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  • Community college faculty should all be allowed to work full time

    Community college faculty should all be allowed to work full time


    Students at Fresno City College

    Credit: Ashleigh Panoo/EdSource

    When most people think of part-time employment in the public sector, they assume that it (1) could be a steppingstone to a full-time job; (2) pays less than full-time, chiefly because it involves fewer hours of work; (3) is voluntary, and (4) is primarily meant to supplement a family’s income.

    When it comes to California’s 36,000 part-time community college professors, the facts defy all four assumptions.

    Unlike workers in other professions, part-time college instructors, regardless of length of service and/or quality of performance, will not be promoted to full-time unless they are lucky enough to secure an increasingly scarce full-time position teaching on the tenure track. Part-time instructors, many who work for decades off the tenure track, have been called “apprentices to nowhere.”

    Over the last five decades, colleges have gravitated toward part-time instructors for the flexibility of their semester-length agreements with no obligation to rehire, and their lower expense.  For example, while all full-time instructors receive state-paid health insurance, only about 10% (3,742) of the state’s part-timers do.

    Part-time instructor salaries are not pro-rated based on a typical full-time salary; instead, they are a separate scale which amounts to about 50-60% of the full-time instructor rate. To be clear, this doesn’t mean they receive 50-60% of the income of a full-time instructor: California law caps part-time faculty workload at no more than 67% of full-time. This workload cap, when combined with the discounted rate of pay, means that the average California part-time instructor teaching at 60% of full-time receives about $20,000 while the average annual income for full-time instructors is in excess of $100,000 a year. 

    Surveys conducted by the American Federation of Teachers in 2020 and 2022 found that roughly 25% of part-time community college faculty nationwide were below the federal poverty line.

    With no natural transition from part-time to full-time, this two-tier workplace takes on features of a caste system, especially as both full-time and part-time instructors satisfy the same credential requirements, award grades and credits that have the same value, and have the same tuition charged for their courses.

    While California college instructors are represented by faculty unions (primarily the California Federation of Teachers or the California Teachers Association), the priority of those unions would seem to be tenured faculty, as evidenced by the differences in the collectively bargained working conditions. 

    In the case of workload, for example, while part-time instructors are barred from teaching full-time, full-time instructors may elect to teach overtime, often called course overloads, for additional income. Full-time instructors displace part-time jobs whenever they do. In fact, full-timers generally get to choose their courses, including overloads, before part-timers are assigned courses.

    A bill being considered at present in the California Legislature is Assembly Bill 2277.  It would raise the current part-time workload restriction from 67% to 85% of full time, which, in theory, could enable some part-timers to teach more classes and earn more income. But if passed, AB 2277 would hardly solve the problem for part-time instructors.

    To make a more meaningful improvement, AB 2277 could be amended in two ways, neither of which make an impact on the state budget:

    • Remove the artificial workload cap outright, thereby enabling part-time instructors the opportunity to work up to 100% of full time when work is available. 
    • Impose a ban on full-time tenure-track instructors from teaching overtime (overloads).

    One possible source of opposition to these changes could be California’s faculty unions, which are dominated by full-timers. While supportive of earlier attempts at raising the cap to 85% (e.g., AB 897 in 2020, AB 375 in 2021, and AB 1856 in 2022) — neither union has shown a willingness to support elimination of the cap outright or curbing full-time overloads.

    In 2008, AB 591 adjusted the cap from 60% to the current 67%, but the first iteration of that bill proposed outright elimination of the cap (as does our suggested amendment), which was opposed by the CFT (see the April 16, 2007 legislative digest and commentary assembled in a California Part-Time Faculty Association (CPFA) report). 

    Another source of opposition could be those full-time instructors accustomed to teaching overtime/overloads; they could oppose losing that option, which underscores the conflict of interest in a two-tier workplace when more for one tier means less for the other.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that California “community colleges could not operate without part-time faculty” who “do not receive the same salary or benefits as their full-time colleagues” in his Oct. 8, 2021 veto of AB 375 based on budgetary concerns — the fear that the state’s 36,000 part-time instructors would suddenly qualify for health care. (That fear has since been addressed by a 400% increase in the state’s contribution to the Part-time Faculty Health Insurance Program from an annual $490,000 to $200 million.) In the meantime, part-time faculty continue to be barred from working full time. 

    Faculty unions and lawmakers should take a step toward abolishing California’s faculty involuntary part-time work restriction by allowing them to work full time and protecting their jobs. An amended version of AB 2277 is a no-cost way of doing so.

    •••

    Alexis Moore taught visual art at colleges and universities for over three decades and served on the executive board of the Pasadena City College Faculty Association of the California Community College Independents (CCCI). 

    Jack Longmate has long served on the Steering Committee of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association and taught for over 28 years at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, where his ending annual salary was about $20,000 for teaching at 55% of an annual full-time teaching load. 

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Anxious California teachers with pink slips await word on jobs next school year

    Anxious California teachers with pink slips await word on jobs next school year


    San Diego Unified teachers attend a school board meeting to protest pink slips last school year.

    San Diego Unified teachers protest pink slips before a school board meeting last year. The district plans to issue 30 preliminary layoff notices this year.

    Courtesy of San Diego Education Association

    Second-grade teacher Jacob Willis has worked in the San Diego Unified School District in different roles since he graduated from high school in 2016. Now, he is one of hundreds of California teachers waiting to see if they will still have a job when campuses reopen next school year.

    Declining enrollment, expiring federal funds for Covid relief, plus a proposed state budget with no new money for education made school leaders in 100 of California’s 1,000 school districts nervous enough about balancing their districts’ budgets to issue layoff notices to 1,900 teachers — 16 times more than the 124 that were issued last spring, according to the California Teachers Association. 

    State law requires that districts send pink slips by March 15 to any teacher who could potentially be laid off by the end of the school year. Although many of the layoff notices are withdrawn by May 15 — the last day final layoff notices can be given to tenured teachers —  the practice is criticized by many for being demoralizing to teachers and disruptive to school systems.

    “It creates serious insecurity and stress for teachers, including those who are ultimately asked to stay,” said Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “This will make it harder for districts to hire teachers and leads teachers to leave the profession.”

    Holding out hope

    Willis, 26, knows that with the state’s enduring teacher shortage he could find a teaching job at another school district, but he’d rather not. His heart is at San Diego Unified, where he started as a noon duty assistant at age 18. He watched over students during recess and lunch for four years while completing his teaching credential.

    “I have no intention to stop teaching,” said Willis, who is in his second year as a teacher. “This is what I went to school for. This is what I intended to do for my whole career arc and life.”

    The month since the pink slips were issued has been a tough one for Willis and his class at Porter Elementary, who learned of his potential layoff when he appeared on the local news. They are upset that he might not be on campus when they return for third grade, he said.

    “There’s so much uncertainty,” Willis said. “There’s a chance that my pink slip might be rescinded. There’s a chance that it might not be rescinded, or I have to go to a different site. … It’s really stressful because I don’t know at all what’s going to happen.”

    Almost a quarter of the pink slips issued in California were from Anaheim Union High School District, which issued 226, and San Diego Unified School District, which initially sent out 208 layoff notices. As of Friday, Anaheim had rescinded at least 55 notices and San Diego Unified 30, according to district officials.

    San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district, employs 4,290 teachers, while Anaheim Union High School District has about 1,346 teachers, according to 2022-23 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

    “We haven’t seen layoffs on this scale in San Diego since 2017,” said Kyle Weinberg, president of the San Diego Education Association, referring to the notices of possible layoffs.

    Pink slips don’t necessarily mean job loss

    Districts generally send out more notices than the number of positions they might need to eliminate to ensure they meet the state requirement. Some pink slips are rescinded after district officials review credentials, expected retirements and projected enrollment numbers at school sites, and hearings with an administrative law judge are held to determine who stays and who goes.

    In San Diego, all the teachers still holding pink slips by the end of last week were probationary employees, said Mike Murad, spokesperson for the district. When the dust settles, Anaheim Union High School District expects to lay off 119 teachers by the end of the school year, while San Diego has said the number will likely be 127.

    Teachers are generally considered probationary if they have been with the district two years or less, are working in the district on an emergency-style credential or are hired into a position with restricted funding.

    The president of the state’s largest teachers union blamed the pink slips on reduced funding and officials who issue more layoff notices than necessary. “Unfortunately, a lot of districts go to it as if it’s like a playbook,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association.

    School districts should look to their reserves to fund these positions next school year, he said. 

    Teacher layoffs are complicated

    Generally, teacher layoffs are based on seniority, although districts can skip more junior teachers if they have special training and experience to teach a specific course that a more senior teacher does not. Pink-slipped teachers, who can prove they have more seniority than another teacher with equal expertise, can also bump that teacher and take that position, resulting in a reshuffling of teachers in multiple schools. 

    In Anaheim, the district protected 16 categories of teachers from layoffs, leading to layoff notices for more senior staff that included a teacher with 25 years of experience, said Geoff Morganstern, president of the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association. The teacher has since had the pink slip rescinded, but others with 10 to 16 years of service have still not had layoff notices revoked, he said.

    San Diego Unified also is not issuing layoff notices to teachers in some difficult-to-fill positions, and expects to have job openings in some credential areas, including special education, math and science, according to district officials.

    Revenue dips prompt layoffs

    Potential staff reductions at San Diego Unified are the result of the loss of nearly $540 million in Covid-relief funds, declining enrollment and projections of decreased state revenue, said board President Shana Hazan. 

    “As a district, we are committed to balancing our budget without significant impacts to students and school sites,” Hazen said. “Over the last year, our team has worked to thoughtfully and strategically build a budget that considers the needs of our children first and foremost.”

    The district is trying to maximize attrition to minimize layoffs, she said. “We are hopeful we can continue to reduce the actual number of employees affected before May 15, when reductions are to be finalized.” 

    The San Diego Education Association has asked district officials to tap reserves to pay teacher salaries and to eliminate positions as teachers retire or leave the district, Weinberg said. 

    Anaheim Union High School Superintendent Michael Matsuda blamed the layoffs in the district on budget deficits brought on, in part, by the loss of 3,500 students. The district had used one-time state funds to extend a three-year agreement, made during the 2017-18 school year, to temporarily increase teaching staff to address critical needs in core content areas, he said in a video statement to the school community. The funds are running out, according to the district.

    Union officials would have liked to have seen the district offer a retirement incentive this year and to manage declining enrollment through attrition and smaller cuts, but district officials didn’t want to spend the money, Morganstern said. The district has many teachers ready to retire, he added.

    Layoffs can hurt teacher recruitment

    Teacher layoffs during the Great Recession, between 2007 and 2009, are widely considered to be one of the causes of the current teacher shortage because they discouraged people from entering teacher preparation programs.

    “It’s a huge risk that the district is taking (by) not rescinding the layoff notices,” Weinberg said. “We are the only large district and the county that’s doing layoff notices, and there are plenty of vacancies in other districts that our educators will apply for, and they will accept jobs. And that’s going to be devastating for our students who have relationships with those educators.”

    A Commission on Teacher Credentialing report released last week shows that enrollment at teacher preparation programs declined another 10% in 2022-23, the most recent year data is available, following a 16% decline the previous year.

    Issuing layoff notices during a teacher shortage can be particularly tricky for districts that are still trying to find teachers for hard-to-fill positions, like those with special education, math and science credentials. 

    Local teachers unions have been holding rallies to gain community support and to put pressure on district officials to rescind the pink slips. 

    “If we are able to win and have all of the layoff notices rescinded, we will have the smaller class sizes that our students need and that we’ve seen with the additional funds during the pandemic,” Weinberg said.

    Morganstern expects all classes in Anaheim Union High School District to reach their maximum allowed capacity of students if the pink slips aren’t all recalled, with some classes going over the limit. The union will file grievances in those cases because it’s a contract violation, he said.

    “Then they’re going to have to scramble to hire teachers, and then they’re going to have to issue massive schedule changes because every kid’s schedule has to be rearranged because of these couple teachers at each school,” Morganstern said. “It’s going to be a disaster.”





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  • Transgender athlete wins, shares state honors, creating questions about inclusion 

    Transgender athlete wins, shares state honors, creating questions about inclusion 


    Flanked by fourth-place winner Ellie McCuskey-Hay, left, and first-place winner Loren Webster, right, second-place winners AB Hernandez, center right, and Brooke White share the podium during a medal ceremony for the long jump at the California high school track-and-field championships in Clovis.

    Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong

    Top Takeaways
    • Transgender athlete AB Hernandez was unflustered amid controversy and protest over her participation in girls’ sports.
    • Under revised rules for the championship, she shared two first-place and a second-place medals with cisgender competitors.
    • President Trump threatened to defund California if she participated.

    A lone boo. A jeering yell of “That’s a boy.” Rhythmic clapping cheering on her and others. A scream of “let’s go” from the crowd. A nation watching. 

    Unrattled by the controversy around her participation in girls’ track and field events, AB Hernandez, an openly transgender student-athlete, achieved two first-place victories and a second-place win in the state championship on Saturday. She shared the podium and recognition with cisgender females as a result of new rules hurriedly adopted last week.

    Sparked by threats from the federal government, just days ahead of this past weekend’s Track and Field State Championship, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) changed its rules regarding the number of girls who could qualify for and would win in events with a transgender athlete.

    The state faced backlash over Hernandez’s participation with President Donald Trump threatening to cut federal funding to California and demanding that the state bar her inclusion. In response, California officials tweaked the rules to expand the number of cisgender girls who could qualify if a trans athlete was participating. Under the changed rules, a cisgender girl displaced by a transgender competitor was awarded whichever medal she would have claimed had the transgender athlete not been competing.

    Local leaders in the conservative-leaning Clovis, which hosted the championship, called it unfair to include a transgender female in sports with cisgender females, The Fresno Bee reported.

    Hernandez, a junior at Jurupa Valley High in Southern California, was unflappable in the Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High School, even when insulted or met with silence in the packed venue. 

    She has “consistently displayed more dignity, maturity, and grace than the many adults, from the president on down, who chose to attack and bully her to score political points,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. “We could not be prouder of the way this brave student-athlete conducted herself on and off the track.” 

    Hernandez qualified as the top competitor in the long jump and triple jump Friday, outperforming others by 6.25 inches and 9.75 inches, respectively, and in high jump, scoring the same as five other athletes. 

    During the championship round Saturday, she was outperformed in the long jump and continued to tie with other athletes in the high jump. 

    Even though she is not ranked as a top athlete nationally, she held on to California’s top marks in the triple jump. 

    This past weekend’s championship revealed conflicting stances on the issue of transgender females competing in women’s sports that point to unresolved questions about what should be done to ensure fairness and inclusion. 

    Friday’s qualifier featured a “Free Speech Area” outside of the stadium that remained empty most of the day. No signs were allowed in the event, but a plane flew a “No boys in girls’ sports!” banner.

    Signs reminded attendants of the importance of sportsmanship at the State Track and Field Championships at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High School in Clovis on Friday, May 30, 2025.
    Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource

    Also outside the event, along the roads or in other areas, small groups protested Friday and Saturday — much smaller crowds than the dozens who questioned Hernandez’s participation at the southern region qualifier events over the last couple of weeks. 

    Donning a “Make America Great Again” hat and American flag-themed attire, Mimi Israelah, a self-proclaimed activist from Long Beach, traveled more than four hours to witness Hernandez, whom she referred to as “the trans,” compete in the girls’ field events. 

    “I don’t know why they’re allowing that because women’s sports is supposed to be for women,” Israelah said, often referring to Hernandez as “he.” She said transgender athletes should have their own division if they wish to compete. 

    Including transgender athletes 

    So far, research on the fairness of transgender athletes, published by the Journal of the Endocrine Society, finds that testosterone is the “only established” advantage men have over women. 

    More specifically, males who have gone through puberty reportedly have 15 times the amount of circulating testosterone than females who’ve gone through puberty, equaling at least a 10% performance advantage in running and swimming and a 20% advantage in jumping events, according to a 2018 Endocrine Review. 

    “He might be transitioned, but he is still a male,” Israelah said. “It’s not fair for the women, and it is destroying women’s sports.”

    Until late 2021, the Olympics required transgender women to reduce their testosterone levels to below a certain threshold to compete. Under the former medical requirement, transgender women had to undergo gender-affirming care, such as testosterone-reducing medication. The Olympics have since eliminated the requirement related to testosterone levels, leading to polarizing debates even in professional sports.

    California’s high school athletics guidelines, outlined by CIF, allow athletes to participate in sports aligned with their gender identity, even if it’s different from their assigned sex at birth, including transgender athletes. 

    ‘Her own competition’ 

    Trump has criticized Hernandez for being “less than average competitor” as a male but “practically unbeatable” as a female. 

    “Her numbers are not unbeatable,” said Sabrina Gomez, whose daughter Jazmaine Stewart, a Redwood High junior from Visalia, competed against Hernandez in long and triple jumps. 

    Stewart finished seventh in Friday’s qualifier for the long and triple jump. She earned a fifth-place spot in the long jump and a sixth-place position in the triple jump for the championship, rankings that are one spot higher since Hernandez shared the podium for her wins. 

    “For my daughter, doing track has always been an individual sport for her, so she’s her own competition,” Gomez said. Even so, with the state championship as a goal, they’d long been aware of and prepared to face off against Hernandez’s numbers. 

    Gomez said she couldn’t characterize Hernandez’s participation as unfair after researching her marks, which fall within the range of other female athletes. 

    In fact, Gomez said, if not for Trump, there wouldn’t have been contention about Hernandez’s participation, which is aligned with CIF’s decade-plus-old policy. 

    According to its materials on gender diversity, CIF is one of 16 state sports associations with gender-inclusive policies that facilitate the participation of transgender, nonbinary and other gender-diverse students in school athletics. 

    Since February 2013, the CIF has had philosophy and eligibility rules for participation based on gender identity. 

    Trump has threatened other states with cuts in federal funding if they continue to allow transgender athletes in youth and women’s sports. Trump began gutting federal education dollars from Maine, and the matter ended up in court. 

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom in March agreed that it was “deeply unfair” for people born as biological men to compete in women’s sports, breaking from most Democratic leaders. 

    CIF policy consistent with state law

    The California Interscholastic Federation’s addition of gender identity participation and eligibility rules in 2013 followed legislation that allows students to participate on sports teams based on their gender identity. The CIF guidelines go further to state that athletes will participate in programs consistent with their gender identity or the gender they most consistently express.

    The statewide policy for high schoolers does not have a legal or medical requirement, such as a documented name change or gender-confirming care, for transgender students to compete. Student participation is based solely on their gender identity or expression.  

    A transgender student-athlete, according to CIF documents, has a protected right to privacy if they choose not to disclose their gender identity. 

    There have been instances of teams forfeiting games due to the belief that their opponent had a transgender player.

    But Hernandez is not the first openly transgender athlete to compete in California, and this isn’t her first time competing. 

    Hernandez has reportedly participated on the track team for three years and told Capital & Main that this is the first year her presence has garnered controversy.

    In early May, a few Christian high schools — JSerra Catholic High School, Orange Lutheran High School and Crean Lutheran High School — penned a letter, expressing “disappointment in CIF’s failure to respect and protect our female athletes and our strong opposition to CIF’s Gender Identity Policy.”

    Earlier this year, Trump issued an executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” to ensure women and girls can compete in safe and fair sports; much like his other orders, he threatened federal funding for noncompliance. In response, CIF at the time said it would enforce its existing policy consistent with state legislation. 

    U.S. Justice department opens title Ix investigation of California

    Title IX is a 1972 landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in education, applying to colleges and schools that receive federal funding. 

    It protects students from being denied access to educational and athletic opportunities. 

    The federal investigation will investigate whether California is violating Title IX by allowing transgender athletic participation in sports, specifically Hernandez competing in track and field.

    This week, as the U.S. Justice Department launched a national civil rights investigation into the policy, the CIF implemented a “pilot entry process” to allow cisgender female athletes who failed to qualify to compete in the championships in Clovis — a “reasonable, respectful way to navigate this complex issue without compromising competitive fairness,” Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, told The Sacramento Bee. 

    Another temporary rule change said any cisgender girl who was displaced by a transgender competitor would be awarded whichever medal she would have claimed had the transgender athlete not been competing.

    Based on Friday’s results and Hernandez’s participation, 13 student athletes qualified in the girls’ long, triple and high jump categories rather than the traditional 12 for Saturday’s championship.

    Among the athletes who competed, there were conflicting views about the fairness of the CIF policy and rule change. 

    For example, southern regional second-place long jump finisher Katie McGuinness, who placed sixth Friday behind Hernandez and four others, spoke out leading up to this past weekend’s championship. 

    In an exclusive with Fox News, McGuiness, a La Cañada High senior, said she felt discouraged facing the trans athlete due to apparent “genetic” disadvantages. 

    Meanwhile, other athletes and teams, including those in Clovis Unified which hosted the championship, declined EdSource interviews so that athletes could focus on their performance and not be distracted. 

    At Saturday’s championship, Long Beach’s Wilson High senior Loren Webster clutched the long jump title over Hernandez. Hernandez shared the second-place honor with River City High School senior Brooke White, reflecting CIF’s rule change. McGuinness finished third instead of fourth due to the second-place title being shared. 

    For the first-place triple jump medal, though Hernandez’s score beat her competitors, she shared the podium with St. Mary College High junior Kira Gant Hatcher. 

    In the high jump, there was a three-way tie as Hernandez, Monta Vista High junior Lelani Laruelle, and Long Beach Polytechnic High senior Jillene Wetteland hit the same marks. 

    Other states are also reckoning with transgender athletic participation – and victory. 

    In Washington, a transgender athlete defied their critics after being booed on the podium. This was the second year that Veronica Garcia of East Valley of Spokane was reportedly heckled by fans. In Oregon, track and field athletes who outperformed a transgender athlete refused to take the podium next to the trans athlete.

    Gomez, the parent of the Redwood High student athlete, said that how community members, coaches, parents, and others respond or react will set an example for the students looking up to them. 

    “Learning how to respond,” she said, “to what the world throws at you makes a difference to the attitude that you’ll have going into a situation.”





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  • High school redesign, dropping enrollment’s silver lining plus more budget miscellany

    High school redesign, dropping enrollment’s silver lining plus more budget miscellany


    Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages

    Top Takeaways
    • Declining enrollments are painful for districts, yet may yield revenue options for the state.
    • With $15 million, districts would brainstorm new concepts for high schools of the future.
    • There’s a catch-22 for English learners who are too young to be tested.

    Inside every governor’s voluminous state budget are items that, while not headline-grabbing, are newsworthy and illuminating. 

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s May budget revision for 2025-26 is no exception, as four examples illustrate. One invites districts to redesign high schools; another adds a billion dollars to spur growth in learning. A third is a quick fix for a legal obstacle to help young English learners; a fourth reveals an important long-term funding trend. Here are the details. 

    Reimagining high school

    Asked to describe how they felt about high school, 3 out of 4 students chose “tired,” “stressed” or “bored” in a 2020 nationwide survey by Yale University. Closer to home, about 4 out of 10 students in the 2024-25 California Healthy Kids Survey reported they lacked a relationship with a caring adult in high school.

    State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond has read those numbers and similar data. She has also seen schools, like MetWest High School in Oakland Unified, and districts like Anaheim Union High School District, that have explored project-based learning, work internships, team teaching, and individual learning plans with alternative measures of achievement. One of the challenges has been scaling models within a learning system that measures learning in terms of periods, course credits, and minutes of seat time.

    That’s why Darling-Hammond encouraged Newsom to include $15 million in the May budget revision for a pilot program to redesign middle and high schools “to better serve the needs of all students and increase student outcomes.”

    “If public schools are to survive, they will have to be transformed to be more responsive,” Darling-Hammond said. “Students should not have to leave public schools for microschools and school pods to get a personalized environment.”

    Newsom is proposing that a yet-to-be-chosen county office of education guide a network of between 15 and 30 districts in a multi-year program to examine innovations, propose alternatives, and learn from each other. 

    State law allows districts to seek waivers from state requirements, and existing independent study regulations permit some flexibility for experimentation. But an independent study was designed to accommodate individual schedules, not a systemic response that reorients the school day to a changing vision for a high school graduate, Darling-Hammond said. 

    “The state board can’t spend time doing workarounds for 2,000 districts,” she said.

    Ron Carruth, the retired superintendent of the El Dorado Union High School District, said he is encouraged by the proposal. This month, he helped establish the California High School Coalition, which will hold its first conference in Sacramento on Oct. 26-28. 

    Anaheim Union High School District Superintendent Michael Matsuda said that “in the age of AI, we need to be more innovative than ever, considering tectonic shifts in jobs and employment. If we’re not preparing students for that world, shame on us.”

    The state-funded network will be “an opportunity to innovate,” he said, while noting that changing systems and culture are a lot harder than people think. “School leaders need to think more like entrepreneurs.”

    Ideas for accelerating learning?

    Parents and community members with ideas for moving districts beyond their post-pandemic learning lag will have a chance to share them under the May budget revision, with an extra $1.1 billion for districts to spend on them.

    Newsom is proposing to add $378 million in each of the next three fiscal years to the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant program — a massive, five-year state grant program approved in 2022-23. The grant program, targeted for the most struggling students, provides what districts in other states lack: state money to replace federal Covid funding that expired in September 2024.

    It’s unclear how much of the original $6.8 billion remains. As of a year ago, $4.8 billion hadn’t been spent, according to an analysis of the most recent state data by School Services of California. The proposed $1.1 billion would add to what’s left.

    Under the terms of the program, districts must solicit community views on spending the money on “evidence-based practices,” like tutoring or investing in teacher residences to retain new teachers. Districts will then have to spell out uses for the funding as a new entry in their annual Local Control and Accountability Plans.

    The timing is good. For example, the Legislature is likely to move districts toward adopting effective early literacy textbooks and effective ways to teach them. This new block grant money could amplify the more than $700 million that Newsom is also proposing for districts to improve early math and reading instruction.

    More districts are also indicating interest in high-impact tutoring, with additional research showing its effectiveness. Along with providing districts with a free, step-by-step guide and counseling for setting up a program, Stanford University-based National Student Support Accelerator is cosponsoring an effort for 40 California districts to design their own tutoring programs over the next year (go here for information on signing up).

    TK English learner funding workaround

    A decision by the Legislature that 4-year-olds in transitional kindergarten (TK) are too young to be tested for English proficiency could delay funding for services the children need before kindergarten. 

    Recognizing the problem, Newsom proposes a temporary fix in the May budget revision by providing $7.5 million in one-time money for 2025-26 and 2026-27.

    All students who speak a language other than English at home are required to take the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) when they enroll in school to determine if they are English learners. But the law that legislators passed last year exempts students in transitional kindergarten from taking the test because of concerns that it was not age-appropriate. Without identifying English learners and providing funding for them under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, schools are not required to provide unidentified students with language services or report their academic progress on the state dashboard.

    “It’s critical that we have funding to support our children, that we have the requirement to support our children, and that we’re doing so in the age and developmentally appropriate way that really keeps their assets in mind,” said Carolyne Crolotte, director of policy for Early Edge California, an organization that advocated for the exemption of TK students from ELPAC testing.

    Crolotte said Early Edge California has been researching what other states do to identify young English learners and is working with the State Board of Education and the National Institute for Early Education Research to identify alternative assessments.

    Newsom is also proposing $10 million for selecting and making available a new screener for schools to use with TK students to identify their language needs. However, there is a catch. The language the governor is suggesting for the budget bill states that the screener should not be used to identify students as English learners. Unless the Local Control Funding Formula is changed, schools would still not receive funds specifically for these students or be required by law to provide them with help to learn English.

    Declining enrollment’s ‘dividend’

    There’s a silver lining to the continued decline in TK-12 student enrollment in California. Per-student funding could grow statewide during much of the next decade if, according to state projections, student enrollment statewide drops by nearly 10%, to 5.25 million by 2033-34.

    That’s because the state will be apportioning money through what’s called Test 1 under Proposition 98, the formula that determines the minimum portion of the state’s General Fund that must be spent on TK-12 schools and community colleges. Under Test 1, that’s about 40% of the total. If state revenues grow at the same time as the number of kids shrinks, the result will be more money per student.

    The increase won’t be enough to prevent spending cuts or school closures in those districts with big drops in enrollment. But it should help ease the pain, and for districts with flat or growing enrollment, provide a modest increase in their share of the Local Control Funding Formula, which provides the bulk of their state funding; it is tied to average daily attendance. 

    Funding through Test 1 is a relatively recent development. In 1988, when they wrote Prop. 98, its authors didn’t foresee a period of declining enrollment. For the first 25 years, as student enrollment grew by more than 1 million, growth in student attendance, along with increases in personal income (Test 2) or increases in General Fund revenue plus 0.5% (Test 3), determined funding levels above or below the previous year.

    First invoked in 2011-12, Test I has been used in seven of the past eight years and will be in effect in 2025-26, and likely in the coming years. 

    The extra money systemwide will also give the Legislature and future governors new options. They could decide which new programs with soon-to-expire one-time funding, such as community schools, should receive permanent support. Or they could choose to phase in much-talked-about changes to the Local Control Funding Formula. These could include raising the base funding for all districts or building in a regional cost adjustment. Those are among the ideas in Assembly Bill 1204, which will get serious attention next year.

    The declining enrollment “dividend,” as it’s been called, “is kind of a boon for the education system,” said Julien Lafortune, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. 





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  • USC students march in protest of decision to cancel valedictorian’s speech

    USC students march in protest of decision to cancel valedictorian’s speech


    Students march in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on April 18, 2024.

    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    Holding Palestinian flags and signs calling for “Justice for Asna,” hundreds of University of Southern California students gathered Thursday to march in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the university. 

    The students, many of them wearing hoodies and masks, which they said symbolized the silencing of the valedictorian, first gathered by the Tommy Trojan statue near the center of campus. They then marched across campus, often chanting “let her speak” and holding signs with the same message in the Palestinian colors of red, green and black.

    The march was the latest protest of the university’s decision to cancel the May 10 speech. The valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, is a biomedical engineering major with an interdisciplinary minor in resistance to genocide. USC officials said they canceled the speech because of security risks, telling EdSource in a statement Thursday that university leadership made the decision in consultation with campus law enforcement. They did not disclose the specific security risks facing the university.

    “While the decision was difficult, it was necessary to maintain and prioritize the security of the USC community during the coming weeks, and to allow those attending commencement to focus on the celebration our graduates deserve,” the university said. “Nothing can take precedence over the safety of our community.”

    Students march near the Tommy Trojan statue in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on Thursday, citing unspecified safety concerns.
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    Pro-Palestinian student groups and other supporters, meanwhile, say the university is perpetuating Islamophobia with its decision.

    “It’s very disappointing that USC is very proactive in theory, for students, but then (the university does) not deliver,” USC student Aisha Patel said. “It’s a slap in the face that they won’t let her speak.”

    Patel said that as a fellow Muslim woman, she feels represented and supported by Tabassum — and that the university’s decision to cancel her speech “silences the voices of people who visibly look like me.”

    An international student at USC from Syria who did not want to be named, said the decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech “devastated and shocked me to my core.” 

    “When I came to the U.S., I thought this was a freedom of speech country and I thought I could express myself,” the student said. “It’s so upsetting that this is happening. If you can’t express yourself in America, then where can you do that?”

    No pro-Israel demonstrators were seen near Thursday’s march.

    The tensions between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students at USC and on other college campuses have heightened dramatically since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, after which Israel responded with a bombardment of Gaza. The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and another 240 were taken hostage. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza — mostly women and children — since Israel launched its military response.

    The conflict has rattled universities across the country with administrators challenged to uphold freedom of speech amid charges that some speech is hateful antisemitism or Islamophobic.

    USC officials have said the decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech has nothing to do with freedom of speech, since no individual student is entitled to speak at commencement. Some free speech experts have still criticized the decision, arguing that selecting her as valedictorian only to cancel the speech raises red flags about the speech climate on campus. The decision also has given Tabassum a platform beyond what she would have had at the graduation. She has been widely interviewed in national and international media. “When you silence us,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “you make us louder.”

    USC students rally in support of a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, after her planned commencement speech was canceled .
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    After USC initially announced Tabassum as a commencement speaker, a number of pro-Israel groups, both on and off the campus, criticized the decision, with some attacking Tabassum over a link in her Instagram bio. The link leads to a webpage that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.” Pro-Israel groups took issue with another part of the website that says Zionism is a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”  

    Rabbi Dov Wagner, who runs the Chabad Jewish Center at USC, said in a statement on Instagram this week that while he has nothing against Tabassum, the initial selection of her as valedictorian “has caused great distress” to Jewish students at USC. He said the speech featured on Tabassum’s social media “is antisemitic and hate speech.”

    USC officials previously said that discussion related to the selection of Tabassum had taken on an “alarming tenor,” including from voices outside of the university. 

    Tabassum said in her own statement issued this week that she isn’t aware of any specific threats made against herself or the university and that she requested “details underlying the university’s threat assessment” but that the request was denied. 

    “There remain serious doubts about whether USC’s decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety,” she added. 

    She also said that while she wasn’t surprised “by those who attempt to propagate hatred,” she was surprised that USC “abandoned me.”

    USC student Hafeez Mir said he attended the march because “it’s outrageous to see the university succumb to external pressures and strip this honor away from her.” 

    Students protest USC’s cancellation of a planned commencement speech by a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum.
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    “She earned this honor and she is far and beyond deserving of it,” Mir said.

    Tabassum also has the support of 66 student and local groups who signed an open letter calling on USC to reverse its decision and allow Tabassum to speak at commencement.

    In the letter, authored by Trojans for Palestine and 65 co-signer groups, the students wrote that USC “perpetuates and engages in Islamophobia and xenophobia by bowing” to outside groups that called for Tabassum to be disinvited.

    “We demand that the University recognize its grave error and allow Tabassum to give her speech at graduation, provide her with whatever safety measures she requests — as has been provided for former presidents and governors, royalty, artists, musicians, professional athletes and others — and publicly apologize to her for acquiescing to a campaign of intimidation and harassment,” they added.

    Meanwhile, some free speech advocates have criticized USC for canceling the speech. Alex Morey, the director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), wrote in a blog post that “with no sense that USC actually received any threats or took any steps to secure the event short of canceling it,” the decision appears to be “a calculated move to quiet the critics.”

    USC Provost Andrew Guzman said in a statement this week that there is “no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement” and that the decision to cancel the speech “has nothing to do with freedom of speech.” 

    Morey wrote that while she agrees that no student is entitled to speak, her organization disagrees with Guzman’s assertion that the decision has nothing to do with free speech.

    “But once USC has selected a student for this honor, canceling her speech based on criticism of her viewpoint definitely implicates the campus speech climate in important ways,” Morey wrote. She added that administrators should have done “everything in their power to provide adequate security” and that canceling the speech should have been a last resort.

     Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • California moves a step closer to eliminating one of the state’s last teacher assessments

    California moves a step closer to eliminating one of the state’s last teacher assessments


    Legislation that would remove one of the last tests teachers are required to take to earn a credential in California passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously Wednesday with little opposition.

    Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, will now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If ultimately approved by the Legislature, it will do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA. 

    The assessment requires that teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice. 

    Eliminating the assessment would encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, author of the bill and chairman of the Senate Education Committee at Wednesday’s hearing.

    “Despite its well-intentioned purpose, the demands associated with preparing for the TPA have actually had the perverse impact of reducing the overall quality of teacher preparation by undermining the capacity of teacher candidates to focus on what’s most important, which is their clinical practice,” Newman said.

    He said the performance assessments duplicate other requirements teachers must fulfill to earn a credential, including proving subject-matter competency, taking teacher preparation courses, being assessed for reading instruction proficiency and completing 600 hours of clinical experience.

    Brian Rivas, senior director at The Education Trust‒West, a nonprofit education research and advocacy organization, spoke in opposition to the legislation.

    “We concluded when we reviewed the research that teaching performance assessments are the best available measure of teacher preparedness and whether or not a candidate is prepared to enter a classroom,” Rivas said. 

    The test offers a common standard to measure how well credentialing programs are preparing teacher candidates and could mean fewer prepared teachers in schools serving low-income students, which are already disproportionately taught by novice teachers, he said.

    California moved away from standardized testing for teacher candidates in recent years as the teacher shortage worsened.

    In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.

    Around the same time, the state also has joined a national effort to change how reading is taught in schools, focusing on a method that teaches students to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics. 

    Last summer, Senate Bill 488 passed the state Legislature. The bill replaced the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, also known as RICA, with a literacy performance assessment based on a new set of literacy standards and Teaching Performance Expectations centered on phonics and other foundational reading skills.  The assessment was scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. The CTA supported the bill.

    Union leaders later said that a survey of its membership persuaded them to change course and to sponsor SB 1263, which would repeal the performance assessment.

    Senate Bill 1263 doesn’t remove the requirement that candidates for a preliminary, multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a test that evaluates their ability to teach reading, meaning the passage of SB 1263 could result in the RICA remaining beyond the 2025 date when it was scheduled to be abandoned.

    The RICA has been a major hurdle for teacher candidates for years. About a third of all the teacher candidates who take the test fail the first time, according to state data collected between 2012 and 2017. Critics also have said that the test is outdated, racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.

     The California Teachers Association also opposed Assembly Bill 2222, which would have required California teachers to use “science of reading” instruction in their classrooms. Last week the bill died without a hearing.

    CTA representative Mandy Redfern spoke in support of Senate Bill 1263 Wednesday, calling the performance assessment a barrier to a diverse teacher workforce.

    “Over the past 20 years, the TPA, or the teacher performance assessment, has evolved into a high-stakes, time-consuming costly barrier for aspiring teachers,” Redfern said. 

    “The current iteration of the TPA has been proven to be ineffective at preparing educators for the realities of the classroom,” she said. “The CTC’s data shows that TPAs disproportionately harm aspiring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) educators.”

    The most recent passing rates on the assessment for people of color are not significantly different from others who took the test, said Mary Vixie Sandy, Commission on Teacher Credentialing executive director, at the hearing. For example, Black teacher candidates had a 75% first-time pass rate and a 95% ultimate pass rate, which is right within the norm, on average with the whole population of teachers who took the assessment, Sandy said.

    The bill would also do away with oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.





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  • Sharp divisions over how California’s aspiring teachers will be taught to teach reading

    Sharp divisions over how California’s aspiring teachers will be taught to teach reading


    CLARIFICATION: The article was revised on April 24 to clarify that the Committee on Accreditation, by law, has the power to accredit programs. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing responds to complaints about the committee’s decisions but does not hear appeals. As a new program, Mills College of Northeastern received a provisional accreditation; it can seek full accreditation in 2026.

    Supporters of bolstering how teacher candidates in California are taught to teach reading cheered in 2021 when the Legislature agreed and mandated change. They remained enthusiastic a year later when the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing adopted new standards that emphasize explicit instruction of fundamental skills, including phonics.

    Now, advocates are charging that the Commission on Teacher Credentialing and its oversight body, the Committee on Accreditation, have failed their first test to stand behind those new standards. Instead, after a one-hour hearing Friday, the commission backed the accreditation of Mills College at Northeastern, which critics argue is ignoring critical new standards. 

    More on the issue

    The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing agenda item on the accreditation complaint can be found here.

    It includes a summary of the issue, the complaint, and the response from Mills College at Northeastern University. The nine written comments for and against the complaint can be found here.

    The Literacy Standard and Teaching Performance Expectations for Preliminary Multiple Subject and Single Subject Credentials, adopted in October 2022, can be found here

    This approval, say critics, will set a bad example for other programs facing a fall deadline to overhaul their literacy instruction and begin teaching the revised standards. 

    “Clearly, the commission is unwilling to uphold the state’s own curriculum framework and its guidance for new teacher prep programs, as outlined” in state law, said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of parents. “Given that, what chance is there that literacy instruction will ever change, and what chance is there that our children will be successful in learning to read?”

    The answer may become clearer as other programs come up for review. But the credential commission’s unanimous vote to reaffirm Mills College at Northeastern’s accreditation found support not only among the peer reviewers for the Committee on Accreditation but also from leaders of other teacher prep programs who submitted comments and testimony. 

    The hearing and the commission’s decision revealed ongoing disagreements over how California’s new literacy standards should be interpreted and implemented and raises the question of whether the Legislature’s intent in ordering a different approach to literacy instruction will be followed with fidelity.

    The credentialing commission’s decision was in response to a complaint that Families in Schools and the nonprofits Decoding Dyslexia and California Reading Coalition filed. The organizations hoped that the commission would investigate the accreditation approval for Mills College at Northeastern or order that the program get technical help to bring it into compliance with the new standards. 

    “Commissioners, it is up to you to make sure the letter and intent of the law is followed. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done, and these terrible results won’t change,” testified Todd Collins of the California Reading Coalition, referring to the low reading proficiency rate of California third graders: 43% overall, and less than a third for Black and Latino children.  

    Credentialing commissioners instead took the third option — referring the complaint to the Committee on Accreditation without comment. 

    Under state law, the Committee on Accreditation authorizes program accreditation. The credentialing commission, which appoints the committee’s members, handles complaints about accreditation decisions but not appeals from the public.  Because Mills at Northeastern was technically a new institution, created by the merger of Mills College, a former women’s college in Oakland that closed in 2022, with Northeastern University in Boston, it sought and received provisional accreditation. It can pursue full accreditation in 2026.

    Commissioners made clear they trusted the accreditation committee’s judgment and peer-review process, which relies on an evaluation by professors of teacher prep programs. Credentialing Commission Chair Marquita Grenot-Scheyer and others said they found no basis for further inquiry or technical help.

    Commissioner Ira Lit, a professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, agreed, adding that he sees “no indication that attention to those frameworks, guidelines and standards of review were amiss in this particular case.”

    The Legislature’s mandate in Senate Bill 488 directed the commission to incorporate evidence-based methods of teaching foundational reading skills in its programs for multiple-subject credentials and reading specialists. The literacy skills that teacher candidates would learn to teach include not only phonics, which correlates sounds with letters in the alphabet, but also vocabulary, oral language, fluency, reading comprehension and writing. The commission appointed two dozen reading experts to recommend research-based literacy practices aligned to the state’s existing curriculum frameworks that all teacher preparation programs would adopt.

    Collins, Flores and others praised the final package of teacher performance expectations, known as Standard 7 in the program requirements. They said it would meet the needs of all students, including English learners and students with dyslexia. 

    So did two members of the work group of experts who were skeptical of Mills College at Northeastern’s literacy instruction: Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, and Sue Sears, a professor of special education at CSU Northridge.

    They called Standard 7 “a rigorous and comprehensive set of requirements which reflect current reading research and practice.” After examining Mills College at Northeastern’s course syllabi, reading lists, and materials for literacy instruction, they said the program fell far short of the requirements. 

    In testimony and written comments, they said the school paid “lip service” to foundational skills and failed to document how prospective teachers would teach phonics explicitly and effectively. Among other flaws, the program didn’t mention the importance of screening for dyslexia and how to provide additional help for struggling and multilingual students, Wolf and Sears wrote.

    Mills at Northeastern, formed from the merger of Mills College, a 170-year-old former women’s college in Oakland that closed in 2022, with Northeastern University in Boston. 

    Structured versus balanced literacy

    In expressing confidence in a thorough accreditation review process, while not commenting on the substance of the complaint, the credentialing commission dodged the underlying  issue. The state had taken a stand in the debate over “structured literacy” versus  “balanced literacy.” Standard 7 incorporates structured literacy. Taught under the banner of “science of reading,” it stresses evidence-proven reading strategies using, in the early grades, direct and sequential instruction of phonics and decodable texts.

    Balanced literacy, an outgrowth of the once-popular “whole language” approach, downplays phonics, which it views as just one of several strategies in teaching reading. Other methods include “three-cueing,” the technique in which readers use pictures in a book, the first letter of a word and other contextual clues to determine words. It’s grounded in the belief that reading more books tied to the skill level of a child’s fluency and comprehension will make them better, more engaged readers.

    Mills College at Northeastern stresses balanced literacy and three-cueing. Its reading assignments include multiple chapters by Fountas and Pinnell, the publisher most identified with balanced literacy. 

    Approving credential programs like Mills “to provide contradictory instructional practices, some of which are supported by research and others that have been debunked by cognitive scientists years ago, will only serve to create confusion for teaching credential candidates,” Decoding Dyslexia CA co-directors Lori DePole and Megan Potente wrote.

    Matthew Burns, a University of Florida reading researcher who said he had studied the effectiveness of Fountas and Pinnell instructional programs and intervention strategies, was blunt. “The three-cueing system should have no place in public education, and should not be part of any preservice training,” he wrote.

    In defense of Mills College

    Other leaders of teacher preparation programs and advocacy groups in California urged the credentialing commission to uphold the approval.

    Stating that a comprehensive literacy curriculum includes background knowledge, multilingualism motivation and diverse text and assessments — not just phonics, Nancy Walker, a professor of literacy education at the University of La Verne, said, “By limiting our focus to the claims made by the popular press and media, we have underrepresented other pieces of reading pedagogy. The Mills College program represents the broad range of literacy as represented in the California literacy frameworks and standards.”

    Karen Escalante, an assistant professor of teacher education and foundations at CSU San Bernardino and  president of the California Council on Teacher Education, warned that “efforts to pick and choose select elements of teacher preparation syllabi undermine the teaching profession and aim to deprofessionalize a professional workforce.”

    Mimi Miller, a professor and literacy teacher educator at CSU Chico, said, “The complaint against Mills privileges one line of research over another. It has inaccurately cited research in order to confirm a set of beliefs about reading instruction.”

    “The science of reading is not settled and will never be settled,” she added.  

    Both the California Teachers Association and Californians Together, which advocates for English and expanding multilingual education, also urged commissioners to uphold the accreditation approval.

    “I call on the commission to not make any decisions that would restrict reading instruction in California,” said Manuel Buenrostro, director of policy at Californians Together.  

    Wolf used her two-minute comment to refute what opponents said regarding the state of research. “Of course, there is the unsettled, but there is far more of the settled neuroscience of reading,” she said.

    Mills College at Northeastern “fails to meet the standards that you asked us to bring to every teacher so that every teacher could be prepared to teach every child,” she said. 

    “I am worrisomely seeing in California that there is becoming more loyalty to past methods that have been shown to be ineffective for our most struggling readers. We can never put loyalty to past methods over loyalty to our children.”

    SB 488 under attack

    Several commissioners indicated they too support a “balanced” approach to reading instruction, tied to research. Others said the key to improved instruction is understanding socioeconomic and cultural differences among children.

    “Culturally responsive teaching practices are what’s going to work to teach those children how to read,” said Commissioner Christopher Davis, pointing to his own experience as a Black child in Los Angeles who did not read an entire book until he was a high school junior. Davis, a middle school language arts teacher in the Berryessa Union School District in San Jose, said, “I want to encourage the public to stop using Black and brown children to prop up their misguided views of what’s happening in schools, because I am one of those people.”

    SB 488 requires that all teacher candidates, starting in the spring of 2025, take a performance assessment demonstrating they can effectively teach the new literacy instruction standards. The law also requires the Committee on Accreditation to visit all teacher prep programs in 2024-25 to verify they are employing the new literacy strategies.

    But a bill that would remove those provisions before they take effect is moving forward in the Legislature. Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, would eliminate the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA. And that would include the performance assessment in teaching reading now being developed. The bill, authored by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would also drop the on-site visits to verify that teacher prep programs are adhering to the literacy standards. The periodic general accreditation and re-accreditation process, like the one that Mills College passed, would be the one accountability check that California’s new teachers know how to teach structured literacy and the science of reading.

    Another bill, which would have extended the same training in structured literacy for new teachers to all elementary school teachers, also would have strengthened the credentialing commission’s literacy expertise. Assembly Bill 2222 would have required that at least one member of the Committee on Accreditation be an expert in the science of reading. And it would have funded several literacy experts for the commission staff. 

    The same adversaries that fought over Mills College at Northeastern battled over AB 2222. Decoding Dyslexia CA, Families in Schools and California Reading Coalition sponsored the bill. Opposition by CTA, Californians Together and the California Association of Bilingual Educators led Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas to pull the bill without a hearing. 

    Collins of the California Reading Coalition said he wasn’t surprised by the credentialing commission’s decision. The view of those involved in teacher preparation programs, which is not unique to California, is, ” ‘Let us professionals do our job. We are the ones who can arbitrate whether we’re doing a good job or not. No one else can do that,’ ” he said.

    “To the extent that the credentialing commission defers to the process and defers to the people in the higher ed institutions, then change is going to come very, very slowly, if at all,” he said.





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  • Too much downtime, too little learning in special day classes

    Too much downtime, too little learning in special day classes


    A special education teacher walks down a hallway with her student in a Northern California school.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    A growing concern has emerged in California regarding the educational rights of students with extensive support needs.

    These students, who often require ongoing assistance in physical, communication, or social support, may not be receiving the mandated instructional minutes set by the California Department of Education. Further, recent studies suggest that special education teachers spend only 20% of their daily time on actual teaching, with students receiving most of their instruction from paraeducators and other service providers. These findings point to wide-ranging implications for how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is really implemented in schools.

    When one of us, Sara Caniglia-Schulte from San Jose State University, observed one such class as part of her supervisory responsibilities, I returned feeling disappointed by how much free time the students were given in class: Four paraprofessionals were sitting along the perimeter of the classroom, two students were on a computer, one was lying over a large exercise ball, one was holding his visual schedule, asking the adults in the room, “What’s next?” and the other students were pacing around the classroom.

    Although separate special education classes for students with extensive support needs have long been viewed as critical for providing intensive individualized support and education, researchers have noted that these students may spend substantial portions of their school day engaged in noninstructional activities such as extended periods of games, choice or play time, movie viewing, or other activities unrelated to academic instruction. 

    To be sure, students with extensive support needs may have diverse cognitive, sensory, physical and communication needs that necessitate frequent breaks and more flexibility in the classroom. However, the question arises: How much is too much? Instructional time is equally vital in special education classes, enabling students to learn and acquire new skills.

    Having been a teacher in a special day class for students with extensive support needs for over 18 years, I (Sudha Krishnan) am painfully aware of the number of times classroom instruction has stalled. In a special day class environment, numerous distractions from instruction exist naturally as a part of the classroom setup. These may include disruptive student behaviors such as interruptions, loud sounds, screaming and interpersonal interactions that divert attention from instruction. At times, extreme behaviors may require evacuating the classroom to ensure everyone’s safety. Additionally, when paraeducators need to take breaks as per their contract, free or choice time may be allocated so that the few remaining staff need only supervise without providing instruction. Moreover, there are regular classroom interruptions by service providers like speech therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists or physical therapists — whether they do the therapy in class or pull students out for sessions in their offices. Bus delays at the start of the school day or early dismissals to accommodate bus schedules (to avoid disrupting pick-ups/drop-offs at other schools) may also reduce instructional time. Research suggests that such interruptions and distractions significantly disengage students and decrease instructional time in the classroom.

    Further, excessive unstructured time can pose unique challenges for students with significant disabilities. Overall, students benefit academically and behaviorally when meaningfully engaged in learning. Students may engage in unproductive or potentially harmful behaviors without proper guidance and supervision. Prolonged periods of free time without meaningful choices or structured activities may lead to boredom, frustration and disengagement, ultimately hindering overall development and progress. Finally, limited access to structured learning activities may impede academic progress and skill development, perpetuating educational disparities and hindering students’ ability to reach their full potential.

    There are many strategies that teachers can employ to provide breaks for students while engaging them productively. Structuring the free time to include peer models to play games or other activities could improve interactive play skills. Preferred activities that require fine or gross motor skills to get kids moving could increase engagement, and simply allowing the students to move outside could improve student performance throughout the day.  Providing simple visual schedules and structured activities may provide students with options to use their free-choice time meaningfully.

    There is also an urgent need for more research into and scrutiny of the amount of instructional time spent in special day classrooms for students with extensive support needs and the level of student engagement during this time. If parents can demonstrate that the school district failed to provide the instructional minutes stated in the individualized education plan, they may be provided compensatory education funded by the district, which can prove costly. Current research in this area has raised stark equity questions and challenged the fundamental design of special education.

    It’s time to confront these realities head-on and question whether special education has been designed in a way that leaves some students behind.

    •••

    Sudha Krishnan, Ed.D, is an assistant professor of special education at San Jose State University‘s Connie L. Lurie College of Education, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

    Sara Caniglia-Schulte, Ed.D, is a lecturer at San Jose State University.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Grassroots contributions fueled bid to oust two from Orange County school board

    Grassroots contributions fueled bid to oust two from Orange County school board


    Packed crowd anticipates discussion on Orange Unified Parental Notification Policy on Sept. 8, 2023.

    Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

    A grassroots movement propelled by small contributions from teachers and local residents ousted two board members from an Orange County school district who supported controversial causes.

    The victory came despite opposing big money contributions from conservative organizations, Republican political figures and business leaders.

    More than 85% of the $227,000 raised by recall supporters came from over 400 individuals giving an average of about $450 each, with the rest coming mostly from teachers’ unions. More than 1 in 10 of the donations came from people who listed their employer as Orange Unified, including more than 25 teachers and board member Andrea Yamasaki.

    The money raised, said the recall movement’s co-chair, Darshan Smaaladen, “reflects the passion for our schools and our students in the district, and the care that our entire community has that we have great public schools.”

    By contrast, just under a third of the nearly $260,000 raised by opponents of the recall came from 115 individual donors, with the majority coming from conservative groups — led by the Lincoln Club of Orange County, which describes itself as “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.” 

    Contributions also came from the re-election campaigns of Assemblymember Bill Essayli and Orange County Board of Education member Jorge Valdez, both Republicans, and the law firm of Shawn Steel, co-founder of the successful campaign to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003. 

    The donations are listed in disclosure forms filed Feb. 17, with some additional large donations reported before the election in early March. Board members Madison Miner and Rick Ledesma — who were repeatedly accused of promoting their own political ideologies at the expense of student learning and well-being — were removed when the recall passed by 3,500 votes.

    Following the money

    The No OUSD Recall group received a number of hefty donations — and was led by the Lincoln Club of Orange County, which gave a series of donations totaling $80,500, just under the $83,261 given by all individuals to that same campaign. 

    The Lincoln Club’s donations, which came from their State PAC and Issues PAC, accounted for 46% of the total campaign’s organizational contributions and 31% of donations across the board. 

    The Lincoln Club of Orange County is funded by various business groups, and more than half of its income comes from the group Angelenos for Outstanding State Leadership, which gets all its money from one organization singly funded by the McDonald’s Corp. 

    The McDonald’s Corp. did not respond to EdSource’s multiple requests for comment.  

    On top of the contributions from the Lincoln Club, three organizations connected to Mark Bucher — the CEO of the California Policy Center, a think tank that stands for the belief that “until we rein in government union power, there’s little hope for reform in our state” — collectively gave $66,000. 

    Bucher said in an interview with EdSource that he “was always an advocate” for the donations to the campaign. 

    He also said he previously served on the board of the Lincoln Club and that he left about a year ago. He claimed that unions have “financed the campaigns of just about every elected official,” and that the donations were an attempt to “offset, very frankly, corrupt practices.”

    Bucher, who supported the election of Ledesma and Miner, also said that “the trustees that got recalled were doing a spectacular job of representing parents and citizens and kids, and they were attacked constantly for it, and school board meetings have been a circus. It’s just ridiculous.”

    He added that his future in political advocacy and spending, including in the upcoming November election, depends on the candidates and issues at stake. 

    The law firm of Shawn Steel — the co-founder of the recall campaign, who has also served as the Republican Party of California’s national committeeman and wrote for the California Policy Center — also supported the No on Recall movement. Assemblyman Essayli, R-Riverside, who authored a failed statewide Assembly bill that would have required schools across California to notify parents if their child may be transgender, also contributed.

    His bill AB 1314 laid the foundation for a similar policy that has been adopted by more than a half-dozen school districts throughout the state.

    The Lincoln Club of Orange County’s executive director, Seth Morrison, along with Bucher criticized the teachers’ unions for backing the recall effort, and Morrison also claimed they were “tied in with a larger Democratic Party.” 

    He said that “they were looking for an excuse to do something like this. This is a bigger thing for them. …That’s something we saw, and we’re happy to engage to defend the people who just got elected.” 

    On the other hand, the recall campaign collected more money for their campaign from a number of individual contributions.

    Most donors to the recall effort gave small amounts, and Smaaladen said that the recall movement’s strategy of asking community members to “donate in honor of” a teacher, along with their matching events, made a large impact on the campaign. 

    Among a wealth of smaller contributions is also a series of sizable donations from the Orange Unified Education Association, which gave $52,086.50 — or 74% of the campaign’s organizational money and 19.5% of total contributions. 

    Educators and the unions representing them played an important role in both organizational and individual contributions. Teachers — including both the union and individual educators — gave the recall campaign $61,048.82, or 22.9%, of its money.

    Teachers unions from neighboring districts, alongside organizations and political action committees representing educators’ interests, also pitched in, giving just over $7,000 collectively. 

    Local organizations with political affiliations — including the Democratic Women of South Orange County and Democrats of North Orange County — carried far less weight, while the Josh Newman for Senate campaign donated $5,000. 

    Women for American Values and Ethics, which identifies itself as a “grassroots group dedicated to advancing progressive values and ethics,” gave $1,041 to the campaign, and the Community Action Fund of Planned Parenthood donated $2,500. 

    What drove each side of the recall 

    After OUSD’s board fired then-Superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen without explanation in January 2023, a group of OUSD parents and teachers banded together to start the grassroots recall movement. 

    The OUSD recall website explains that the group was motivated by decisions made by the school board, including a series of alleged violations to the Brown Act, banning the pride flag, passing a policy that requires school administrators to notify parents if their children show signs of being transgender and a temporary suspension of the district’s digital library because it included the book “The Music of What Happens,” a coming-of-age story about two boys who are in love. 

    “We knew that this board was not going to listen to parents and the district, and they weren’t going to do what was best for our students,” Smaaladen said. “We became this kind of ragtag group that has evolved into a grassroots movement of hundreds of involved parents.” 

    Smaaladen said the group opted to pursue the recall during the March primary in an effort to save the district money. The recall effort started gathering signatures in June 2023, and by October had collected enough to place the recall question on the ballot. 

    Recall leaders also decided to focus their effort on Ledesma and Miner — and dropped the attempt against board member Angie Rumsey and board President John Ortega because they are up for re-election this coming November. 

    However, the No OUSD Recall group has repeatedly stated in social media posts dating back to April 2023 that the recall effort is an attempt to attack parents’ rights. 

    “When we won our elections to the OUSD Board less than two years ago, we did so on the promise of defending parents’ rights, fighting for curriculum transparency, working to improve test scores, prioritizing student safety and ensuring education is not replaced with indoctrination,” Miner said in a statement to EdSource. 

    “We proudly followed through on those promises, and the radical recall attempt is the resulting backlash.” 

    Now, the five remaining school board members will have to decide whether to appoint two new members or to hold a special election; plus, three of the remaining board members’ terms expire this year. 

    “It has been a tumultuous year with the numerous changes within Orange Unified. The voters have spoken, and I look forward to our board being able to move past the politics and collaboratively focus on how to best support our districts’ students,” said Orange Unified School board member Ana Page in a statement to EdSource. 

    “I deeply appreciate the diverse perspectives and expertise that my fellow trustees will bring to future civil discussions that directly impact OUSD students and look forward to continuing the valuable work of supporting public education.”

    Beyond Orange Unified

    Before the voting started, both sides believed that the recall election against Ledesma and Miner would be consequential — not just for their district but for the state, and possibly, the nation as a whole. 

    “We’re going to see more of this, which is all the more reason why … we’re getting involved to stop it, to tell them that turning around and recalling someone not even a year after they’ve been in office is just a waste of taxpayer dollars. It’s just wrong,” the Lincoln Club’s Morrison said.

    Efforts to recall members of a school board aren’t uncommon in California and across the nation — though relatively few actually make it to the ballot, said Joshua Spivak, a senior research fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s California Constitution Center and author of “Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom.” 

    Spivak said the number of school board recall efforts across the country grew especially during the Covid-19 pandemic — which he described as “arguably the biggest impact that a government ever had on our lives in our lifetime unless you were in WWII. But hardly any of them resulted in the removal of an elected official, he said.

    Since then, the number of recalls has dwindled, Spivak said. 

    In 2023, he said there were 102 recall attempts across the country — 29 of which were in California. Michigan, which is known to be the state where recalls are most popular, had 35 attempts that same year. 

    “Orange Unified will be setting a precedent,” Smaaladen said before the election. “But I hope the precedent we set is to send a clear message to those that are elected to school boards: to listen to their community and to make moderate decisions that are in line with what is best for the students and not necessarily their own personal agendas.” 

    She added that the recall election has forced the community to pay more attention to local politics, which she said has already and will continue to “change the trajectory of the district.” 

    “I’ve had numerous voters say, ‘Oh, I didn’t vote in November 2022,’ or even ‘I voted for Madison and Rick, but, you know, I wasn’t really paying attention because everything was fine,’” Smaaladen said. 

    “And when things are fine, it’s good, you can let it be. But now (voters are) paying attention.”





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  • California must help schools add green space

    California must help schools add green space


    Credit: Joe Sorrentino / The Trust for Public Land

    Last year, in the middle of a historic heat wave, I visited an elementary school that I represent in South Los Angeles. Visits like this are one of the best parts of my job — it’s an opportunity to get to know students, teachers, and administrators, and to see the great things that happen every day in Los Angeles Unified School District. I finished around noon, and as I left, the school seemed oddly quiet. Looking around, I saw that students had all abandoned the play yard to sit under the shade of a few trees on the edge of the campus. 

    The mercury that day was above 90, which meant the temperature coming off the asphalt that covers the school was probably over 140 degrees. It’s not uncommon in the dog days of summer to see students huddled up against our buildings seeking precious inches of shade, or sheltering inside as the weather begins to overpower air conditioning systems. But this wasn’t summer at all; we were in the middle of the hottest October on record. It’s possible that every October now will be the hottest October on record. 

    Extreme weather is our new normal, and for the sake of kids in this state, our schools must adapt to it. Extreme heat is harmful to kids’ mental and physical health, and hotter temperatures impede classroom learning and hurt students’ exam performance, which can lower graduation rates. At the same time, studies show that spending time outdoors can benefit kids by reducing stress, improving concentration, reducing negative social behavior, and even improving test scores. Across California, we have to rebuild our schools to give students access to nature and reduce the impact of extreme heat.  

    But green schoolyards are also essential modern infrastructure for everybody, not just students. They absolutely increase academic success, but they also improve community health, reduce the urban heat island effect, and provide massive opportunities for rainwater capture in a state that is plagued by flooding even while it is desperate for drought relief. They can also provide access to nature and recreation for communities that lack park space. Throughout the state, districts are some of the largest local landowners. California simply cannot adapt to climate change without reimagining what our schools look like. 

    We are making progress, but nowhere near as quickly as we need to. In September 2022, the LAUSD Board of Education voted to create “Green Schools for All” in Los Angeles by 2035. This requires a dramatic conversion of all our campuses to at least 30% green space — including shade trees, bioswales, gardens, native plants and other investments that will turn our schools from concrete-and-asphalt jungles to outdoor learning environments and play fields. Currently, over 560 Los Angeles Unified School District schools are below our 30% target, and over 230 schools have less than 10% green space. The district estimates that the overall cost of fixing this situation is $4 billion.  

    We have worked hard to identify resources for this crucial greening effort, resulting in over $500 million in bonds and other funding to increase green space at dozens of our campuses. Millions of dollars in CalFire funding will make improvements at almost 40 additional schools, but this was a one-time funding source and will get us nowhere near the target. Forget about 2035 — at this rate, we won’t meet our target until after 2050, when temperatures will regularly pass 100 degrees and the number of “extremely hot” days over 95 degrees will triple. Schools in Los Angeles — and throughout California — clearly do not have the money for a transformation this huge and this critical. Without funding from the state, no school districts will finish this necessary work on the timeline that our new climate reality demands. 

    This is why I am asking our Legislature to allocate $1 billion for schoolyard greening in this year’s school bond measure. The urgency of this moment comes from a climate emergency that we adults are passing on to the most vulnerable people among us — our own children, many of them in low-income communities disproportionately impacted by climate change. But few emergencies provide so many opportunities for widely distributed positive change at the same time. By providing sufficient funding for schoolyard greening, our leaders in Sacramento will improve academic outcomes and provide access to green space for students regardless of their ZIP code, and at the same time, they will build the foundation of a climate resilient future for all Californians. 

    •••

    Jackie Goldberg is president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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