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  • Next stop on transfer students’ journey: UC Berkeley’s new, high-end dorm

    Next stop on transfer students’ journey: UC Berkeley’s new, high-end dorm


    Students move into UC Berkeley’s Anchor House on Aug. 21, 2024.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Elizabeth Diaz was the valedictorian of her high school class in Bakersfield. But that does not mean her path to a four-year university has been easy.

    “Honestly, (UC Berkeley has) been my dream university since I was in high school,” Diaz said. “I had originally committed before, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to afford it.”

    Instead, Diaz spent two years at Bakersfield College, where she “felt a lot of stigma” for not having gone further from home for the next step in her education. “I felt like, you know what, I’m here. I’m not going to be able to make it anymore. I’m just going to stay here in my city,” Diaz said.

    Former Bakersfield College student Elizabeth Diaz settles into her dorm room for transfer students at UC Berkeley’s new Anchor House.
    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    While attending community college, she pushed herself to get involved during the first two years, knowing it would take more to prepare herself for another shot at UC Berkeley than simply attending classes. “I started off getting involved with on-campus jobs as a tutor,” Diaz said. “I got involved with student government. I was a student activities manager, I created the history club on campus trying to, you know, get rid of that sense that ‘history sucks,’ because history is so cool. We’re living in it all the time.”

    Diaz also got involved in the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) because the organization is “tied … with my identity growing up as a daughter of an undocumented family … (I’m glad about) getting involved with the nonprofit CHRILA (and) advocating for other families who are still struggling,” Diaz said, adding, “Thankfully my family has been transitioning; my dad actually now has citizenship.”

    And she also took advantage of resources like Bakersfield College’s Extended Opportunity Programs and Services.  

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LMUVNQMsZY

    Watch Elizabeth Diaz move into her new dorm room with her family.

    “I kept myself accountable. Being a part of resource programs like EOPS … and the TRIO Student Support Services made me really, really, really super grateful for my community college, for allowing me the opportunity to get to know myself better and what I wanted to do.”

    Last month, Diaz finally achieved that dream, enrolling in UC Berkeley as a transfer student and moving into Anchor House, a brand-new residence hall specifically for transfer students on the university’s campus.

    Anchor House, a gift from the Helen Diller Foundation, is an apartment-style community that features high-end amenities such as a yoga studio, a rooftop vegetable garden and multiple lounge areas. It is also home to the new Transfer Student Center.

    “It’s like walking into a nice hotel,” a parent marveled when passing through the entrance.

    Immediately upon entering, the extravagance of the modern fixtures screamed resort more than undergraduate student housing. Even with ceilings akin to a cathedral, the front desk emitted an approachable warmth with the eager smiles of the resident assistants — a far cry from many freshman dorm buildings at UC Berkeley that don’t even have a lobby.

    Anchor House’s transfer-exclusive status brings both security in housing and an opportunity to grow relationships.

    “Last year coming in, I was still waiting on on-campus housing until the last round of housing offers, which was three weeks until the school semester started. It was nerve-wracking not having a place to live as the semester was approaching,” said Max Ortega, a transfer student from Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, now entering his senior year.

    Without a well-established transfer community, the transition to UC Berkeley was difficult last year as a new student, said Jonathan Zakharov, a rising senior from Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. He noted the stark contrast between new first-year students “right out of high school,” and transfers with life experience and diverse backgrounds, saying it was “impossible” to find other transfer students to connect with after moving in.

    “If this were my first year while living at Anchor House, it would have been easier to relate to people,” Zakharov added.

    While transfer students make up 21% of undergraduates at UC Berkeley, the lack of community was clear. According to Anchor House resident director Ryan Felber, transfer students can feel “impostor syndrome,” which he hopes to remedy through a “built-in” community in students’ residential lives.

    “This space will be a literal anchor for them to hold onto and a place to call home,” Felber said.

    Jennifer Dodson
    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Anchor House is open to both newly admitted and current transfers — and for Jennifer Dodson, a re-entry student who spent 20 years working in corporate accounting, living at Anchor House in her final year will be a major shift from last year’s housing.

    “As a junior transfer, I was placed in Unit 1 Putnam, which is primarily a freshman dorm,” Dodson said. “I was also roommates with a freshman student, but she was mature, and we got along very well.”

    Dodson, who turned 40 in June, is looking forward to Anchor House’s “networking opportunities,” an aspect she wasn’t able to experience in her first year living in Unit 1, in addition to building new friendships and meeting new people from diverse backgrounds.

    “It’s never too late to go back to school,” said incoming junior transfer and re-entry student Amye Elbert, who raised three children and one grandchild up until starting at UC Berkeley this fall.

    Elbert recently turned 52 years old, and is a first-generation college student.

    “Growing up, I always wanted to have a college degree, but in my aversive background, no one talked about college,” Elbert said. “I had kids early and had to take jobs I wasn’t interested in. Once my kids grew up and I didn’t have four mouths to feed, I knew I wanted to fulfill my dream of going to school.”

    After spending three years at Los Medanos College and earning three associate degrees in fine arts, art practice and art history, she will major in art practice at UC Berkeley with the aim of becoming a middle school art educator.

    “When I was in middle school, I just entered foster care and felt awful. But I had this art teacher who made me feel important and loved my artwork, and I want to do something similar for young students in situations like mine.” 

    Jo Moon is a third-year political economy and media studies student at UC Berkeley and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • How California can unlock multigenerational economic mobility and success

    How California can unlock multigenerational economic mobility and success


    Krystle Pale, UC Santa Cruz graduate and advisory committee member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success, with her family. She provided testimony for AB 2458 and also successfully advocated for her children to walk with her on stage during graduation.

    Credit: Photo by Nikhil Naidu Photography / Courtesy California Competes

    About 1 in 8 college students in California is a parent. For these students, college isn’t just about attending class and studying; it’s a daily juggling act that also includes managing households, raising children, and working to stay afloat. Moreover, the additional costs of child care, higher food expenses, and other necessities mean that student parents pay an additional $7,500 per child to attend college. Without significant financial aid, they would need to work at least 50 hours per week at minimum wage to cover these costs. 

    The precarious balancing act is more than a personal challenge — it’s a consequential issue that spans generations and affects all Californians. When student parents thrive, the benefits ripple across communities and generations, creating economic stability for families, closing racial equity gaps, and strengthening California’s workforce and economy. Yet, their determination to balance work, study and parenting goes largely unnoticed because neither colleges nor the state systematically collects data on their demographics, experiences and outcomes.

    This Student Parent Month, we urge higher education leaders, policymakers and communities to change that. To empower bright futures for all Californians and bolster the state’s economy, which increasingly relies on a skilled workforce, California must transform the higher education system to address the needs of student parents and smooth the path to college for the 3.9 million Californians with children who have yet to complete their degrees. And it all starts with better data.

    Think of data both as a flashlight and a key. As a flashlight, data illuminates the needs and strengths of student parents, allowing colleges to identify the obstacles they face and the support they need to succeed. As a key, data unlocks a deeper understanding of who California’s student parents are, enabling more informed decision-making and resource allocation to improve outcomes for them and their families.

    Right now, California cannot effectively use student parent data in these ways. Only some campuses collect data on student parents and the several that do miss critical data points, such as the number and ages of students’ children, which would be helpful for assessing the need for child care and family-serving housing. Definitions of “student parent” vary between institutions, and within colleges, departments struggle to coordinate data collection efforts, further limiting their ability to leverage data to drive systemic change for student parents.

    Recognizing these gaps, our organizations launched The California Alliance for Student Parent Success and identified data collection and utilization as a critical component of our statewide policy agenda to support the postsecondary success and comprehensive well-being of student parents.

    To turn California’s student parent data into a flashlight and a key, it should be accessible, accurate and actionable:

    • Accessible means that colleges should facilitate information-sharing between campus departments, across colleges, and external sectors like workforce and social services, and share de-identified data publicly.
    • Accurate means that colleges and government agencies should establish standardized data collection definitions and procedures statewide.
    • Actionable means that the data can be effectively analyzed and responds to the needs of student parents. Data should be collected about the experiences of student parents from enrollment through career, their academic and workforce outcomes, and data disaggregated by key demographics, like race, ethnicity and gender.

    California has work to do, but progress is on the horizon, especially with the development of stronger data infrastructure through the California Cradle-to-Career Data system.

    Legislation to strengthen data collection for student parents is also underway. This year, our alliance cosponsored its first bill, the GAINS for Student Parents Act (AB 2458), which will require institutions to uniformly collect and report data on student parents and share this data with the Office of Cradle-to-Career Data. This will enable California to evaluate and shape policies and practices that will empower student parents to reach their full potential. The bill also seeks to make college more affordable, addressing financial hurdles student parents face. Now, all that remains is the governor’s signature to make this bill law.

    Addressing data gaps will enable California to better tailor resources and policies, streamlining student parents’ educational and career journeys and laying the foundation for a thriving economy. This Student Parent Month, let’s honor their determination to work, study and parent by taking concrete steps to advance their success. Passing legislation like GAINS for Student Parents Act is one critical step. It’s time for California to unite in uplifting the voices and future of student parents and, by extension, the future of California.

    •••

    Su Jin Jez, Ph.D., is CEO of California Competes, a nonpartisan policy and research organization focused on identifying solutions to California’s higher education and workforce issues.

    Christopher J. Nellum, Ph.D., is executive director of EdTrust-West, a nonprofit organization advancing policies and practices to dismantle the racial and economic barriers embedded in the California education system. 

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • California students need more diverse teachers; let’s close the gap with tutors

    California students need more diverse teachers; let’s close the gap with tutors


    Courtesy: Teach for America

    School is back in session. In California, we ended the prior school year with promising data that student attendance rates throughout the state are rising from historic lows during the pandemic. While having students in seats is cause for celebration, we must ensure that we have enough teachers in classrooms. 

    California has a long way to go. We rank 47th in the country for student-teacher ratio. Our elected officials are making investments in school staffing, yet there are further measures we should be taking to make sure students receive the quality education they deserve. And there’s no time to waste. 

    The initiative we should be champing at the bit to implement is high-impact tutoring: tutoring in one-on-one situations or very small groups meeting at least 30 minutes, three or more times a week. Here’s why this is an effective, scalable way to provide students with high-quality educators: 

    You can’t argue with data. Research shows that high-dosage tutoring is one of the most effective ways to help students make academic progress. Yet few students actually receive it. A recent study from Stanford University demonstrated the many positive effects of tutoring, including increased reading and math scores, attendance and a feeling of belonging. Teach For America’s (TFA) tutoring program, the Ignite Fellowship, finds and develops tutors who connect virtually with students during the school day. Fellows, who are paid for their work, are supported by a school-based veteran educator to customize instruction. Seventy-one percent of the 3,500 students across the country being tutored by Ignite fellows meet their semester-long reading and math goals.

    Tutoring is a pipeline to teaching. Teacher morale is an ongoing issue. Because teaching is so unique, it can be hard to fully prepare aspiring educators for what it’s like to lead a classroom. Tutoring serves as a way for college students to step behind the wheel, with a professional providing roadside assistance before they are given full control. This can be key to teacher recruitment and retention — before people fully enlist in becoming a teacher, they have the opportunity to see if this profession is right for them. AmeriCorps, which also invests in employing young people as tutors to help them jump-start service-oriented careers, has found that more than half of its tutors hope to pursue a career in education after their service. When teachers are more confident stepping into their classrooms, students are the ones who reap the rewards. 

    Tutors ease the burden for teachers. Tutors can focus on small groups or individual sessions with students — something that lead teachers don’t always have the capacity to do. This way, tutors can address specific learning gaps for individual students, meeting more individual and diverse needs, and allowing students to build authentic relationships with multiple educators/mentors. I have had teachers tell me they wish they could clone themselves so they could work with more students to meet different needs and speeds. In our reality, tutors may be the closest thing we have to clones.  

    Prioritizing diversity. To provide a diverse experience for our nation’s students, we must have their educators — their role models — reflect them. This means we should prioritize recruiting and retaining teachers of color. Throughout California’s public schools, 77% of the K-12 population is composed of students of color, whereas only 37% of educators identify as people of color. This kind of ratio is true for Los Angeles, where I am based. That’s why I’m excited to be welcoming the Ignite Fellowship to schools throughout Los Angeles (and expanding even further throughout California) this year, helping bring more diverse and locally rooted teachers into classrooms. People of color face historically more hurdles than white people in the workforce, and this is even more extreme in the teaching profession. Tutoring is a way to expand the diversity of the teacher pipeline and can increase students’ access to educators from diverse backgrounds. Virtual programs like Ignite also allow for more flexibility and accessibility, meaning fewer hurdles for aspiring teachers to become tutors, and more opportunities for students to connect with tutors and mentors.  

    The school year may already be underway, but the reality is that schools will be fighting to staff their classrooms all year. Anything we can do to mitigate the detrimental effects that understaffed schools have on students should be a priority. Investing in tutors is an actionable way to help staff schools with diverse educators, with an added benefit of creating a pipeline of tomorrow’s teachers.

    We have the proof that it will help our students, so what are we waiting for?  

    •••

    Lida Jennings is the executive director of Teach For America Los Angeles and San Diego. 

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Pandemic recovery in schools will be a ‘long slog,’ says sobering national report

    Pandemic recovery in schools will be a ‘long slog,’ says sobering national report


    Student mental health was declining even before the pandemic, research has shown.

    Alison Yin for EdSource

    Nearly five years after Covid-19 began, a national report released Tuesday shows that recovery from the pandemic for students will be a “long slog.”    

    “The State of the American Student,” a report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) states that the findings are “sobering, daunting, and discouraging,” and that the slow pace of recovery from the pandemic has left an indelible mark on education, with long-term implications for students’ income, racial inequity and social mobility in the United States. 

    “If policymakers and educators do not get serious about ensuring these students have access to proven interventions, then we will continue to see the educational impact of the pandemic reverberate for many years, both in our schools and in our economy,” the report stated.

    For the last three years, CRPE — a research organization out of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University — has released annual reports examining the academic, social, emotional and mental health effects of the pandemic on students. CRPE Executive Director Robin Lake said the reports were an attempt to ensure that schools wouldn’t go back to business as usual before students were “made whole.”

    Fears that the pandemic would widen pre-existing opportunity gaps have come to fruition, according to the report’s summary of a wide span of research. The report focuses extra attention on certain groups: young children, disabled students, English learners and homeless students, and students who still lag far behind from where they would have been if not for the pandemic. Lake added these groups were largely not well served by schools before the pandemic began.

    The report takes a sweeping look at the issues that have been harming students’ recovery since 2020, including chronic absenteeism, staffing shortages, poor teacher morale and student disengagement. These are all signs pointing to a pandemic recovery effort that will require a “long haul.”

    Struggling students need more attention

    Currently, schools are facing “gale-force” headwinds trying to address these challenges, the report states. Pandemic-era funding is drying up, declining school enrollment is stretching district finances, and many educators are facing burnout. But the worst part is that the problem is underappreciated, Lake said.

    “Perhaps the most concerning thing to us is how little discussion there is about these problems,” Lake said. 

    Politicians are not talking about pandemic recovery, especially when it comes to the groups that have been struggling the most, she said. For instance, CRPE pointed out how some states, including California, do a poor job communicating data about how students have fared since the pandemic.

    Additionally, parents do not seem to know just how far behind their children are — thanks in part to grade inflation and some schools’ poor communication, Lake said.

    USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research conducted interviews with the parents of disabled students.

    One parent did not learn from the school that their child was failing two courses, making him ineligible to graduate from high school: “I didn’t know until we were in the process of graduation,” the parent told interviewers.

    The number of students who are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has skyrocketed in recent years. It dipped during the peak of the pandemic when school campuses were closed, but surged again as students returned to the classrooms. It’s not clear why, but different theories have emerged.

    While it states that kindergartners who have not attended preschool are more likely to have academic and social struggles, including a rising number of behavioral issues and speech delays, the report notes that students who start school behind their peers may be being over-identified as having a disability or that the high numbers could be because students who might have simply been treading water in a previous era are now being correctly identified as having a disability.

    The problems faced by disabled students exemplify many of the biggest struggles of pandemic recovery efforts in schools. Disabled students’ academic performance has long lagged behind other students, but that gap has widened in the wake of the pandemic. The teacher shortage is particularly acute among special education teachers, now that they are needed most. Meanwhile, some effective efforts, such as tutoring, are not reaching disabled students. Low expectations for students with disabilities is a crisis that has failed to garner proper attention and resources, Lake said.

    One parent interviewed for the report said that getting help for their disabled students required constant fighting. “Multiple times, they promised in-person, in-school tutoring — which they just were understaffed and were never able to find anyone,” the parent said.

    Another parent said that without speech therapy, their son with epilepsy fell behind in school during the pandemic.

    “He fell further behind because my husband and I tried our best, but we can only do so much if you’re not a teacher, which is very frustrating,” the parent said in an interview.

    Recovery solutions are straightforward

    The strategies that helped schools recover have “not been rocket science,” Lake said. 

    Many schools have been successful with programs such as tutoring, high-quality curricula, extending learning time and improving communication with parents. Some schools are making these strategies a permanent part of the school experience, which is good news: Tutoring and small-group instruction are some of the most powerful tools schools have at their disposal, the report states.

    But scaling can be tricky, and many of the students who need help the most are not getting it, CRPE notes. Fewer than half of students who most needed that help enrolled in summer school, according to a Rand study, and just 1% of eligible students in Louisiana enrolled in a tutoring program for struggling readers.

    The report recommends focusing on the specific needs of struggling students, such as students with a disability or English learners, rather than so-called average students. Addressing the issues that these students are struggling with will pay dividends for the broader student population, Lake said.

    Some schools are demonstrating that recovery is possible, even if it’s not the dominant story right now. Students and educators alike are struggling, but there is a renewed understanding of the crucial role that school plays in a community. That has led to some schools rebuilding and strengthening that institution.

    “During the pandemic, you remember, there was so much talk about more joyful education, more engaging, more flexible,” Lake said. “We think that that has actually taken hold.”





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  • For preschool educator, kids’ paintings give them a deep brush with themselves

    For preschool educator, kids’ paintings give them a deep brush with themselves


    Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza

    Daniel Mendoza makes his own paintbrushes. It may have started out as a way to save money, but it also reflects his aesthetic as a veteran preschool teacher who uses painting to engage pint-sized students.

    “The brushes happened out of a necessity of wanting to make things big,” said the child development specialist who is also a painter. “If you’re familiar with preschool teachers, we make super low salaries starting out. I had to stay on a budget.”

    Daniel Mendoza uses art as a way to spark engagement in preschool.
    Credit: Daniel Mendoza

    Instead of downsizing his plans to teach small children how to create epic murals or Jackson Pollock-style canvases, Mendoza got creative. The brushes became a symbol of his DIY vibe.

    “I came up with this mop-style brush,” said the 44-year-old, with customary modesty. “It really allowed me to feel even more connected to this work and a part of who I am and what I’m trying to convey, down to the materials themselves.” 

    While he started out as a musician and now works primarily in visual arts, he says the leap to education was a no-brainer for him. 

    “It wasn’t really a stretch for me to move worlds,” said Mendoza, the program administrator for the Placer County Office of Education early childhood education department. “Music and visual arts are so interconnected. Even education is the same in ways.  It takes thinking in that creative mindset.”

    Much like the preschoolers he spent 10 years teaching, Mendoza embraces big messes. One of the first things students saw when they came into his classroom was a drippy, paint-splattered canvas.

    Now, he teaches other educators how to unleash the power of creativity in the classroom. Some teachers are afraid of making a big mess, but he relishes it.

    “Art is intrinsic to who we are as humans,” he said. “It’s tied to our identity and our outlook on how we view the world.  Think about the aesthetics of art, and how that is tied to everyday life. What we like to wear, eat, listen to … We want to create, it’s deep in who we are.”

    Mendoza, who grew up on a pistachio farm, seeing nature as his playground, believes that children are naturally artists. They love to get down-and-dirty, and they often focus more on the process than the product. Sometimes a child will concentrate so hard on a piece they seem to lose themselves in the work, only to run off as soon as it’s finished.

    “They love making the art,” he quips, “not putting their name on it.”

    Little children think outside the box by default, experts say. The challenge is how to let them grow that impulse even as they grow up. 

    “Preschoolers live in their creative mindset, all the time. It’s the perfect space for me,” he said. “Art gives children a voice. It opens the door for them to share their feelings, their thoughts, their ideas.”

    Having grown up in a low-income immigrant family, Mendoza is passionate about making sure all children have the same exposure to the arts that high-income families often take for granted.

    “I was a Head Start kid, I know what it’s like to struggle,” said Mendoza. “It’s sad because when we think about the circle, generational poverty or generational addiction as opposed to generational wealth and prosperity. Some of these children will stay in this lower socioeconomic status as they grow into adults. That’s how they exist. Giving them tools like art, dancing, painting, gives them an understanding of freedom, of expression, of identity.”

    Mendoza views teaching as an art form of its own, cultivating his pedagogy with the same depth of dedication as his mixed-medium artworks.

    “He approaches his work like an artist — with creativity,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative, “but also with an educator’s understanding of how to remove enough limitations to engage in play and art-making both individually and collectively.”

    Preschool teacher Daniel Mendoza with some of his students.
    credit: Daniel Mendoza

    Sometimes Mendoza worries that no matter how much headway he makes in the early years, encouraging children to think for themselves and embrace their creativity, that it all gets lost by middle school, when the intense pressure on achieving high test scores can diminish the love of learning.

    “I feel that so many don’t see that connection, the connection art has to culture, individuality and community,” he says ruefully. “It might be a lack of education or awareness, but this conversation is missing. Helping connect what is seen as a ‘luxury’ to those learning goals and foundations that are important to families, gives us an opportunity to show the massive impact the arts have on children’s learning and ability to reach their maximum potential in school and throughout life.  We all need the arts, not just children.”

    He partly blames the laser focus on numeracy and literacy for creating a more stressful environment for children that also hasn’t moved the needle academically.

    “Math scores are down,” he notes. “We have done math all day, and then we did this after-school math program, and now we’re sending math homework home, and that’s still not working. So now we’re going to double down and kids are going to do math on the weekends. I’ve watched a lot of baseball. That’s three strikes right there.”

    By contrast, art teaches focus, he says. It demands that you slow your roll, pay attention and then reflect on the nuance. That depth of concentration and perception pays off in all the other subject areas, experts say. 

    “He has the seamless ability to integrate the arts with other content areas,” said Jennifer Hicks, assistant superintendent of educational services at the Placer County Office of Education. “When children experience art with Daniel, they are experiencing math, they are experiencing literacy, they are experiencing science.”

    Mendoza says he almost got arrested once at the old Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas for spending too much time looking at a painting. The lights turned off, and when security guards appeared, they assumed he was up to no good.

    “Art is an invitation to have an inner dialogue,” he said. “To examine yourself, what you think, what you feel.”

    Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza

    One of the most noticeable things about Mendoza is his exuberance for art and learning for their own sake. That’s partly why small children often gravitate to him, even when he and his wife are just out shopping at Target, because he radiates warmth.

    “Daniel is joyful,” said Hicks. “ His passion for early education is apparent in everything he does.  He’s always ready to take on a new project or implement an innovative idea. He has a magical way of communicating with children, teaching them language, expression and how to be good humans.”

    While his time is jam-packed with training preschool teachers, painting and teaching about the creative process in children at Sierra College, when he needs to recharge creatively, he always heads back into the classroom to the little ones who are his muses. 

    “If my tank is low, I go hang out at one of our classrooms,” he said. “The children are always so awesome at refilling that creative tank for me.”





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  • How stepping out of my comfort zone enhanced my college experience

    How stepping out of my comfort zone enhanced my college experience


    News writing and editing major Ally Valiente says she’s glad she overcame her self-doubts about going behind the mic at Sonoma State’s radio station, KSUN.

    Credit: Courtesy of Ally Valiente

    When I told a friend that I would be hosting a radio show every Monday at 11 a.m. on KSUN, Sonoma State University’s student-run radio station, he looked at me almost in disbelief and said, “Are college radio stations even, like, a thing anymore?” 

    Admittedly, I thought that, too. Before signing up for the course, I considered radio stations to be another thing of the past. 

    But it turns out, college radio stations are very much still around. While many of the CSU campuses such as San Francisco State, Sacramento State and Cal State Los Angeles have switched to an entirely online format, other campuses like Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, San Jose State and Cal Poly Humboldt provide listeners with an option to tune in online or on the airwaves. 

    As a communication major, my sole focus was on written journalism, specifically writing and editing for the school newspaper. The idea of venturing outside my “area of expertise” was a daunting one. Because of that, I put off choosing any electives for three years. 

    And I know I wasn’t the only one who felt tentative about stepping out of my comfort zone.

    Jalen Jenkins, the new general manager of KSUN radio, originally took COMS 385: Media Lab (Radio) to fulfill his elective requirement. 

    “I did not know much about radio before getting into KSUN and was mainly drawn to it because of my interest in music. Since then, I’ve found so many things that have encouraged me to stay. From group work that keeps the station running smoothly to improving my show each week, the involvement I’ve had in KSUN has kept it in my schedule since I first enrolled,” Jenkins said. 

    Like Jenkins, when Daniel Oliva, a television, film and media studies major, decided to sign up for an introduction to digital art course during his senior year in 2022 at California State University Los Angeles, it was to fulfill a course requirement.

    Oliva said that he initially felt a bit unsure because he did not know how to draw or shade properly. Nonetheless, he decided to “throw the hat in the ring” and try it. 

    “When you’ve been taking classes that are related to your major, a lot of it is shared information between classes. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you’re learning more. I went into that class not really knowing how to use Adobe Illustrator or art in general,” Oliva said. “I feel comfortable with a program that I didn’t otherwise have any experience in. I’m glad I didn’t listen to that voice in my head that said ‘You don’t know anything about art, so why take an art class?’”

    I would be lying if I said it wasn’t uncomfortable taking a radio course at first. And it wasn’t as if all my anxiety melted away when I slipped on the headphones and spoke into the microphone for the first time. I was self-conscious about not having any experience with operating a sound board, writing segments for a show or audio mixing. 

    But throughout the semester, I gained confidence behind the mic, even though the thought of public speaking terrified me in the beginning. The support from my peers and professor helped me to gradually break out of my shell.

    I learned how to write scripts for show segments and promotions, production techniques like audio-mixing and editing, and effective voice delivery for clear pronunciation in front of a microphone.  

    Similarly, Marivella Torres, a fourth-year communications major at Sonoma State university, was apprehensive when she first joined the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority, but later found it empowering

    Torres said her primary concern was not knowing what to expect from the experience. 

    “I never thought I would be a person to be affiliated with a sorority, and I had some concerns about whether sororities were inclusive. However, before accepting my bid, I met with the girls in a casual setting and those worries quickly went away as they were more than happy to answer all my questions and concerns,” Torres said.

    “Being in a sorority has taught me many things. I have had the pleasure of getting involved by being our bursar, which is a treasurer, and I am currently holding the vice archon (vice president) position.”

    Torres said that since joining, she has learned leadership and how to delegate and work in a team, meet strict deadlines, deal with budgets and make executive decisions. 

    If I gave in to my anxiety and avoided radio simply because I didn’t have the experience, I would never have experienced personal growth or gained the confidence that I have now. Joining KSUN radio enriched my college journey, and that wouldn’t have been the case if I hadn’t decided to take the first initial step out of my comfort zone. 

    •••

    Ally Valiente is a fourth-year communications/media studies and English double major at Sonoma State University and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Looming end of historic student homelessness funding has arrived

    Looming end of historic student homelessness funding has arrived


    Family Resource Center in Greenfield, CA, where families go for assistance with basic needs. The school district is located in southern Monterey County.

    Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource

    Less than two months into this school year, three families seeking shelter in Monterey County asked for motel vouchers from their children’s schools and were turned away. The vouchers, along with several other services for students experiencing homelessness, are no more.

    The families sought help from the schools because, in the past, that was where the county’s homeless liaison had provided them with vouchers for short stays at local motels, temporarily sheltering their homeless families with the ultimate goal of getting them into permanent housing.

    But the funds that paid for those vouchers had come from a federal program, the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth, known as ARP-HCY. The historic allocation of $800 million for schools nationwide, of which California received $98.76 million, was one-time pandemic-era funding that must be committed by the end of this month and used by the end of January 2025. There is a possibility for schools to receive an extension on the timeline to spend the funds, though they won’t receive additional amounts.

    There is no plan either at the federal or state level to replace those funds at anywhere near the same level.

    “There is a fair amount of heartache because the needs are high, and higher than they were even before the pandemic, and homelessness is always a crisis,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of youth homelessness nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection. “The prospect of the additional funds to meet those heightened needs going away is demoralizing. It’s true everywhere, but I think particularly true in California, where homelessness is unabated, to say the least.”

    In preparation for the fiscal cliff, homeless liaisons — school staff tasked with identifying and supporting students experiencing homelessness — are ending some services for students that they’d begun offering during the pandemic, laying off staff, and braiding together other streams of funding.

    Rising rates of child homelessness as the funding to address it decreases

    Homeless liaisons have long rung the alarm of rising child homelessness, and their concerns are not without merit. The rate of student homelessness in California rose by 9% during the 2022-23 school year from the year prior. Child poverty in the state also increased in 2023 for the third year in a row and, at 19.2%, is now higher than its pre-pandemic rate of 18.6%, according to a recent analysis published by the California Budget and Policy Center.

    There was a significant dip in student homelessness rates at the peak of the pandemic, which was followed by a sharp increase, once schools reopened. Experts attribute this dramatic shift to the identification efforts by liaisons. While some of the increase can be attributed to rising homelessness amid skyrocketing rent prices and inflation, it is also in part due to the staff hired with ARP-HCY funds whose jobs were to figure out which students were homeless and to connect them with resources.

    Liaisons have also resoundingly cited a critical issue: There is no dedicated, ongoing funding for their work, which they say impedes their ability to implement long-term programming, hire staff and build out preventive measures to help families avoid homelessness.

    “The money that we received is the money that we should be receiving on a regular basis to do the work that we need to do,” said Jennifer Kottke, the homeless liaison for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

    There are other streams of funding for students experiencing homelessness, but most are one-time funds, too limited to be distributed across all schools, or they are not set aside specifically for this population of students.

    For example, California’s funding formula for education requires that funds be set aside for high-needs students, which includes homeless students. But those dollars need to be distributed across all high-needs students, not only those experiencing homelessness. As such, the percentage of funds has long been disproportionate to the number of homeless children enrolled in schools statewide. And crucially, this funding requires first identifying students who are homeless — the very effort school staff say needs to first be funded.

    There is also the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act’s Education for Homeless Children And Youth grant, but at $129 million nationwide, it is a fraction of the windfall the ARP-HCY provided.

    Earlier this year, there was a statewide push to include $13 million in the state budget as dedicated funding for students experiencing homelessness. The amount was a match for the federal McKinney-Vento dollars California received in the pre-pandemic years, but the state Legislature failed to pass it.

    What did liaisons do with ARP-HCY funding?

    Liaisons are pointing to ARP-HCY dollars as an example of the possibilities for supporting students experiencing homelessness when they are given the opportunity to hire staff and expand their services for children.

    “The thing is that the work is intense, but the funding doesn’t match, so then you end up undercounting because you don’t have the time to do the proper identification process,” said L.A. County’s Kottke.

    With the influx of funds, Kottke hired someone to run a countywide free tutoring program for a year and a half that served about 600 students experiencing homelessness, a data analyst to navigate the complicated nature of homelessness data, and a community outreach specialist to distribute informational modules to other liaisons and share social media posts on homeless education resources. In the last school year alone, her office served at least 63,000 students and families experiencing homelessness, though they are still finalizing their numbers and expect that number to be higher.

    Her county office received just over $3 million in the first round of ARP-HCY distributions and about $253,000 in the second round — but these amounts include the funds for 78 districts and charters that Kottke contracted with as the head of her local consortium, which she and other county offices statewide had to create in order to distribute funds to any districts and charters that received less than $500,000.

    The motel vouchers in Monterey County were paired with case management to guide families through the county’s housing assistance programs. The part-time staffer in charge of that was hired with ARP-HCY funds, which means that Donna Smith, the county’s homeless liaison, has had to eliminate the position.

    The American Rescue Plan “was designed as a safety net to be able to help students still participate in school, still have access to the curriculum,” said Smith, whose county has some of the highest concentrations of student homelessness. “It was really designed to keep them from failing in school, because we know that school is very important no matter what you do.”

    To highlight the importance of education, Smith also hired two people to run after-school programs for children at homeless shelters in the region. Every day, for two and a half years, children at the shelters were taught music and art, played sports, and went on field trips on the weekends. But with the money drying up, the programs were shut down on June 30.

    Smith’s county office received about $423,000 in the first round of allocations and just under $29,000 in the second round. As with Kottke, she was also the head of her local consortium and distributed portions of that funding to other districts and charters.

    In total, Smith had to lay off seven part-time employees, and Kottke is laying off two this month.

    Farther north, Meagan Meloy, Butte County’s liaison, began offering what she calls “the next tier of support for students.”

    In her two decades doing this work, Meloy has focused on ensuring that students experiencing homelessness were enrolled and could get a ride to school. “That always felt like a Band-Aid approach versus the more comprehensive case management,” she said.

    But with over $295,000 total in ARP-HCY funds, she was also able to support families with getting into housing, maintaining their housing, addressing their social-emotional needs, offering academic support, and distributing basic aid needs like food and clothing.

    “It just puts more restrictions on prioritizing which students and families we’re going to serve first,” said Meloy, referring to the end of ARP-HCY funds.

    One of the uses of the federal funds was the increase in identification efforts. A significant dip in student homelessness followed school closures at the height of the pandemic, which experts agree occurred because the identification of students experiencing homelessness relies on school staff being able to see and interact with children. That became much more difficult, at times impossible, via video.

    If liaisons do not notice signs of potential homelessness, it is then up to the student and their families to self-identify. But, according to interviews with liaisons statewide, few children and families self-identify as homeless; they might feel ashamed, be fearful of their children being taken away from them, or might not consider themselves as being homeless.

    Such challenges make identification of homelessness among students a key part of every homeless liaison’s job. Some schools, such as Santa Rita Union Elementary in Monterey County, used their ARP-HCY money to hire staff who focused primarily on calling and visiting families they believed might be homeless. It’s a job that liaisons say requires significant investment in time, money and effort, as trust needs to be built with families.

    “I think we’ll see even a bigger bump (in homelessness rates) for ’23-24, because that’s when ARP was fully out, but if it goes down next year, it’s not going to be because ‘Oh, we’re solving homelessness,’” said Duffield. “It’s because there are fewer people knocking on doors and following up and asking questions.”





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  • Why are students often ineligible for homelessness funding? | Quick Guide

    Why are students often ineligible for homelessness funding? | Quick Guide


    Hygiene supplies and clothing for families in need at the Family Resource Center in Monterey Peninsula Unified.

    Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales / EdSource

    With schools adjusting to the end of historic Covid-era federal funding for students experiencing homelessness, much of their focus has shifted to trying to sustain the programming they implemented and keep the staff they hired with those pandemic relief funds.

    California has allocated significant levels of state funding toward addressing homelessness, and there are other streams to help cover students’ needs, but students experiencing homelessness are not always eligible.

    “I think particularly in California, unsheltered, visible homelessness is in the news and is a political issue, but people aren’t talking about children. State policymakers in particular are not talking about this crisis, and certainly not anywhere near the level that they are about adult homelessness,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of youth homelessness nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection.

    This quick guide, a follow-up to a recent EdSource story — “Looming end of historic student homelessness funding has arrived” — explains why students are not always eligible for all homelessness funding and the challenges this presents to the school staff tasked with supporting students experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

    Why are homeless students eligible for some streams of homelessness funding but not others?
    Some of the state funding that California has funneled toward preventing and addressing homelessness is targeted toward youth. The state’s Homekey program, for example, has resulted in millions of dollars toward the building or conversion of housing for youth who are homeless or on the verge.

    But most students experiencing homelessness are not always eligible for state or federal funding, and that often comes down to how homelessness is defined.

    There are two definitions: one outlined by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the other by the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

    The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law implemented decades ago to ensure students experiencing homelessness are identified and supported, defines homelessness, in part, as “children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason.”

    Among homeless liaisons and other school staff, this is often referred to as being “doubled-up,” and that is how the majority of homeless youth in California and nationwide live.

    But the more common definition of homelessness used outside of school settings is the one set by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and that definition does not include people living in doubled-up environments.

    “You’ve got all these kids living in precarious doubled-up situations that have no way to get any type of services because they technically don’t meet HUD-related pieces,” said Jennifer Kottke, the homeless liaison for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

    Some children are indeed living unsheltered, but most are out of sight. Given that reality, homeless liaisons say they are best equipped to address the impact of homelessness among their students because schools are where families experiencing homelessness are more likely to already be.

    In other words, liaisons are meeting those families where they are, and this rings particularly true for liaisons working in rural parts of the state.

    “In rural areas, schools are where you’ll find families. We don’t have big drop-in centers and resource centers where families would be showing up for services. They’re out there in unpopulated areas, but they’re coming to school, so school is this kind of avenue to do outreach,” said Meagan Meloy, the homeless liaison for the Butte County Office of Education.

    What forms of funding are available for students experiencing homelessness?
    There are several streams of funding for students experiencing homelessness, though they are either short-term, one-time grants, limited in amounts, or not set aside specifically for this population of students.

    The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act’s Education for Homeless Children And Youth grant is a steady stream of funding, for example, but at $129 million nationwide, it does not reach all schools that enroll students experiencing homelessness. California received $13.9 million for the 2021-22 school year, which was distributed across 6.4% of the state’s school districts via a competitive grant process.

    There is also the state-funded Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program which sets aside a percentage of funds for youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness. The set-aside for youth uses the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness, which broadens eligibility of students who live doubled-up, though it restricts the ages to 12- to 24-year-olds.

    Meloy applied and received that grant for rural Butte County, which will provide funds over three years. Her team’s plan is to pilot a program where multiple agencies team up to reach out to homeless families through the region’s schools and provide case management to guide them through housing services and prevent them from entering into unsheltered homelessness. Her team plans to support younger students through their parents.

    “We appreciate it … and it’s one of the strategies we’re using but, again, it’s not going to be a comprehensive fix to address what I see as a huge need in our state,” said Meloy, referring to student homelessness.

    Even if schools are able to tap into those funds, they are set aside exclusively for housing and not for services such as transportation, food assistance, clothing, school supplies and more. “Those services are equally important to housing, especially if youth are going to recover from their homelessness and be successful in school as a long-term prevention strategy,” Duffield said.

    Additionally, Butte County is likely to be an exception in this use of state funding, according to Duffield, “because additional licensing is required for housing providers to serve minors.”

    Schools are also required to set aside dollars from the state’s education funding formula to support high-needs students. That funding requires first identifying students who are homeless — the very effort school staff say needs to first be funded. That funding is also distributed across all high-needs students, not just those experiencing homelessness.

    “The thing is that the work is intense, but the funding doesn’t match, so then you end up undercounting because you don’t have the time to do the proper identification process,” said Kottke, who said the federal housing department should be working with schools, given the evidence that education is a preventive measure against homelessness.

    Other streams of funding can be used to support students experiencing homelessness, though they all run into similar challenges. And, none of them get anywhere near the level of funding that liaisons received for students experiencing homelessness during the pandemic through the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth, or ARP-HCY.

    “These California funds still are no substitute or replacement for the scale of ARP-HCY, or what California is spending on its adult homeless population,” said Duffield. “This is where the real disparities lie.”

    What if liaisons keep piecing together various streams of funding?
    Liaisons say that the nature of their funding model can be tedious and time-consuming. Since there isn’t one source of funding that can by itself cover services this population of students, liaisons say they spend much of their time doing what they call “braiding” of grants and other funding streams.

    “Our department here … is almost all grant-funded. For me, it’s kind of a way of life,” said Meloy.

    An example of braiding is what Meloy did with the HHAP funding.

    “It’s hard because it takes a lot of administration work and braiding funding is beautiful if you can figure out how to put a square peg into a round hole,” said Kottke, “but sometimes braiding funding isn’t what it’s chalked up to be, and so sometimes it’s hard to do.”

    The braiding of funding also makes it more difficult to track and assess the use of funding across all schools and counties.

    What further complicates this funding model, plus the time required to identify students as homeless, is that liaisons are rarely, if ever, solely focused on this specific student population. Most often, the time they can spend on supporting students who are homeless is a small percentage of their work.

    A quick scroll through the list of liaisons statewide highlights their widespread titles: director of operations, superintendent, manager of student information systems, truancy mediation liaison, office manager, and more.

    What do liaisons say they would do with dedicated funding for students experiencing homelessness?
    For Meloy, who lives in a county particularly susceptible to wildfires, the lack of dedicated funding means her team cannot prepare for the now-expected rise in student homelessness that happens when families are displaced due to fires.

    “That need isn’t going away,” said Meloy. “It feels like we’re kind of getting through the Covid disaster, but we’re still facing these other disasters that impact housing.”

    In Monterey County, liaison Donna Smith would like to offer more transportation options to students experiencing homelessness. She also services foster youth in her county, and she’s able to contract with a company to drive foster youth to and from school.

    Students who are homeless can either receive a bus pass or their parents can be reimbursed for gas; families don’t always have vehicles, however, or children might be too young to ride the bus by themselves. “But there’s not a lot of options outside of that. That’s just one kind of thing that I wish we had: better transportation for these kids to and from school that is paid for.”

    Kottke in L.A. County also said she would like to focus more on preventive strategies. “A lot of the work we do is very reaction-based. I’ve always been preventative, so I think that’s one of the pieces that I spend a lot of time in this work fighting for,” she said. “We should be preventionary, not reactionary.”





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  • Free-range parenting: A chat with Lenore Skenazy

    Free-range parenting: A chat with Lenore Skenazy


    Let Grow after school play clubs encourage children to make their own fun and games, to gain independence and learn social skills.

    credit: Kevin Stinehart

    Lenore Skenazy was once reviled as the worst mom in America for letting her 9-year-old son Izzy take the subway by himself. He got hassled so often that he began carrying a printout of the transit rules stating anybody over 8 could ride alone.

    The newspaper columnist turned author has since become a champion of the “free-range kids” parenting style and helped spark a national movement, “Let Grow,” which encourages parents to gradually give their children the kind of small freedoms they were allowed as children, such as walking to school or to the park. 

    Skenazy recently took a few moments to chat about what she sees as the serious developmental impacts of curtailing the natural impulse for free play and how we went from a country where it was normal for children to ride the bus to a nation where parents try to manage their college kid’s schedule.

    Amid the deepening youth mental health crisis, Skenazy suggests that free play is a serious matter for human development. She suggests that coddling our kids may limit their cognitive potential, holding them back from peak educational experiences, pointing to research showing a link between lower independence and higher anxiety. Independence, she says, is the key to developing happy, well-adjusted children.

    Free range parenting pioneer Lenore Skenazy
    credit: Evan Mann

    Do you think that giving kids more independence can help fight anxiety? 

    Everybody’s worried about this and people are wondering, what should we do? And sometimes the answer is, let’s have a yoga room at school so they can center their feelings. Let’s do breathing exercises. And my answer is, if what has happened is we took out all their independence and all the time that they would just be playing with each other and laughing and figuring out what to do and changing the rules and arguing and compromising, OK, we’ll do it your way, but then next tomorrow we’ve got to play it my way. All that stuff. That is how children have grown up since the dawn of time, right? We’ve just taken these things out in the last few generations. You were allowed to play outside as kids, weren’t you? We were allowed to have free time after school. Our kids aren’t. You were allowed to be unsupervised sometimes, and our kids aren’t. If all that has resulted in a massive downturn in child mental health, how about we reverse engineer it? Wouldn’t that involve giving them back some independence and free play?

    Tell me about the Let Grow play clubs after school. 

    What we’re trying to do is basically create a wildlife refuge, only for kids, a place where life goes on as if things haven’t all changed beyond the borders. There’s a bunch of kids together. There’s chalk, there’s balls, there’s cardboard boxes, and there’s an adult there. But they’re not organizing the games, they’re not solving the arguments. They’re just there like a lifeguard in case something goes really wrong. So the kids at first are awkward, like what are we supposed to do? And we say, what do you want us to do? It’s up to you. And remember, they are still human. And one of them says, well, let’s play football. And the other one says, I’m going to draw a tic-tac-toe. And then everybody starts playing. And then you hear the laughs and the smiles and the kids are interacting. So, by the time they have to go and ask the lady at McDonald’s for a spoon, it is not the end of the world.

    Why do kids need time interacting with their peers face to face?

    You want kids to be off their phones, learning how to interact, learning how to make things happen, learning how to deal with frustration because you can’t all be first. And also learning empathy, the older kids helping the younger kids and learning a little bit of maturity, because the little kids don’t want to look like babies. These cool older kids, you need to have them interacting like humans. Playing. That’s how they have always interacted and that’s how they make friends. We’re worried about loneliness. How do kids make friends? They make friends because they play with them. This is the way kids used to spend their entire childhoods.

    How do you convince parents to let their children do the things they took for granted?

    There’s something called the Let Grow Experience. And it’s just a homework assignment that teachers give their students, and it says, go home and do something new on your own without your parents. They could do anything from make pancakes to walk to school to walk the dog or use a sharp knife. 

    Does that help parents feel empowered as well as kids? Does it give all of us more agency?

    The reason we love this project so much is that once your kid goes and does something on their own, parents are generally so excited and so thrilled that that rewires you. You are excited to send them out again. And then the kid gets rewired because, instead of my mom loves me, but she doesn’t think I can go to the store, she knows I’ll screw it up, or I’m too shy or whatever. Then the kid says, wait, no, my mom believes in me. I can do this. And knowing that somebody believes in you turns out to be the greatest gift to a kid’s psyche because, sometimes, somebody has to believe in you for you to believe in yourself.

    Let Grow after-school play clubs allow kids “free play” — without screens and with each other.
    credit: Kevin Stinehart

    How do you feel about the proliferation of ed-tech in the classroom? A lot of schools are deeply invested in ed-tech as a way to make kids smarter. This is the opposite of that. Is it hard to make an argument for the relationship between free play and intellectual development?

    It’s really easy to make the argument. It doesn’t necessarily land, but the argument is this: The brain comes ready to be wired, right? How do you learn to deal with somebody who’s annoying? How do you learn to come up with an idea? How do you learn to innovate? How do you learn to solve a problem? You have to do all these things to learn how. They’re delightful to do. People love solving problems and love coming up with ideas and love playing. And Mother Nature put the play drive into kids so they would become the kind of geniuses who have gotten us to this point in human history. Ed-tech did not get us to this place in human history.

    The rub is that taking the screens away is a really hard thing to do. 

    You can’t just take the screens away and leave them staring at blank walls. But if you have become the entertainment center, you’ve goofed. The world is actually more entertaining than the phones because you can smell it, taste it, feel it. So you just have to give them back the real world. Take away the phone and open the door.





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  • All California students should be empowered to be ready for UC and CSU admission

    All California students should be empowered to be ready for UC and CSU admission


    Making Waves Academy, a charter school in Richmond, tries to instill a college-pursuing attitude while leaving room for kids to enter a career after graduation if they wish.

    Courtesy: Making Waves Academy

    There is a troubling trend in California that makes affordable and quality higher education — which is meant to be a public good — not even an option for most students, particularly Black and Latino students. It’s the inequity of students completing the “A-G” courses required for admission to the University of California and California State University systems. More than half of all students, and over two-thirds of Black and Latino students, did not meet these requirements — too often because the courses were not offered or the students didn’t know they were needed. This means they are ineligible for admission into California’s public universities.

    As CEO of a grade 5-12 charter school in Richmond, I believe the A-G requirements should be seen as an asset rather than an obstacle for California schools. The requirements are transparent and attainable. They help prepare students academically, support eligibility for California’s public universities, and open up a variety of opportunities for students’ future career pathways. Ultimately, this helps alleviate inequities in education, the workforce and the economy.

    At our school, our goal is that 100% of our students are ready for college while also embracing, supporting and celebrating students who want to pursue early post-secondary career options. Within the Class of 2024, 95% of our graduates are pursuing higher education, and within that group, 71% are planning to attend University of California or California State Universities campuses. Among our 1,000 or so fifth through 12th graders, 99% are students of color, and 85% are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Here is how school and district leaders can build a culture around supporting students in meeting the A-G requirements.

    Align your curriculum to the A-G requirements

    Students don’t know what they don’t know. And they don’t always know there are specific course requirements to be eligible to attend public universities. It is our responsibility as school leaders and systems to align our curriculum to the A-G requirements and remove that burden on individual students.

    The good news is that this is not a very heavy lift. In California, students are already required to take a variation of core academic subjects listed within the A-G requirements, such as English, history, science and math. Making sure students are taking a lab science class, a third year of a world language, or a math up to Algebra II are small but meaningful adjustments to their course schedules that would help more students meet the A-G requirements, thus meeting eligibility requirements for UC and CSU campuses. 

    Get creative to track individual students

    For every college and career counselor in California, there are 464 students. It’s no wonder 56% of California students experience barriers to meeting the requirements. Instead of relying solely on counselors, make the most of advisory period. Advisory period teachers can reinforce college readiness and help track individual students’ progress on the A-G requirements. Our advisory teachers track the same cohort of students from ninth through 12th grade. With this support, students can also practice their agency by being actively involved in mapping out their courses and paying attention to their post-graduation plans, which serves them well whether they ultimately pursue college or not.

    Be inclusive of non-college-going students

    It is important to note that a culture that embraces the A-G requirements and college readiness and a culture that embraces a continuum of college and career options can and should live side by side. It is a both/and approach not an either/or approach. Allow for both. When you align to the A-G requirements, you ensure that students meet the “floor” for college eligibility. Build further understanding with students on the continuum of attainable pathways. For example, the A-G requirements can also align with career technical education, which integrates core academic courses with technical and occupational ones. This way, students can explore career interests and still remain eligible for college. Knowing the range of options available means students can choose what’s best for them.

    Communicate early and often with parents and families 

    California has some of the world’s best and most affordable opportunities for higher education. Tragically, many students and families don’t know these opportunities are attainable. The importance of the A-G requirements and information around college affordability must be communicated to students and families early and often. Ideally, regular updates and information sessions start with students and families in middle school. For example, we set clear expectations with students and families at fifth grade orientation. We talk to them about the A-G requirements being built into our curriculum and about our school culture around college readiness. Time and time again, we see ecstatic students and families when they realize college is accessible and attainable.

    It’s our responsibility as school leaders or school systems to provide the necessary courses and support to bridge the inequities between high school to college and careers. The logistical challenges are surely outweighed by the opportunities: more racial representation in higher education, an increase in economic mobility for students from low-income backgrounds, and a more diverse and educated workforce.

    •••

    Alton B. Nelson Jr. is the CEO of Making Waves Academy in the Bay Area city of Richmond.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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