipeline and investing in high-quality, ongoing professional development. A range of strategies would support this goal. They include expanding Golden State teacher fellowships and teacher residences dedicated to science and math teachers. Districts can also consider signing bonuses and retention bonuses for qualified math teachers as well as protection from potential layoffs. Teaching institutes, such as those the state funded in 2001, would also help ensure more and better math instruction.

    Instead, the latest contentious debates have focused on narrower issues, often centering on university admission requirements. In 2019, it was CSU’s proposal to add a year of math or quantitative reasoning coursework to admission requirements. It was ultimately shelved.

    Then it was the question—raised by an earlier draft of the framework — of middle school math acceleration. Without starting Algebra I in middle school, it is difficult for students to have calculus on their transcripts, which many perceive as a disadvantage in applying to selective universities. However, acceleration policies have traditionally contributed to tracking, in which Black and brown students have been assigned to lower-value math sequences. Vocal San Francisco parents — who objected to San Francisco Unified’s experiment and insisted that students be able to take Algebra I in middle school — are one reason the framework now leaves that decision up to local districts.

    A current dispute centers on including options such as statistics and data science — in addition to Algebra II — on the UC system’s list of math courses that fulfill the three-year requirement. After initially supporting expanding options, UC’s admissions board recently reversed itself.

    Those are important issues, but the skirmishes detract from more fundamental issues. When students take Algebra I and which math courses they are allowed to take in high school is immaterial if they take only two years of math or if they lack qualified teachers, period. Ultimately, ensuring math opportunity for students means investing in quality teachers. They hold the keys to deeper math learning.

    •••

    Kyndall Brown is the executive director of the California Math Project, which is mandated to implement California’s math standards with a focus on supporting low-performing schools. 

    Pamela Burdman is the executive director of Just Equations, a policy institute that works to rethink the role of math in education equity.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • GOP Has a New Culture War Target: Superman

    GOP Has a New Culture War Target: Superman


    Democrats are tied up in knots trying to frame “the right message.”

    Republicans are focused relentlessly on stupid, misleading culture war issues, invented out of whole cloth. They skillfully maneuver voters into arguing about fake issues, enabling them to sidestep their truly terrible policies and goals.

    A few years back, Republicans launched a full-scale attack on “critical race theory,” which demonized any honest examination of American history. Parents turned out to school board meetings to protest the phantom CRT, which allegedly made white kids feel bad.

    Republicans harped on the issue, and red states passed laws banning CRT and other “divisive” concepts. The base fell for the anti-CRT campaign hook, line, and sinker.

    Have you heard about CRT lately? NO. It served its purpose. On to fomenting hate against other targets.

    In the 2024 campaign, the Republican Party had two burning issues: transgender people and violent immigrants. They harped relentlessly on parents’ fears that teachers were indoctrinating their children to be gay, even to be transgender. School nurses, it seemed, were performing surgery at school so that students could switched to a different gender, even though the same nurses won’t prescribe an aspirin without parental permission.

    Stoking hatred towards immigrants was equally successful for Republicans. Undocumented immigrants were here to rape and murder. When the election was over, Trump used the hatred he had stoked to unleash masked thugs to kidnap people off the streets and throw them into unmarked vans. The mass roundups continue, despite pleas by farmers and the tourist industry to leave their workers alone.

    The centerpiece of Trump’s massive Big Ugly Bill was the billions allotted to dertaining and expelling the immigrants that Trump used to stoke fear and hatred.

    Culture war issues are very successful for Republicans because they distract the public from what is really happening. They distract from informed discussions of the radical downsizing of the federal government, the shutdown of foreign aid, the elimination of programs authorized by Congress, the incoherent tariff wars that alienate our allies.

    The latest culture war issue has been building against the new “Superman” movie. It is even more pointless than the war against CRT and trans kids.

    The best description of the Republicans’ efforts to gin up fear of the new movie was written by journalist Parker Molloy, who writes an excellent blog called “The Present Age.”

    She wrote:

    So apparently Superman believing in “basic human kindness” is now controversial. Who knew?

    James Gunn, director of the new Superman film hitting theaters this Friday, recently sat down with The Times of London for an interview about his take on the Man of Steel. His crime? Describing Superman as “the story of America” — specifically, as an immigrant story centered on the apparently radical notion that being kind to people is good, actually.

    “I mean, Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country,” Gunn told the newspaper. “But for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

    Pretty anodyne stuff, right? The most famously wholesome superhero represents wholesome values. An alien refugee who becomes Earth’s greatest champion might have something to do with immigration. Real “water is wet” territory here.

    But in the right-wing media ecosystem, Gunn’s comments were treated like he’d just announced Superman would be spending the entire movie reading The Communist Manifesto while wearing a pussy hat. Fox News immediately branded the film “Superwoke.”Jesse Watters suggested Superman’s cape should read “MS13.” Breitbart called it “terrible,” “superficial,” and “overstuffed” — which is impressive considering they hadn’t seen it yet. One OutKick writer declared that Gunn was “obviously upset that President Donald Trump is deporting illegal immigrants by the millions.”

    All because a director pointed out that Superman — a character literally created by the children of Jewish immigrants — is an immigrant story about being nice to people.

    The manufactured outrage machine kicked into overdrive so fast, you’d think Gunn had suggested replacing the S on Superman’s chest with a hammer and sickle. But this isn’t really about Superman. It’s about how conservative media takes the most innocuous statements and transforms them into culture war ammunition. It’s about how the right-wing ecosystem has become so reflexively oppositional that even “basic human kindness” reads as a partisan attack.

    And perhaps most tellingly, it’s about what happens when you’ve built an entire media apparatus that needs a constant supply of things to be mad about — even if that means getting upset that Superman, of all characters, stands for truth, justice, and helping people.

    Let’s trace how this nonsense actually unfolded, because watching the outrage assembly line in action is genuinely instructive.

    The Times interview dropped on July 6. Within hours, the right-wing media apparatus had stripped Gunn’s comments of context and repackaged them as an assault on American values.

    Fox News didn’t just report on Gunn’s comments; they created an entire narrative. “Superwoke” became their branded shorthand, repeated across segments like a mantra. Kellyanne Conway appeared on the network to declare, “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us.” Because apparently, suggesting people should be kind is now “ideology.”

    But it was Jesse Watters who really went for it, quipping, “You know what it says on his cape? MS13.” Yes, the Fox News host actually tried to connect Superman — SUPERMAN — to a Salvadoran gang. Because he’s an immigrant, get it? Real subtle stuff.

    The escalation was predictable. Ben Shapiro released a YouTube video through The Daily Wire, focusing his ire on lead actor David Corenswet’s refusal to say “the American way” in interviews. Instead, Corenswet had said “truth, justice, and all that good stuff,” which apparently constitutes treason in Shapiro’s America. “The reality that Hollywood is so far to the left that they cannot take a core piece of Americana and just say it’s about America,” Shapiro complained, seemingly unaware that “the American way” wasn’t even added to Superman’s motto until the 1950s.

    The coordination across outlets was almost impressive. All the right-wing news organizations hit the same talking points within 48 hours. “Go woke, go broke” appeared in nearly every piece, because if there’s one thing conservative media loves, it’s a catchphrase that rhymes.

    What’s particularly rich about all this pearl-clutching is that these same outlets constantly complain about “cancel culture” and “mob mentality.” Yet here they are, organizing a pre-emptive boycott of a movie because its director said… checks notes… immigrants can be good people and we should be nice to each other.

    There is more to her brilliant critique. Open the link and finish reading. I subscribed.

    Meanwhile, the actual film is getting great reviews and audience reactions. We are all in danger of being nice and kind to one another.



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  • Lessons from the 1978 teachers strike in Fresno: Bonds, trust will suffer

    Lessons from the 1978 teachers strike in Fresno: Bonds, trust will suffer


    Credit: Thomas Galvez/Flickr

    Nearly 45 years ago, in the fall of 1978, teachers across Fresno Unified stood at the gates of their schools, rather than in front of dozens of students in the classroom. They’d made a decision to participate in what is still the district’s only strike in history.

    Students were no longer with the teachers they’d grown to know. They had to contend with substitute teachers or administrators who gave them packets of work in combined classrooms or in the cafeteria.

    As the two-week-long strike continued, some teachers returned to their classrooms, while others, with signs in hand, remained on strike to demand better working conditions.

    “At many schools, it was very traumatic, especially for the younger ones,” retired teacher Barbara Mendes said. Mendes, 84, was the teachers union representative at Lane Elementary and had been teaching for about three years when she and others went on strike in 1978.

    Each day, Mendes and other Lane Elementary teachers, standing at the school’s perimeter, greeted students in the mornings as they entered school and again in the afternoon as they left.

    “Just to smile,” Mendes said. “Just a smile at the students, so they’d know we were OK and that they’d be OK.”

    That smile, a “hey” or a handshake were subtle ways to mitigate the effects of the strike, which was meant to put pressure on the district but affected students as well.

    Fast forward 40 plus years: Thousands of teachers in the over 70,000-student school district must, once again, choose whether to walk away from their students in a standoff with the district, which must decide if not compromising with teachers on contested issues is what is best for Fresno Unified students.

    Both sides must take steps to bridge a widening communication gap before a heated strike makes matters worse, as it did in 1978.

    While the 1978 strike eventually led to better communication between the district and union — a victory, it also damaged relationships among teachers and shattered whatever trust existed between teachers and administrators.

    40 years later, teachers are fighting for the same issue

    Collective bargaining for teachers in California started in the mid-to-late 1970s, and the 1978 contract that resulted from the strike was the first-ever negotiated agreement between Fresno Unified and its teachers union, according to Nancy Richardson, 78, who was first elected to the school board in 1975. Other employee unions, Richardson said, closely monitored contract negotiations and strike actions with plans to come to the district for “me too” clauses on pay and benefits.

    Back then, the school district had also just desegregated staff and schools, Richardson said, so tensions were already high.

    However, class size was the driving force for the 1978 strike, something current teachers know too well.

    “We just wanted our class size lowered,” Mendes said, whose husband was also a teacher. She can’t recall the exact language of the union’s proposal for reducing class size but said that “anything would’ve been better” than what many teachers had to endure each day.

    “My husband had so many children in his high school classroom, he had some of them sitting on the vents that ran along the window,” she said. “He didn’t have enough desks.”

    Now, in 2023, the teachers union wants class sizes capped, in addition to a change in contract language offering parents the choice of moving their children to smaller classes before the cap is exceeded or giving teachers an increased stipend.

    Strike was ‘devastating’ for staff

    The 1978 strike lasted between eight and 10 days. To this day, people’s recollection of the strike differs because some educators crossed the picket line.

    Some teachers can’t afford to go without the pay, Superintendent Bob Nelson said.

    “They have to make very hard decisions about what they intend to do,” he said. “That puts teachers at odds with one another.”

    It was difficult for Mendes and her husband, who started working in the district office later in his career and who joined the strike, to go 10 days without a salary, and just as hard to watch their colleagues return to work because they had no choice.

    “It was hard on them,” Mendes said. “They had bills to pay. They went back for monetary reasons, not because they changed their minds about the reasons for the strike.”

    Those who returned to their class before the strike ended were often chastised by others for that decision, Mendes and Richardson recall. So during and after the 1978 strike, Mendes worked to mend relationships. While she views her reconciliation efforts at her elementary school as somewhat successful, she admitted that many relationships elsewhere never recovered.

    “There are teachers, to this day, who won’t speak to each other because one struck and the other one didn’t,” Mendes said.

    Richardson summed up the lifelong impact of the strike experience in one word: devastating.

    “Nobody gets out without damage,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t scarred.”

    And that went for administrators too.

    Principals, responsible for keeping schools running, were left with angry teachers divided by the strike, she said.

    As school board president, Richardson was the face of the board, and she was bombarded with angry calls about class size, pay and benefits, and even threatening messages.

    The teachers union at the time posted the school board members’ phone numbers. Messages, such as, “You’re going to pay for this,” made Richardson fear for her children’s safety.

    She graphically detailed how members of the union held a candlelight vigil outside her home and walked up and down her street, frightening her fifth-grade daughter. Richardson’s daughter has distinct memories of that moment, but not any of the reasons behind the strike.

    “Things happened that people never forget,” she said.

    This year’s collapsed negotiations may lead to district’s second strike

    Even though the last teachers strike was 45 years ago, the school district and teachers union have been on the brink a few times. In 2017, teachers voted to strike, but a third party stepped in and negotiated a compromise.

    This time is very different from 2017, both Fresno Unified and the Fresno Teachers Association say.

    Manuel Bonilla, union president since July 2018 and a member of its bargaining team before that, said a strike seems more “urgent and real” to address what has become teachers’ daily work: meeting students’ social-emotional needs.

    “I think people are more upset now by the ignoring of the issues — of the disconnect of the reality of what people are going through,” Bonilla said.

    In a way, teachers shouldered the school system’s burden by going above and beyond their duties during and following the pandemic, he said, but now, teachers feel “undervalued.”

    Superintendent Nelson attributes the differences between now and 2017 to Sacramento City, Los Angeles and Oakland school districts pursuing strikes in line with what he considers a California Teachers Association playbook that unions are following.

    “It feels like what has happened in other school districts up and down the state,” he said.

    In 2017, when teachers voted to strike, teachers hadn’t worked under a contract in 18 months, according to Nelson, who’s been superintendent since 2017. This year, teachers are just over three months out of the previous contract, and teachers are even closer to a strike, he said.

    “We’re just in a different place now (from 2017),” Nelson said.

    The school district and teachers union have declared an impasse in negotiations and failed to reach an agreement despite multiple mediation attempts. In late May, upon giving its last offer, the Fresno Teachers Association imposed a Sept. 29 deadline for the school district to agree on a contract or face an Oct. 18 strike vote.

    The district and union did not meet that deadline.

    Mending relationships, rebuilding trust becomes more challenging if strike happens

    At this point, weeks ahead of a possible strike, scant trust exists between FUSD administration and teachers. This has likely worsened over time, Richardson said.

    “I’m sure they (board members and district leaders) know how extremely problematic it is to get to this point — or go further — because of the erosion of trust,” she said. “And I’m sure they know that whenever there is a strike, anywhere, building back trust takes so long and is so difficult.”

    Mendes, the retired teacher, believes the only way for the district and union to avoid a strike is for the district to “really listen” to teachers and for there to be better communication between them.

    “Listen to what their problems are,” she said over and over. “Don’t tell them what they should be thinking. Just listen to what the teachers are complaining about and promise to do something about it.”

    If it takes a strike for that communication to happen, rebuilding trust becomes an even greater challenge.

    The 1978 strike might’ve lasted longer than it had, if not for communication.

    Richardson, according to Mendes, visited various schools to talk to striking educators.

    “Seeing us on the picket line broke her (Richardson’s) heart,” Mendes said.

    Eventually, Richardson, union leaders and the superintendent met to discuss ways to end the strike.

    “We did that sitting down together,” Richardson said.

    She urges teachers and administrators to consider what could be lost if teachers strike.

    “Think about how it’s going to go afterwards,” she said, “and focus on the kindness and respect it will take for people to work together successfully afterwards.”

    But is a strike worth it?

    The teachers’ strike in 1978 didn’t quite lead to lower class size, Mendes said, but teachers had an impact.

    “I think that it was important to let the teachers know that they could do something that would make an impact, as hard as it was on everybody,” she said.

    Still, four decades later, Mendes isn’t sure if that impact outweighed the trauma and broken relationships.

    “Every strike is questionable,” she said. It was rewarding for those who took part, she said, and it opened lines of communication.

    Even so, was the strike worth it?

    “I don’t know; I really am not sure,” Mendes said. “But it does get the attention (of the school district).”





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  • Teachers of recently arrived immigrant students to get help under new law

    Teachers of recently arrived immigrant students to get help under new law


    Oakland International High math teacher David Hansen teaches newcomer immigrant students fractions using the game of checkers.

    Theresa Harrington/EdSource

    As soon as Jenna Hewitt King asked students in her senior English class for newcomers to introduce themselves, she knew she was in over her head.

    “I saw this look of fear in their faces, like, ‘What? I have to talk out loud?’ There was a lot of whispering in their home language,” said King, who also wrote a commentary about the experience for EdSource. “We were both looking at each other like deer in headlights and you could sense this was not something that any of us were prepared for.”

    A bill signed over the weekend by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Bill 714, will begin to provide much-needed guidance and data for teachers like King, who often don’t have training or experience in how to teach newcomer students — defined as students between 3 and 21 years old who were born in other countries and have attended school in the U.S. for fewer than three years.

    King had expected to be able to teach the class in a way similar to how she teaches other senior English classes at San Leandro High School in Alameda County. Those students read three novels over the course of the year and write multiple essays.

    But the students in her newcomer class had recently arrived from other countries and did not know much English. Most of them spoke Spanish, and a few spoke Mandarin or Cantonese.

    King speaks only English and had no experience or training in teaching English language development to students learning English as a second language, let alone students new to the country.

    “I was just ridiculously ill-prepared. Teaching English in high school, we don’t teach phonics, we don’t teach language in the immense detail that elementary or English learner teachers do,” King said. “Most of last school year was me running around like a crazy person asking ELD teachers on campus, ‘What am I doing? What can you share with me?’”

    King’s experience is not an isolated one. Researchers and educators who work with teachers throughout California say it is common for teachers of newcomer students to feel unprepared.

    “What happens is that they’re basically thrown into the classroom and it’s either sink or swim,” said Efraín Tovar, who teaches seventh and eighth grade newcomer students at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma Unified School District in the Central Valley and is also founder and director of the California Newcomer Network.

    Tovar said most school districts, charter schools and county offices of education do not have experts in teaching newcomers.

    Assembly Bill 714 will require the California Department of Education to put together a list of resources on best practices and requirements for teaching newcomer students. In addition, the law requires the state to consider including content on newcomers in the next revision of the English Language Arts and English Language Development curriculum framework and to include resources on newcomer students in any new instructional materials for grades one to eight.

    “As a teacher, I’m excited. It’s historic. It’s a light. It’s hope,” Tovar said. “Finally, newcomers are being brought to the forefront.”

    The bill also requires the state’s Department of Education to report the number of newcomer students enrolled and their countries of origin. There were about 152,000 newcomer students enrolled in California schools in 2020-21, according to data obtained from the state by Californians Together, but this data is not readily available to the public.

    Separating data on newcomers from other English learners is important, said Jeannie Myung, director of policy research at Policy Analysis for California Education, or PACE, an independent research center at Stanford University that focuses on education.

    “We know that what we don’t measure, we don’t really understand, and what we don’t understand, we can’t really improve,” Myung said.

    The bill originally would have also required the department to report newcomers’ scores on standardized tests, to be able to compare them to other groups of English learners. But that requirement was removed from the final version of the legislation.

    In 2021 and 2022, PACE brought together leaders from California’s departments of Education and Social Services, the Legislature, school districts and universities to discuss how to improve newcomer education, resulting in six reports on newcomers in the state.

    Myung said there is expertise and knowledge about how to best teach newcomers, and how it is different from teaching other English learners, but that information is not reaching most teachers.

    “California’s a local control state, and local control is often good in decision-making. But local control shouldn’t mean that every teacher in every classroom is repeating the wheel when it comes to how to educate newcomer students,” Myung said.

    Myung said an example of best practices is materials created for older newcomer students. Most texts available for English learners are created for younger students, but many newcomers are often teenagers, who would find a picture book about playing with a toy too juvenile. They need access to materials that are at their level of English but also deal with content at their age level, she said.

    In addition, teachers need to know how to help students who speak different home languages talk to each other in English.

    In King’s class at San Leandro High, she relied on Google Translate to communicate with her students. After realizing her students would not be able to read the novels she had planned for other seniors, she scrambled to find other materials. She found one novel written in short poetry with pictures, and she had her students watch a movie version of another novel and then read short excerpts of it rather than the whole text. This year, she is using some books in students’ home languages, but she is still struggling to figure out how to facilitate discussion between them.

    “If you can imagine having a group of newcomers where you have three, four, five, maybe up to eight languages represented in your classroom, that requires a special skill set,” Tovar said.

    Newcomer students also need support understanding their new communities in the U.S. and how they fit into them, said Magaly Lavadenz, executive director of the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University.

    “It’s not just about teaching them to learn English better, but how to better integrate into society and be a fully participatory citizen,” Lavadenz said.

    Lavadenz said it is crucial for schools to help newcomer students and families access social services they may need, like food, housing and mental health therapy.

    As a teacher in Glendale Unified in the early 1990s, Lavadenz said she saw many students who had fled war in Central America draw pictures of the violence they had witnessed. She saw that again while conducting a case study of San Juan Unified’s newcomer program, published by PACE. She said children were asked to draw the flags of their countries and one boy from Afghanistan described his drawing by saying, “Red is the color of blood spilling on the streets.”

    “These are things that children should not see, that we should not see as adults. They’re seeing this and they’re experiencing this, and those images stay with them,” Lavadenz said. “That experience opened my eyes about what the effects of trauma are on young children and how schools could be more ready.”

    King said AB 714 is a small but good step forward.

    “I still haven’t received any additional training,” she said. “Each time I ask, I’m told, ‘Yeah, find a training.’ I don’t know where to go or what to do.”





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  • BenQ Showcases Next-Gen Classroom Solutions at the ISTE+ASCD Conference

    BenQ Showcases Next-Gen Classroom Solutions at the ISTE+ASCD Conference


    Jeffrey D. Bradbury
    Latest posts by Jeffrey D. Bradbury (see all)

    The energy on the floor of ISTELive is always electric, but this year, the buzz around the future of classroom technology felt particularly strong. Amidst the innovation, one exhibitor, BenQ, stood out by showcasing a new generation of classroom solutions designed to be more integrated, secure, and intuitive for teachers than ever before. It wasn’t just about a new piece of hardware; it was about creating a cohesive ecosystem.

    In this article will explore the key announcements from BenQ’s presence at the conference and provide a practical, hands-on look at five specific features that are set to transform the modern classroom, as demonstrated in a series of video interviews from the event.

    I would like to thank BenQ for being a supporter and sponsor of my ISTELive experience this year.

    For more information, please check out these links:

    The Big Picture: Deep Google Integration and a Secure Cloud

    The major news from BenQ is a significant step forward in creating a seamless classroom experience. The company’s newest interactive displays are now EDLA-certified, meaning they come with Google features and the Google Play store built-in, no extra hardware required. This gives teachers instant access to the Google Workspace tools they use every day, as well as the power of Gemini AI.

    Furthermore, BenQ announced that this entire ecosystem is secured by Amazon Web Services (AWS). For school districts, this is a crucial detail. It means that all data and cloud functionality are secure, localized, and reliable, addressing major concerns around student data privacy and system stability.

    A Practical Guide: 5 Key Features in Action

    Beyond the big announcements, what does this mean for the teacher in the classroom? I had the chance to sit down with the team from BenQ to get a hands-on look at the features that make these new displays so powerful.

    1. Why Choose a BenQ Board? The Foundation

    Before diving into specific features, it’s important to understand the core value proposition. Why should a school choose a BenQ board in the first place? The answer lies in creating a more engaging, healthy, and flexible learning environment.

    As discussed in the video, BenQ boards are designed with both teachers and students in mind, featuring 4K resolution for crystal-clear visuals and ClassroomCare™ health features to protect eyes in the classroom. The goal is to create a central hub for learning that is both powerful and easy to use.

    2. Seamless Sign-In and Security

    One of the biggest friction points for teachers using shared technology is the cumbersome process of logging in and out. BenQ’s new Google integration solves this problem directly.

    With a simple and secure sign-in process, teachers can instantly access their personal Google Drive, lesson plans, and classroom materials. This single sign-on capability not only saves valuable instruction time but also ensures that a teacher’s digital environment is secure, and they can easily sign out with one tap at the end of a class.

    3. Effortless Casting and Classroom Flexibility

    Effective teaching in a modern classroom requires flexibility. Teachers need to be able to move around the room, interact with students, and facilitate group work without being tethered to the front of the class.

    BenQ’s integrated InstaShow™ software allows for instant wireless screen sharing from any device—a laptop, a tablet, or even a phone. As demonstrated in the video, teachers can “cast” their screen to the board with a single click, allowing them to teach from anywhere in the classroom and seamlessly share student work for the entire class to see.

    4. Creating and Importing Your Lessons

    One of the biggest fears teachers have with new technology is that they will have to recreate all their existing lesson materials from scratch. BenQ has designed its software to work with the tools teachers already use.

    As you can see in this demonstration, teachers can easily import and manipulate their existing PowerPoints, Google Slides, PDFs, and other documents directly on the interactive display. This means there is no wasted time; a teacher can take a lesson they’ve used for years and instantly make it more dynamic and interactive.

    5. Making Learning Interactive

    The ultimate goal of an interactive display is to create more engaging, hands-on learning experiences. BenQ’s built-in software tools are designed to make this easy for any teacher.

    From annotating directly on top of any content to using digital manipulatives and interactive widgets, the board becomes a canvas for co-creation. Teachers can build dynamic lessons that capture student attention and allow them to interact with content in a deeper, more meaningful way.

    What Do You Want Your Classrooms To Look Like?

    The announcements from BenQ at ISTELive signal a clear shift in classroom technology. The focus is no longer on standalone hardware, but on creating a cohesive, secure, and intuitive ecosystem. By deeply integrating with Google, securing their platform with AWS, and focusing on the practical needs of teachers, BenQ is providing a powerful solution for creating the future-ready classrooms our students deserve.

    Take the Next Step

    Are you looking to bring more innovative and practical technology into your classroom or school? Join my weekly newsletter to get a curated collection of EdTech strategies, expert insights, and time-saving resources designed to help you make an impact.

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  • Buffeted by change, California charter schools continue to grow amid scrutiny

    Buffeted by change, California charter schools continue to grow amid scrutiny


    A student at Rocketship Public Schools in San Jose works on a math problem.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • Charter schools’ enrollment has grown slowly since the pandemic; they now serve one out of eight TK-12 children in California.
    • Most charter schools will seek renewal within the next three years under new rules.
    • High-profile cases of fraud have led to calls for tighter controls, with bills now before the Legislature.

    California charter schools are having a strong year — at least by one metric: enrollment. As the state’s traditional public school population continues to decline, charter school enrollment has risen to nearly 728,000 students, accounting for 12.5% of all public school students across 1,280 campuses and independent study programs.

    Most charter schools are also performing well academically. In the 2023-24 California School Dashboard, 16.5% of charter schools earned the highest performance rating, qualifying them for renewals of five to seven years. An additional 76.8% are eligible for five-year renewals, while just 6.7% face closure.

    However, this growth comes amid increasing scrutiny. State lawmakers are pushing for stricter financial oversight following high-profile fraud cases, while local districts now have more authority to reject charter petitions. Teachers unions are gaining influence within charter schools.

    Looming is the potential for another religious charter school case making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, adding more complexity to the already politically charged environment. If the court rules in favor of taxpayer funding of religious charter schools, it could have significant implications for public education funding and policy at the state level. Combined with the uncertainty over the future of the U.S. Department of Education and the Trump administration’s support for private school vouchers, the charter school sector faces political challenges not unlike those of 1992, when California enacted its charter school legislation.

    The tension is annoyingly familiar to Myrna Castrejón, president and CEO of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). Despite charter schools’ successes in academic achievement, dual high school and community college enrollment, and competitive admission rates to the University of California and California State University for Black, Latino, and low-income students, Castrejón described the current political climate as a “bare-knuckle” fight.

    “Every year we have to rally our troops and tell our stories and speak to legislators about who we are and who we serve and why our mission is so important,” said Castrejón. “I can’t sit here and say charter schools are doing great and the politics are better — they are not. Make no mistake, we still have opponents who are not going to stop until they strip out our autonomy entirely and/or cripple us.”

    Fraud and oversight

    A key focus of that anger is Assembly Bill 84, introduced by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. The bill aims to enact sweeping anti-fraud reforms proposed in a trio of reports released last year, following the largest charter school fraud in California history.  

    Muratsuchi, who is running for state superintendent of public instruction in 2026, told EdSource that he has no intention of “going after the charter schools that are acting responsibly and providing good educational services for their kids.” AB 84, he added, “is about going after the bad actors that are committing fraud and engaging in corruption through the current lack of transparency and accountability that we have with our statewide charter oversight system.”

    The most notorious case involved A3 Education, a network of 19 virtual schools whose operators stole over $400 million in public school money by falsifying student enrollments. A3 exploited “a completely failed system not designed and operated to protect itself from theft,” said Kevin Fannan, a former San Diego County deputy district attorney who worked on the case. While this was an extreme case, charter advocates acknowledge the sector’s vulnerabilities and are among those calling for stronger safeguards.

    “We are not in denial that we have a problem,” said Eric Premack, founder of the Charter Schools Development Center (CSDC). “It’s extraordinarily painful for us to have even a slow drip of these.” But Premack, Castrejón and other charter advocates believe that Senate Bill 414, which they sponsored, offers a more targeted solution than AB 84, which they view as imposing onerous administrative provisions that have nothing to do with fraud. Both bills have passed their respective houses and will ultimately be amended before a final version is approved and sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    Nonclassroom-based schools’ rapid growth

    The rapid expansion of “nonclassroom-based” charter schools presents challenges in regulation, but the term itself is a “misnomer,” according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) in their anti-fraud report commissioned by the state Legislature. Under state law, a charter school is classified as nonclassroom-based if less than 80% of instruction occurs in a traditional classroom. As a result, hybrid programs, like those that require students to attend classes three days a week, fall into the same category as entirely virtual schools.

    For example, Northern Summit Academy (NSA) in rural Shasta County converted a former grocery store in Anderson into a dynamic learning hub for its 200 independent study students in transitional kindergarten through high school. The school offers optional in-person instruction in core subjects like math, social studies and science, as well as an enviable maker space with career technical education in fields such as digital embroidery, video production and robotics.

    The academy also provides career pathways in nursing, cosmetology, energy and power, and has a veterinary assistant program with state-of-the-art equipment that has a 100% employment rate for graduates. Students meet weekly, in person or online, with their teacher of record. Despite this hands-on learning, NSA is classified as nonclassroom-based. The LAO-FCMAT report found that nearly two-thirds of nonclassroom-based schools in 2023-24 used hybrid models where much of the instruction was in person.

    That still leaves more than 100,000 students in schools that are mainly virtual, and more are expected to seek authorization when a legislative moratorium on new nonclassroom-based charters ends on Jan. 1, 2026. These schools have attracted the most scrutiny due to their disproportionate problems with oversight, especially when authorized by small districts that stand to receive substantial income in oversight fees, which “raised some red flags for us about whether we can have quality authorizing in that situation,” explained Edgar Cabral, the LAO’s deputy legislative analyst for K–12 education. The LAO-FCMAT report identified 14 small districts in 2022-23 that authorized virtual charters whose enrollment far exceeded their district’s own, including most of the six districts conned by the founders of A3 schools.

    AB 84 seeks to limit enrollment in nonclassroom-based schools authorized by small districts, but critics argue this could undermine well-run programs and stifle the innovation that is a hallmark of the charter school movement.

    Kevin Humphrey, superintendent of Guajome Park Academy, based in Vista in Central California, notes that hybrid programs are essential for students who cannot thrive in traditional settings, offering flexibility for those facing anxiety, health issues or bullying. “These programs don’t just protect our students — they give them a future,” Humphrey said.

    Local vs. county

    About 84% of charter schools are authorized by local school boards. Nearly all the rest are under county offices of education. A few dozen that are authorized by the State Board of Education have until 2028 to find new authorizers under Assembly Bill 1505. Approved in 2019, AB 1505 was a sweeping charter reform aimed at giving local districts more control over charter authorizations. But there is growing concern among charter critics that more petitioners will bypass local school boards and turn to county offices, which are seen as more charter-friendly.

    Adam Weinberger, president of the California School Employees Association, the union representing school staff, decried it as a “blatant end run around local school boards,” undermining the intent of AB 1505.

    Adding to the pressure, more than 1,000 charter schools are due for renewal over the next three years due to a pandemic-era pause. This renewal process is a highly detailed and time-consuming task that will strain both local school districts and county offices of education. The rigorous evaluations required for renewals will assess each school’s academic performance, financial stability and legal compliance.

    Shrinking enrollment, increasing competition

    Ten to 15 years ago, large urban districts saw charter schools as a solution to overcrowded classrooms and split sessions. Now, with statewide enrollment at 5.8 million and declining, districts are competing with charters for a shrinking pool of students. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which once enrolled nearly 672,000 students, now serves fewer than 517,000, with charter students making up a record 28% of that total, costing the district about $2.8 billion in state funding. In recent years, the LAUSD board has become more wary of charters and is currently in a legal battle over its efforts to restrict charter schools from sharing campus space with district schools.

    Assemblymember Muratsuchi recognized that some districts with declining enrollments have “significant consternation with local charter schools taking away enrollment and enrollment-based funding.” But he also acknowledged that many families choose charter schools and “that is a reality that school districts need to deal with.”

    To win back and hold onto students, some districts are expanding choice programs, such as magnet schools and independent study programs. During the 2023-24 school year, more than 277,000 students in transitional kindergarten through 12th grade were receiving at least half their instruction through independent programs run by districts and county offices of education, according to the California Department of Education.

    While charter enrollment is still rising, the pace has slowed, as has the number of new schools; only 12 opened in 2023 compared to 53 in 2019. Some long-running charters are closing due to enrollment declines. Downtown College Prep, which opened its first charter high school in San Jose in 2001, shut that campus and its two middle schools last month, citing a $4.5 million budget shortfall and a 35% drop in enrollment in six years.

    Pondering this trend, Tom Hutton, executive director of the California Charter Authorizing Professionals, wonders if there will come a point in declining enrollment environments “where, even though choice is impactful, there just are too many schools — both district and charter — creating more risks of making all of them weaker instead of strengthening public education overall.”

    At this time, the organization’s most pressing concern is helping authorizers as they face political and public pressure to improve authorizing practices. Its mission is ensuring that charter students receive a high-quality education.

    “Charter schools were introduced to inject some new energy into addressing persistent challenges in California’s education system, especially for students with unique needs and those in underserved communities, and in many ways they have succeeded,” Hutton said.

    But, as the nation’s largest and second-oldest charter system, he added, “We’re experiencing growing pains and challenges in finding the right balance between continuing to innovate and committing to greater accountability. We see that as an opportunity to strengthen the system.” 

    Kathryn Baron is an education reporter based in California.





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  • We need all hands on deck to ensure students get the financial aid they need for college

    We need all hands on deck to ensure students get the financial aid they need for college


    Parent Raul Zuniga and his daughter Sandy, a senior at La Habra High in Orange County, receive help with financial aid forms from counselor Rosa Sanchez at a “Cash for College” workshop.

    FERMIN LEAL/EDSOURCE TODAY

    California is better off when more people have education and training to power our economy and support thriving communities. Financial aid that reduces or fully covers the cost of college or job training is an investment that benefits all of us.

    About $550 million in federal and state aid goes unused annually when thousands of eligible California students miss out on financial aid. Many are unaware of financial aid, don’t know how to apply or if they qualify, or fear sharing personal information because of their immigration status.

    A new law is helping to ensure that financial aid is not left on the table. Schools must help all high school seniors complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or California Dream Act Application unless the student formally opts out. Students submit one of these applications, depending on their residential status, to access the grants, scholarships, work-study opportunities, student loans and other forms of aid available to help finance postsecondary education or training.

    Providing support for all students as they complete financial aid applications is an equity-driven game changer. This policy encourages students to plan for and attend college or job training programs and ensures that all students and families can make informed plans and decisions about their life after high school.

    Achieving universal participation in this student-centered systemic approach to financial aid requires planning and collaboration among K-12 school leaders, counselors, educators, student groups and community organizations. California’s All in for FAFSA/CA Dream Act campaign supports K-12 education partners as they work to achieve universal FAFSA/CADAA completion. Local progress can be tracked on the state’s Race to Submit dashboard. The data can help target assistance for students who may need extra support and encouragement to complete and submit a financial aid application. It also helps us to identify, learn from and share best practices with schools and districts across the state.

    Since universal participation was required, the number of California students applying for financial aid increased significantly. More than 60% of California’s high school seniors submitted financial aid applications by March 2, the deadline for students planning to attend a four-year college. By Sept. 5, the deadline for students heading to community college, the total FAFSA or CADAA completion rate for the class of 2023 climbed to nearly 75%. More than 24,000 financial aid applications were completed this year compared with the same time a year ago.

    The progress achieved with California’s universal financial aid requirement is due to the hard work of K-12 district leaders, high school principals, counselors and teachers, California Student Opportunity and Access Program counselors, Cash for College workshop coordinators, community-based organizations, and students and their families. They went all in to help more high school students than ever complete financial aid applications.

    In a few months, the U.S. Department of Education will release a revised federal aid application called the Better FAFSA. The good news is that the redesigned application will be easier to complete. The bad news is that the Better FAFSA application window will open two months later than in a typical year. This compressed timeline could most disadvantage students and families who need greater support to complete the aid application — and who have the most to gain from filling out the form.

    We will need all hands on deck at the state, district and high school levels to keep making progress and ensure that students don’t lose ground in this inaugural year of the Better FAFSA. The California Student Aid Commission will continue to support K-12 districts and high schools as they work to meet the universal FAFSA or CADAA requirement. We have confidence that with planning, collaboration with partners, clear communication and purpose, California can ensure that all high school seniors complete the FAFSA or CADAA, and California’s vision of increasing access to higher education for all students will become a reality.

    •••

    Catalina Cifuentes is chair and Marlene Garcia is executive director of the California Student Aid Commission.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Parents of English learners in the dark about their children’s language progress

    Parents of English learners in the dark about their children’s language progress


    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón was always a very involved parent, from the time her children were in Head Start.

    She would volunteer in the classroom and sign up for parent committees throughout elementary and middle school.

    But Carbajal Salmerón didn’t realize that her children, who attend school in Pomona Unified, were still considered English learners after years of school, or how that might affect them. Then one day she received notification that her son had been reclassified as fluent and English proficient when he was in eighth grade.

    Her first question was, “Why hasn’t my daughter reclassified?” 

    Carbajal Salmerón’s daughter Mia Mirón was younger and had never learned to speak Spanish fluently, in part because she had always spoken English with her older brother.

    “I couldn’t understand it,” Carbajal Salmerón said in Spanish. “My son was the first born and he only spoke Spanish when he entered school. But why would my daughter still be an English learner, if she had had a harder time learning Spanish?”

    Courtesy of Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón

    Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón (right) with her children Andrew and Mia Mirón at Mia’s eighth grade graduation.

    Parents of English learners are often unaware of their children’s progress learning the language, according to advocates from the Parent Organization Network, based in Los Angeles.

    The organization is launching a campaign to help parents learn to monitor their children’s progress and advocating for changes in how districts communicate the information to families.

    Students are classified as English learners when they first enroll in school if their parents speak a language other than English at home and they do not score high enough on the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). English learners have to continue to take the test every year, until they show proficiency in English, in addition to meeting other requirements, such as meeting grade level on state standardized tests in English language arts. At that point, they are reclassified as “fluent English proficient.”

    As long as students are classified as English learners, they must take English language development classes in addition to their regular classes. If they are not reclassified before middle and high school, those language classes can take up so much of their schedule that they cannot take as many electives as other students, and they may not be able to access as much academic content in other classes.

    Araceli Simeón, executive director of Parent Organization Network, said that parents often rely on report cards to monitor their children’s academic progress. “If they’re getting A’s and B’s, they don’t look at anything else,” she said.

    Districts have to send information to parents of English learners every year about their children’s progress on the ELPAC, but the reports are often sent in the mail, separate from a child’s report card. Even when parents do receive the scores, they do not always understand what they mean or what their children need to do in order to be reclassified.

    In addition, more and more districts are using online portals to share students’ scores on state standardized tests in reading, math and English language proficiency, Simeón said. Often, those portals can be difficult to navigate for parents who don’t speak English or aren’t as comfortable with technology. 

    “If you don’t know how to navigate that, then essentially years go by without you receiving a note about your child’s progress on the test,” Simeón said.

    Last year, staff from Parent Organization Network trained more than 80 parents in three districts – Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified and Pomona Unified.

    In one of those trainings, Carbajal Salmerón learned for the first time about the process for students to be reclassified.

    “For the first time, someone explained to me the exam that they have to take once a year and that they have to learn how to write, listen, speak and read. The teachers had never told me that my daughter had a 3 in reading, for example, or a 2 in writing. No one had ever told me that,” said Carbajal Salmerón.

    Maribel Bautista is another parent who took the training. She has 14-year-old triplets in Long Beach Unified. All three were classified as English learners when they entered kindergarten because the family speaks Spanish at home. When Bautista would receive reports on how her triplets were doing in English, she assumed it was in English language arts, rather than learning the language itself. 

    When Bautista took training with Parent Organization Network and began to analyze the reports she had received, she realized that one of her triplets was reclassified in second grade and another in third, but one had never been reclassified, and he was in eighth grade.

    “I think the most important thing is explaining to parents what the classification of English learner means, why their kids are being placed there, and what steps they need to take to pass the exam before they go to middle school,” Bautista said in Spanish. “It’s about communication.”

    Courtesy of Maribel Bautista

    Triplets Nick, Jeson and Kendrick Figueroa attend school in Long Beach Unified.

    Asked what steps they are taking to help parents understand the reclassification process and their children’s progress, the districts where Parent Organization Network trained parents responded in different ways.

    The superintendent of Pomona Unified, Darren Knowles, said that collaborating with Parent Organization Network “led to a complete overhaul of the documents that we use to inform parents about the reclassification process.”

    Knowles said over the last four years, Pomona Unified redesigned a resource page for parents about reclassification criteria in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. The district also conducts regular presentations and training for parents about what students need in order to reclassify. In addition, he said the district is printing ELPAC score reports to give to families during parent-teacher conferences. Recently, he said the district sent out information about ELPAC scores to parents and offered in-person meetings if they wanted to review their children’s progress. He said 92 parents from 18 different schools requested an in-person meeting.

    Spokespersons from Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified shared fewer details. “Our families have various opportunities including notification and consultation letters,” said the LAUSD statement. “The District also offers over a dozen meetings throughout the year where families can deep dive into their student’s educational journey. In addition, families are welcome to call and set up a school visit with the English learner designee or school principal.”

    “Long Beach Unified is dedicated to ensuring parents of English language learners receive student progress and reclassification information,” said Long Beach Unified School District spokesperson Evelyn Somoza. “Parents of students who have not yet been reclassified receive information on their student’s English language proficiency at the start of every school year through U.S. mail and our online portal. Parents receive phone calls and emails when test scores from assessments completed during the school year become available.”

    Both Bautista and Carbajal Salmerón attended universities in Mexico and want their children to go to college, too. They want their children to be able to enroll in the college preparatory classes they need in high school, which can be hard for students if they are still classified as English learners.

    After understanding the process, they began to push for more help for their children and encourage them to work on their English reading and writing skills to improve their scores on the ELPAC. 

    Carbajal Salmerón’s daughter Mia took a summer school intensive English class, began to attend English classes on Saturdays, and started focusing on improving her reading.

    Finally, in the first semester of ninth grade, she was reclassified, allowing her to stop taking English language development classes and freeing up her schedule to take more electives.

    Now a sophomore, Mia hopes to go to college to study ethnic studies. She credits her eighth grade English language development teacher, who spoke with her and other English learners and explained to them that they had to pass the English proficiency test in order to be reclassified as fluent. 

    “She was a teacher that really wanted everybody in the class to reclassify, and she put in the energy and time to really create a connection with every single one of us,” Mia said. “I feel like personally it’s all in the teacher. If they motivate you and make you see that you personally are capable of doing and achieving and reclassifying, it’s the greatest compliment ever.”





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  • Newsom signs bill creating new transfer pilot program between UC and community colleges

    Newsom signs bill creating new transfer pilot program between UC and community colleges


    The Transfer and Reentry Center in Dutton Hall at UC Davis helps transfers get acclimated to their new environment.

    Credit: Karin Higgins/UC Davis

    In a bid to make it easier for California’s community college students to transfer to the University of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Tuesday to create a new transfer pathway between the two systems.

    The transfer pathway created by Assembly Bill 1291 will start as a pilot program at UCLA, with students getting priority admission if they complete an associate degree for transfer in select majors beginning in the 2026-27 academic year. The specific majors haven’t yet been determined, but UCLA will have to identify at least eight and another four by 2028-29. At least four of the majors will be in a science, technology, engineering or math field.

    The new pathway would expand to at least four additional UC campuses, also in limited majors, by 2028-29.

    The bill doesn’t, however, guarantee students admission to their chosen campus. If a student is not admitted to their preferred campus, the student will be redirected and admitted to another campus.

    Supporters of the legislation say it would help to streamline the state’s complex transfer system since students can already earn an associate degree to get a guaranteed spot in the California State University system.

    “By working together, California’s three world-leading higher education systems are ensuring more students have the freedom to thrive, learn, and succeed,” Newsom said in a statement. “With this new law, the Golden State is streamlining the transfer process, making a four-year degree more affordable for transfer students, and helping students obtain high-paying and fulfilling careers.”

    Newsom signed the bill despite opposition from the statewide student associations representing UC and community college students. In a statement last month urging Newsom to veto the legislation, they said they were dissatisfied because it doesn’t give students a guaranteed spot at the campus of their choice.

    The bill’s author, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, said in a statement that it will help to “tackle a long-standing goal in California: to simplify and streamline the transfer paths” for community college students. “This bill gets UC into the game with universal transfer pathways and will increase economic opportunity and prosperity for all Californians to help our state economy thrive,” he added.

    Currently, UC lacks a systemwide transfer guarantee for community college students. There are separate transfer admission guarantees at six of the system’s nine undergraduate campuses — each of them except UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego. But those separate guarantees each have different requirements for admission. And students who are also interested in transferring to Cal State have to simultaneously deal with that system’s own distinct requirements.

    Earlier this year, McCarty authored another bill, Assembly Bill 1749, that would have gone further than the more recent legislation by requiring UC to admit all eligible students who complete any associate degree for transfer, like the California State University system already does.

    UC opposed that bill, arguing that it would be a disservice to students in certain STEM majors because they would enter UC underprepared for some upper-division courses. UC officials then negotiated the details of AB 1291 with the governor’s office, McCarty and other key lawmakers.

    “I am proud that 27 percent of University of California undergraduates begin their educational journey at a California Community College and go on to thrive on our campuses,” Michael Drake, UC’s systemwide president, said in a statement. “The University is committed to attracting and supporting transfer students, and we look forward to continuing to partner with transfer advocates such as Governor Newsom, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, and others in the state legislature on streamlining the transfer process.”





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  • Time to retire the tainted, unfair basic skills test for teachers

    Time to retire the tainted, unfair basic skills test for teachers


    Photo courtesy Woodleywonderworks / Flickr

    One morning, some 20 years ago, I took an anonymous phone call that stunned me. Years had passed since our decadelong federal class action discrimination lawsuit against the CBEST had ended with only partial reforms in 2000. From its origins in 1982, the California Basic Educational Skills Test, which purports to measure the universal reading, writing and math skills needed to perform in all the varied public school jobs requiring credentials, has been controversial for deterring tens of thousands of educators of color from entering the public school workforce. The horrific first-time pass rates — 38% for Blacks; 49% for Latinos, and 53% Asians vs. 80% for whites — improved, but only modestly, after 1995 changes instigated by our lawsuit.

    The caller had personal knowledge that a recently deceased former employee of the defendant Commission on Teacher Credentialing had examined the CBEST for her doctoral dissertation and concluded it was racially and culturally biased. The Commission suppressed the study, including when our lawsuit specifically requested such reports. Instead of producing it or making us and our judge aware of it, the commission’s lawyers quietly procured a protective order from a state judge to keep the study out of the federal case.

    From its inception, the racial and cultural bias undergirding the CBEST — like the phantom study — has been suppressed, lurking, just beneath the surface. The sickening pass rates — rather than spurring reform — have been used to support the worst kind of circular reasoning: If it’s failing that many people, especially Black and brown people who’ve been subjected to inferior public education in California, the state’s lawyer repeatedly told the court, it must be working.

    Federal guidelines dictate that a test and its passing levels should correspond to “normal expectations of proficiency within the workforce.” Yet there has never been evidence that over half of all Black college graduates (or a fifth of whites, for that matter), are graduating lacking basic reading, writing and math skills.

    Rather, the CBEST’s passing scores, and to some extent its math content, have always been set arbitrarily high, bent more on failing many to justify itself politically than on fairly assessing educators on the minimum level of basic skills needed for their jobs.

    The CBEST ran off track from its inception. Rather than being created by employment-testing experts like a civil service exam, it was a high-profile political showpiece, divorced from critical employment testing standards and processes. When employment tests have a substantial adverse impact on diverse candidates, “job-relatedness” requires that assumptions about what skills are needed must be proven by analyzing each job tested. Likewise, untested desires for high performance on partial job elements must be scrutinized. Insisting that all your players sink 90% of their free throws may sound good, but that unexamined standard would fail legions of hall of famers.

    Documents uncovered during the case acknowledged that in 1982, California chose the faster and cheaper development plan from Educational Testing Service that specifically rejected making the test “job-related.” Even so, ETS’s initial validity study undertook the most careful and extensive examination to date of where to establish passing scores, for, as required, “minimally competent” (not high or average-performing) educators. Relying on the professional judgment of some 289 educators and academics, that study recommended relatively modest passing scores. A typical employment exam process would likely have called it a day. Instead, a much smaller, politically appointed advisory board of 11 recommended substantially higher passing scores, which were further one-upped by then-State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig. Spurred on by “campaign promises to raise [teacher] quality,” Honig set yet higher passing scores without regard to job-relatedness. The final effect reduced Black, Latino and Asian first-time pass rates from 63%, 69% and 76% if the 289 ETS panelists had been followed to 38%, 49% and 53%, respectively.

    Enter Public Advocates’ litigation 10 years later. The state defendants were blindsided when the courts held the CBEST is an employment exam for public school educators which must be “job-related.” The pre-litigation validity studies admittedly had never taken the essential first step for employment tests — a job analysis of all those educator jobs. When the commission finally attempted one in 1994, its own expert advised that most of the math test — the algebra and geometry portions used since 1982 — was not job-related, that those items should be removed and the test re-scored to pass unfairly failed candidates.

    Did the state and the commission acknowledge the harm caused and right the wrong? No. They doubled down on protecting the CBEST and its racially discriminatory failure rates.

    The policymakers had their expert “reconsider” and then delete that recommendation. Then, they engineered a revised CBEST that imported the difficulty level and high failure rates for people of color of the prior invalid test by removing much less of the math content than called for, swapping in relatively difficult “lower order” math items and — when test-takers still performed better — raising the math passing score.

    In 2000, six judges on a deeply fractured 11-judge federal appellate panel looked the other way and accepted the “revised” CBEST. But state decision-makers don’t have to continue to do so. At its meeting this week, the commission is examining whether to renew the CBEST contract with its vendor. After 40 years, it’s time to retire the CBEST. In a post-George Floyd era of racial reckoning, we should be working to overturn the harms against people of color caused by unnecessary, biased, standardized tests. In 2015, California dropped another discriminatory, misguided “accountability” measure from a bygone era, the High School Exit Exam. The University of California and California State University have dropped the SAT from their admissions processes, and the state has essentially halted community colleges from using questionable exams to place students from marginalized communities in dead-end remedial classes disproportionately. Oregon, the only other state that used the CBEST, phased out administering it years ago, concerned with its redundancy and adverse impacts.

    There are more than enough entry requirements to ensure credential candidates possess job-related basic skills. These include requiring a bachelor’s degree, subject matter competency, the California Teaching Performance Assessment, the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment or RICA and, since 2000, transcript reviews of basic skills proficiency as an alternative to the CBEST. It’s time for the credentialing commission and the state to drop the tainted CBEST. It’s also time for some reconciliation. The commission can start by releasing that long-suppressed study of the CBEST’s racial and cultural bias.

    •••

    John Affeldt is a managing attorney at Public Advocates, a public-interest law firm in San Francisco, where he focuses on educational equity issues.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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