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  • California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done

    California, districts try to recruit and retain Black teachers; advocates say more should be done


    A middle school science teacher explains a lesson on climate change using a SMART board.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage. The state and individual school districts have launched initiatives to recruit teachers of color, but educators and advocates say more needs to be done.

    Hiring a diverse group of teachers helps all students, but the impact is particularly significant for students of color, who then score higher on tests and are more likely to graduate from college, according to the Learning Policy Institute. A recently released report also found that Black boys are less likely to be identified for special education when they have a Black teacher.

    BLACK TEACHERS: HOW TO RECRUIT THEM AND MAKE THEM STAY

    This is the third part of a special series on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.

    Our series looks at the obstacles that keep Black people from becoming teachers, and the bias and lack of support some face when they join the profession.

    In the last five years, state lawmakers have made earning a credential easier and more affordable, and have offered incentives for school staff to become teachers — all moves meant to ease the teacher shortage and help to diversify the educator workforce.

    Despite efforts by the state and school districts, the number of Black teachers doesn’t seem to be increasing. Black teachers say that to keep them in the classroom, teacher preparation must be more affordable, pay and benefits increased, and more done to ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    “Black educators specifically said that they felt like they were being pushed out of the state of California,” said Jalisa Evans, chief executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network of a recent survey of Black teachers. “When we look at the future of Black educators for the state, it can go either way, because what Black educators are feeling right now is that they’re not welcome.”

    Task force offers recommendations

    State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called diversifying the teacher workforce a priority and established the California Department of Education Educator Diversity Advisory Group in 2021. 

    The advisory group has made several recommendations, including beginning a public relations campaign and offering sustained funding to recruit and retain teachers of color, and providing guidance and accountability to school districts on the matter. The group also wants universities, community groups and school districts to enter into partnerships to build pathways for teachers of color.

    Since then, California has created a set of public service announcements and a video to help recruit teachers and has invested $10 million to help people of color to become school administrators, said Travis Bristol, chairman of the advisory group and an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley. Staff from county offices of education also have been meeting to share ideas on how they can support districts’ efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, he said.

    The state also has invested more than $350 million over the past six years to fund teacher residency programs, and recently passed legislation to ensure residents are paid a minimum salary. Residents work alongside an experienced teacher-mentor for a year of clinical training while completing coursework in a university preparation program — a time commitment that often precludes them from taking a job.

    Legislators have also proposed a bill that would require that student teachers be paid. Completing the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required by the state, while paying for tuition, books, supplies and living expenses, is a challenge for many Black teacher candidates.

    Black teacher candidates typically take on much more student debt than their white counterparts, in part, because of the large racial wealth gap in the United States. A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth (property and cash), while the median Latino family had $38,000 and the median Black family had $23,000.

    Lack of data makes it difficult to know what is working

    It’s difficult to know if state efforts are working. California hasn’t released any data on teacher demographics since the 2018-19 school year, although the data is submitted annually by school districts. The California Department of Education (CDE) did not provide updated data or interviews requested by EdSource for this story.

    The most recent data from CDE shows the number of Black teachers in California declined from 4.2% in 2009 to 3.9% during the 2018-19 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics data from the 2020-21 show that Black teachers made up 3.8% of the state educator workforce. 

    Having current data is a critical first step to understanding the problem and addressing it, said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West, an education research and advocacy organization.

    “Let’s be clear: The California Department of Education needs to annually publish educator demographic and experience data,” Lara said. “It has failed to do so for the past four years. … Without this data, families, communities and decision-makers really are in the dark when it comes to the diversity of the educator workforce.” 

    LA Unified losing Black teachers despite efforts

    While most state programs focus on recruiting and retaining all teachers of color, some California school districts have initiatives focused solely on recruiting Black teachers.

    The state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, passed the Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity, Preparation and Retention resolution two years ago. It required district staff to develop a strategic plan to ensure schools have Black teachers, administrators and mental health workers, and to advocate for programs that offer pathways for Black people to become teachers. 

    When the resolution was passed, in February 2022, Los Angeles Unified had 1,889 Black teachers —  9% of its teacher workforce. The following school year, that number declined to 1,823 or 7.9% of district teachers. The number of Black teachers in the district has gone down each year since 2016. The district did not provide data for the current school year.

    Robert Whitman, director of the Educational Transformation Office at LA Unified, attributed the decrease, in part, to the difficulty attracting teachers to the district, primarily because of the area’s high cost of living.

    “Those who are coming out of colleges now, in some cases, we find that they can make more money doing other things,” Whitman said. “And so, they may not necessarily see education as the most viable option.”

    The underrepresentation of people of color prompted the district to create its own in-house credentialing program, approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Whitman said. The program allows classified staff, such as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants and bus drivers, to become credentialed teachers while earning a salary and benefits at their original jobs.

    Grow-your-own programs such as this, and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program, and a soon-to-be launched apprenticeship program, are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.

    Los Angeles Unified has other initiatives to increase the number of Black educators in the district, Whitman said, including working with universities and colleges to bring Black teachers, counselors and psychiatric social workers to their campuses. The district also has programs that help school workers earn a credential for free, and channels employees completing a bachelor’s degree toward the district’s teacher preparation program where they can begin teaching while earning their credential.

    All new teachers at Los Angeles Unified are supported by mentors and affinity groups, which have been well received by Black teachers, who credit them with inspiring and helping them to see themselves as leaders in the district, Whitman said.

    Oakland has more Black teachers than students

    Recruiting and retaining Black teachers is an important part of the Oakland Unified three-year strategic plan, said Sarah Glasband, director of recruitment and retention for the district. To achieve its goals, the district has launched several partnerships that make an apprenticeship program, and a residency program that includes a housing subsidy, possible. A partnership with the Black Teacher Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, offers affinity groups, workshops and seminars to support the district’s Black teachers.

    The district also has a Classified School Employee Program funded by the state and a new high school program to train future teachers. District pathway programs have an average attrition rate of less than 10%, Glasband said.

    This year, 21.3% of the district’s K-12 teachers are Black, compared with 20.3% of their student population, according to district data. Oakland Unified had a retention rate of about 85% for Black teachers between 2019 and 2023.

    Better pay, a path to leadership will help teachers stay

    Black teachers interviewed by EdSource and researchers say that to keep them in the classroom, more needs to be done to make teacher preparation affordable, improve pay and benefits, and ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

    The Black Educator Advocates Network  came up with five recommendations after surveying 128 former and current Black teachers in California about what it would take to keep them in the classroom:

    • Hire more Black educators and staff
    • Build an anti-racist, culturally responsive and inclusive school environment
    • Create safe spaces for Black educators and students to come together
    • Provide and require culturally responsive training for all staff
    • Recognize, provide leadership opportunities and include Black educators in decision making

    Teachers interviewed by EdSource said paying teachers more also would make it easier for them to stay.

    “I don’t want to say that it’s the pay that’s going to get more Black teachers,” Brooke Sims, a Stockton teacher, told EdSource. “But you get better pay, you get better health care.”

    The average teacher salary in the state is $88,508, with the average starting pay at $51,600, according to the 2023 National Education Association report, “State of Educator Pay in America.” California’s minimum living wage was $54,070 last year, according to the report.

    State efforts, such as an initiative that pays teachers $5,000 annually for five years after they earn National Board Certification, will help with pay parity across school districts, Bristol said. Teachers prove through assessments and a portfolio that they meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To be eligible for the grant, teachers must work at least half of their time in a high-needs school. Teachers who qualify are also given $2,500 to cover the cost of certification.

    This incentive will help teachers continue their education and improve their practice, said Los Angeles teacher Petrina Miller. “It’s awesome,” she said.

    Teacher candidates must be actively recruited

    Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.

    “In order to increase the number of Black teachers in schools, it has to become deliberate,” Jackson said. “You have to actively recruit and actively seek them out to bring them into the profession.”

    Since starting in 2005, Jackson has been one of only a handful of Black teachers at his school.

    “And for almost every single one of my kids, I’m the first Black teacher they’ve ever had,” said Jackson. “…  And for some of them, I’m the first one they’ve ever seen.” 

    Mentors are needed to help retain new teachers

    Mentor teachers are the key ingredient to helping new Black educators transition successfully into teaching, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource. Alicia Simba says she could have taken a job for $25,000 more annually in a Bay Area district with few Black teachers or students, but opted to take a lower salary to work in Oakland Unified.

    But like many young teachers, Simba knew she wanted mentors to help her navigate her first years in the classroom. She works alongside Black teachers in Oakland Unified who have more than 20 years of teaching experience. One of her mentor teachers shared her experience of teaching on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Other teachers told her about teaching in the 1980s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

    “It really helps dispel some of the sort of narratives that I hear, which is that being a teacher is completely unsustainable,” Simba said. “Like, there’s no way that anyone could ever be a teacher long term, which are things that, you know, I’ve heard my friends say, and I’ve thought it myself.” 

    The most obvious way to retain Black teachers would be to make sure they are treated the same as non-Black teachers, said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher and president of the Associated Chino Teachers.

    “If you are a district administrator, site administrator, site or colleague, parent or student,  my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and my special education credential are just as valuable and carry as much weight, and are as respected as any other educator,” she said.

    “However, it’s just as critical for all those groups to acknowledge and respect the unique cultural experience I bring to the table and acknowledge and respect that I’m a proud product of my ancestral history.”





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  • Through comedy, students can take ‘big swings’ for mental health

    Through comedy, students can take ‘big swings’ for mental health


    Two teaching artists lead a group of students through improv exercises during a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education's Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.

    Teaching artists lead students through improv exercises during a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.

    Top Takeaways
    • Many school districts are using comedy and improv workshops to teach students social-emotional skills, encourage self-expression and foster social connection. 
    • Through the comedy program Laughing Together, professional comedians and mental health clinicians develop workshops based on exercises that can improve student mental health. 
    • Game-based learning and interactive play can engage students who might have fallen behind academically or socially during the pandemic.

    “If you were an object, what object would you be?” 

    Chris Gethard, a veteran comedian and improv teacher, posed this question to a group of high school students in Northern California at a Laughing Together workshop he was leading. He remembered one who identified as a fruit. 

    “When I was a kid, I convinced myself that I hated avocados,” Gethard remembered the student saying. “And then I tried one, and I actually love ’em. And that’s been my experience the past few years as I’m learning to love and embrace myself.”

    It quickly became obvious to Gethard that the improv wasn’t about avocado or any fruit for that matter. It was a big moment, and the student was taking a big risk to figure out something about themselves — their gender identity in real time.

    “Young people right now are living in a world where those experiences are often held up in the spotlight and politicized,” Gethard said. “So to see a kid being able to take a comedy exercise, which feels light and accessible and not too heavy, they can let their guard down and take a big swing like that.”

    Many school districts are turning to comedy as a way of supporting student mental health. In 2023, Gethard co-founded Laughing Together, a program based on research that comedy can be an effective tool for students’ social-emotional learning and social connection with their peers. 

    Nearly 6,500 students and educators across 26 different schools, districts, or youth organizations, have taken part in their workshops since Gethard co-founded the program with Marlon Morgan, CEO of parent nonprofit Wellness Together. 

    “One of the reasons that we [partnered with Gethard] is that he had already shared about his own mental health through his comedy special on HBO,” said Morgan, who is also a former school counselor. “He can make dark and scary things funny, which really helps students gain insight into their own emotions and become better at connecting with each other.” 

    ‘Taking chances in the spotlight’

    Research shows that students who practice social-emotional skills in safe environments with well-defined goals have improved social behavior, emotional regulation and academic performance. 

    “We have clinical psychologists who go through all the improv exercises,” Gethard said. “They get to say — ‘these ones are about making people funny, and they also prioritize nonverbal communication, strengthening eye contact, being comfortable with failure and taking some chances in the spotlight.’”

    Christina Patterson, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School in Stockton, said pandemic shutdowns forced her to spend nearly entire days scrolling through social media, hoping for something new to interact with (“But, there never is anything new,” she added). 

    For the first time since her school implemented a cellphone ban, Patterson said taking part in the Laughing Together workshop, even for an hour, met the level of engagement she had always been looking for on her phone. Like Patterson, students in recent years report better cognitive, social and academic outcomes through game-based learning and interactive play, compared to lecture-based instruction. 

    “I feel engaged with people who are interactive — they’re not trying to teach at you, but they’re trying to teach with you together,” Patterson said. 

    Laughing Together workshops are led by one of the program’s teaching artists, including professional comedians, actors and performers, alongside children’s psychologists, drawing on art, play and game therapy research, to develop social-emotional learning and communication skill-building into each exercise. For Gethard, a workshop is successful if he can teach students something without them realizing it. 

    “We want kids to leave feeling more connected and comfortable with each other, not like they just watched a slide show or that they were just spoon-fed these lessons,” he said. “We want them to feel that they’re allowed to at least throw an idea out there, and no one’s going to judge them, pick them apart, or criticize them.” 

    Sofia Stewart-Lopez, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School, helped set up a peer-to-peer summit, where she and other student mentors took part in a Laughing Together workshop. She remembered starting the day anxious about a big presentation about mental health resources she had later in the day, but after a few skits and improv games, she felt more confident, relaxed and connected to the people around her. 

    “I learned that a big part of balancing heavy topics of mental health, like anxiety, depression or substance abuse, is learning how to combat them with things that can help you with those feelings,” Stewart-Lopez said.

    Markus Alcantar, a senior and a peer counselor at Lincoln High School, said his favorite part of the workshop was one in which he got to become an apple. He had to think on his feet about why he felt like one, and then he improvised a skit with someone who had decided they were a tree. In another exercise, he said a volunteer started with juggling a ball, after which students added another ball, followed by another, and then another — until they couldn’t keep up anymore. 

    “It was a fun representation of how you can have a lot of things going on in your head mentally, and that you can learn to unravel those thoughts and organize them for yourself and other people,” Alcantar said. 

    About 1 in 5 teenagers, and most of Stewart-Lopez’s friends at school, she said, have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression. So the workshop, she said, was particularly helpful in understanding how laughter exactly works in the brain — like how endorphins and serotonin receptors can alleviate some feelings of sadness or anxiety — to be able to have fun and build healthy coping skills with friends at school. 

    “The [improv exercises] also taught us that thinking on our feet better prepares us to be able to respond in different types of situations,” Stewart-Lopez said. “We learned that different people need different types of support, which betters us as mentors.”

    Middle school students attend a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.

    Most recently, Gethard completed nine workshops at a high school where over half of the student body are on Individualized Education Plans (IEP), or accommodations for students with learning, developmental, or behavioral disabilities. During the first workshop, he noticed most students reaching for their phones in the middle of an exercise or while on stage. To ease students into the experience, he’d tell them to simply take a breath and try to be present. 

    “After the first few workshops, a teacher came up to me and said, ‘their ability to lock in and focus on that is leaps and bounds compared to week one,” Gethard said. “She said, ‘they just never got their ability to focus back after Covid, but if we can keep going with this, it’s going to change the game for these kids in the room.’” 

    Rates of anxiety and depression — which shot up by 70% among California children between 2017 and 2022 — are the top health-related drivers of absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic. Research indicates that reduced social interaction, coupled with overreliance on screen time, also worsened students’ social cognition skills, such as cooperation and communication, and executive functions, such as attention and memory.

    Alcantar was in seventh grade when schools shut down, and when he returned to in-person instruction as a high school freshman, he said he found it difficult for him to initiate conversations with people around him. Stewart-Lopez said that after schools lifted mask mandates, she kept hers on for a while because she was worried about meeting social expectations about what she should look like. 

    “The pandemic had added to my sense of anxiety about, ‘What if I don’t fit in? What if I’m different from everybody else?” she said. 

    For Stewart-Lopez, laughter feels like home. It’s how she and her sisters got through their parents’ separation and also how she plans to take new risks with new people at college this year. 

    “We’re creating that safe place for students to get real-time responses to the risks they’re taking — and everyone’s taking risks — which makes it okay,” said Morgan, the CEO of nonprofit Wellness Together.





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  • Trump’s budget would reduce Pell Grant awards and work-study programs

    Trump’s budget would reduce Pell Grant awards and work-study programs


    A commencement ceremony at California State University, Fullerton, in 2021.

    Credit: Cal State Fullerton/Flickr

    • New “K-12 Simplified Funding Program” is effectively an elimination, advocates say.
    • Proposal eviscerates programs for low-income students in both K-12 and higher education.
    • Funds for disabled students increased, but shift to flat funding is concerning to educators.

    The Trump administration is proposing the biggest cuts in a half-century to federal financial aid by reducing Pell Grant award amounts for low-income college students, plus the government’s contribution to the Federal Work-Study program. Fewer students will likely enroll in college and achieve a degree as a result, college officials say.

    The cuts are included in a proposed 15% reduction to the U.S. Department of Education’s budget, totaling $12 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education, plus sweeping changes to how remaining funding would be distributed.

    The president’s initial budget, issued on May 2, foreshadowed programs in danger of cuts or eliminations, but specifics remained vague until late last week with the release of new details.

    The budget is still under review by the Senate, which could change the administration’s proposal in any direction.

    Advocates, however, remain pessimistic and warn that this education budget request is only one aspect of the larger budget and policy concerns.

    “The biggest thing is what happens in the Senate with budget reconciliation,” said Rob Manwaring, a fiscal and policy analyst at the advocacy organization Children Now.

    The proposal eviscerates funding for programs that support students experiencing homelessness, rural students, English learners, and more. However, President Donald Trump would maintain Title I, which provides supplemental funds to schools in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, at the current $18 billion.

    K-12 funding

    Funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is slightly higher in the budget request, but advocates are concerned that federally mandated costs are rising faster than federal funding.

    Manwaring said special education, for instance, is “one of the fastest growing costs for school districts,” due to a rise in students being screened and diagnosed with disabilities, plus costs associated with the resources provided.

    The budget request lists funding for special education as an “increased investment,” but a consolidation of various programs supporting students with disabilities ultimately amounts to flat funding.

    This type of funding “is further reducing the federal government’s role in supporting special education” because it does not account for variables such as cost-of-living increases, costs of salaries and benefits for educators, a rise in disabled student populations, and other such changes, Manwaring said.

    At risk of elimination are hundreds of millions for programs that support the education of migrant students, teacher training, education research and English learners.

    The proposal includes pooling together 18 grant programs currently funded at about $6.5 billion into a single $2 billion block grant. It is titled K-12 Simplified Funding Program and the administration argues it will allow states and local education agencies flexibility in how funding is allocated.

    Those 18 programs include:

    • Education for Homeless Children and Youths (EHCY)
    • Assistance for Arts in Education
    • Statewide Family Engagement Centers
    • American Civics and History Education
    • Comprehensive Literacy State Development

    Advocates say the consolidation amounts to elimination.

    “It’s just another way of saying ‘we’re eliminating funding,’” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection. “Whether the funding is zeroed out because the line item is zeroed out or whether it’s zeroed out because supposedly it’s put into a new block grant, the program doesn’t exist anymore.”

    Part of the problem with the consolidation plan is the removal of targeted funding, she added.

    California’s Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, provides an example of how the federal consolidation plan could play out: While schools receive funding for several vulnerable student groups, the stream is not only often limited in how it can be spent, but is also shared among students with widely varying needs. This has historically led to insufficient funding for students who require much greater support, according to the Learning Policy Institute.

    Lack of targeted funding for vulnerable student groups, such as students experiencing homelessness, fails to address the specific types of support that students may need in order to keep attending school, Duffield added.

    “Who’s doing the outreach and awareness? Who’s going knocking on the doors of motels? Who’s going to shelters?” she asked, listing a multitude of tasks that homeless liaisons, funded in part with federal dollars, take care of.

    Students experiencing homelessness are one student group with a specific federal policy outlining supports that schools are required to offer. In their case, it’s the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

    Advocates are raising questions about whether the proposed funding changes could impact other federal policies.

    “Will the requirement go away if the funding goes away? That is where the ambiguity of what the information that’s been shared so far is: Will there be changes in law that accompany changes in budget?” Manwaring said.

    How higher education is faring

    California college leaders said the proposed changes and cuts to federal financial aid programs, including TRIO programs, the Pell Grant, and federal work-study, would make it more difficult for students to enroll and complete their degrees.

    TRIO programs — such as Upward Bound, Veterans Upward Bound, and McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement — aim to help disadvantaged students enroll in and complete college. Its funding, over $1 billion across 10 programs, would be fully eliminated.

    In project year 2024-25, TRIO funded almost 450 projects in California, according to an EdSource analysis of grant award data for all eight TRIO program types published by the U.S. Department of Education. Together, projects in California received about $150 million to engage more than 100,000 student participants and train 556 staff members.

    The White House proposal would also reduce the maximum Pell Grant by 23% — nearly $1,700 — from $7,395 to $5,710. The administration defends the proposed cut, saying that not reducing the maximum amount “would put the program in an untenable financial position,” and contends that the maximum award will still cover the average full amount of in-state tuition and fees for community college students. The budget summary says that overall funding levels have not kept up with broader eligibility requirements approved by former President Joe Biden.

    The proposed cut to the Pell maximum grant is the first in more than 30 years and certainly the largest by far in the more than 50 years of the program’s existence, according to federal records. Very modest reductions to the maximum award were made in 1993 and in the early 1980s.

    Additional changes imposed in the House’s reconciliation bill would strip any Pell Grant eligibility from many part-time students and change the number of minimum credits students need to get the maximum award from 12 credits per term to 15.

    Such a large reduction in the maximum grant would be “troubling” and, together with the possible eligibility changes, would mostly impact low-income students and shut off more of them to the financial aid they need to attend college, said Allie Bidwell Arcese, senior director of strategic communications and engagement for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

    In California, 24% of community college students, 35% of University of California undergraduates and about 42% of California State University students receive a Pell Grant, which is available to low-income students.

    The White House proposal would also reduce funding for Federal Work-Study by $980 million and eliminate the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant. Those changes would be less impactful to California students but still significant. To employ students in work-study jobs, colleges would have to put up 75% of their pay; currently, they contribute only 25%. With both the CSU and UC already facing cuts in federal and state funding for next year, it’s unclear whether they could afford such an increase in matching money to sustain work study at current levels.

    More than 41,000 students in California participated in the Federal Work-Study program in the 2022-23 award year, according to an EdSource analysis of Federal Student Aid data. Their earnings include almost $95 million in federal compensation.

    In addition, more than 252,000 California students received Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants. The federal share of those awards was about $131 million.

    In the San Diego Community College District, more than 12,000 students receive a Pell Grant. The proposals put forth in the White House’s budget request and the House reconciliation bill would have devastating impacts on the district’s students, said Chancellor Gregory Smith.

    Roughly 4,000 students in the district get the maximum award and would lose out on about more than $1,500 annually. An additional 4,500 students take fewer than eight credits and could forgo their Pell Grants entirely under the House’s bill. Smith said he expects many of those students will end up dropping out if the proposed changes are enacted.

    “The likelihood of many of them being able to complete college would be very low,” he said. “So many of our students are in difficult financial circumstances. One bad break — car breaks down — or a medical emergency — will likely force them to have to stop their education.”

    At CSU, where more than $1 billion in Pell Grants was distributed to more than 200,000 students in 2023-24, officials estimate that 60% of Pell recipients would see their awards reduced or eliminated altogether under the White House proposal.

    A number of CSU students also stand to lose out if the cuts to the opportunity grants and work-study are enacted. Almost 40,000 students were awarded the opportunity grants, and 6,300 participated in Federal Work-Study in 2023-24.

    At UC, students and officials in recent years have advocated for the maximum Pell Grant to be doubled, arguing that the current ceiling for the award doesn’t meet student needs and forces many to take out loans. UC was thus “deeply concerned” about the White House proposal, said UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez, particularly as the system also deals with disruptions to federal research funding.





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  • We need to track how California’s efforts to increase teacher diversity are working

    We need to track how California’s efforts to increase teacher diversity are working


    Credit: Allison Shelly for American Education

    Updated April 4 to correct demographic information of students and teachers in California.

    I started my professional life as a server at the Marriott. I was looking forward to a career in the hospitality industry, but I also wanted to use my degree in biology and my love of science, so I decided to substitute teach.

    During my first week in the classroom, one of my students said, “Mr. Z, we have learned more from you in the last three days than in the previous two weeks.”

    That’s when I knew I wanted to become an educator. 

    My research into teacher preparation programs left me discouraged. Their cost was a major barrier for me, as it is for many other aspiring teachers of color. Then I found out about the Golden State Teacher Grant (GSTG) program, which provides teachers of color with the opportunity to pursue a career in education tuition-free. I would never have been able to afford my master’s degree and teaching credential had it not been for this program. 

    With this grant, I was able to receive my master’s and credential within one year, allowing me to step into the classroom and diversify the space that much faster. This is important because 20% of California’s students identified as white, while 61% of teachers identified as white. (The comparison is as of 2018-19, the last year that the California Department of Education published statewide teacher demographic data). Research shows that teachers of color have a positive effect on the pupils we serve. I have seen this in my own teaching. My high school chemistry classes are 85% students of color. One of my students, Nayleya, wrote to me, “I hated coming to school and I just felt like there was no point to it. I felt like the other teachers were just trying to control us and, in a way, treat us like robots, but you don’t. You listen to what we are having problems with and try your hardest to help.”

    The Golden State Teacher Grant came with a comprehensive level of support, ensuring my success in the program and in the classroom. When I was working on my final project, a chemistry unit plan, my professors provided ongoing mentorship. I was able to resubmit my assignments until I reached mastery in my content area. This informed my teaching practice; I now give my students multiple opportunities to resubmit their assignments until they too reach mastery of the learning target. This has motivated students like Nayleya to work harder, even if she found the lesson challenging, because she knows I am backing her up every step of the way, in the same way my professors supported me. 

    I know that the Golden State grant worked for me as it has for many of my colleagues. However, to really know how many teachers of color are entering the profession, the programs they graduate from, the districts and schools they are teaching at, we need much more information than just personal experience. This is even more pressing now as the Legislature is considering addressing current budget shortfalls by clawing back funds from some of the teacher training programs, like the Golden State Pathways Program, teacher and counselor residency grants and national board certification grants, without understanding their impact. We need comprehensive data on the effectiveness of programs like the Golden State Teacher Grant to ensure that our investments in them are working, and policymakers have the information they need to make informed budget decisions.  

    Our Legislature is now debating a bill that will do just that. Senate Bill 1391, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, would require the state to develop a dashboard with information on teacher training pipelines, credentialing, hiring and retention. Having a comprehensive data dashboard would also help us anticipate any challenges that arise from recruiting to preparing and retaining a diverse workforce. Imagine the improvements we could make to how we prepare and support teachers if we knew what programs were effective, and what worked and what didn’t. 

    I love teaching and I love my students. I want other people of color to pursue a career in education and find the passion and rewards that come with mentoring young scholars. Let’s make sure we have the data to help sustain and diversify our workforce, for the benefit of all our students. 

    •••

    Omar Zamarripa is a ninth and 10th grade science teacher at Port of Los Angeles High School in San Pedro. He is a 2023-24 Teach Plus California Policy Fellow.  

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





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  • California student-run news organizations ramp up Spanish-language coverage

    California student-run news organizations ramp up Spanish-language coverage


    Copies of El Leñador, the Spanish-language newspaper, adorns the Cal Pol Humboldt newsroom.

    Credit: Courtesy of El Leñador

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    Many student-run newspapers throughout the Cal State system now provide content in Spanish. But how they do it — and the reasons why — varies from campus to campus.

    A campus newspaper’s ability to publish in Spanish hinges on having Spanish speakers on staff, and the turnover of student journalists from semester to semester can make or break a newspaper’s ability to publish in Spanish.

    Adriana Hernandez, editor-in-chief of San Francisco State’s Golden Gate Xpress knows her publication is one of the luckier ones.

    “We either translate or do original reporting (in Spanish) — depending on the situation or urgency — for our Spanish section,” Hernandez said. 

    San Francisco State is the first campus among the Cal State schools to offer a major dedicated to bilingual Spanish journalism, giving its student journalists consistency from one year to the next.

    Contrast this to California State University, Sacramento. The State Hornet struggles to find students who are prepared to provide Spanish-language content to their peers.

    “Last semester we had four staffers, this semester we had five,” said editor-in-chief Mercy Sosa. “I will say that every semester we have adapted, grown, and found more tools that are at our disposal, but we are still obviously learning ourselves, so not everyone is as confident with Spanish writing.”

    Fernando Gallo, adviser for The State Hornet said, “It is a challenge to find students that can read and write in Spanish here.”

    At San Diego State University, Jennifer Aguilar is a senior and a first-generation transfer student. Aguilar is the editor of Mundo Azteca, an entire Spanish section of San Diego State’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Aztec. She says her role is to “translate or help others write their stories in Spanish.” 

    “We recruit students every year, which is how we keep it going as students leave,” Aguilar said.

    And at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, students who are not journalists but are instead majoring in Spanish have contributed to The Mustang News. Martha Galvan-Mandujano, an assistant professor of Spanish, has encouraged her students to assist.

    “Some of my students have helped as editors, translating or writing news in the past. I think they started in 2021-22,” Galvan-Mandujano said. She teaches a course on Spanish journalism for the university’s world languages and cultures department, and has “recommended students (to The Mustang News) in the past and tried to encourage my advanced Spanish students to participate” in working with the newspaper.

    Beyond logistics is the bigger picture of why it matters. 

    “I think it’s important to include Spanish language in our reporting to be able to give the community a voice to represent themselves,” Hernandez said of San Francisco State’s Golden Gate Xpress. “It also reflects on how diverse our newsroom is — our sourcing, and the kind of work we do. Every community deserves to have their voices heard and be well-informed.”

    Hernandez admits that metrics for their Spanish stories aren’t high. “However, we have seen outliers from story topics [that] connect with our community. We have seen a lot more activity in our Spanish multimedia content, ranging around 5,000-9,000 views on social media,” adding, “We have seen a lot more engagement from our Spanish-language audience through Instagram, for example, as well as reaching others outside of SF State.” 

    At Cal Poly Humboldt, what was once a Spanish-language insert into The Lumberjack, the campus newspaper, has become the main news source for the region. El Leñador (The Lumberjack in Spanish) moved beyond covering campus events to topics of broader interest to the Humboldt County community, such as housing and immigration, as well as profiles on local Latino businesses.

    El Leñador was formed in 2013, after Cal Poly Humboldt was designated a Hispanic-serving institution. Twenty-one of California State University’s 23 campuses now meet the criteria for becoming HSIs. 

    Gallo, adviser to Sacramento State’s The State Hornet, also highlighted the importance of the paper’s bilingual efforts, given that the university is an HSI with a Hispanic population of more than 35%. The stories are not only important to the audience but to the journalists writing them. 

    “Spanish is the one that I know, it is the one that I grew up with,” The State Hornet’s Sosa said, “so it is the one that I can work with at the moment. But I think it is important for us to know that even though we live in the United States, there are people here speaking in other languages that deserve to have this service, which is what I think journalism is.”

    Similarly, Daniel Hernandez, the Spanish visuals editor for San Francisco State’s Golden Gate Xpress, said that he thinks it is necessary to have other languages included in their publication, as well. The next one may be Mandarin or Cantonese, he said, but it’s important to really focus on the Spanish language now and “build the foundation on how to keep a stable Spanish section going.”

    Emmely Ramirez graduated with a journalism degree from California State University, Sacramento. Olivia Keeler is a fourth-year communications and media studies major at Sonoma State University. Both are former members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • Bill to mandate ‘science of reading’ in California schools faces teachers union opposition

    Bill to mandate ‘science of reading’ in California schools faces teachers union opposition


    Teacher Jennifer Dare Sparks conducts a reading lesson at Ethel I. Baker Elementary School in Sacramento last year.

    Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource

    California’s largest teachers union has moved to put the brakes on legislation that mandates instruction, known as the “science of reading,” that spotlights phonics to teach children to read.

    The move by the politically powerful California Teachers Association (CTA) puts the fate of Assembly Bill 2222 in question as supporters insist that there is room to negotiate changes that will bring opponents together.

    CTA’s complaints include some recently voiced by some advocacy organizations for English learners and bilingual education that oppose the bill and have refused to negotiate any changes to make the bill more acceptable.

    The teachers union put its opposition to AB 2222 in writing in a lengthy letter to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi last week. The committee is expected to hear the bill, introduced in February, later this month. 

    The letter includes a checklist of complaints including that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and cuts teachers out of the decision-making process, especially when it comes to curriculum. 

    “Educators are best equipped to make school and classroom decisions to ensure student success,” the letter said. “Limiting instructional approaches undermines teachers’ professional autonomy and may impede their effectiveness in the classroom.”

    Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised that CTA would oppose legislation that would ensure all teachers are trained to use the latest brain research to teach children how to read.

    “Unfortunately, a lot of folks in the field haven’t actually been trained on that, and a lot of the instruction materials in classrooms today don’t align with that,” Tuck said.

    Tuck said CTA appears to misunderstand the body of evidence-based research known as the science of reading. It “is not a curriculum and is not a program or a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said. “It will give teachers a foundational understanding of how children learn to read. Teachers will still have a lot of room locally to decide which instructional moves to make on any given day for any given children. So, you’ll still have significant differentiation.”

    A nationwide push

    California’s push to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy is in sync with 37 states and some cities, such as New York City, that have passed similar legislation. 

    States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it trains children to use pictures to recognize words on sight, also known as three-cueing. The new method would teach children to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.

    Although phonics, the ability to connect letters to sounds, has drawn the most attention, the science of reading focuses on four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.

    Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would require that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour-minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.  

    The legislation goes against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.

    “It’s a big bill,” said Yolie Flores, president of Families in Schools, a co-sponsor. “We’re very proud that it’s a big bill because that means it is truly consequential in the best way possible for children. It’s not a sort of tweak around the edges kind though, it’s the kind of bill that really brings transformation. So we are hoping that the Legislature sees beyond the sort of typical pushback and resistance, and in the end, I think, teachers will see that this was a huge benefit for them.”

    Seeking compromise

    The bill’s author, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, said she took CTA’s seven-page letter not as an outright rejection but as an opportunity for negotiations.

     “I’m glad they sent this letter,” she said. “They outline their objections and the reasons why, and that’s something I can work with. It’s not a flat, ‘No, we don’t want you to do it.’ They gave me specific items that I can look at and have a conversation about.”

    She said that Assemblymember Muratsuchi asked her to work with the CTA on a compromise. She is also meeting with consultants for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, “to look at the big picture,” she said.

    But Flores says the state’s budget problems, with predictions of no money for new programs, may be a bigger hurdle to getting the bill passed than the CTA opposition. The cost of paying for the required professional development for teachers would total $200 million to $300 million, she said. Because it is a mandate, the state would be required to repay districts for the cost.

    “That is a drop in the bucket for something so transformational, so consequential,” Flores said. “I hope that the Legislature really comes to that realization. We’re in a budget deficit, but our budget is a statement of priorities.”

    Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandate instruction in the science of reading. In 2023, just 43% of California third graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students. 

    “It’s foundational,” Flores said. “It’s not the only thing teachers need to know. It’s not the only thing that teachers will need to do and to adhere to, but it’s sort of the basic foundational knowledge of how children’s brains work in order to learn to read.”

    The bill would sunset in 2028 when all teachers are required to have completed training. Beginning in July, all teacher preparation programs would be required to teach future educators to base literacy instruction on the science of reading. 

    Needs of English learners

    The CTA and other critics of AB 2222 charge that it ignores the need of English learners for oral language skills, vocabulary and comparison between their home languages and English, which they need in order to learn how to read. Four out of 10 students in California start school as English learners.

    Tuck disputes this. “We actually emphasize oral language development,” he said. “This would be the first statute that would say when instructional materials are adopted, and when teachers are trained in the science of reading, they must include a focus on English learners and oral language development.”

    Representatives from Californians Together, an advocacy organization for English learners and bilingual education, applauded the CTA’s opposition to the bill. They oppose the bill, rather than suggest amendments, because they disagree with its overall approach.

    “We just don’t think this is the right bill to address literacy needs,” said Executive Director Martha Hernandez. “It’s very restrictive. We know that mandates don’t work. It lacks a robust, comprehensive approach for multilingual learners.”

    Instead, Californians Together and the California Association for Bilingual Education have both said they would prefer California fund the training of teachers and full implementation of the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework. 

    The framework was adopted in 2014 and encourages, but does not mandate, explicit instruction in foundational skills and oral language development for English learners.

    The California Language Teachers Association has requested the bill be amended to include information about teaching literacy in languages not based on the English alphabet, such as Japanese, Chinese or Arabic, according to Executive Director Liz Matchett. However, the organization has not yet taken a position on the bill.

    “I agree that we want to support all children to be able to read. If they can’t read, they can’t participate in education, which is the one way that is proven to change people’s circumstances,” said Matchett, who teaches Spanish at Gunn High School in Palo Alto. “There’s nothing to oppose about that. I’m still a classroom teacher, and all the time, you get kids in high school who can’t read.”

    Education Trust-West urges changes in the bill to center the needs of “multilingual learners” — children who speak languages other than English at home — and to include more oversight and fewer mandates, such as those that may discourage new teachers from entering the profession.

    “If our recommended amendments were to be accepted, EdTrust-West would support it as a much-needed solution to California’s acute literacy crisis.”

    Claude Goldenberg, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, said “it was disappointing” to see CTA’s opposition, particularly because the union did not suggest amendments. He said he had met with representatives from CTA and urged them to identify what could be changed in the bill.

    In a recent EdSource commentary, Goldenberg urged opponents to “do the right thing for all students. AB 2222’s introduction is an important step forward on the road to universal literacy in California. We must get it on the right track and take it across the finish line.”

    Referring to the CTA’s opposition, Goldenberg said, “Obviously my urgings fell flat. They identified why they’re opposing, but there’s no indication of any possible re-evaluation.” 

    Goldenberg, who served on the National Literacy Panel, which synthesized research on literacy development among children who speak languages other than English, has called on the bill’s authors to amend it to include a more comprehensive definition of the “science of reading” and include more information about teaching students to read in English as a second language and in their home languages.

    The CTA has changed its position on bills related to literacy instruction in the last two years. It had originally supported Senate Bill 488, which passed in 2022. The legislation requires a literacy performance assessment for teachers and oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation. The union is now in support of a bill that would do away with both.

    The change of course was attributed to a survey of 1,300 CTA members, who said the assessment caused stress, took away time that could have been used to collaborate with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students, according to Leslie Littman, vice president of the union, in a prior interview. 

    Veteran political observer Dan Schnur said he’s not surprised CTA would oppose the bill since some of its political allies are against it; the question is how important CTA considers the bill. 

    “If it becomes a pitched battle, CTA will have to decide whether it is one of its highest priorities in this session,” he said.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t indicated his position yet, but Schnur, the press secretary for former Gov. Pete Wilson, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and USC, said, “This is not the type of fight Newsom needs or wants right now. If he has strong feelings, it’s hard to see him going to war for or against.”





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  • Community outrage leads to changes in Fresno Unified superintendent search

    Community outrage leads to changes in Fresno Unified superintendent search


    Community members attend a listening session on Feb. 21 at Duncan Polytechnical High in Fresno to discuss the search for a new superintendent.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    At a special meeting Wednesday, the Fresno Unified School District board bowed to community pressure and postponed already scheduled interviews of district employees vying for the superintendent job.

    The seven-person board was set to interview internal candidates during a closed session — an initial step in the process to select the next superintendent for the state’s third-largest district — before deciding whether to expand the search to candidates beyond the school district.

    The boardroom was packed, standing-room-only, with parents, students, staff and other community members. An overflow crowd watched the meeting on TV screens on the first and second floors of the district building. 

    Thirty speakers echoed support for one of three positions regarding the search process: that the board’s decision to start with internal candidates first was best, that the board should’ve conducted at least a statewide search from the start, or that the process has been plagued by politics, so far. 

    The meeting displayed a divided school system and raised questions about the school board’s ability to select a leader to guide a district that desperately needs to improve student outcomes.

    Outrage had been mounting among community members since the board’s March 20 closed-session decision on how to proceed with the search, which resulted in dueling board factions. 

    Trustee Claudia Cazares on Wednesday led a 5-2 vote, compelled by community feedback, to postpone the interviews until further deliberation. The “no” votes came from trustees Andy Levine and Veva Islas, who argued that the interviews had been scheduled. 

    Cazares said that “to make it cleaner for us and more transparent, that we take a giant step back and start fresh from the beginning, including additional community input, before we move forward with any interviews.” 

    Pausing gives the board an opportunity to further discuss the search process, correct misconceptions spreading in the community and ensure people are heard, trustee Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas said during the meeting. 

    “It’s ultimately about trust in Fresno Unified,” Jonasson Rosas said. “I want everybody to be absolutely clear about what we’re actually doing.” 

    Even with the board’s decision to change course, the unrelenting public clamor for transparency and the elimination of political agendas will likely shape how the search for superintendent proceeds. 

    “When people talk about misinformation and misrepresentation — when there is no transparency, that is what happens,” said community member Christina Soto. 

    ‘To ensure that FUSD staff are seen and heard first’ 

    On Jan. 22, Superintendent Bob Nelson announced his resignation to start a tenure-track position at Fresno State. During a closed meeting on March 20, the school board, tasked with hiring and firing the superintendent, decided to interview internal candidates first, before deciding how to proceed with the search. 

    Board member Keshia Thomas said she made her decision in order to ensure Fresno Unified staff are “seen and heard first.” 

    “These people have given their lives to the district,” Thomas said, “and they deserve that much.”

    Another reason given for wanting to interview in-house stemmed from the budget implications of launching a national search, which may be unnecessary, in the context of a $30 million deficit the district faces.

    The first phase of the search — eliciting community feedback and creating the job description — cost the district $40,000 in fees from the search firm Leadership Associates. Another phase, whether completed by Leadership Associates or another firm, could cost between $75,000 and $100,000, Thomas said. The second phase has not been determined by the board.

    “We’re shelling out all this money to search firms to do this work,” Thomas said. “And if we don’t have to, we really shouldn’t spend it.” 

    When Nelson was tapped as superintendent in 2017, the board conducted a costly national search that eventually chose an internal candidate. 

    After the departure of Nelson’s predecessor in 2017 and the uncertainty about who’d lead the district in the period until the new superintendent started, the school board implemented a plan for the resignation of the top district leader. The succession plan, formed in the early years of Nelson’s tenure, involved creating the position for and hiring a deputy superintendent who would be prepared to step in; it’s also a quasi-grow-our-own leadership model that ensures continuity during and following the transition of district leaders.

    When Nelson announced his resignation, he told EdSource he’d continue serving as superintendent until July 31, which will trigger the district’s succession plan. The school district confirmed in a media release about Nelson’s resignation that Deputy Superintendent Misty Her would be named interim superintendent. 

    The board has approved succession planning and grow-our-own programs at different levels across the district, said Annarita Howell, the district’s assistant superintendent for human resources. She was one of the district’s staff members and students who supported the board’s initial decision to interview internal candidates.

    “My wondering is why we question that succession planning now (that) you have been supporting for the last 10 years?” Howell asked. 

    Brown Act violations?

    Some board members blame the community outrage on information leaked from a closed session that has been misconstrued by those who accuse the board of a lack of transparency. 

    An update on the March 20 meeting for the search informed the public that the board had decided to interview in-house candidates. Details of the 4-3 decision and how each board member voted was leaked to GV Wire, a digital news site, which Thomas said violates the Brown Act, legislation guaranteeing the public’s right to attend and participate in meetings for bodies such as the school board. 

    “Only people in that room were privy to who thought what,” she said.  Only board members and representatives from the search firm were present at that meeting. 

    According to Bryan Martin, attorney for Fresno Unified, the Brown Act generally requires the board to report out final actions that the board makes in closed session, including reporting how each board member “voted.”  He didn’t consider the 4-3 decision to interview internal candidates as a final action. 

    Thomas confirmed that she was one of the four who chose to interview internal candidates first, a decision she stands by. But the leaked decision created a misconception that the four wanted to only interview and choose the new superintendent from staff. 

    District spokesperson Nikki Henry also said that what was communicated to the public was not what happened, and that the 4-3 decision was never about limiting the search to internal candidates only, but about starting with FUSD employees. 

    “The board has never said that they will only look at internal applicants,” she said. “There’s never been anything from the board that has said they will not go to a statewide or national search for the superintendent.”

    Skepticism of the process, Henry said, likely came because the board was taking the search one step at a time and allowing each step to inform the next step. 

    “The whole process is not going to happen out in the open because that’s not how it’s done,” Thomas said. “That’s not how you do any interviews or hire any person if you’re an HR person.” 

    And the school board is the human resources for the superintendent hiring, she said. 

    In a Tuesday news conference called by board President Susan Wittrup, community leaders, including those in the teachers union as well as city council representatives, called on Fresno Unified board members to conduct the search the “right way,” at least statewide and in an open and transparent way, led by and with community involvement. 

    Wittrup said the school board needed to change course with the way it decided to handle the search, an action that the board has now taken.

    Thomas said Wittrup’s actions have made matters worse.

    “Trustee Wittrup decided to fabricate the truth about what was said and what was requested by a majority of the trustees,” Thomas said about an editorial published in GV Wire that Wittrup wrote as well as other statements she made to the media. 

    Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, said on Tuesday that there needs to be a public discussion about why the original decision was made.

    He said that the explanation that the process be conducted in closed session as an HR process is an excuse. 

    In other places across the country, applications and interviews of those applying for a superintendency are open to the public because of state legislation. 

    Even individuals not associated with education, such as Darius Assemi, publisher of the online news site GV Wire and CEO of Granville Homes, a real estate development company, which he admitted doesn’t build homes in the Fresno Unified area, joined Tuesday’s event.  

    Assemi said that the community deserves better than a closed-door selection and hiring process. 

    “It should be a transparent, open process so that the public sees what actually takes place,” he told EdSource before the board backpedaled its decision. “Not behind closed doors; not in secrecy.” 

    Many say their voices were unheard

    Another factor creating concern about the search process is related to the 24 listening sessions conducted in February and the search firm’s report on those sessions.

    The search firm’s summary, not even a full two-page document, lists and briefly details key themes deemed necessary for the district’s next leader, including: 

    • An educational background that includes experience as a teacher, an administrator and other roles, and administrative credentials
    • Experience and understanding of the district’s history, culture, complexities and diversity. According to the summary, the community preferred internal candidates and applicants with ties to the Central Valley
    • Effective communication skills and the ability to collaborate and engage with people in the school community
    • A strategic vision supported by data-driven strategies

    Wittrup said Leadership Associates’ report misinformed board members about what the community wanted, and that community members felt their voices went unheard during the listening sessions because they asked for a search beyond district personnel. 

    “I have heard overwhelmingly from parents and constituents across this city that their voice was not captured,” Wittrup said. “That would be a travesty if we used misinformation to make these decisions.” 

    Community member Soto said she invested at least five hours in attending various listening sessions, just to have that information “disregarded and misrepresented.” 

    “Communities stated that we wanted someone that was familiar with the Valley,” she said. She was one of at least 10 people who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting in support of a search not limited to internal applicants. “I’m sure there are many people across the state and maybe the nation who have Central Valley roots who would be qualified to be superintendent.” 

    Community members at board meetings, including Wednesday’s, and through conversations with trustees have recommended a national or statewide search as well as a districtwide search committee to interview candidates. 

    Board member Cazares said in an April 2 Facebook post that she had originally asked board leadership for a community committee to assist in the search. Cazares was named as one of the four who wanted to start with the internal search. She could not be reached to confirm. 

    “I hope that board president (Trustee Wittrup) would reconsider my recommendation,” Cazares said in her social media post. 

    Board member Valerie F. Davis, also named as one of the four who chose to start with the internal search but couldn’t be reached to confirm, said she has hired three superintendents, in which the board “always” had community members as part of the search committee. 

    The original board decision, Bonilla said, eroded the community’s trust because the closed-door decision came without community input. He added that now, after an outpouring from frustrated community members, the board is deciding to “take steps in the right direction.”

    What else complicated the process? 

    Wittrup is the sole board member who publicly challenged the board’s original decision. In the weeks before Tuesday’s news conference and Wednesday’s board meeting, Wittrup was the first of nearly 400 people to sign Break the Cycle of Failure at Fresno Unified, an online petition about the decision to start with internal candidates. She also penned an opinion piece about the matter. 

    “It’s the only way I know,” Wittrup said about the appropriateness of her actions to write an op-ed and host a news conference to challenge the board’s decision. 

    Board member Levine, though he’s remained quiet about the March 20 closed-session discussion, shared his position last week via Facebook and with EdSource. He supported inviting both internal and external candidates to apply and said that a process to consider all candidates at once sets up the board’s pick for success. The community would know the decision is based on a competitive and rigorous process. 

    He said he didn’t see the need to attend Tuesday’s new conference because the board must figure out how to move forward as a unit.  

    “We need to figure out, as a board, how to come together to get there, hopefully,” he said.

    So what happens next? 

    It’s still unclear how the process will proceed, even after the board met in closed session for about an hour Wednesday night. 

    Whether community members want the board to maintain its direction to interview internal candidates first, to redo the entire process or to eliminate political influence, “we can’t do stuff behind closed doors,” said community member Gloria Hernandez. 

    “We need to proceed in this process in the most transparent way,” Roosevelt High teacher Marisa Rodriguez said, “so that we can gain the trust of our community.”





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  • We must redesign middle and high schools to serve students better

    We must redesign middle and high schools to serve students better


    Vista Del Mar Middle School in Chula Vista

    Credit: San Diego County Office of Education

    Tucked inside Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed state budget is a kernel of hope for the future of adolescents in California: A $15 million investment to reshape the way students experience middle and high schools. It represents just .013% of total state education spending, but it represents an important commitment to serving students better.

    This investment will create a small cadre of middle and high schools to support students’ sense of belonging, to help prepare them for well-paying jobs in the future, and to personalize learning environments and supports so that those who need extra help can get it. Participating schools will also integrate more hands-on, experiential learning and lead the way in new and appropriate uses of technology for deeper learning. These are the learning opportunities and environments that young people are asking us to provide. 

    What might these schools encompass, and how would we approach this work?

    The San Diego County Office of Education works with districts, students, families and communities to address system- and community-wide issues and goals. We work with interested districts to build a portrait of a graduate, where leaders listen to students, parents, community members, and school and district staff to co-create a district plan built on the collective answer to: “Where do we want our student to be in 15 to 20 years when they graduate and what attributes and skill sets do they need to possess?” Through this process, we seek to create and strengthen our schools to be welcoming spaces for all students, with opportunities to be successful in school and life.

    The Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program (SSRP) is especially timely now, as California continues to chart a course toward improved outcomes and experiences for adolescents in our public schools. This state-level persistence in forward-looking policy is critically important amid federal-level backsteps and disinvestment in young people.

    Working as an SSRP network to learn and grow together, a group of secondary schools would be selected to receive state grants to support the reshaping of schools as places where all students feel known, understood and engaged in future-relevant learning. The two-year pilot would be evaluated, as all new programs should be, to identify redesign strategies for schools statewide and determine whether the effort should grow. 

    The program smartly builds upon recent, substantial investments in secondary schools by the governor and Legislature. These include new “community school” models that serve not just students’ academic but their health and social-emotional needs; dual-enrollment opportunities that allow high schoolers to experience and accelerate toward college; and the Golden State Pathways Program, which puts students on paths toward college and high-wage careers in economic growth sectors such as technology, health care, education and climate science/adaptation. 

    At a time of sharp ideological divides, we have been encouraged to see strong, across-the-board support among California voters for the importance of college and career education, social-emotional learning, student mental health and school environments where all students feel accepted. Public opinion research conducted by a bipartisan polling group earlier this school year bears this out. 

    As we prepare to celebrate our many high school graduates during this season of commencement, we remain focused on our most critical work ahead: to ensure that our public schools function effectively for all, especially those students who are furthest from opportunity and for whom our schools have not yet succeeded. 

    California has taken strong steps toward improving school experiences and outcomes for adolescents, particularly in this post-pandemic period when they are truly in need. The SSRP is another stride in that direction. To stay the course on preparing our young people for the future they deserve, we urge the Legislature to act favorably on the governor’s proposal.

    •••

    Gloria E. Ciriza, Ed.D., the San Diego County superintendent of schools.

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





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  • Is the ‘core curriculum’ still core?

    Is the ‘core curriculum’ still core?


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    We often talk about the “core curriculum” as the center of our education system, the most essential content for students to master in order to be prepared for their futures. For most, it includes English, math, science and social science. Many support the inclusion of multilingualism, the arts and career-technical education.

    With the advances of the past century, isn’t it time to re-evaluate what is “core”? What competencies do young people need to face future challenges? How can they be the drivers of their own learning? Why is it so difficult to change legacy thinking?

    Our education system is separated into, and organized around, these discreet “core” subject areas. They are the basis for students’ class schedules, schools’ departmental structures, teachers’ credentials, and universities’ admissions requirements. They are the focus of student report cards, state standards, standardized tests, tutoring programs and accountability measures.

    Yet, over the past decade, when more than 75 school districts across California have engaged their communities to develop a “graduate profile” or “portrait of a graduate” by asking their community members what skills, competencies and mindsets are most essential for young people to be successful, the core subject areas are not ranked at the top. Rather, respondents (or community members) say that students should be creative and critical thinkers, effective communicators and collaborators, self-directed lifelong learners, culturally competent and globally aware citizens, technically and financially literate, adaptable and resilient, and kind and curious. This represents a more holistic and integrated approach to teaching and learning. In fact, a recent WestEd report verified that these competencies are most frequently cited in districts’ graduate profiles; the academic content areas fell further down the list.

    For decades, employers have identified a similar set of competencies as critical for success in the workplace. While colleges and universities tend to default to core content requirements, when pressed they agree that the same competencies are critical for a young person’s success in postsecondary education. And, wouldn’t we all want informed and productive citizens to embrace these skills? Are they not core?

    These ideas are not new. Nearly 20 years ago, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills created the P21 Framework, often simplified by practitioners to “the 4Cs” —  collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking.

    My goal is not to establish an either/or argument, but rather to suggest a rebalancing for current and future generations. Granted, much of our society still stands behind “the three R’s” — reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmatic — and will argue until blue in the face that these skills are most essential. They are! Yet, in this day and age, when information is available at our fingertips 24/7 and artificial intelligence can organize that information in coherent ways, what should we consider as core?

    Content will always be central to our schools. If we were to formally elevate the importance of the 4Cs, and even organize around them, students still would have to think critically about something, collaborate around something, and communicate something. That “something” is the content, and teachers can be creative about how to integrate key standards. But, what would it look like if we were to rebalance the priorities?

    We wouldn’t have to look far to find examples of small but significant shifts. Several school districts (such as Davis and Novato) have modified their elementary report cards to reflect their graduate profile outcomes. Anaheim Union High School District employs “5Cs coaches” at each of their 20 school sites to help teachers integrate the 5C skills into everyday lessons and projects (5Cs = 4Cs + compassion). In order to graduate, some districts (including Pasadena and Anaheim) require students to demonstrate their graduate profile outcomes through senior projects, portfolio defenses or capstone interviews.

    District efforts to rebalance the priorities of our education system — by creating a graduate profile and working to operationalize it — have been underway for well over a decade, but progress has been slow because the state (the Department of Education, State Board of Education, Legislature, and Governor’s Office) has been slow to incentivize, encourage, and/or support local efforts through funding and policy. Many other states have done so.

    What might it look like if formal structures existed to intentionally prioritize a new core set of competencies? For example, what if students could earn digital badges for their demonstration of the 4Cs, to be used as portable credentials for college admission and employment? What if teachers could earn micro credentials for the effective teaching of the 4Cs? What if the state’s data and accountability systems captured student progress on the 4Cs? In more creative and less formalized applications, what if field trips, after-school and summer programs centered on 4C skill development? What if administrators selected the teacher-of-the-month based on impressive 4C instruction? What if foundations awarded scholarships and/or (like in Petaluma) students voted on the homecoming court based on student demonstration of the 4Cs?

    Recently, I facilitated a team of educators and community members working to implement their graduate profile. When I asked the father of a Latina 12th grader whether he thought the traditional transcript or the graduate profile most reflected what his daughter needed for her future success, he pointed to the graduate profile.

    ●●●

    Roman Stearns is the executive director of Scaling Student Success, a California partnership dedicated to educating the whole child, leveraging the power and potential of a community-developed “graduate profile” or “learner portrait” as a driver for transformational change.

    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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  • Calls, home visits, counseling help get California students back to school

    Calls, home visits, counseling help get California students back to school


    When first grader Jordan Muñoz stopped going to school during the 2022-23 school year, his mother attributed it to depression, following the deaths of Muñoz’s great-grandfather and uncle. Some days, his mom couldn’t get him out of the house. Other days, she’d get him dressed and to the corner of Fresno’s Fremont Elementary, but he’d take off running. Most often, she failed to get him beyond the school parking lot.

    “I tried to just take him. Leave him at school. But he would get right in front of my car so I wouldn’t leave,” said Muñoz’s mom, Deyanira Pacheco.

    Aware of the difficulty, administration, counselors, psychologists and teachers at his Fresno Unified school developed a plan to support Muñoz, according to Cecilia Aguayo, the district’s child welfare and attendance specialist.

    The district of over 70,000 students had made such plans before in an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism rates, which went from 50.3% during the 2021-22 school year to 35.4% in 2022-23. While this is still higher than pre-pandemic years, the decrease stands in sharp contrast to other districts, like Oakland Unified, where chronic absences rose from 47.5% to 61.4% during the same years.

    Statewide, nearly a quarter of K-12 students remained chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year — a decline of about 5 percentage points from the previous school year, but a sign of the lingering effects of the pandemic that led to sharp drops in student attendance after schools reopened for in-person instruction. Students who are chronically absent from school are sometimes also the same children who do not have their basic needs met: Federal data shows that nearly half of all California homeless students, 44.5%, were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year.

    Nearly a third of the 930 districts statewide that reported data had a higher rate of chronic absenteeism in 2022-23 than the year before. A small number of districts, 33, had a chronic absenteeism rate over 50% in 2022-23, the most recent data available.

    EdSource’s analysis of data from the California Department of Education offers insight: The statewide average rate of excused absences for the 2022-23 school year was 54.7%, with unexcused absences at 39.2%. Both numbers are similar to pre-pandemic levels.

    While both excused and unexcused absences are counted toward chronic absenteeism rates, a school’s knowledge of the reasons behind the absences can better help them support and re-engage students.

    Researchers and school staff have long tried to better understand how to re-engage chronically absent students, or students who missed 10% or more days in one school year.

    State education code lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school; however, interviews with districts show that many excused absences are mental health and illness-related. Unexcused absences could indicate that students did not have proper documentation to mark them excused, or that they provided no reason for their absence or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence.

    Fresno Unified is in the Central San Joaquin Valley and is the state’s third-largest district. Across the 30 districts in Fresno County, all but four decreased their chronic absences between 2021-22 and 2022-23. Altogether, the average change was 11.62 percentage points, with Fresno Unified, the county’s largest district, above average with a gain of 14.9 percentage points.

    The district credits their targeted communication with families as the foundation for their improvement, a method echoed by researchers as highly effective.

    Child welfare and attendance specialist Aguayo made phone calls, visited Muñoz’s home and popped up at the school when Pacheco picked up her other child, a kindergartner, who soon followed his brother’s example and sometimes refused to attend school. The district referred them to counseling services.

    Although Pacheco, the kids’ mother, said the visits and calls helped in a way, she didn’t pursue counseling, perhaps thinking it wouldn’t work, Aguayo said.

    By the end of the 2022-23 school year, Muñoz had attended only 27 days out of 179 days enrolled — a 15% attendance rate. Of the days missed, only six were excused. The school district didn’t give up on him, however. They used every tool to get him back to school.

    Oakland Unified’s rising chronic absences

    Farther north, in Oakland, chronic absences increased from 47.5% in the 2021-22 school year to 61.4% the following school year. But the high rate was already clear prior to the pandemic, at 34.4% during 2018-19.

    “There hasn’t been a ‘normal’ year in many years,” said Heather Palin, the district’s director of multitiered systems of support, about chronic absences, in October. “Just broadly speaking, this is way higher than pre-Covid.”

    Oakland Unified, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a diverse district of 46,000 students that is currently facing a significant budget deficit. Most districts across Alameda County, of which Oakland Unified is the largest, either saw a decrease in chronic absenteeism or had virtually no change between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Oakland Unified ranked last and stands out with an increase of 13.9 percentage points.

    The district has adopted a plan aimed at reducing its 61.4% district absentee rate by 25 percentage points with similar drops in each individual school, Palin said.

    Each Oakland Unified school is expected to have an attendance team that meets regularly and includes an administrator, community school manager, attendance specialist and principal. Teams’ plans for increasing attendance include offering incentives like attendance certificates, celebrations and swag.

    “It was an expectation that was set last year, and we have more capacity to support it, and we’re more kind of unified as a system in the messaging around the importance of that team,” Palin said.

    The district offers a virtual school, Sojourner Truth Virtual Academy, but it’s not aimed at students who are chronically absent. Rather, it’s a different learning format offered to all students.

    Cumulative enrollment data shows that this school remained a popular choice for students: it had 250 enrolled students pre-pandemic, then jumped to 1,533 students during 2021-22. The following year, 2022-23, nearly 1,000 remained enrolled.

    Palin said that district authorities do not know why all students are chronically absent because schools were unable to reach some families. The students they reached mostly said they no longer wanted to attend school or requested a transfer to the virtual academy. Students also cited illness, family relocation, mental health and safety concerns.

    How insight from families can help

    While school administrators can excuse absences based on students’ individual circumstances — even if the reason is typically not covered by state law — they can only do so if they know the difficulties absent students are experiencing.

    According to a recently published PACE report that examined California attendance data across the 2017 and 2022 school years, schools with higher rates of unexcused absences often have lower attendance rates overall. The same study by the nonprofit research group found that “socioeconomically disadvantaged students are much more likely to have their absences labeled unexcused.”

    To address the number of illness-related absences, Fresno Unified clarified expectations, informing families about appropriate scenarios in which to send their kids to school. Consequently, excused absences increased from 41.3% in 2021-22 to 54.8% the following year, while unexcused absences decreased from 64% to 43.4%.

    When the district knows what’s impacting student attendance, they can support, not penalize families, which many feared, said Tashiana Aquino, executive director of support programs, and Abigail Arii, director of the district’s student support services.

    The very few excused absences that Muñoz had, along with conversations with his mother, helped the district set up a plan to increase his attendance.

    Staff sent letters, called, visited the home, and educated Pacheco about attendance laws. “They asked me why he didn’t want to stay at school,” Pacheco said.

    But even with a plan in place, Pacheco couldn’t get Muñoz, 7, to school.

    By Sept. 23, 2022, she’d enrolled Muñoz in the district’s eLearn Academy, hoping he’d complete the work from home. Still, he wouldn’t. Six weeks later, he was re-enrolled at Fremont but was still not attending school.

    Pacheco faced a school attendance review board (SARB) case in June 2023, a step “we really tried to avoid,” Aguayo said.

    But the case was the “wake-up call” that pushed Pacheco to get the help she and Muñoz needed, said district staff.

    “I think that’s where she realized, ‘I need to step up, too,’” said Tainia Yeppez, the SARB technician.

    During the case, Fresno Unified again referred the family to counseling services. This time, in summer 2023, Pacheco started Muñoz in therapy.

    New, more flexible solutions

    Ongoing chronic absenteeism requires new thinking, advocates say, to ensure students do not fall back on foundational academic skills.

    “Just because kids are not in the school building doesn’t mean we can’t still figure out creative and innovative ways to educate them. These chronic absenteeism rates are not going to just drop,” said Lakisha Young, CEO and founder of parent advocacy group Oakland REACH. “Everybody is in uncharted territory. So the question is: ‘Can we change the conversation?’”

    At the height of the pandemic, Oakland REACH established a virtual learning hub for Oakland Unified’s K-2 students, offering tutoring that kept them engaged and attending school regularly. Early results showed that 60% of their students improved two or more reading levels on the Oakland Unified assessment, while 30% improved three or more levels. The organization now offers paid fellowships for Oakland caregivers to work as tutors producing high academic results.

    Part of the challenge with common alternative learning formats to re-engage absent students while meeting their academic needs is that they are not always viable for students whose homes do not have the space to designate for schoolwork, said Young.

    “A family who chooses to home-school has a different setup than a kid that’s chronically absent, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be given that option,” she said. It’s up to each district to find the solutions that would best serve their students, she added.

    Southern California’s Glendale Unified is one of the few school districts with a slight decrease of 1% in their absenteeism rate plus low excused and unexcused absences: 20.6% and 22.3%, respectively.

    Last school year, more students met with the district SARB, said Hagop Eulmessekian, Glendale Unified director of student services.

    To address increasing mental health concerns, every Glendale Unified school has a wellness center where students can take a break during the school day. If a student is experiencing behavioral challenges, they are transferred to a community day school where they take each class in the same room throughout the day while teachers rotate for different subjects.

    “There’s no wiggle room for the students who kind of disappear” throughout the day, said Eulmessekian. “They get the same education, they get fed, they get additional support, whether it’s counseling or therapy, and then when we see they’re able to go back on our comprehensive campuses, we transfer them back.”

    Oakland REACH’s Young encourages educators to think outside the box.

    “We have got to get creative about these babies,” said Young. “At some point you have got to do something different. You have got to just say: ‘This kid’s at home, how do I still get them educated?’”

    Back in Fresno, Muñoz has done a complete 180. As of March, his attendance rate is 98%.

    “Counseling really does help a lot,” Pacheco said.

    She also needed to learn skills to address the boy’s behavior, Aguayo said. “I think she kind of got the power she needed. She finally got control.”

    Of 128 days, he’s only missed two, one of which was excused. Even on days when he’s sad about losing his great-grandfather and uncle, he goes to school, Pacheco said. In fact, he made a commitment at the beginning of the school year to attend every day.

    “Now, he wakes up at 6 in the morning, ready to go,” Pacheco said with a grin. Muñoz, now 8, likes going to school to play soccer with his friends.

    He is behind academically — the impact of not attending school for most of his first-grade year, Pacheco said. The school provides additional academic support through remediation classes.

    “All he needed to do was attend,” Yeppez said.

    Because of his current high attendance rate, the court dismissed the SARB case in December, and Muñoz ended counseling in February.

    For other families with students not regularly attending school, Pacheco said schools and districts must help them by talking to them and figuring out the problem, much like Fresno Unified did for her, and families must utilize the provided or recommended services, such as counseling.

    “I think it was a little bit of everything that helped mom,” Yeppez said. “She was willing to get the help, accept the help and make that change. She was willing to make that change for her son’s success.”





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