Once upon a time. Elon Musk was Trump’s best friend. No longer. Despite his best effort to slash the government, he failed. Originally, Musk offered to secure a cut of $2 trillion, but came nowhere near that figure, eventually he dropped his goal to only $175 billion. That number may actually be much lower because of errors in the count.
When Musk learned that Trump’s new budget was vastly increased, he went ballistic.
He said that the new budget was “disgusting.” He did not mention that his companies–especially Starlink and SpaceX–will be showered with federal funding in the “one big, beautiful bill.” Starlink will have a large role in Trump’s plan to build a “Golden Dome” to protect the U.S. and that his Space X will lead the effort to travel to Mars.
Elon Musk on Tuesday called President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislation making its way through Congress “pork-filled” and “a disgusting abomination.” Musk, who recently left his cost-cutting role in Trump’s administration, issued his strongest condemnation to date of the massive tax and immigration bill that narrowly passed the House and is pending in the Senate. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” Musk wrote on social media. “You know it.” On Monday night, Trump re-upped his call for Congress to send the bill to his desk by July 4.
A Walnut Valley Unified kindergarten teacher shows her students a book during class.
Credit: Walnut Valley Unified / Facebook
An underused, little-known public school choice program allowing students to enroll in other districts that open their borders has been reauthorized six times in the past 30 years. Under a bill winding its way through the Legislature, it would become permanent, with revised rules.
Under the District of Choice program, districts announce how many seats they make available to nonresident students by the fall of the preceding year, and parents must apply by Jan. 1. By statute, enrollment is open to any family that applies, without restrictions — and with a lottery if applications are oversubscribed. The program bans considering academic or athletic ability or, if an applicant is a student with special needs, the cost of educating a student.
“This bill is a crucial step towards creating a more inclusive and equitable public education system — one where all students have the opportunity to grow and thrive,” said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, the author of Senate Bill 897.
With enrollments dropping statewide — and projected to continue — districts could view District of Choice as a strategy to stem the decline and bolster revenue that new students would bring. But few districts have seized the option. At most, 50 districts out of nearly 1,000, mostly rural or suburban and small, have signed on.
That number, in turn, has restricted the openings for families; fewer than 10,000 students annually have transferred through the program — about 0.2% of California’s students, according to an evaluation of the program by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2021.
The list of districts for 2024-25 will be 44, the same as this year. That is down from 47 districts in 2021-22, when a total of 8,398 students transferred, according to the latest data available from the California Department of Education.
Of those, 2,574 students — 31% of the total — transferred to a single district, Walnut Valley Unified, a 14,000-student district in the San Gabriel Valley. The district includes the cities of Walnut and Diamond Bar and abuts Pomona Unified. Newman, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, represents Walnut Valley; his predecessor, Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, also championed District of Choice and shepherded a previous five-year reauthorization.
Together with five other districts receiving the most students — Oak Park Unified, Glendora Unified, West Covina Unified, Valley Lindo Elementary School District and Riverside Unified — the five received 82% of the students in the program statewide. Riverside, with 1,100 of its 42,000 students enrolled through District of Choice, is the only large district using the program.
Robert Taylor, Walnut Valley Unified’s superintendent, said the district had participated in the program for decades, in the belief that the district “should provide any child an opportunity regardless of special needs, socioeconomic status or street address. And that’s still today. We take every kid who wants to come.”
Taylor cited the “diversity of well-rounded opportunities” that draw outsiders: Arts offerings in elementary schools, starting in kindergarten, include dance, theater and music and are taught by professionals in the arts, he said. There is a counselor in every elementary school, and counselors stay with the same students throughout high school and meet one-on-one with them during the summer. The graduation rate is 100%, he said.
Responding to an allegation he hears, Taylor said, “No, we don’t cherry-pick students. We don’t want to, and it’s been against the law to.” The 2017 reauthorization of the law requires that districts give low-income students priority for transfers, and SB 897 would add homeless and foster children as well. The 23% of low-income students from other districts enrolled at Walnut Unified are slightly less than the 25% overall in the district.
Students from 30 districts have enrolled through District of Choice, Taylor said, and some parents drive from more than an hour away. One district that has not been sending additional students is its larger, less affluent neighbor, Pomona Unified, where 85% of its 22,000 students are from low-income families.
Under an arcane rule, a district can cap the number of students it permits to leave for districts of choice at a cumulative 10% of its average daily attendance since it first joined the program — even if many students have long since graduated from high school. Pomona reached that limit a half-dozen years ago, after going to court to prove that Walnut Valley had already exceeded the target, said Superintendent Darren Knowles.
SB 897 would delete that clause and replace it with a new annual cap: 10% of a district’s current average daily attendance for districts with fewer than 50,000 students and 1% for districts with more than 50,000 students. Sending districts would also be exempt if county offices of education verified that a loss of students to the program would jeopardize their financial stability.
Pomona Unified was the only opponent listed at a hearing last month in the Senate Education Committee, where the bill passed unanimously. Rowland Unified, a 13,000-student district to the west of Walnut Valley, has also complained about the financial impact of the transfer program.
Knowles said he doesn’t oppose the concept of school choice, if the distribution is equitable. But before reaching the cap, Walnut Valley drew disproportionately high numbers of white and Asian families from the wealthier neighborhoods in Diamond Bar that lie within Pomona Unified. The latter may be attracted to the two dual Chinese language immersion programs in Walnut Valley.
Wealthier families are able to drive their kids to Walnut Valley; low-income Latino families with both parents working more than likely can’t, said Knowles.
“The District of Choice does not create a good distribution for Pomona Unified,” Knowles said. “We need kids excelling as well as those struggling. Taking out the smartest kids in any district is not a good situation.”
Pomona Unified already has closed six elementary schools due to declining enrollment, Knowles said. The new cap could “decimate us within five years,” Knowles said. “Give us time to recover, a reprieve.”
Newman said that he is open to further accommodations for an adverse financial impact. “We don’t want well-intended legislation to have unintended consequences,” he told EdSource.
Who chooses?
In its 2021 evaluation, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that District of Choice “allows students to access educational options that are not offered in their home districts,” including college prep courses, arts and music and foreign languages. Nearly all the students transferred to districts with higher test scores.
Newly required oversight measures found no districts discriminating against interested students, and that the program appeared to increase racial balance for some districts and reduce it for others, the LAO said, “although the changes for most districts are small.” It found that statewide, fewer low-income students used the program, compared with other students in their home districts; however, the proportion of those students had risen over four years from 27% to 32%. Participation of Latino students, though also on the rise, was smaller than the Latino enrollment in their home districts — similar to Pomona and Walnut Valley.
Among the last children to transfer from Pomona to Walnut Valley six years ago, right before the limit was reached, is Ethan Fermin. Then entering kindergarten, he is now in sixth grade at Suzanne Middle School. His sister, now in second grade, was admitted through an interdistrict transfer, a more restrictive permit process that requires both districts to approve the move. A family must make the case for the transfer or cite a hardship — in this case, the transportation challenges of having kids in two different districts. Parents whose children are denied a transfer can appeal to the county board of education, which often reverses a decision.
Ethan’s father, Billy, graduated from Pomona Unified schools; he was high school class president and active in many school activities, Fermin said. From his home, he can see the elementary school his kids would have attended — a two-minute walk from their house. Friends from high school are Pomona teachers. His kids would have attended his high school, Diamond Ranch High.
Leaving the district wasn’t easy, he said, adding, “But it’s a different world from when I went to school.” What caught his eye in Walnut Valley, he said, was a program in two elementary schools that leads to the International Baccalaureate, a rigorous high school program that stresses inquiry-based learning. He liked the early years’ focus on developing well-rounded, creative and open-minded learners and risk-takers. “Given the choice, it was night and day,” he said.
Taylor said Walnut Valley doesn’t market its programs as District of Choice, and he doesn’t speak negatively about other districts. Fermin said the district is smart to use social media heavily to show off what’s happening in its schools, and banners go up at the start of the sign-up period.
Possible reasons for so little participation
Charter schools are by far the largest public school choice program in California. The more than 1,200 charter schools served 685,553 students in 2022-23 — 11.7% of statewide enrollment, compared with about 2% through interdistrict transfers and 0.02% through District of Choice.
The Legislature passed laws permitting charter schools in 1992 and the District of Choice a year later. Both were viewed as strategies to counter a school voucher initiative that would have provided public funding for private school tuition, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s analysis. Voters trounced the voucher initiative, which drew only 30% support in the 1993 vote.
Why so few districts have participated in the program is a matter of conjecture. The five-year reauthorization periods raised the risk for districts and parents that their participation might be cut short. Ken Kapphahn, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office who did the evaluation, said some districts are able to receive as many interested transfer students as they want through the interdistrict permit process, under which they can set academic and behavior conditions.
Some districts would involve long drives to get to, while others assume they don’t have special offerings to lure lots of students, he said. And it’s his impression, he said, that many districts still don’t know the program exists; the California Department of Education does not promote it.
Newman said there is an entrepreneurial potential of the program that many superintendents haven’t recognized. The ability to draw students from nearby districts could inspire “a high level of innovation” that best serves students’ interests, he said.
Former President of the State Board of Education Mike Kirst, who said he supports making the program permanent, suggested another reason: It could be that district superintendents consider District of Choice a violation of an unwritten education commandment, Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s enrollment.
“It’s a professional norm that you don’t try to ‘poach’ students from other districts,” he said.
When the Covid-19 pandemic seriously disrupted the ability of students to take SATs and ACTs, many colleges and universities, including the University of California and California State University systems, either made standardized tests optional or dropped the requirement for admissions. Now, Dartmouth is the first to say that either SATs or ACTs will be required again for fall 2024 applicants, and a few other universities, including Harvard, are following this path.
Even before the pandemic, equity concerns were often cited as reasons these tests should not be required; both the UC and Cal State systems have maintained that they will continue to be SAT- and ACT-free.
To learn what university students think about the potential return of standardized testing, EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps asked them the following questions at seven California colleges and universities:
“While UC and Cal State have said there are no plans to change their test-free policy, in place since 2020, do you think standardized tests such as these should return? Why or why not?”
Below are their responses.
(Click on the names or images below to read what each person had to say.)
Alex Soriano opposes the return of standardized tests, suggesting that there should be “more holistic ways” to evaluate students equitably. However, he is unsure of what an alternative might look like.
“In my opinion, based on evaluating different skills … I feel like (the test) doesn’t really evaluate knowledge on the same level,” he said. “I think bringing back standardized tests would bring back [equity] issues.”
To showcase the disparity of standardized test scores, Soriano references EdGap.org. The website features a map that displays the median household income of neighborhoods and the average SAT and ACT scores in those areas. The map indicates that high-income areas exhibit well-performing test scores in comparison to those from low-income areas.
“Coming from the upper-middle-class area of San Diego, my area was super high (in SAT and ACT scores), and it made sense,” Soriano said. “A lot of my friends could afford to pay for the extra tutoring; they could pay for a counselor that can come in and work on standardized test prep, and not everybody is able to afford those services.”
By Jazlyn Dieguez
“I think they should (return) just because I think it’s a good (performance assessment) other than grades for colleges because some high schools inflate their GPAs,” Rodriguez said. “It’s kind of a middle ground.”
After taking the SAT exam once, Rodriguez was satisfied with the “OK” score he received since he wasn’t planning to apply to any universities with a high SAT requirement. Instead, he opted to attend Modesto Junior College and has since transferred to San Diego State University.
“It’s weird because I know some people are not great test-takers and some students haven’t had the luxury of being in certain classes or receiving tutoring,” he said. “Some people were spending crazy amounts of money to have a good SAT and ACT score. I wasn’t one of those guys, I was just happy with whatever I got.”
By Jazlyn Dieguez
“No, I do not believe standardized testing should be reinstated,” Kattaa said. “The SATs are a disadvantage for most college applicants.”
Kattaa believes that “a student’s GPA, extracurriculars, admission essays, and letters of recommendation speak more (about) a student’s academic and personal achievements. They are more than just one test.”
Kattaa also believes that the absence of required standardized tests has increased diversity on college campuses.
By Aya Mikbel
“I believe that standardized tests such as these should not return due to the amount of pressure it puts onto students and the possible disadvantage regarding admission status,” Naseer said. However, she sees the advantage of the tests being provided “for those who want to show more dedication.”
She understands that colleges and universities are looking for “well-rounded students; academics certainly play a greater role when applying to college.”
But Naseer is concerned that when students don’t have high scores, “It may cause them to be looked down upon, (and) there are other factors such as general academics or volunteer service that should be prioritized as well.”
Naseer continued, “As a student who didn’t take these tests, I feel that doing so allowed me to focus and improve on other areas of my studies/experience.”
By Aya Mikbel
“No, I don’t think these tests should be brought back,” Garcia said. “I think there should be a different type of examination process. I didn’t take the ACT or SAT and got in (to UCLA). I think they don’t really evaluate the student as a whole.”
Garcia added that she thinks the tests don’t “give a very good evaluation of students, academically speaking.”
By Delilah Brumer
“We got rid of the SAT and ACT requirements a few years ago, and I honestly think that it’s more fair for people to not have (these tests) as a requirement,” Wolin said.
Wolin said she was able to get SAT tutoring, but it was expensive for her family, and she’s “very aware that not everyone can afford that.”
“While I did have a leg up, I know that it wasn’t fair to everyone,” Wolin said. “I think abolishing that requirement was a step in the right direction. I wish I had a better solution for a replacement, but I don’t. At least now, I know they’re focusing on a more holistic approach, which I think is more fair.”
By Delilah Brumer
“I think it depends on the college,” Bar said. “For a school like Cal Poly, where a majority of what they are going to take into account is your GPA and test scores, it is different from a private college where they are going to take a more holistic approach.”
As a student who participated in examinations for his admission into Cal Poly, Bar said that he believed the university could benefit from reinstating test scores in exams, to add more depth to applications.
“Right now, Cal Poly doesn’t use essays, so all the application really consists of is biographical information and GPA,” Bar said. “I think there should be another component, like SATs or ACT scores. I think for a school that requires just such minimal information about the applicants, they should require it.”
By Arabel Meyer
“They should be test-free because it makes admissions more equal, and all higher SAT scores usually come with higher preparation,” Martinez said.
Martinez said she hopes UCs and CSUs would not require test scores because she finds inequality when colleges use standardized test scores for admissions. The SAT takes preparation and financial resources that not all students can access, according to Martinez.
“I came from a low-income community and rural community,” she said. “There was no such thing as SAT prep.”
Martinez only realized the importance of SAT preparation when her peers began to discuss private tutoring and other resources they had access to. She hopes that remaining test-free will provide greater opportunities for students, regardless of their financial position.
By Kelcie Lee
“Having it is a good idea,” Chiu said. “However, the SAT, when you take it, you can learn how to get a good score. So in a way, it’s almost rigged.”
She had mixed feelings when it comes to the SAT and ACT; she understands the purposes of assessing students, but also acknowledged flaws of using standardized tests for admissions.
“Even if you do get a good score, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re meant to go to one of these top schools.”
She believes a better option would involve the UCs making their own test that is “more knowledge-based,” as opposed to the memorization involved in prepping for the SAT.
“Ultimately, it’s a weird in-between of whether you should have it or not,” Chiu said.
By Kelcie Lee
“I personally think the tests aren’t necessary or helpful. I don’t think they are proof of intelligence.”
Williams transferred from Berkeley City College to Sonoma State in 2023. She did not have to take a standardized test to get admitted.
“I know people in my life that have told me about their experiences, and that they felt that the test was not concrete proof of whether or not they are intelligent.”
By Ally Valiente
Bernales said that he does not support standardized tests making a return because “the tests favor those that have access to more resources.”
He is dissatisfied with the inequity. “Families with money can get tutors to help educate their kids to do better and can afford for them to take it multiple times to improve, while some families may not be able to afford it,” Bernales said.
“Along with that,” he continued, “the [high] school’s funding also can affect the results of the test since a better funded school tends to have higher scores.”
By Ally Valiente
“No, because I think a lot of people just aren’t good test takers, and a lot of it’s just really generalized knowledge,” Mlouk said.
Mlouk said she did not get a good score on the SAT, but she had a high GPA, which helped her.
“I consider (myself) a pretty smart person, but the test does not reflect that at all,” she said.
Mlouk said standardized tests like the SAT and ACT aren’t helpful for people who are not good test takers.
“It would limit their chances even though they could excel at that school,” Mlouk said.
A bill that would have required California teachers to use the “science of reading,” which spotlights phonics, to teach children to read has died without a hearing.
Assembly Bill 2222, authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, will not advance in the Legislature this year, according to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who described the state’s student reading and literacy rates as “a serious problem,” adding that the bill should receive a “methodical” review by all key groups before there is a “costly overhaul” of how reading is taught in California.
“I want the Legislature to study this problem closely, so we can be sure stakeholders are engaged and, most importantly, that all students benefit, especially our diverse learners,” Rivas said in a statement to EdSource, referring to English learners.
The bill, which had the support of the California State PTA, state NAACP and more than 50 other organizations, hit a snag two weeks ago, when the California Teachers Association — the state’s largest teachers union — sent a letter stating its opposition to the bill to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi.
The union claimed that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and would cut teachers out of decisions, especially on curriculum.
Rubio, who could not be reached late Thursday, told EdSource last week that Muratsuchi asked her to work with the teachers union on a compromise.
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised the bill didn’t get a hearing considering the importance of the issue.
“We understand it’s a tough budget year, but we also believe that the most important priority for the education budget is helping our kids learn how to read,” he said.
But he called the move to table the bill a “bump in the road.”
“When we launched with Assemblymember Rubio and the sponsors behind this, we knew it might be a multi-year effort,” he said. “So you get up tomorrow and keep it moving forward.”
Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandates this change in reading instruction. In 2023, just 43% of California third-graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.
“The California NAACP was right, this is a civil rights issue,” said Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM. “And you don’t play politics with civil rights. The misinformation and ideological posturing on AB 2222 effectively leveraged the politics of fear. We have to do better, for kids’ sake, and can’t give up.”
What is the science of reading?
Science of reading refers to research-based teaching strategies that reflect how the brain learns how to read. While it includes phonics-based instruction that teaches children to decode words by sounding them out, it also includes four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.
The legislation would have gone against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour-minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
English learner advocates opposed bill
It appears lawmakers heard the pleas of advocates for English learners who opposed the bill.
“We know that addressing equity and literacy outcomes is a high priority for California and that our state is not yet where it needs to be with literacy outcomes for all students,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, one of the organizations that opposed the bill. “AB 2222 is not the prescription that is needed for our multilingual, diverse state.”
She said she is willing to work with lawmakers for a literacy plan that is based on reading research, but that “centrally addresses” the needs of English learners.
California’s proposed legislation to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy would have been in sync with other states that have passed similar legislation. States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it de-emphasizes explicit instruction in phonics and instead trains children to use pictures to identify words on sight, also known as three-cueing.
Muratsuchi had until the end of the day Thursday to put the bill on the calendar for the April 17 meeting of the Assembly Education Committee. It would then have had to be heard by the Assembly Higher Education Committee before the April 26 deadline for legislators to get bills with notable fiscal impacts to the Appropriations Committee. Now, the bill will have to be reintroduced next year to get a hearing.
“It’s really too bad. Lots of kids are not being well-served now. But on the other hand, I hope this will be an opportunity to regroup and present a more robust version of the bill,” said Claude Goldenberg, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education, who supported the bill.
Goldenberg said a future version of the bill should include a “more comprehensive definition” of the “science of reading” and should make clear that this includes research on teaching reading to all students, including English learners.
“English learners, for example, would benefit if teachers knew and used research that is part of the science of reading and applies whether they’re learning in their home language or in English. Same for children with limited literacy opportunities outside of school and children having difficulty learning to read,” Goldenberg said.
‘Backroom politics’
Lori DePole, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, one of the supporters of the bill, expressed frustration Thursday evening over the decision to table it.
“It is shameful that when more than half of CA kids aren’t reading at grade level that our legislators are okay with the status quo, and they have killed this literacy legislation without even allowing it to be heard,” she said in a statement.
“… CA kids’ futures are too important to allow backroom politics to silence this issue. We will no longer accept lip service in addressing our literacy crisis. It is time for action, and we aren’t going away.”
Advocates for students with dyslexia support the phonics-based teaching methods as especially effective for children with the learning disability.
Muratsuchi said he supports the science of reading. “However, we need to make sure that we do this right, by serving the needs of all California students, including our English learners,” he said in a statement to EdSource. “California is the most language-diverse state in the country, and we need to develop a literacy instruction strategy that works for all of our students.
“I thank Speaker Robert Rivas for his decision to pursue a more deliberative process involving all education stakeholders before enacting a costly overhaul of how reading is taught statewide,” he said.
EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza contributed to this report.
Thomas Ultican reviews the current state of billionaire support for charter schools in California. Most people, certainly the charter industry, has long forgotten or never knew that the original charter school idea was that they would be created by teachers and operate under the aegis of local school boards. The reason for the linkage was that charter schools were supposed to be places that tried innovative practices, especially for the neediest students, and fed their results to their host district. They were supposed to be like R&D centers for local school districts.
They were not supposed to compete with public schools but to help public schools.
They were not supposed to undermine public schools. They were not supposed to be for-profit or operated as chains or entrepreneurs.
Summer is just around the corner and for both remedial and enrichment programs, we humbly think single book units from our Reading Reconsidered curriculum are an ideal match. Our Associate Director of Curriculum and School Support Alonte Johnson-James, explains why:
Summer school and enrichment programs share a common goal of improving and advancing the knowledge and skills of students. They also provide a great chance for the teachers invested in their success to be able try outhigh quality curricula and newer, more research-backed approaches.
When considering a curriculum that best serves students and teachers, we believe the novel-based, modular units of the Reading Reconsidered curriculum provide the opportunity to support students with building knowledge and practice retrieving this knowledge throughout the unit.
Even more exciting is the “one-stop-shop” benefit of high-quality instructional materials that support the training and development of new and veteran teachers alike.
Here are some of the attributes of the Reading Reconsidered Curriculum that make it ideal for summer programs:
Novel-based:
With summer programs roughly spanning 5 to 6 weeks, our novel-based units are a hit! Leaders and teachers may select any of our 36 novel-based units based on their knowledge of their students. Using novel-based units affords summer school students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a good book and read it cover-to-cover. To support with choosing the best fit text, we provide a scope and sequence for text selection based on the time of year. Consider choosing a recommended beginning of year unit for supporting students through remediation or choose a mid-year or end-of-year unit to advance learning or prepare students for the upcoming school year.
Either way, choosing a unit with students in mind can increase investment and engagement in the novel. One teacher shared that the Lord of the Flies unit allowed students to be “immersed in deep concepts and look at things in a different light, that they would not normally think of. It helps get them involved in the plot of the novel and feel part of it.”
Knowledge and Retrieval:
As previously mentioned, Our student-facing materials provide students with the knowledge-building tools needed to see success in these novel-based units. A knowledge organizer makes the end of unit understandings transparent from the launch of the unit. Daily lesson handouts include a Do Now, Vocabulary Practice, Retrieval Practice and all essential knowledge students will need to access the reading and learning for the day. Additionally, materials also include embedded non-fiction and light embellishments to support teachers and students with key background knowledge needed to access pivotal moments of the text without spending valuable learning time with front-loading content. Including these knowledge-building moments at the “just right” moment allows students to build genuine connections between the non-fiction and the fictional text at the center of the class and deepen their learning and connection to the text.
Teachers will be better able to assess and respond to students’ understandings with the recursive practice embedded throughout units. Vocabulary lessons include recursive practice that revisits key literary and content-specific terms students will need to access the day’s materials and encode into their long-term memory for future study and application. Retrieval practice also assesses students’ understanding and retention of key knowledge and skills taught throughout the unit. Additionally, daily lessons include recursive practice of newly taught and previously learned content from the Do Now to the Exit Ticket. Teachers can leverage various portions of each lesson to gather data and best plan for how to respond to this data using the provided lesson materials.
One school leader had this to share about the retrieval practice:
I love the vocabulary boxes for exposure and how these are embedded words in the text. I also appreciate the periodic review of terms. The retrieval practices are a great quick check for where students are at and to emphasize what key details students need to retain.
One-Stop Shop:
The book-based Reading Reconsidered curriculum is highly regarded by school leaders and teachers because of its rigor, its accessibility and the embedded teacher support. Teachers are provided with unit and lesson plans that outline essential unit understandings as well as the standards that are practiced and assessed throughout the unit. The lesson plans serve as guides for teachers to ensure effective implementation with suggestions for how to approach the day’s reading andplans for engaging students in the learning, and an additional benefit to having printable daily lesson plans and student packets is it simplifies planning and allows teachers to focus on assessing and responding to student work with intentional considerations foradaptations and differentiation to tailor lessons based on students’ abilities and needs. Ultimately, the Reading Reconsidered curriculum lowers the planning lift for summer school teachers and makes the curriculum well-poised to serve as a training and development tool for more novice teachers. What’s even better? All materials are shared in Word form for easy formatting, adapting, and printing.
If you are looking for a literacy curriculum for this summer, choose Reading Reconsidered for its:
Novel-based, modular unit structure to best select rigorous and engaging text that invest students in the novel and their learning
Consistent recursive practice that reviews key knowledge students will need to master the unit’s content and provides teachers with consistent data to inform data-driven instruction
“One-stop” approach to essential teacher and student facing materials that support implementation and differentiation
A student performs a poem at the quarterfinals of the 12th annual Get Lit Classic Slam.
Photo Credit: CJ Calica
Salome Agbaroji wrote her first poem, a rap, in the second grade, and she’s been crafting rhymes ever since. Now the 18-year-old Harvard student is best known as the nation’s youth poet laureate.
“I have always loved poetry,” said Agbaroji. “Even before I knew it was poetry, I started loving rap music, so I’ve always loved poetry and using words creatively. That’s always just been what I gravitated to, even as a young, young child.”
A Nigerian-American poet from Los Angeles, Agbaroji has performed spoken word poetry for the Golden Globes, an NFL halftime show, and she’s talked poetry with President Joe Biden at the White House. Her passion for spoken word performance began back at Gahr High School in Cerritos, where her love of words was further fueled by the arts education nonprofit Get Lit-Words Ignite.
“Get Lit is an amazing organization, giving you the space and the opportunity to share your voice and to be creative and to be wild and to be heard,” says the eloquent teenager who believes in the power of poetry to combat rising illiteracy and injustice. “They shined a light on me. They made such a big impact on my whole journey.”
2023 national youth poet laureate Salome Agbaroji performs a poem at the 12th Annual Get Lit Classic Slam.Photo Credit: Unique Nicole
Amid a deepening literacy crisis, Get Lit spreads a love of literature through spoken word poetry and performance. Founded by actor/writer Diane Luby Lane in 2006, Get Lit, which recently received $1 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, teaches classical poetry as well as empowers children and teens to write their own poems in over 150 Los Angeles schools, instilling a love of language in a generation often struggling with literacy.
“Spoken word really helps with literacy,” said Lane. “It really helps when you put your body on the line, when you’re not just listening passively, but you’re actually memorizing, you’re performing, you’re responding with your own words. It’s such an interactive experience.”
Get Lit reaches out to roughly 50,000 students a year, ranging from fourth grade to high school, through its school-based programs. The curriculum is a deep dive into great literature, from T.S. Eliot to Maya Angelou, that culminates in a three-day Classic Slam, the largest classic youth poetry competition in the country.
The Classic Slam “is really worth attending if you can, it is mind-blowing and so inspiring to witness,” said Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, co-founder of Turnaround Arts: California, a nonprofit that works in elementary and middle schools. “Students who participate benefit in so many ways; they gain confidence and poise and become empowered to use their voice in a unique way.”
Along the way, they teach the power of recitation, as well as how to amplify your own voice amid the noise of the social media age. The students come to hear the echoes in the ancient, putting the past in dialogue with the present.
“We always say a classic isn’t a classic because it’s old, a classic is a classic because it’s great,” Lane said. “We’re redefining what the canon is.”
Finding the joy in literacy can be a powerful message for children who don’t always feel celebrated in the school system, some say. Roughly 85% of Get Lit’s students are from under-resourced communities and 92% are students of color.
“Kids are sitting in school for eight hours a day, either being bombarded by facts and information or being asked to regurgitate those facts and information,” said Agbaroji, who has written poems that explore race, community and history. “Writing is like the one space, the one little pocket in an eight-hour school day where students actually can do something themselves, create something that they can say is mine and no one can take it away from me.”
Ironically, Lane says that while some adults dismiss the study of poetry as a stilted and staid pursuit, most youths have far more open minds.
“It’s an easy sell with the kids. Very easy,” she says with a smile. “The elementary schools have been begging for it. You know how good young kids are at memorizing things. And sometimes their own responses are so deep. It’s unbelievable.”
Get Lit tries to respond to each child’s distinctive needs, experts say, tapping into what makes that student unique, how to help them shine.
“They are doing amazing work,” said Merryl Goldberg, an arts advocate and veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “One of the things that I really like about what I know about them is that they incorporate community and student needs into their mission focused on poetry.”
Lane says she knows just how to frame poems so that Tennyson and Tupac have equal pull with students and tries to shed light on the universality of poetry to capture the human experience.
“We say, claim your poem, claim your life,” said Lane. “Because I am approaching it as an actor, I can pull Wordsworth pieces that make the kids raise their hand and fight over poems, and we’re mixing this with a lot of contemporary voices. Tupac is a great poet. The mixture allows for students to find themselves however they want to.”
Cleveland High School students Robert Lee Shelton, Mateo Vejar, Heidi Lopez and Ashley Tahay perform a group poem at the 12th annual Get Lit Classic Slam.Photo Credit: Unique Nicole
Parsing one word at a time, the way a poem requires, may be most ideal for struggling readers, Lane adds, who prefer to savor each syllable instead of speeding along the page.
“My daughter, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. It was really hard for her to get through a whole book. It just was,” says Lane. “So many children in our school districts, their reading skills are not great, but their emotional IQ is high. So a poem gives them the opportunity to study something short but deep. It’s an absolute game changer. It changes the entire culture of a school.”
She’ll never forget teaching poetry to her daughter’s fourth grade class. She had them learn Angelou’s iconic “Still I Rise” by heart and watched the fourth graders light up with pride.
“Here’s a kid that struggled with reading that doesn’t feel like they’re smart, but now they have this whole poem memorized,” she said. “They learn to perform it really well. They write their own response back to it. It’s deeply empowering. And they do it for the whole grade or class or school. And they get to feel really powerful by mastering short form content. That’s deep.”
First graders at Frank Sparkes Elementary in Merced County write about how they would spend their money.
Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
Two years ago, California launched an innovative program to help children from low-income families save for their future education. Enrollment in the program, known as CalKIDS, began for all newborn babies and eligible low-income public-school students in 2022.
CalKIDS is a children’s savings account (CSA) program, a long-term wealth-building vehicle that can be used to help finance higher education. These accounts have specifically designed features (incentives and explicit structures) that encourage asset building among disadvantaged families, but they are meant to universally serve all families with children.
They provide a financial structure to collect contributions from a variety of entities such as governments, employers, philanthropic foundations, communities, private donors and others. But while CalKIDS provides each newborn with their own account, they should be thought of only as community accounts opened for individual children. CalKIDS challenges the norm that paying for college and building wealth for low-income children is solely or even mostly the responsibility of families or even the government alone.
While enrollment, account opening and initial deposits for CalKIDS are automatic, so far only 8.3% of eligible students (about 300,000) have taken the additional step of registering for the program, which is necessary for them to ultimately be able to access the funds.
But this is not a reason to despair. Registration rates alone are not the best metric for understanding or measuring the potential of this program because:
CalKIDS is likely to have a high return on investment for Californians over the long term. For example, a return-on-investment (ROI) analysis estimates that for every dollar invested by the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, in its CollegeBound program, the city will receive $9 in benefits associated with increased income, improved health, additional tax revenues and savings to the judicial and education system.
The program opens the door to multiple sources of support. The ability of CalKIDS to build wealth for children by facilitating the flow of multiple asset streams into a child’s account makes it unlike any other wealth-building tool within the state’s policy tool kit. An example of how other programs are doing this can be found in a case study on the Early Award Scholarship Program, a children’s savings account program in Indiana. They are converting traditional scholarships awarded at age 18 into early award scholarships that go into accounts long before age 18. New York City’s Kids RISE is using community scholarships, allowing groups like churches to come together and provide every child in their community with an early award scholarship. With a little foresight, CalKIDS can also be adapted to act as a financial structure for combining other efforts to support children and tackle wealth inequality, such as the “baby bonds” proposals in California.
CalKIDS can provide many other social, psychological and educational benefits. Building wealth is only one part of its potential impact on Californians. Evidence shows that children’s savings accounts reduce maternal depression, improve social-emotional development, parental educational expectations, and lead to more positive parental practices. Increasingly, evidence also shows that these programs are an effective strategy for improving children’s postsecondary outcomes. These effects can occur even when families have not contributed to their account. Moreover, the effects are often strongest among disadvantaged families.
However, it will take time to realize all the potential benefits of CalKIDS. Here are some reasons why:
Existing norms: A seldom-discussed reason why some families may wait to register or begin to save in CalKIDS is because of the cultural norm that families don’t need to start planning for college until their children are in high school. Having become entrenched over generations, it will take time to reverse these assumptions. As more families register in CalKIDS, however, we can expect the norm of waiting to change.
Economic conditions: According to financial needs theory, when families’ incomes increase and they have enough resources to meet basic needs, they are more likely to plan and save for college. Covid and the high inflationary period that followed have strained the ability of families to meet basic needs. This might be another reason why it might take time to see the full benefits of CalKIDS.
Long-term investment: These are investment accounts designed to build wealth over a long period. Furthermore, the real outcomes CalKIDS is concerned with are also long-term, such as increased college enrollment rates. Given this, impacts should be examined over a longer period.
The SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment started in 2007. It provides an example of how investments in children’s savings accounts are better understood over time, and not in a single snapshot. After the Great Recession (2008-09), the initial $1,000 investment in the accounts declined to just below $700. However, they grew to about $1,900 by the end of 2019. This is similar to what has been seen in other long term investment accounts such as 401k’s. After an economic disturbance, over time they often recover.
Similarly, after Covid, which was at its peak in 2020, by 2021 when children in SEED OK were about age 14, the average treatment child had about $4,373 in their account. And families that were able to save had average balances of about $14,000. So, even if families are not able to save, significant assets accumulate in these types of accounts.
Even though it might seem like the CalKIDS program is off to a slow start, it is important to not lose sight of the fact that it is a long-term investment in kids living in California. And that it has the potential for creating a variety of important social, psychological, educational and economic impacts. These impacts can produce a substantial return on investment for the state and its citizens if given time to be fully realized.
June 2, 2025, by Dean Hoke: In the ongoing debate about the future of higher education, small colleges are often overlooked—yet they are indispensable. On May 21st, Higher Education Digest published my article, “Small Colleges Are Essential to American Higher Education,” in which I make the case for why these institutions remain vital to our national educational fabric.
Small colleges may not grab headlines, but they provide transformative experiences, especially for first-generation students, rural communities, and those seeking a deeply personal education. As financial pressures mount and demographic shifts continue, it’s easy to underestimate the impact of these campuses—but doing so comes at a cost. These schools are not only educators; they are regional economic engines, community partners, and laboratories for innovation.
In the article, I outline key reasons why we need to support and strengthen small colleges, including their unique role in economic development, workforce provider, and civic engagement. I also explore the consequences of neglecting this sector and what we can do about it.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the whole piece and share it with your colleagues and networks. Read the article here.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and reflections.
Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on small colleges’ challenges and opportunities. Dean is the Executive Producer and co-host for the podcast series Small College America.
Credit: Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages
A few weeks ago, my high school chemistry class sat through an “AI training.” We were told it would teach us how to use ChatGPT responsibly. We worked on worksheets with questions like, “When is it permissible to use ChatGPT on written homework?” and “How can AI support and not replace your thinking?” Another asked, “What are the risks of relying too heavily on ChatGPT?”
Most of us just used ChatGPT to finish the worksheet. Then we moved on to other things.
Schools have rushed to regulate AI based on a hopeful fiction: that students are curious, self-directed learners who’ll use technology responsibly if given the right guardrails. But most students don’t use AI to brainstorm or refine ideas — they use it to get assignments done faster. And school policies, built on optimism rather than observation, have done little to stop it.
Like many districts across the country, our school policy calls students to use ChatGPT to brainstorm, organize, and even generate ideas — but not to write. If we use generative AI to write the actual content of an assignment, we’re supposed to get a zero.
In practice, that line is meaningless. Later, I spoke to my chemistry teacher, who confided that she’d started checking Google Docs histories of papers she’d assigned and found that huge chunks of student writing were being pasted in. That is, AI-generated slop, dropped all at once with no edits, no revisions and no sign of actual real work. “It’s just disappointing,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
In Bible class, students quoted ChatGPT outputs verbatim during presentations. One student projected a slide listing the Minor Prophets alongside the sentence: “Would you like me to format this into a table for you?” Another spoke confidently about the “post-exilic” period— having earlier that week mispronounced “patriarchy.” At one point, Mr. Knoxville paused during a slide and asked, “Why does it say BCE?” Then, chuckling, answered his own question: “Because it’s ChatGPT using secular language.” Everyone laughed and moved on.
It’s safe to say that in reality, most students aren’t using AI to deepen their learning. They’re using it to get around the learning process altogether. And the real frustration isn’t just that students are cutting corners, but that schools still pretend they aren’t.
That doesn’t mean AI should be banned. I’m not an AI alarmist. There’s enormous potential for smart, controlled integration of these tools into the classroom. But handing students unrestricted access with little oversight is undermining the core purpose of school.
This isn’t just a high school problem. At CSU, administrators have doubled down on AI integration with the same blind optimism: assuming students will use these tools responsibly. But widespread adoption doesn’t equal responsible use. A recent study from the National Education Association found that 72% of high school students use AI to complete assignments without really understanding the material.
“AI didn’t corrupt deep learning,” said Tiffany Noel, education researcher and professor at SUNY Buffalo. “It revealed that many assignments were never asking for critical thinking in the first place. Just performance. AI is just the faster actor; the problem is the script.”
Exactly. AI didn’t ruin education; it exposed what was already broken. Students are responding to the incentives the education system has given them. We’re taught that grades matter more than understanding. So if there’s an easy shortcut, why wouldn’t we take it?
This also penalizes students who don’t cheat. They spend an hour struggling through an assignment another student finishes in three minutes with a chatbot and a text humanizer. Both get the same grade. It’s discouraging and painfully absurd.
Of course, this is nothing new. Students have always found ways to lessen their workload, like copying homework, sharing answers and peeking during tests. But this is different because it’s a technology that should help schools — and under the current paradigm, it isn’t. This leaves schools vulnerable to misuse and students unrewarded for doing things the right way.
What to do, then?
Start by admitting the obvious: if an assignment is done at home, it will likely involve AI. If students have internet access in class, they’ll use it there, too. Teachers can’t stop this: they see phones under desks and tabs flipped the second their backs are turned. Teachers simply can’t police 30 screens at once, and most won’t try. Nor should they have to.
We need hard rules and clearer boundaries. AI should never be used to do a student’s actual academic work — just as calculators aren’t allowed on multiplication drills or Grammarly isn’t accepted on spelling tests. School is where you learn the skill, not where you offload it.
AI is built to answer prompts. So is homework. Of course students are cheating. The only solution is to make cheating structurally impossible. That means returning to basics: pen-and-paper essays, in-class writing, oral defenses, live problem-solving, source-based analysis where each citation is annotated, explained and verified. If an AI can do an assignment in five seconds, it was probably never a good assignment in the first place.
But that doesn’t mean AI has no place. It just means we put it where it belongs: behind the desk, not in it. Let it help teachers grade quizzes. Let it assist students with practice problems, or serve as a Socratic tutor that asks questions instead of answering them. Generative AI should be treated as a useful aid after mastery, not a replacement for learning.
Students are not idealized learners. They are strategic, social, overstretched, and deeply attuned to what the system rewards. Such is the reality of our education system, and the only way forward is to build policies around how students actually behave, not how educators wish they would.
Until that happens, AI will keep writing our essays. And our teachers will keep grading them.
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William Liang is a high school student and education journalist living in San Jose, California.
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