Flanked by fourth-place winner Ellie McCuskey-Hay, left, and first-place winner Loren Webster, right, second-place winners AB Hernandez, center right, and Brooke White share the podium during a medal ceremony for the long jump at the California high school track and field championships in Clovis.
Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
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California Department of Education vows to protect “all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity.”
Sixteen-year-old transgender athlete AB Hernandez shared three medals with cisgender competitors under newly rejiggered rules at California’s track and field championships last weekend, sparking controversy.
The U.S. Department of Justice warned California schools they may be held in violation of civil rights protections for girls.
The California Department of Education on Tuesday weighed in on the escalating controversy over transgender athletes in school sports, advising schools to hold the line in the wake of threats from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday issued a letter warning California school districts they will face legal trouble if they don’t pledge to bar trans athletes from competition by June 9, citing civil rights concerns. The CDE countered Tuesday, advising schools to hold fast and let it respond to the Justice Department regarding matters of gender identity on behalf of the state.
“Let’s be clear: sending a letter does not change the law,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in a statement. “The DOJ’s letter to school districts does not announce any new federal law, and state law on this issue has remained unchanged since 2013. California state law protects all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity. We will continue to follow the law and ensure the safety of all our athletes.”
Last weekend’s fracas over California’s track and field championships in Clovis has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign to target transgender athletes in girls sports, a divisive hot-button issue that conservatives have pushed aggressively of late.
President Donald Trump has threatened financial penalties for California public schools after a 16-year-old trans athlete, AB Hernandez, won three medals in last weekend’s California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field Championships. Hernandez placed first in the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump.
In the wake of a key last-minute rule change, Hernandez shared the podium with her cisgender competitors. The hastily rejiggered rules allow girls to receive medals based on where they would have finished if a transgender athlete had not been allowed to compete.
This compromise did not mollify the president.
“Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so,” Trump wrote in a 12:56 a.m. ET post on June 2. “As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” he added, referring to Newsom.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, argues that letting transgender athletes into girls sports competitions constitutes sex discrimination, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” Dhillon has said. “Therefore, you cannot implement a policy allowing males to compete alongside girls, because such a policy would deprive girls of athletic opportunities and benefits based solely on their biological sex.”
The Civil Rights Division has also announced investigations into the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado for allegedly allowing males to live in intimate and communal spaces earmarked for females.
Town leaders in Clovis, the largely conservative city in Central California that hosted the track and field championships, called it unfair to include a transgender athlete in girls sports, The Fresno Bee reported. Chino has also filed a lawsuit on the issue.
California is among 22 states with laws that allow transgender athletes to compete with girls. Amid the state’s nearly 6 million TK-12 public school students, experts say, the number of active transgender student-athletes is estimated to be in the single digits.
Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has often jousted with Trump on social issues, shocked many on the left when he admitted that he felt allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls was “deeply unfair” during a recent interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
While Newsom himself has not as yet weighed in on this specific controversy, Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, has praised the new rules as “a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness — a model worth pursuing.”
For her part, Hernandez, a junior at Southern California’s Jurupa Valley High, has been characterized as poised and unruffled amid the heated controversy.
“We could not be prouder of the way this brave student-athlete conducted herself on and off the track,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.
This story has been updated with additional quotes.
Rich Lyons, UC Berkeley’s top innovation official and former business school dean, will become the next chancellor of the campus, the university announced Wednesday.
Lyons, 63, an alumnus of Berkeley, will start in the role on July 1, when current Chancellor Carol Christ will step down.
“I am humbled and thrilled to become UC Berkeley’s next chancellor, following the remarkable leadership of Chancellor Christ. Berkeley is one-of-a-kind, and I will endeavor to honor its traditions and history while guiding the campus into its next chapter and growing its impact,” Lyons said in a statement.
When he assumes the role this summer, Lyons will take over at a particularly fraught time in higher education, including at Berkeley. Israel’s war in Gaza has divided the campus, where there have been numerous protests and demonstrations since last fall. Last month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it is investigating Berkeley over potential incidents of discrimination related to the war.
Faculty at Berkeley, meanwhile, “have never been more demoralized,” the Berkeley Faculty Association wrote in an open letter to the next chancellor last week. In the letter, the faculty lamented that they have not received a raise in line with inflation for many years and that their salaries lag behind the faculty at peer institutions.
The result, according to the faculty, “is a campus that is close to the breaking point,” with faculty who are burdened with maintaining Berkeley’s reputation despite “ever-diminishing resources and ever-deteriorating working conditions.” Faculty have also struggled to afford housing in the expensive San Francisco Bay Area, they wrote.
At the same time, Berkeley is “struggling to maintain its reputation as a bastion of free speech and academic freedom,” according to the faculty. “Across the country, the alt-right has sought to neutralize universities as spaces of critical thought. They have found allies on our own campus who are worried that potential donors may be alienated from the Berkeley ‘brand,’” the faculty association wrote.
In a statement to EdSource responding to the faculty letter, Lyons said he plans to prioritize shared governance with faculty upon assuming his new role.
“Coming from over 30 years on the Berkeley faculty, I have great appreciation for our faculty’s excellence and the context in which that excellence is delivered. I see many opportunities for new investment in our faculty and all that they need to thrive,” he said.
Lyons served as dean of the Haas School of Business from 2008 to 2018. He is also a professor of economics and finance at the school. Since 2020, he has been in his current role as Berkeley’s chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer.
UC systemwide President Michael Drake, who helped select Lyons, said in a statement that he would be a “bold and visionary leader” for the campus committed to “preserving Berkeley’s academic and research prowess.”
As chancellor, Lyons will earn an annual salary of $946,450.
After earning his bachelor’s degree in business from Berkeley in 1982, Lyons also received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. He joined the Berkeley faculty as a professor of finance in 1993 and has been on the campus ever since, other than spending two years working as the chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs beginning in 2006.
Lyons’ predecessor as chancellor, Christ, said in a statement that she is “thrilled and reassured” by the selection of Lyons as the next chancellor. “In so many ways, Rich embodies Berkeley’s very best attributes, and his dedication to the university’s public mission and values could not be stronger,” she added.
Californians remain anxious about the mental health of public school students four years after the Covid virus closed down schools, according to a new survey released Wednesday. They also indicated they’re lukewarm toward passing a statewide school construction bond.
In the Public Policy Institute of California’s survey of 1,605 California adult residents, 81% of all adults and public school parents said they were strongly or somewhat concerned about students’ mental health and well-being – a view that, for most part, cut across race, political party affiliation and family income. The number reflects a continuing worry about the persistent impact of the pandemic two years after students returned to the classroom following school closures of more than a year.
SOURCE: PPIC Statewide Survey, April 2024. Survey was fielded from March 19-25, 2024 (n=1,605 adults, n=1,089 likely voters, and n=252 public school parents).PPIC
Advocates for a statewide bond to build and repair TK-12 school facilities may face an uphill battle to pass it – assuming Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators put the issue before voters in November.
Only 53% of likely voters said they would vote for a state bond, while 44% said they’d vote no, with only 3% undecided, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, which on Wednesday released its annual survey of voters’ view on TK-12 education issues. The number is well below 60%, the standard level of favorability that comforts backers of an initiative heading into a campaign.
The mid-March survey also found mixed views on how Newsom and the Legislature are handling the state education system; 51% of all Californians and 60% of public school parents said they liked how he had managed education. That’s the lowest number since his election in 2018, and consistent with PPIC’s most recent survey on his overall job performance. The survey had a margin of error of 3.3% plus or minus.
Newsom’s highest rating was in April 2020, when 73% of likely voters approved and 26% disapproved of his performance on TK-12 education. That coincided with the emergence of the coronavirus, and his decision to close schools. “Newsom got a bump in the early days of the crisis for responding decisively amid the shock of the pandemic,” said Mark Baldassare, survey director and chair of public policy for PPIC.
The Legislature and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also received roughly 50% approval in the latest survey; however, the poll also showed that most Californians agreed with their positions on social and political issues that captured headlines in the past year.
69% of all adults said they strongly (43%) or somewhat (26%) oppose individual school boards passing laws to ban and remove certain books from classrooms and school libraries; a smaller majority of public school parents (30% strongly, 25% somewhat) agreed. Last year, Newsom threatened to fine Temecula Valley Unified and replace a social studies textbook that the board rejected because it included a reference to the late gay activist Harvey Milk; the board reversed its position.
58% of all adults and 55% of public school parents oppose individual school boards creating policies to restrict what subjects teachers and students can discuss in the classroom.
More than 80% of adults and public school parents strongly or somewhat favor teaching about the history of slavery, racism, and segregation in public schools; more than 50% of all respondents strongly held that view.
Local schools got good marks for preparing students for college, but less so the workforce. 60% of all adults and 72% of public school parents said their schools did well preparing students for college, while 51% of all adults and 65% said they did a good job preparing students for jobs and the workforce. Only 45% of African American respondents said the schools did a good job for college, compared with 64% of Asian Americans, 61% of Latinos and 61% of Whites.
As with these and many of the issues surveyed, there was a sharp partisan division, with most Democrats supporting Newsom’s positions and most Republicans opposing them.
California adults were about evenly split (50% support, 49% oppose), however, on whether to allow books with stories about transgender youth in public schools. Three in four Democrats support this, while eight in 10 Republicans oppose it, and independents are divided (51% support, 48% oppose). Only 42% of public school parents support the idea, and 57% said they oppose it; they also opposed including lessons on transgender issues by the same breakdown.
Newsom and the Legislature have committed billions of dollars to phase in voluntary transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds. Two-thirds of all adults, including 77% of public school parents, 80% of Democrats, 41% of Republicans, 84% of Blacks, and 57% of Whites, said that’s a good idea.
Uncertainty about bond issue
Newsom said in January that he supports placing a school construction bond on the November statewide ballot; voters last passed a state bond in 2016, and the state has run out of money to contribute to districts’ share of new construction and renovations.
However, Newsom and legislative leaders have not negotiated the specifics. School consultant Kevin Gordon, president of Capitol Advisors, said that polling results could affect the size and scope of a bond. Instead of a $15 billion bond that legislative leaders have discussed, it could be much less; instead of including money for the University of California and California State University, which polls less favorably than TK-12, it could include money only for TK-12 and community colleges, he said.
Gordon and Baldassare disagreed on how much to read into the 53% support of the bond eight months before the election.
“All of the not-so-good news about the state budget, with billions of dollars in red ink, has had an impact on voters’ attitude that affects the bond issue now,” Gordon said. “But after this summer, with a balanced budget adopted, and with economists optimistic about the latter part of 2024, voters’ attitude could change.”
Credit: Public Policy Institute of California, April 2024 survey
Four years ago, voters rejected a state bond 46% to 54% in the March 2020 primary election. But, Gordon said, voters have never defeated a state bond initiative in a November election, which attracts more people to the polls.
Baldassare said the bare majority support in the survey shows “there is a lot of economic anxiety among voters over inflation and anxiety over taking on more debt.” That showed in the bare passage last month, with 50.2% of the vote, of Proposition 1. It will determine how to spend money on housing for unhoused people suffering from mental illness.
The survey also produced mixed, and perhaps puzzling results to the same questions asked in previous surveys:
Asked “how concerned are you that California’s K-12 public school students in lower-income areas are less likely than other students to be ready for college,” 39% this year said “very concerned.” That’s the lowest percentage since the question was introduced in 2010, when 59% said they were very concerned.
Asked, “How would you rate the quality of public schools in your neighborhood today,” 49% of likely voters gave their schools an A or B. That’s nine percentage points higher than last year and in pre-pandemic 2019.
Asked whether the quality of education has gotten worse over the past few years, 52% of adults said it was worse, 11% said it had improved, and 34% said about the same. That was an improvement from last year, when 62% said education had gotten worse and only 5% said it had improved – and far better than in 2011. That was during the depths of the Great Recession, when school districts were slashing budgets following cuts in state revenue: that year, 62% said schools had gotten worse.
A Walnut Valley Unified kindergarten teacher shows her students a book during class.
Credit: Walnut Valley Unified / Facebook
An underused, little-known public school choice program allowing students to enroll in other districts that open their borders has been reauthorized six times in the past 30 years. Under a bill winding its way through the Legislature, it would become permanent, with revised rules.
Under the District of Choice program, districts announce how many seats they make available to nonresident students by the fall of the preceding year, and parents must apply by Jan. 1. By statute, enrollment is open to any family that applies, without restrictions — and with a lottery if applications are oversubscribed. The program bans considering academic or athletic ability or, if an applicant is a student with special needs, the cost of educating a student.
“This bill is a crucial step towards creating a more inclusive and equitable public education system — one where all students have the opportunity to grow and thrive,” said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, the author of Senate Bill 897.
With enrollments dropping statewide — and projected to continue — districts could view District of Choice as a strategy to stem the decline and bolster revenue that new students would bring. But few districts have seized the option. At most, 50 districts out of nearly 1,000, mostly rural or suburban and small, have signed on.
That number, in turn, has restricted the openings for families; fewer than 10,000 students annually have transferred through the program — about 0.2% of California’s students, according to an evaluation of the program by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2021.
The list of districts for 2024-25 will be 44, the same as this year. That is down from 47 districts in 2021-22, when a total of 8,398 students transferred, according to the latest data available from the California Department of Education.
Of those, 2,574 students — 31% of the total — transferred to a single district, Walnut Valley Unified, a 14,000-student district in the San Gabriel Valley. The district includes the cities of Walnut and Diamond Bar and abuts Pomona Unified. Newman, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, represents Walnut Valley; his predecessor, Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, also championed District of Choice and shepherded a previous five-year reauthorization.
Together with five other districts receiving the most students — Oak Park Unified, Glendora Unified, West Covina Unified, Valley Lindo Elementary School District and Riverside Unified — the five received 82% of the students in the program statewide. Riverside, with 1,100 of its 42,000 students enrolled through District of Choice, is the only large district using the program.
Robert Taylor, Walnut Valley Unified’s superintendent, said the district had participated in the program for decades, in the belief that the district “should provide any child an opportunity regardless of special needs, socioeconomic status or street address. And that’s still today. We take every kid who wants to come.”
Taylor cited the “diversity of well-rounded opportunities” that draw outsiders: Arts offerings in elementary schools, starting in kindergarten, include dance, theater and music and are taught by professionals in the arts, he said. There is a counselor in every elementary school, and counselors stay with the same students throughout high school and meet one-on-one with them during the summer. The graduation rate is 100%, he said.
Responding to an allegation he hears, Taylor said, “No, we don’t cherry-pick students. We don’t want to, and it’s been against the law to.” The 2017 reauthorization of the law requires that districts give low-income students priority for transfers, and SB 897 would add homeless and foster children as well. The 23% of low-income students from other districts enrolled at Walnut Unified are slightly less than the 25% overall in the district.
Students from 30 districts have enrolled through District of Choice, Taylor said, and some parents drive from more than an hour away. One district that has not been sending additional students is its larger, less affluent neighbor, Pomona Unified, where 85% of its 22,000 students are from low-income families.
Under an arcane rule, a district can cap the number of students it permits to leave for districts of choice at a cumulative 10% of its average daily attendance since it first joined the program — even if many students have long since graduated from high school. Pomona reached that limit a half-dozen years ago, after going to court to prove that Walnut Valley had already exceeded the target, said Superintendent Darren Knowles.
SB 897 would delete that clause and replace it with a new annual cap: 10% of a district’s current average daily attendance for districts with fewer than 50,000 students and 1% for districts with more than 50,000 students. Sending districts would also be exempt if county offices of education verified that a loss of students to the program would jeopardize their financial stability.
Pomona Unified was the only opponent listed at a hearing last month in the Senate Education Committee, where the bill passed unanimously. Rowland Unified, a 13,000-student district to the west of Walnut Valley, has also complained about the financial impact of the transfer program.
Knowles said he doesn’t oppose the concept of school choice, if the distribution is equitable. But before reaching the cap, Walnut Valley drew disproportionately high numbers of white and Asian families from the wealthier neighborhoods in Diamond Bar that lie within Pomona Unified. The latter may be attracted to the two dual Chinese language immersion programs in Walnut Valley.
Wealthier families are able to drive their kids to Walnut Valley; low-income Latino families with both parents working more than likely can’t, said Knowles.
“The District of Choice does not create a good distribution for Pomona Unified,” Knowles said. “We need kids excelling as well as those struggling. Taking out the smartest kids in any district is not a good situation.”
Pomona Unified already has closed six elementary schools due to declining enrollment, Knowles said. The new cap could “decimate us within five years,” Knowles said. “Give us time to recover, a reprieve.”
Newman said that he is open to further accommodations for an adverse financial impact. “We don’t want well-intended legislation to have unintended consequences,” he told EdSource.
Who chooses?
In its 2021 evaluation, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that District of Choice “allows students to access educational options that are not offered in their home districts,” including college prep courses, arts and music and foreign languages. Nearly all the students transferred to districts with higher test scores.
Newly required oversight measures found no districts discriminating against interested students, and that the program appeared to increase racial balance for some districts and reduce it for others, the LAO said, “although the changes for most districts are small.” It found that statewide, fewer low-income students used the program, compared with other students in their home districts; however, the proportion of those students had risen over four years from 27% to 32%. Participation of Latino students, though also on the rise, was smaller than the Latino enrollment in their home districts — similar to Pomona and Walnut Valley.
Among the last children to transfer from Pomona to Walnut Valley six years ago, right before the limit was reached, is Ethan Fermin. Then entering kindergarten, he is now in sixth grade at Suzanne Middle School. His sister, now in second grade, was admitted through an interdistrict transfer, a more restrictive permit process that requires both districts to approve the move. A family must make the case for the transfer or cite a hardship — in this case, the transportation challenges of having kids in two different districts. Parents whose children are denied a transfer can appeal to the county board of education, which often reverses a decision.
Ethan’s father, Billy, graduated from Pomona Unified schools; he was high school class president and active in many school activities, Fermin said. From his home, he can see the elementary school his kids would have attended — a two-minute walk from their house. Friends from high school are Pomona teachers. His kids would have attended his high school, Diamond Ranch High.
Leaving the district wasn’t easy, he said, adding, “But it’s a different world from when I went to school.” What caught his eye in Walnut Valley, he said, was a program in two elementary schools that leads to the International Baccalaureate, a rigorous high school program that stresses inquiry-based learning. He liked the early years’ focus on developing well-rounded, creative and open-minded learners and risk-takers. “Given the choice, it was night and day,” he said.
Taylor said Walnut Valley doesn’t market its programs as District of Choice, and he doesn’t speak negatively about other districts. Fermin said the district is smart to use social media heavily to show off what’s happening in its schools, and banners go up at the start of the sign-up period.
Possible reasons for so little participation
Charter schools are by far the largest public school choice program in California. The more than 1,200 charter schools served 685,553 students in 2022-23 — 11.7% of statewide enrollment, compared with about 2% through interdistrict transfers and 0.02% through District of Choice.
The Legislature passed laws permitting charter schools in 1992 and the District of Choice a year later. Both were viewed as strategies to counter a school voucher initiative that would have provided public funding for private school tuition, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s analysis. Voters trounced the voucher initiative, which drew only 30% support in the 1993 vote.
Why so few districts have participated in the program is a matter of conjecture. The five-year reauthorization periods raised the risk for districts and parents that their participation might be cut short. Ken Kapphahn, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office who did the evaluation, said some districts are able to receive as many interested transfer students as they want through the interdistrict permit process, under which they can set academic and behavior conditions.
Some districts would involve long drives to get to, while others assume they don’t have special offerings to lure lots of students, he said. And it’s his impression, he said, that many districts still don’t know the program exists; the California Department of Education does not promote it.
Newman said there is an entrepreneurial potential of the program that many superintendents haven’t recognized. The ability to draw students from nearby districts could inspire “a high level of innovation” that best serves students’ interests, he said.
Former President of the State Board of Education Mike Kirst, who said he supports making the program permanent, suggested another reason: It could be that district superintendents consider District of Choice a violation of an unwritten education commandment, Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s enrollment.
“It’s a professional norm that you don’t try to ‘poach’ students from other districts,” he said.
When the Covid-19 pandemic seriously disrupted the ability of students to take SATs and ACTs, many colleges and universities, including the University of California and California State University systems, either made standardized tests optional or dropped the requirement for admissions. Now, Dartmouth is the first to say that either SATs or ACTs will be required again for fall 2024 applicants, and a few other universities, including Harvard, are following this path.
Even before the pandemic, equity concerns were often cited as reasons these tests should not be required; both the UC and Cal State systems have maintained that they will continue to be SAT- and ACT-free.
To learn what university students think about the potential return of standardized testing, EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps asked them the following questions at seven California colleges and universities:
“While UC and Cal State have said there are no plans to change their test-free policy, in place since 2020, do you think standardized tests such as these should return? Why or why not?”
Below are their responses.
(Click on the names or images below to read what each person had to say.)
Alex Soriano opposes the return of standardized tests, suggesting that there should be “more holistic ways” to evaluate students equitably. However, he is unsure of what an alternative might look like.
“In my opinion, based on evaluating different skills … I feel like (the test) doesn’t really evaluate knowledge on the same level,” he said. “I think bringing back standardized tests would bring back [equity] issues.”
To showcase the disparity of standardized test scores, Soriano references EdGap.org. The website features a map that displays the median household income of neighborhoods and the average SAT and ACT scores in those areas. The map indicates that high-income areas exhibit well-performing test scores in comparison to those from low-income areas.
“Coming from the upper-middle-class area of San Diego, my area was super high (in SAT and ACT scores), and it made sense,” Soriano said. “A lot of my friends could afford to pay for the extra tutoring; they could pay for a counselor that can come in and work on standardized test prep, and not everybody is able to afford those services.”
By Jazlyn Dieguez
“I think they should (return) just because I think it’s a good (performance assessment) other than grades for colleges because some high schools inflate their GPAs,” Rodriguez said. “It’s kind of a middle ground.”
After taking the SAT exam once, Rodriguez was satisfied with the “OK” score he received since he wasn’t planning to apply to any universities with a high SAT requirement. Instead, he opted to attend Modesto Junior College and has since transferred to San Diego State University.
“It’s weird because I know some people are not great test-takers and some students haven’t had the luxury of being in certain classes or receiving tutoring,” he said. “Some people were spending crazy amounts of money to have a good SAT and ACT score. I wasn’t one of those guys, I was just happy with whatever I got.”
By Jazlyn Dieguez
“No, I do not believe standardized testing should be reinstated,” Kattaa said. “The SATs are a disadvantage for most college applicants.”
Kattaa believes that “a student’s GPA, extracurriculars, admission essays, and letters of recommendation speak more (about) a student’s academic and personal achievements. They are more than just one test.”
Kattaa also believes that the absence of required standardized tests has increased diversity on college campuses.
By Aya Mikbel
“I believe that standardized tests such as these should not return due to the amount of pressure it puts onto students and the possible disadvantage regarding admission status,” Naseer said. However, she sees the advantage of the tests being provided “for those who want to show more dedication.”
She understands that colleges and universities are looking for “well-rounded students; academics certainly play a greater role when applying to college.”
But Naseer is concerned that when students don’t have high scores, “It may cause them to be looked down upon, (and) there are other factors such as general academics or volunteer service that should be prioritized as well.”
Naseer continued, “As a student who didn’t take these tests, I feel that doing so allowed me to focus and improve on other areas of my studies/experience.”
By Aya Mikbel
“No, I don’t think these tests should be brought back,” Garcia said. “I think there should be a different type of examination process. I didn’t take the ACT or SAT and got in (to UCLA). I think they don’t really evaluate the student as a whole.”
Garcia added that she thinks the tests don’t “give a very good evaluation of students, academically speaking.”
By Delilah Brumer
“We got rid of the SAT and ACT requirements a few years ago, and I honestly think that it’s more fair for people to not have (these tests) as a requirement,” Wolin said.
Wolin said she was able to get SAT tutoring, but it was expensive for her family, and she’s “very aware that not everyone can afford that.”
“While I did have a leg up, I know that it wasn’t fair to everyone,” Wolin said. “I think abolishing that requirement was a step in the right direction. I wish I had a better solution for a replacement, but I don’t. At least now, I know they’re focusing on a more holistic approach, which I think is more fair.”
By Delilah Brumer
“I think it depends on the college,” Bar said. “For a school like Cal Poly, where a majority of what they are going to take into account is your GPA and test scores, it is different from a private college where they are going to take a more holistic approach.”
As a student who participated in examinations for his admission into Cal Poly, Bar said that he believed the university could benefit from reinstating test scores in exams, to add more depth to applications.
“Right now, Cal Poly doesn’t use essays, so all the application really consists of is biographical information and GPA,” Bar said. “I think there should be another component, like SATs or ACT scores. I think for a school that requires just such minimal information about the applicants, they should require it.”
By Arabel Meyer
“They should be test-free because it makes admissions more equal, and all higher SAT scores usually come with higher preparation,” Martinez said.
Martinez said she hopes UCs and CSUs would not require test scores because she finds inequality when colleges use standardized test scores for admissions. The SAT takes preparation and financial resources that not all students can access, according to Martinez.
“I came from a low-income community and rural community,” she said. “There was no such thing as SAT prep.”
Martinez only realized the importance of SAT preparation when her peers began to discuss private tutoring and other resources they had access to. She hopes that remaining test-free will provide greater opportunities for students, regardless of their financial position.
By Kelcie Lee
“Having it is a good idea,” Chiu said. “However, the SAT, when you take it, you can learn how to get a good score. So in a way, it’s almost rigged.”
She had mixed feelings when it comes to the SAT and ACT; she understands the purposes of assessing students, but also acknowledged flaws of using standardized tests for admissions.
“Even if you do get a good score, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re meant to go to one of these top schools.”
She believes a better option would involve the UCs making their own test that is “more knowledge-based,” as opposed to the memorization involved in prepping for the SAT.
“Ultimately, it’s a weird in-between of whether you should have it or not,” Chiu said.
By Kelcie Lee
“I personally think the tests aren’t necessary or helpful. I don’t think they are proof of intelligence.”
Williams transferred from Berkeley City College to Sonoma State in 2023. She did not have to take a standardized test to get admitted.
“I know people in my life that have told me about their experiences, and that they felt that the test was not concrete proof of whether or not they are intelligent.”
By Ally Valiente
Bernales said that he does not support standardized tests making a return because “the tests favor those that have access to more resources.”
He is dissatisfied with the inequity. “Families with money can get tutors to help educate their kids to do better and can afford for them to take it multiple times to improve, while some families may not be able to afford it,” Bernales said.
“Along with that,” he continued, “the [high] school’s funding also can affect the results of the test since a better funded school tends to have higher scores.”
By Ally Valiente
“No, because I think a lot of people just aren’t good test takers, and a lot of it’s just really generalized knowledge,” Mlouk said.
Mlouk said she did not get a good score on the SAT, but she had a high GPA, which helped her.
“I consider (myself) a pretty smart person, but the test does not reflect that at all,” she said.
Mlouk said standardized tests like the SAT and ACT aren’t helpful for people who are not good test takers.
“It would limit their chances even though they could excel at that school,” Mlouk said.
A bill that would have required California teachers to use the “science of reading,” which spotlights phonics, to teach children to read has died without a hearing.
Assembly Bill 2222, authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, will not advance in the Legislature this year, according to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who described the state’s student reading and literacy rates as “a serious problem,” adding that the bill should receive a “methodical” review by all key groups before there is a “costly overhaul” of how reading is taught in California.
“I want the Legislature to study this problem closely, so we can be sure stakeholders are engaged and, most importantly, that all students benefit, especially our diverse learners,” Rivas said in a statement to EdSource, referring to English learners.
The bill, which had the support of the California State PTA, state NAACP and more than 50 other organizations, hit a snag two weeks ago, when the California Teachers Association — the state’s largest teachers union — sent a letter stating its opposition to the bill to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi.
The union claimed that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and would cut teachers out of decisions, especially on curriculum.
Rubio, who could not be reached late Thursday, told EdSource last week that Muratsuchi asked her to work with the teachers union on a compromise.
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised the bill didn’t get a hearing considering the importance of the issue.
“We understand it’s a tough budget year, but we also believe that the most important priority for the education budget is helping our kids learn how to read,” he said.
But he called the move to table the bill a “bump in the road.”
“When we launched with Assemblymember Rubio and the sponsors behind this, we knew it might be a multi-year effort,” he said. “So you get up tomorrow and keep it moving forward.”
Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandates this change in reading instruction. In 2023, just 43% of California third-graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.
“The California NAACP was right, this is a civil rights issue,” said Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM. “And you don’t play politics with civil rights. The misinformation and ideological posturing on AB 2222 effectively leveraged the politics of fear. We have to do better, for kids’ sake, and can’t give up.”
What is the science of reading?
Science of reading refers to research-based teaching strategies that reflect how the brain learns how to read. While it includes phonics-based instruction that teaches children to decode words by sounding them out, it also includes four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.
The legislation would have gone against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour-minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
English learner advocates opposed bill
It appears lawmakers heard the pleas of advocates for English learners who opposed the bill.
“We know that addressing equity and literacy outcomes is a high priority for California and that our state is not yet where it needs to be with literacy outcomes for all students,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, one of the organizations that opposed the bill. “AB 2222 is not the prescription that is needed for our multilingual, diverse state.”
She said she is willing to work with lawmakers for a literacy plan that is based on reading research, but that “centrally addresses” the needs of English learners.
California’s proposed legislation to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy would have been in sync with other states that have passed similar legislation. States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it de-emphasizes explicit instruction in phonics and instead trains children to use pictures to identify words on sight, also known as three-cueing.
Muratsuchi had until the end of the day Thursday to put the bill on the calendar for the April 17 meeting of the Assembly Education Committee. It would then have had to be heard by the Assembly Higher Education Committee before the April 26 deadline for legislators to get bills with notable fiscal impacts to the Appropriations Committee. Now, the bill will have to be reintroduced next year to get a hearing.
“It’s really too bad. Lots of kids are not being well-served now. But on the other hand, I hope this will be an opportunity to regroup and present a more robust version of the bill,” said Claude Goldenberg, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education, who supported the bill.
Goldenberg said a future version of the bill should include a “more comprehensive definition” of the “science of reading” and should make clear that this includes research on teaching reading to all students, including English learners.
“English learners, for example, would benefit if teachers knew and used research that is part of the science of reading and applies whether they’re learning in their home language or in English. Same for children with limited literacy opportunities outside of school and children having difficulty learning to read,” Goldenberg said.
‘Backroom politics’
Lori DePole, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, one of the supporters of the bill, expressed frustration Thursday evening over the decision to table it.
“It is shameful that when more than half of CA kids aren’t reading at grade level that our legislators are okay with the status quo, and they have killed this literacy legislation without even allowing it to be heard,” she said in a statement.
“… CA kids’ futures are too important to allow backroom politics to silence this issue. We will no longer accept lip service in addressing our literacy crisis. It is time for action, and we aren’t going away.”
Advocates for students with dyslexia support the phonics-based teaching methods as especially effective for children with the learning disability.
Muratsuchi said he supports the science of reading. “However, we need to make sure that we do this right, by serving the needs of all California students, including our English learners,” he said in a statement to EdSource. “California is the most language-diverse state in the country, and we need to develop a literacy instruction strategy that works for all of our students.
“I thank Speaker Robert Rivas for his decision to pursue a more deliberative process involving all education stakeholders before enacting a costly overhaul of how reading is taught statewide,” he said.
EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza contributed to this report.
A student performs a poem at the quarterfinals of the 12th annual Get Lit Classic Slam.
Photo Credit: CJ Calica
Salome Agbaroji wrote her first poem, a rap, in the second grade, and she’s been crafting rhymes ever since. Now the 18-year-old Harvard student is best known as the nation’s youth poet laureate.
“I have always loved poetry,” said Agbaroji. “Even before I knew it was poetry, I started loving rap music, so I’ve always loved poetry and using words creatively. That’s always just been what I gravitated to, even as a young, young child.”
A Nigerian-American poet from Los Angeles, Agbaroji has performed spoken word poetry for the Golden Globes, an NFL halftime show, and she’s talked poetry with President Joe Biden at the White House. Her passion for spoken word performance began back at Gahr High School in Cerritos, where her love of words was further fueled by the arts education nonprofit Get Lit-Words Ignite.
“Get Lit is an amazing organization, giving you the space and the opportunity to share your voice and to be creative and to be wild and to be heard,” says the eloquent teenager who believes in the power of poetry to combat rising illiteracy and injustice. “They shined a light on me. They made such a big impact on my whole journey.”
2023 national youth poet laureate Salome Agbaroji performs a poem at the 12th Annual Get Lit Classic Slam.Photo Credit: Unique Nicole
Amid a deepening literacy crisis, Get Lit spreads a love of literature through spoken word poetry and performance. Founded by actor/writer Diane Luby Lane in 2006, Get Lit, which recently received $1 million from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, teaches classical poetry as well as empowers children and teens to write their own poems in over 150 Los Angeles schools, instilling a love of language in a generation often struggling with literacy.
“Spoken word really helps with literacy,” said Lane. “It really helps when you put your body on the line, when you’re not just listening passively, but you’re actually memorizing, you’re performing, you’re responding with your own words. It’s such an interactive experience.”
Get Lit reaches out to roughly 50,000 students a year, ranging from fourth grade to high school, through its school-based programs. The curriculum is a deep dive into great literature, from T.S. Eliot to Maya Angelou, that culminates in a three-day Classic Slam, the largest classic youth poetry competition in the country.
The Classic Slam “is really worth attending if you can, it is mind-blowing and so inspiring to witness,” said Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, co-founder of Turnaround Arts: California, a nonprofit that works in elementary and middle schools. “Students who participate benefit in so many ways; they gain confidence and poise and become empowered to use their voice in a unique way.”
Along the way, they teach the power of recitation, as well as how to amplify your own voice amid the noise of the social media age. The students come to hear the echoes in the ancient, putting the past in dialogue with the present.
“We always say a classic isn’t a classic because it’s old, a classic is a classic because it’s great,” Lane said. “We’re redefining what the canon is.”
Finding the joy in literacy can be a powerful message for children who don’t always feel celebrated in the school system, some say. Roughly 85% of Get Lit’s students are from under-resourced communities and 92% are students of color.
“Kids are sitting in school for eight hours a day, either being bombarded by facts and information or being asked to regurgitate those facts and information,” said Agbaroji, who has written poems that explore race, community and history. “Writing is like the one space, the one little pocket in an eight-hour school day where students actually can do something themselves, create something that they can say is mine and no one can take it away from me.”
Ironically, Lane says that while some adults dismiss the study of poetry as a stilted and staid pursuit, most youths have far more open minds.
“It’s an easy sell with the kids. Very easy,” she says with a smile. “The elementary schools have been begging for it. You know how good young kids are at memorizing things. And sometimes their own responses are so deep. It’s unbelievable.”
Get Lit tries to respond to each child’s distinctive needs, experts say, tapping into what makes that student unique, how to help them shine.
“They are doing amazing work,” said Merryl Goldberg, an arts advocate and veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “One of the things that I really like about what I know about them is that they incorporate community and student needs into their mission focused on poetry.”
Lane says she knows just how to frame poems so that Tennyson and Tupac have equal pull with students and tries to shed light on the universality of poetry to capture the human experience.
“We say, claim your poem, claim your life,” said Lane. “Because I am approaching it as an actor, I can pull Wordsworth pieces that make the kids raise their hand and fight over poems, and we’re mixing this with a lot of contemporary voices. Tupac is a great poet. The mixture allows for students to find themselves however they want to.”
Cleveland High School students Robert Lee Shelton, Mateo Vejar, Heidi Lopez and Ashley Tahay perform a group poem at the 12th annual Get Lit Classic Slam.Photo Credit: Unique Nicole
Parsing one word at a time, the way a poem requires, may be most ideal for struggling readers, Lane adds, who prefer to savor each syllable instead of speeding along the page.
“My daughter, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. It was really hard for her to get through a whole book. It just was,” says Lane. “So many children in our school districts, their reading skills are not great, but their emotional IQ is high. So a poem gives them the opportunity to study something short but deep. It’s an absolute game changer. It changes the entire culture of a school.”
She’ll never forget teaching poetry to her daughter’s fourth grade class. She had them learn Angelou’s iconic “Still I Rise” by heart and watched the fourth graders light up with pride.
“Here’s a kid that struggled with reading that doesn’t feel like they’re smart, but now they have this whole poem memorized,” she said. “They learn to perform it really well. They write their own response back to it. It’s deeply empowering. And they do it for the whole grade or class or school. And they get to feel really powerful by mastering short form content. That’s deep.”
First graders at Frank Sparkes Elementary in Merced County write about how they would spend their money.
Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
Two years ago, California launched an innovative program to help children from low-income families save for their future education. Enrollment in the program, known as CalKIDS, began for all newborn babies and eligible low-income public-school students in 2022.
CalKIDS is a children’s savings account (CSA) program, a long-term wealth-building vehicle that can be used to help finance higher education. These accounts have specifically designed features (incentives and explicit structures) that encourage asset building among disadvantaged families, but they are meant to universally serve all families with children.
They provide a financial structure to collect contributions from a variety of entities such as governments, employers, philanthropic foundations, communities, private donors and others. But while CalKIDS provides each newborn with their own account, they should be thought of only as community accounts opened for individual children. CalKIDS challenges the norm that paying for college and building wealth for low-income children is solely or even mostly the responsibility of families or even the government alone.
While enrollment, account opening and initial deposits for CalKIDS are automatic, so far only 8.3% of eligible students (about 300,000) have taken the additional step of registering for the program, which is necessary for them to ultimately be able to access the funds.
But this is not a reason to despair. Registration rates alone are not the best metric for understanding or measuring the potential of this program because:
CalKIDS is likely to have a high return on investment for Californians over the long term. For example, a return-on-investment (ROI) analysis estimates that for every dollar invested by the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, in its CollegeBound program, the city will receive $9 in benefits associated with increased income, improved health, additional tax revenues and savings to the judicial and education system.
The program opens the door to multiple sources of support. The ability of CalKIDS to build wealth for children by facilitating the flow of multiple asset streams into a child’s account makes it unlike any other wealth-building tool within the state’s policy tool kit. An example of how other programs are doing this can be found in a case study on the Early Award Scholarship Program, a children’s savings account program in Indiana. They are converting traditional scholarships awarded at age 18 into early award scholarships that go into accounts long before age 18. New York City’s Kids RISE is using community scholarships, allowing groups like churches to come together and provide every child in their community with an early award scholarship. With a little foresight, CalKIDS can also be adapted to act as a financial structure for combining other efforts to support children and tackle wealth inequality, such as the “baby bonds” proposals in California.
CalKIDS can provide many other social, psychological and educational benefits. Building wealth is only one part of its potential impact on Californians. Evidence shows that children’s savings accounts reduce maternal depression, improve social-emotional development, parental educational expectations, and lead to more positive parental practices. Increasingly, evidence also shows that these programs are an effective strategy for improving children’s postsecondary outcomes. These effects can occur even when families have not contributed to their account. Moreover, the effects are often strongest among disadvantaged families.
However, it will take time to realize all the potential benefits of CalKIDS. Here are some reasons why:
Existing norms: A seldom-discussed reason why some families may wait to register or begin to save in CalKIDS is because of the cultural norm that families don’t need to start planning for college until their children are in high school. Having become entrenched over generations, it will take time to reverse these assumptions. As more families register in CalKIDS, however, we can expect the norm of waiting to change.
Economic conditions: According to financial needs theory, when families’ incomes increase and they have enough resources to meet basic needs, they are more likely to plan and save for college. Covid and the high inflationary period that followed have strained the ability of families to meet basic needs. This might be another reason why it might take time to see the full benefits of CalKIDS.
Long-term investment: These are investment accounts designed to build wealth over a long period. Furthermore, the real outcomes CalKIDS is concerned with are also long-term, such as increased college enrollment rates. Given this, impacts should be examined over a longer period.
The SEED for Oklahoma Kids (SEED OK) experiment started in 2007. It provides an example of how investments in children’s savings accounts are better understood over time, and not in a single snapshot. After the Great Recession (2008-09), the initial $1,000 investment in the accounts declined to just below $700. However, they grew to about $1,900 by the end of 2019. This is similar to what has been seen in other long term investment accounts such as 401k’s. After an economic disturbance, over time they often recover.
Similarly, after Covid, which was at its peak in 2020, by 2021 when children in SEED OK were about age 14, the average treatment child had about $4,373 in their account. And families that were able to save had average balances of about $14,000. So, even if families are not able to save, significant assets accumulate in these types of accounts.
Even though it might seem like the CalKIDS program is off to a slow start, it is important to not lose sight of the fact that it is a long-term investment in kids living in California. And that it has the potential for creating a variety of important social, psychological, educational and economic impacts. These impacts can produce a substantial return on investment for the state and its citizens if given time to be fully realized.
Credit: Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages
A few weeks ago, my high school chemistry class sat through an “AI training.” We were told it would teach us how to use ChatGPT responsibly. We worked on worksheets with questions like, “When is it permissible to use ChatGPT on written homework?” and “How can AI support and not replace your thinking?” Another asked, “What are the risks of relying too heavily on ChatGPT?”
Most of us just used ChatGPT to finish the worksheet. Then we moved on to other things.
Schools have rushed to regulate AI based on a hopeful fiction: that students are curious, self-directed learners who’ll use technology responsibly if given the right guardrails. But most students don’t use AI to brainstorm or refine ideas — they use it to get assignments done faster. And school policies, built on optimism rather than observation, have done little to stop it.
Like many districts across the country, our school policy calls students to use ChatGPT to brainstorm, organize, and even generate ideas — but not to write. If we use generative AI to write the actual content of an assignment, we’re supposed to get a zero.
In practice, that line is meaningless. Later, I spoke to my chemistry teacher, who confided that she’d started checking Google Docs histories of papers she’d assigned and found that huge chunks of student writing were being pasted in. That is, AI-generated slop, dropped all at once with no edits, no revisions and no sign of actual real work. “It’s just disappointing,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
In Bible class, students quoted ChatGPT outputs verbatim during presentations. One student projected a slide listing the Minor Prophets alongside the sentence: “Would you like me to format this into a table for you?” Another spoke confidently about the “post-exilic” period— having earlier that week mispronounced “patriarchy.” At one point, Mr. Knoxville paused during a slide and asked, “Why does it say BCE?” Then, chuckling, answered his own question: “Because it’s ChatGPT using secular language.” Everyone laughed and moved on.
It’s safe to say that in reality, most students aren’t using AI to deepen their learning. They’re using it to get around the learning process altogether. And the real frustration isn’t just that students are cutting corners, but that schools still pretend they aren’t.
That doesn’t mean AI should be banned. I’m not an AI alarmist. There’s enormous potential for smart, controlled integration of these tools into the classroom. But handing students unrestricted access with little oversight is undermining the core purpose of school.
This isn’t just a high school problem. At CSU, administrators have doubled down on AI integration with the same blind optimism: assuming students will use these tools responsibly. But widespread adoption doesn’t equal responsible use. A recent study from the National Education Association found that 72% of high school students use AI to complete assignments without really understanding the material.
“AI didn’t corrupt deep learning,” said Tiffany Noel, education researcher and professor at SUNY Buffalo. “It revealed that many assignments were never asking for critical thinking in the first place. Just performance. AI is just the faster actor; the problem is the script.”
Exactly. AI didn’t ruin education; it exposed what was already broken. Students are responding to the incentives the education system has given them. We’re taught that grades matter more than understanding. So if there’s an easy shortcut, why wouldn’t we take it?
This also penalizes students who don’t cheat. They spend an hour struggling through an assignment another student finishes in three minutes with a chatbot and a text humanizer. Both get the same grade. It’s discouraging and painfully absurd.
Of course, this is nothing new. Students have always found ways to lessen their workload, like copying homework, sharing answers and peeking during tests. But this is different because it’s a technology that should help schools — and under the current paradigm, it isn’t. This leaves schools vulnerable to misuse and students unrewarded for doing things the right way.
What to do, then?
Start by admitting the obvious: if an assignment is done at home, it will likely involve AI. If students have internet access in class, they’ll use it there, too. Teachers can’t stop this: they see phones under desks and tabs flipped the second their backs are turned. Teachers simply can’t police 30 screens at once, and most won’t try. Nor should they have to.
We need hard rules and clearer boundaries. AI should never be used to do a student’s actual academic work — just as calculators aren’t allowed on multiplication drills or Grammarly isn’t accepted on spelling tests. School is where you learn the skill, not where you offload it.
AI is built to answer prompts. So is homework. Of course students are cheating. The only solution is to make cheating structurally impossible. That means returning to basics: pen-and-paper essays, in-class writing, oral defenses, live problem-solving, source-based analysis where each citation is annotated, explained and verified. If an AI can do an assignment in five seconds, it was probably never a good assignment in the first place.
But that doesn’t mean AI has no place. It just means we put it where it belongs: behind the desk, not in it. Let it help teachers grade quizzes. Let it assist students with practice problems, or serve as a Socratic tutor that asks questions instead of answering them. Generative AI should be treated as a useful aid after mastery, not a replacement for learning.
Students are not idealized learners. They are strategic, social, overstretched, and deeply attuned to what the system rewards. Such is the reality of our education system, and the only way forward is to build policies around how students actually behave, not how educators wish they would.
Until that happens, AI will keep writing our essays. And our teachers will keep grading them.
•••
William Liang is a high school student and education journalist living in San Jose, California.
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.
Students at Rudsdale Continuation High School in Oakland, California.
Credit: Anne Wernikoff for Edsource
Magaly Lavadenz was excited about what she felt could be a game-changer for students who are learning English as a second language.
The Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) at Loyola Marymount University, which Lavadenz directs, had just won a grant in October 2024 for $5.7 million from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Comprehensive Center on English Learners and Multilingualism.
The center would provide resources, training and materials to state education agencies and tribal education agencies so they could, in turn, help districts provide the best support to English learners.
“There was so much excitement about this work,” Lavadenz said.
Then, four months later, in February, Lavadenz received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education terminating the grant and claiming that it violated President Donald Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.
It was a chilling foreshadowing of what would come.
The Trump administration later cut the vast majority of the staff of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), which is charged with administering federal funding for English learners, providing resources and training to schools, and making sure states provide the instruction and services they are required to provide to English learners.
Then, in Trump’s budget request released May 2, he proposed eliminating the federal funding earmarked for English learners and immigrant students under Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law.
“To end overreach from Washington and restore the rightful role of State oversight in education, the Budget proposes to eliminate the misnamed English Language Acquisition program which actually deemphasizes English primacy by funding NGOs and States to encourage bilingualism,” reads the budget proposal. “The historically low reading scores for all students mean States and communities need to unite—not divide—classrooms using evidence-based literacy instruction materials to improve outcomes for all students.”
Researchers, advocates, and school district administrators say the termination of grants and proposed cuts to funding for schools are misinformed and violate federal law.
“There are civil rights laws that protect English learners,” Lavadenz said. “We believe that the U.S. Department of Education is in violation of those.”
Both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 require public schools to ensure that English learners can participate fully in school at the same level as their English-speaking peers. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Lau v. Nichols case in 1974 that schools must provide additional instruction to students who do not speak English fluently to make sure they can understand the content of their classes.
Education leaders in California said the cuts to Title III would be devastating. Title III funds are sent to state education agencies, like the California Department of Education, to distribute to schools based on the number of immigrant and English learner students they have. They are to be used to help students understand academic content in their classes and to help them learn English.
Debra Duardo, the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools, said she was “deeply concerned” by the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate Title III. In the 2023-24 school year, schools in L.A. County received approximately $30 million in Title III funding for English learners, she said, which was used for tutoring, support staff, instructional coaching, and high-quality supplemental materials. In addition, they received $2.5 million for immigrant students, which were used to help support family literacy and outreach, school personnel, tutorials, mentoring, and academic and career counseling.
“This decision would have devastating impacts on Los Angeles County schools, where we serve one of the nation’s largest populations of English learners and children from migrant families,” Duardo said.
Lavadenz said if the funds are cut, districts may stop providing services to English learners, or they may remove funding from other areas to keep providing services.
“There’s going to be potential not just for the elimination of services, but we’re going to be pitting student groups against each other,” Lavadenz said.
Nicole Knight, executive director of English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement at Oakland Unified School District, agreed.
“Ultimately, cutting support for English learners jeopardizes the quality of education for all students, as districts would be forced to divert resources from other critical priorities in order to meet their legal obligations to provide language services,” Knight said.
In addition, a loss of funds would likely mean no federal monitoring, collection of data on English learners, or oversight to make sure states or school districts are actually providing the services they are required to under the law.
“I am devastated to see that work dismantled at the federal level,” said Knight. “It feels like years of progress and good work are being erased.”
Efraín Tovar, who teaches recent immigrant students at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma Unified School District in the Central Valley and is also the founder of the California Newcomer Network, said his district has used Title III funds to buy supplemental curriculum and computer software for newcomer students. He said some districts have used the funds to create innovative Saturday programs for recent immigrant students to help them learn.
“Here in Selma, those funds have helped me directly impact my students’ educational journey,” Tovar said. Every single dollar in public education helps. If those funds are not given by the federal government, the question we have at the local level is, will the state then make it a priority to fund those special programs?”
Many California leaders disagreed with the administration’s arguments that bilingual education or encouraging bilingualism makes students less likely to speak English.
“Decades of research clearly support dual-language and multilingual programs as the most effective models for helping students acquire English and achieve long-term academic success,” Knight said. “I can only hold on to hope that our lawmakers will attend to the evidence, the research, and their conscience to make the right decision for our young people.”
Lavadenz is not convinced, however, that Congress will end up cutting all that funding, especially given that some Republican states like Texas have a long history of encouraging, or even requiring, bilingual education for English learners.
“This is an evolving story,” she said. “The states that have a lot more to lose are not necessarily progressive states like California.”
