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Trump wants to cut college access programs for low-income students; California educators are pushing back

Students at a National TRIO Day Celebration at Cal Poly Pomona.

Courtesy of Laura E. Ayon

Around California this summer, low-income and first-generation students are staying in college dorms for the first time. High schoolers are camping beside the Klamath River. Undergraduates are presenting research at a symposium for budding scholars in Long Beach.

All are part of federally funded TRIO programs — like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars — based on California campuses, from rural Columbia College neighboring Yosemite National Park to private four-year institutions in Los Angeles like the University of Southern California. TRIO reaches children as young as middle school, preparing them to enroll in college and providing mentorship, academic advice and research opportunities when they do. In California, the programs served over 100,000 participants in the 2023-24 academic year.

“I really don’t think I could have made it through City College [of San Francisco] without them,” said Ekaterini Stamatakos, 22, a psychology major and TRIO student who earned an associate degree and then transferred to UCLA, where she will start her junior year this year. “I think these kinds of programs really go beyond whatever they might say on their profiles or the paragraphs that they have on their webpages — it really does make such an impact on students’ lives.”

But hanging over TRIO programs like Talent Search and Student Support Services is a Trump administration proposal to eliminate them. If Congress enacts that plan, all TRIO Student Support Services — such as tutoring in reading, help with college applications and workshops in financial literacy — would be defunded starting in fiscal year 2026. Their funding is uncertain until Congress finalizes the appropriations bill later this year.

TRIO, whose name derives from an original group of three programs but now includes eight, has largely prevailed in past funding battles. With an annual budget now exceeding $1 billion, it continues to garner significant bipartisan support. But a White House budget request released in the spring argues that TRIO programs, rooted in 1960s anti-poverty policy, are now “a relic of the past.”

“Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means,” the budget request says. Colleges “should be using their own resources to engage with K-12 schools in their communities to recruit students, and then once those students are on campus, aid in their success through to graduation.”

The threat has mobilized TRIO supporters to redouble a public awareness campaign aimed at persuading lawmakers to maintain the programs. In California, there were about 450 TRIO programs in the 2023-24 academic year, an EdSource analysis of federal data shows, with most of that funding flowing to programs housed at more than 100 colleges and universities.

The proposal to sever funding for TRIO comes as the Trump administration has notched a U.S. Supreme Court victory that clears the way for mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education. This month, California joined a coalition of states suing for the release of $6.8 billion in federal school funding that has been frozen by the federal government. Since January, the White House has enacted or attempted a host of other changes affecting areas like financial aid and how the federal government interprets civil rights law.

TRIO programs based on California campuses like Sonoma State University, Cal Poly Pomona and UC Davis each receive millions of dollars annually and are funded to serve thousands of participants per campus, the analysis shows. Smaller TRIO programs, many at community colleges, may work with dozens or hundreds of students on a budget of less than $300,000.

At Cal Poly Humboldt, high school students and rising college freshmen this summer read an August Wilson play before venturing on a field trip to see it performed live at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. At Cal Poly Pomona, peer coaches prepare presentations for fellow students on such topics as artificial intelligence and summer internships. At Columbia College, a community college 50 miles northeast of Modesto, a TRIO director said she’s worked with everyone from 14-year-olds in dual enrollment programs to 72-year-olds advancing toward master’s degrees.

Decades of consensus meets partisan divides

Studies generally suggest TRIO has a positive effect on academic outcomes, such as enrolling in college or completing a degree. Supporters also tout the success of alumni — some of whom have gone on to become lawmakers, astronauts, and in many cases, leaders of local TRIO programs themselves — as evidence of a positive impact on families and communities.

“I have alumni whose kids are now in college and thriving, or have graduated college,” said Rafael Topete, who leads the TRIO Student Support Services Program at Cal State Long Beach.

But this is not the first time TRIO programs have faced Republican-led challenges. Under President Ronald Reagan, TRIO advocates blocked an attempt to halve the program’s budget. Bipartisan support again thwarted a bid to eliminate TRIO funding during the Clinton administration.

TRIO’s critics point to a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored 2009 study finding that Upward Bound did not have a statistically significant impact on overall postsecondary enrollment. (The Council for Opportunity in Education, which advocates for TRIO and other college access programs, later sponsored a rebuttal study, which found Upward Bound had a strong positive impact on students.)

Two recent U.S. Government Accountability Office reports argue that the federal Department of Education could improve how it evaluates TRIO. The department has said further steps to verify data depend on the agency having adequate staff.

Educational Talent Search and Cal-SOAP students at Cal State Long Beach attend a workshop to help rising seniors get ready for college applications and financial aid. (Courtesy of Jesus Maldonado)

Education Secretary Linda McMahon this spring resurrected such accountability arguments to justify defunding the programs. “I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” McMahon said at a June budget hearing.

People who work for TRIO programs object to those criticisms. In interviews, many named by memory the metrics they report as a condition of receiving federal funding, like high school graduation rates and college enrollment statistics. “Every year, we report data to verify we are doing what we said we would do,” said Kathy Kailikole, who has had a 30-year career in TRIO programs and currently works at San Diego State University.

There are signs that TRIO remains a point of agreement in a Congress more often divided along party lines. Federal funding for TRIO has climbed from $838 million in 2014 to almost $1.2 billion in 2023. And of the 130 members in the Congressional TRIO Caucus, 26 are Republicans. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho are among the Republicans who have vocally questioned cuts to TRIO.

Today’s bitter ideological divides may test that consensus.

In May, three Upward Bound grantees outside California received notice from the Department of Education that their funding would not be continued due to conflicts with Trump administration priorities, said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education.

A copy of one such cancellation letter provided to EdSource by Jones said the grants “violate the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”

Overcoming distance and doubt in rural California

Jen Dyke directs the Upward Bound program at Cal Poly Humboldt where, years ago, she was once a student. Today, she travels hundreds of miles to recruit students from rural Hayfork, South Fork and Hoopa. It’s a region where rural schools often contend with high teacher turnover rates, low math test scores and an uncertain economic outlook, Dyke and her colleagues said.

“Timber is already gone. Fishing is already gone. Tourism is now something that is not super strong because of wildfires,” Dyke said during a lull in Upward Bound’s summer academy, which brings 27 high school-age students on campus to take classes and live in dorms. “So these areas that we serve are, once again, facing dismal futures if we also cut TRIO.”

Cal Poly Humboldt’s TRIO initiatives are among dozens of TRIO programs in California — and more than 500 in the U.S. — that reach participants in predominantly rural communities and remote towns, an EdSource review of federal data found.

Rose Sita Francia, who directs another Cal Poly Humboldt TRIO program called Talent Search, tries to expose students as early as sixth grade to careers that give them a reason to consider postsecondary education. The first step, she said, is to put college on the map for them — literally.

“Many students don’t know where Arcata is, where Cal Poly Humboldt is located,” she said. “And so we have teachers ask us regularly, ‘Will you show us some geography of college-going, and will you talk to us about trade school options as well?’”

Associate degree students at Columbia College tour a Humboldt County forest while on a trip to visit Sonoma State University and Cal Poly Humboldt on Sept. 17, 2024. (Courtesy of Anneka Rogers Whitmer)

Anneka Rogers Whitmer oversees TRIO programs housed at Columbia College, more than an hour’s drive from the two nearest four-year universities, Stanislaus State University and UC Merced. The college’s Educational Opportunity Center serves more than 1,000 people across five counties with just two staff members, who visit places like prisons and social service agencies. The TRIO staff have had to overcome distrust of college degrees, Whitmer said, by offering advice on how to apply for financial aid and where to find vocational training.

“We’re an education desert, no doubt,” she said, “but we just have to think more creatively about how we’re going to reach the folks.”

Ekaterini “Kat” Stamatakos and Ghislaine Maze pose for a photo at the City College of San Francisco commencement ceremony in May 2025. (Courtesy of Ghislaine Maze)

‘It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged’

The program Ghislaine Maze coordinates at City College of San Francisco may be called the TRIO Writing Success Project, but it does much more than provide writing workshops and embedded tutors in English classes.

“So many students are trying to figure things out on their own, on the fly, with just a few hours on campus,” said Maze, whose program is funded to serve 310 students on a budget of roughly $485,000 a year. “It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged.”

Tight campus budgets may leave other academic advisers on campus so overbooked that students struggle to get appointments, she said. A trusted TRIO mentor can help navigate financial aid and plan a student’s academic schedule. “That’s where a program like ours kind of fits in,” Maze said.

Before Ekaterini Stamatakos got to City College, she attended four high schools. She thinks she must have missed hundreds of days of school in that time, a consequence of housing instability. She struggled academically, but finished at a credit recovery school.

Stamatakos, who goes by Kat, was retaking an English class at City College when a tutor from the TRIO Writing Success Project explained that it provided feedback on writing assignments, mentorship and a place to hang out at the library, complete with snacks. “This is perfect,” Stamatakos thought. “I’m just going to basically live there.”

With assistance from a writing tutor, Stamatakos earned an ‘A’ in the course. “I don’t think I ever imagined that I would get an ‘A’ after my years of failing classes,” she said.

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18/07/2025
How our district moved the needle on early literacy (and you can too)
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

Palo Alto Unified sorely needed to improve.

Despite ample resources and a reputation as one of California’s top districts, we were dramatically failing high-need students in education’s most fundamental subject: reading. For me, as a school board member, that was a tough pill to swallow.

But we have started to turn around our long-term problem as borne out by the results for our district on the state’s CAASPP/Smarter Balanced tests. Our students and teachers raised third grade reading scores for underserved groups from among the worst in the state to one of the best.

Even better, any district can follow the approach we used; it did not rely on big spending or complicated new programs. Early literacy is a “solvable crisis” for California’s schools.

Like most districts in California, we were struggling to teach reading to low-income and historically marginalized students. For low-income Latino third graders, 80% were below grade level, which ranked us near the bottom of all California districts.

This was a shocking realization for a district that thinks of itself as No. 1. It almost certainly meant that we were failing many other students, too, though some were being saved by a safety net of well-educated parents and out-of-school support.

The superintendent and his team decided to go “all-in” on improving early literacy. Instead of piecemeal changes, they put together a comprehensive reworking of our approach to early literacy, called the Every Student Reads Initiative.

Starting in 2021, this initiative has impacted almost every aspect of Palo Alto’s early literacy program, from teacher development and instructional materials to district administration and leadership:

Teacher training
- The district uses the Orton-Gillingham (O-G) training, a leading method for teaching reading foundational skills, for all K-three teachers, reading specialists, and all elementary principals.
- Reading-focused optional after-school workshops are available for TK-five teachers and elementary specialists.
- Teachers receive curriculum and assessment-specific training.
Coaching and on-the-job support
- The district provides ongoing support to teachers with implementation of the new curriculum.
- There is now a repository of high-quality resources for teachers on reading instruction including instructional materials and videos.
- The team leading the initiative has weekly communication with elementary educators.
Reading curriculum and interventions
- The Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study, criticized for lack of foundational skills, has been replaced by the widely used Benchmark Advance/Adelante plus O-G foundational skills and “decodable” texts.
- Schools offer targeted interventions for students who need additional support focused on phonemic awareness and phonics.
Reading assessment
- The Fountas & Pinnell BAS, a teacher-administered “running records” assessment, has been replaced by the computer-based and nationally normed iReady Reading Assessment.
- Staff conduct continued universal dyslexia screening in grades K-three using the iReady assessment.
District leadership
- The district appointed our first-ever literacy director, a respected elementary principal with expertise in reading.
- School administrators participate in monthly Elementary Principal Learning Collaborative meetings dedicated to pre-K-to-five reading instruction and supporting teachers with the implementation of curricular and assessment changes.
School board
- The school board has established multiyear improvement goals for third-grade student achievement, specifically focused on lower-performing student groups, to be included in the superintendent’s annual review.
- District staff provides updates to the school board at least three times per year.
While phonics was an important part of the initiative, our Every Student Reads Initiative is not a “phonics first” or “phonics only” approach — far from it. In every grade, it includes all the major pillars of reading from the National Reading Panel (comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, phonics and phonemic awareness).

District leaders made implementation of the Every Student Reads program a top priority; this was key. Early literacy was one of just five major district goals, called the Palo Alto Promise, and the only goal explicitly focused on student achievement. It has remained one of our top goals for the last three years.

Equally important was our superintendent’s outspoken personal leadership on the issue. He constantly talked about the initiative with parents, teachers and his own leadership team. His community messages included frequent updates throughout the year. And our school board was given formal updates three times a year, including a detailed readout of annual results versus goals. There was no doubt: Every Student Reads was a big deal for Palo Alto Unified.

The results so far have been impressive. Over two years, we’ve seen significant improvement on the state’s CAASPP/Smarter Balanced assessments across all the targeted groups compared with 2019, despite the headwinds from the pandemic. The bellwether low-income Latino third-graders have gone from 20% reading at or above grade level to 47% — one of the top results in the state.

Credit: Todd Collins

Percent of third grade students meeting or exceeding standards on the state’s CAASPP/Smarter Balanced assessments. Statewide results for 2022-23 have not yet been released.

In fact, nearly all groups saw double-digit growth last year. The share of third-grade English learners reclassified to English proficient reached its highest level in at least the last 10 years. And last year’s third graders have held onto their gains in fourth grade.

Credit: Todd Collins

Percent of third-grade students meeting or exceeding standards on the state’s CAASPP / Smarter Balanced assessments. Statewide results for 2022-23 have not yet been released.

Palo Alto is an outlier in some ways, with above average funding and relatively few high-need students (about 17%). But the Every Student Reads approach isn’t just for outliers; it did not rely on big spending or complicated new programs.

Instead, it focused on doing the fundamentals well: an “all-in” commitment, strongly backed by senior leadership, coupled with an array of supports to help teachers build their knowledge and refine their practice in teaching reading. Any district can do what we did.

California faces an early literacy crisis. Just 42% of all third-graders are at grade level for reading. For low-income Black and Latino students, the number plummets to 25%. Our history of struggle in Palo Alto mirrors a broader failure across the state to recognize and address this crisis. While some schools have managed to buck the trend, most face challenges similar to ours.

But we can change this. School boards, superintendents, and district leaders have the power to address this “solvable crisis.” By going “all-in” on early literacy, districts all over California can move the needle for students who rely on school the most. Every Student Reads should be at the top of every California district’s priority list.

•••

Todd Collins is a member of the Palo Alto Unified School District Board.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
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18/07/2025
Lawmakers, Newsom and UC agree on new community college transfer plan, legislative leader says

The Transfer and Reentry Center in Dutton Hall at UC Davis helps transfers get acclimated to their new environment.

Credit: Karin Higgins/UC Davis

In an attempt to make it easier for students seeking to transfer to the University of California, the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom are in agreement on the framework for a new pilot transfer program between the community college system and UC, a top lawmaker told EdSource on Monday.

“This is monumental,” Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, said in an interview Monday. “This is the biggest transfer bill in over a decade and the first time we’re able to get pretty darn close to having a universal transfer process for all community college students.”

McCarty, the author of the bill, said the legislation was a negotiated compromise between the Senate, Assembly, Newsom’s office and UC. McCarty participated in the talks as chair of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education finance.

Rather than immediately creating a systemwide transfer guarantee, the newly proposed pathway would start as a pilot at UCLA in a limited number of majors and then expand to more campuses in limited majors. The bill states that UC must “prioritize admission” to students who complete an associate degree for transfer in the selected majors but does not state they need to guarantee admission to them at their chosen campus. If a student is not admitted to their chosen campus, the student would be redirected and admitted to another campus.

A UC spokesperson confirmed Monday that UC has been in negotiations with lawmakers and Newsom on “compromise legislation” but that UC has not yet taken an official position on the bill.

The bill is expected to get floor votes this week in both the Assembly and the Senate, according to McCarty.

Assembly Bill 1291 would first require that UCLA, beginning in 2026-27, prioritize admission for community college transfer applicants who complete an associate degree for transfer in certain majors. The specific majors have yet to be determined, but UCLA would need to designate at least eight of them. By 2028-29, it would expand to at least 12 majors, with at least four of them in a science, technology, engineering or math field.

By 2028-29, the new transfer pathway would also expand to four additional UC undergraduate campuses that have also yet to be determined. UC would choose those campuses and, like at UCLA, designate at least 12 majors at each campus and prioritize admission for students who complete an associate degree for transfer in those majors. The Legislature then intends to expand the program by 2031 to UC’s remaining four undergraduate campuses.

Earlier this year, McCarty introduced another bill, AB 1749, that would have required UC, beginning in 2025, to admit all eligible students who complete any associate degree for transfer, something the California State University system already does.

But UC opposed that bill, with officials for the system arguing that it would have disadvantaged students in certain majors — especially in STEM fields — because they would have entered UC underprepared for their coursework.

UC has yet to take a position on the latest bill because the university wants to be able to “review final legislative language” and evaluate “any potential last-minute amendments,” said Ryan King, a spokesperson for the system, in a statement to EdSource.

Currently, UC does not have a systemwide transfer guarantee for community college students. There are separate transfer admission guarantees at six of the system’s nine undergraduate campuses — all except UCLA, Berkeley and San Diego. But those separate guarantees each have different requirements for admission. And students who consider transferring to Cal State have to also deal with separate and different requirements for that system.

As EdSource has reported in a continuing series, “A Broken System of University Transfers,” the complicated process is a big reason why so few students successfully transfer from a community college to a four-year university in California and why many experts have called for a more streamlined transfer process. Most recently, a report published by the Public Policy Institute of California last month found that most California community college students who wish to transfer never do and states that “students would have an even clearer roadmap for transfer success” if UC were to participate in the associate degree for transfer as Cal State does.

McCarty said he’s hopeful his bill will be “a game changer” for community college transfers.

“Too often you have to have a doctoral degree to understand how to transfer,” he said. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We have this system that’s been working for the community colleges and CSU, and I’m excited that we’re going to be able to expand this to the UC.”

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18/07/2025
Cal State trustees decide this week on 6% tuition rate hike, but with a sunset provision

Students, faculty and staff protest a potential tuition increase across the California State University system.

Credit: Michael Lee-Chang / Students for Quality Education

California State University trustees will decide this week on whether students will see a 6% tuition rate increase over the next five years.

But ahead of their Wednesday vote, the nation’s largest public university system has already tweaked the proposal: Any tuition rate increase will sunset after five years and be reevaluated for the 2029-30 academic year.

The proposal would go into effect in the fall 2024 semester and affect the system’s 460,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The first increase would be $342 for full-time undergraduate students.

Last year, CSU assembled a work group to examine sustainable funding in the 23-campus system and found the costs of operating the university system exceeded its revenues. The work group also found that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s multiyear financial compact, made with the CSU to increase enrollment and improve graduation rates in exchange for annual 5% funding increases, did not fully meet the system’s funding needs, said Steve Relyea, chief financial officer for the Cal State system, during a recent call with reporters.

“The absence of tuition increases in 11 of the past 12 years has prevented the CSU from having sufficient resources to help keep up with rising costs,” he said.

The new tuition proposal would generate $148 million of new ongoing revenue in its first year, said Ryan Storm, the system’s assistant vice chancellor for budget. Over five years, the system would see about $840 million in new funding.

The increase would also allow CSU to invest more dollars into financial aid. About 60% of undergraduate students would not be affected by the tuition increase because their tuition is covered by grants, scholarships and waivers. Eighty-one percent of undergraduate students receive some form of financial aid.

“The additional revenue would be invested in the budget priorities that reflect the values and the mission of the university,” Storm said, adding that those priorities include academic and student service support for basic needs and mental health services, improving Title IX practices, improving maintenance and building new facilities, and improving compensation to attract and retain faculty and other CSU employees.

Cal State is currently facing a $1.5 billion funding gap, in addition to demands from its faculty and employee unions to improve compensation and wages. Students who are vehemently against the rate increase will rally and protest the proposal during the board meeting Tuesday and Wednesday.

The California Faculty Association, which represents the system‘s professors, is against a tuition rate increase even though it has reached an impasse in contract negotiations to improve wages. Currently, CFA is demanding a 12% increase in compensation, while Cal State is offering 5%. The association is also advocating for a semester of paid parental leave and workload relief. It also wants to be involved whenever faculty have contact with campus police.

“We’re not buying the austerity message that the CSU is sending out,” said Charles Toombs, president of the faculty association. “We know that the CSU has plenty of money in reserves and in investments, so we know they can fund not only our salary increases in our proposals but also the salary proposals that the other unions are demanding. We just don’t buy that they need to put our salary increase on the backs of students.”

But Cal State only has about 33 days of funding — or about $766 million — in its reserves, and the board’s policy is that the system has about three to six months of funding, which it doesn’t, said Relyea, CSU’s chief financial officer.

He underscored that the system needs the new tuition revenue to increase salaries. About 70% to 80% of any university’s budget is driven by faculty and staff salary and benefits, Relyea said, adding that the tuition rate increase is “driven by wanting to and needing to compensate faculty and staff at a fair rate that represents the market.”

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18/07/2025
UC regents appear to support future tuition increases, but are skeptical of bigger ones
Student walk up and down the Promenade to Shields Library at UC Davis.

Credit: Gregory Urquiaga / UC Davis
Top Takeaways

UC is likely to continue raising tuition for each incoming class and then freezing the cost for that cohort of students for up to six years.

The rate of increase each year is based on inflation but has been capped at 5%. Regents appear opposed to increasing that cap.

UC is worried about federal cuts and uncertain state finances. Students are concerned about affordability.
The University of California’s Board of Regents on Thursday indicated support for continuing to raise tuition for each incoming freshman class for at least several more years, though many regents appeared skeptical of hiking the maximum increase allowed each year.

Since the 2022-23 academic year, tuition has gone up for each incoming class of undergraduates, ranging from 3.5% to 5%. But the price was also then frozen for the duration of their enrollment, so long as they graduate within six years. The rate of increase each year is based largely on inflation, but is capped at 5%.

California residents who entered this past fall pay $14,436 in tuition and systemwide fees, not including some additional campus fees, living expenses and books, and will continue to pay that rate each year. For in-state freshmen starting this fall, their rate will be $14,934, about 3.4% higher. Out-of-state and international students pay significantly higher rates.

When the regents approved the so-called tuition stability plan in July 2021, they agreed to reconsider it prior to the 2027-28 academic year. Most regents said they want to renew the cohort policy, describing it as a resounding success that has improved campus budgets and brought predictability to students and their families. In the past, tuition increases affected all students from all cohorts, whether freshmen or seniors, at the same time and the same rates, often raising costs in the middle of their education.

The regents did not take action Thursday to formally extend the plan and only discussed the policy. A vote on it may be scheduled as soon as November, officials said.

A number of regents, however, appeared unlikely to support proposals from UC administrators to allow for even greater tuition increases, including one to increase the maximum tuition hike in a given year from 5% to 7%.

“I think it’s remarkable the success we’ve had, and that’s why I want to continue it,” said Richard Leib, a regent and a past chair of the board. “But I also have the feeling that if it’s not broken, why are we trying to fix it?”

UC staff said upping the maximum increases could help the system navigate budget problems, including federal cuts to research funding and state funding uncertainties.

The president of the UC Student Association, meanwhile, encouraged the regents to get rid of the policy altogether and keep tuition flat after the 2026-27 academic year.

“In order to ensure that the university can be a space that is accessible to students financially, I strongly urge you all to not renew the cohort tuition model,” Aditi Hariharan, a fourth-year student at UC Davis, said during remarks to the board. She added that keeping the policy would threaten UC’s ability to enroll “a diverse range of students from all economic backgrounds.”

In defending the plan, UC officials said Thursday that the policy has actually made attending UC less expensive for the system’s low-income students.

Shawn Brick, the system’s associate vice provost for student financial support, noted that the state’s Cal Grant program fully covers tuition and fees for qualifying students. Additionally, UC sets aside 45% of revenue generated from the tuition policy for financial aid. That, Brick said, has provided the system’s neediest students with additional aid for other expenses, such as textbooks, that was not previously available.

Nathan Brostrom, the system’s chief financial officer, said the policy has also generated $375 million in new revenue for campus operations, which has been used to support faculty-to-student ratios and improve student services.

At the same time, officials said the policy has not been a cure-all and that higher tuition revenue and state budget support have not kept pace with rising costs.

The UC staff on Thursday suggested three potential scenarios that would generate even more revenue from the tuition policy. One would be the proposal to increase the maximum annual increase to 7%. Another would be to add another increase, possibly 1%, on top of the inflation-based increase. The third option would be to reduce the amount of revenue that is set aside for financial aid, from 45% to 35%.

Most regents who spoke said they disapproved of the proposal to allow for annual increases as high as 7%. Maria Anguiano, the board’s vice chair, said she remains supportive of renewing the original policy, but added that tuition hikes of 7% “no longer feels modest.”

State Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, an ex-officio voting member of the board, said increasing the cap to 7% would be a “very significant change” and suggested tabling the idea altogether.

“If we have an extraordinary circumstance where you all feel the need to increase tuition more than 5% in any given year, you should have to come back to this body and explain why,” she said.

Jay Sures was one of the only regents who appeared to support the proposal. He said federal changes and threats have created “true headwinds for this university system” and that there are “issues with what potential state funding could be going forward that could potentially pose a true existential threat” to the system.

“What would happen if we did have a cap and our shortfall was such that we were in that sort of disaster situation? What are we going to be able to do if we put a cap on it today and we fall into that situation tomorrow?” Sures said.

Before the UC staff brings an official proposal to the board, they plan to consult with incoming President James Milliken, who takes over on Aug. 1, said Brostrom, the chief financial officer.

Janet Reilly, the board chair, said the current plan is to bring an action item to the board’s meeting in November, but added that could change.

“I think that what you are hearing from this group is a lot of gratitude and much satisfaction with the program that we rolled out,” Reilly said. “But still there are questions to be answered.”
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18/07/2025
California releases long-awaited teacher data, revealing demographic shifts
Juniors attend a U.S. History class at Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, Calif., May 1, 2017.

Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
Top Takeaways

The number of teachers in the state increased to 285,891 since the 2019-20 school year.

Hispanic teachers increased 19%, growing from 61,518 to 73,400.

Student-to-teacher ratios and administrator-to-student ratios are improving.
California added 3,000 new classroom teachers and a significant number of new administrators despite declining student enrollment and budget reductions brought on by the end of pandemic funding, according to long-awaited data released by the California Department of Education on Thursday.

Researchers and education advocates have been calling for the release of the data for years. Although the information is submitted by school districts annually, it had not been updated on the CDE’s DataQuest website since the 2018-19 school year. The release fills in the gaps, including data through the 2023-24 school year.

“It’s very difficult to do this work without having the data in front of us to know what we can do and what is working,” said José Magaña, executive director of Bay Area Latinos for Education. “It’s something that we hope can become accessible or more accessible to folks now and in the future years, so that we can continue to invest in things that are working and also make tweaks and say what can we do differently.”

The delays were due to a lack of staffing, additional state reporting requirements and a backlog of reports that had to be reconfigured because the state changed course codes in 2018-19, said Cindy Kazanis, the director of the Analysis, Measurement and Accountability Reporting Division at CDE, in a previous interview with EdSource.

Now, parents, educators and researchers using the CDE’s DataQuest database can access information, updated through the 2023-24 school year, about teachers, administrators and other credentialed staff. The CDE plans to release data for the 2024-25 school year later this year.

The release is expected to include an upgrade that gives users the ability to filter information by gender, grade span, school or staff type, allowing them to learn, for example, how many Hispanic teachers worked in non-charter public schools in a district in a particular year, or how many credentialed administrators in elementary schools in a district were women.

The CDE has also added student-to-teacher ratios and administrator-to-student ratios, which also seem to be improving, according to the CDE.

The data is crucial to ensure California schools have a diverse teacher workforce, said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, director of TK-12 policy for EdTrust-West.

“Essentially, we can’t give California students the teachers that they need, which are diverse teachers, without being able to see where they are and see how they are being recruited and retained,” Wheatfall-Lum said. “It’s very important for us to have this information because we know the significant impact having teachers of color has on students of color and their success.”

Growth takes off in Fresno

The state has added 3,000 classroom teachers since the 2019-20 school year for a total of 285,891. The data shows that Fresno had the largest increase in the number of teachers in its schools, with 8% more over the five-year period ending in 2023-24. Napa County, on the other hand, lost 6.5% of its teachers over the same period.

It’s unclear if the number of teachers in the state has changed in the 21 months since the data for 2023-24 was collected. Declining enrollment, a smattering of teacher layoffs and tightened school budgets may have erased some of the increases in schools where 5% of the teachers are not qualified to teach the courses they teach.

These gains could also be undermined by the recent freeze of federal teacher preparation grants and budgetary problems at California State University and the University of California, which could further reduce the number of teachers entering the field.

The state has also had an increase in the number of new administrators and pupil services staff in 2024-24. The number of administrators grew from just over 25,000 in 2019-20 to 28,780 in 2023-24. Pupil services staff grew from more than 30,000 to 36,535 in the same time period.

Number of Hispanic teachers growing

Much has changed in the five years since the data was last updated. The number of Hispanic teachers in California classrooms increased by more than 19% during that time, growing from 61,518 to 73,400, according to the CDE.

There was also a 21% increase in the number of Hispanic administrators and a 48.2% increase in the number of Hispanic school nurses, counselors and other pupil services positions.

The number of white teachers declined over the five-year period by 7%, reducing their number to 158,064, or 55% of the teaching workforce.

The change in the racial makeup of teacher candidates coincides with the evolving population of the state, where 56% of the K-12 student population was Hispanic in the 2023-24 school year, according to the CDE.

There has also been an increase in the number of Filipino, Asian, American Indian and Pacific Islander teachers, while the number of Black teachers declined incrementally, despite state initiatives to recruit and retain them.

The trends are exciting, but more needs to be done to recruit and retain educators, especially as new research shows that 1 in 3 teachers anticipate leaving the profession, Magaña said.

Teachers of color are asking for more inclusive and supporting school environments, stronger systems to meet students’ behavioral and academic needs, and a healthier work-life balance, he said.

The increase in the number of teachers of color and teachers overall could be attributed to efforts by state lawmakers to ease the teacher shortage and diversify the teacher workforce by making earning a credential easier and more affordable. The state has also offered degree and coursework alternatives to several tests, established residency and apprenticeship programs, and paid for school staff to train to become teachers.
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18/07/2025
Improve community college transfer with dual admissions, clearer pathways, say college leaders

Fresno City College campus.

Credit: Ashleigh Panoo/EdSource

Creating a more streamlined transfer pathway and expanding initiatives such as dual enrollment and dual admissions could help increase the number of California students who successfully transfer from community college to a university, officials from the state’s public higher education segments said Tuesday.

“The key is that across all three of our systems, that we have a more unified process for designing pathways and programs together … so that these pathways naturally flow from the community college system into the CSU, into the UC,” Aisha Lowe, an executive vice chancellor for California’s community college system, said during a panel discussion hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The panel, which also included representatives from the University of California and California State University systems, came on the heels of a PPIC report that found that few students who wish to transfer from a community college to a UC or Cal State campus are successful in doing so.

The report also found that there are big racial and regional disparities in transfer students. For example, Black and Latino students as well as students from the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire are less likely than their peers to transfer successfully.

But the state is taking steps that officials expect will improve the transfer process, which critics say is overly complex. Students considering transferring to a UC or Cal State often have to contend with different course requirements, depending on the campus, even in the same major.

Currently, top lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom are in agreement on the framework of a new pilot transfer program between the community colleges and UC, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, told EdSource on Monday. Under Assembly Bill 1291, transfer students earning an associate degree for transfer would get priority admission, first to UCLA in select majors and later to additional campuses. Proponents say that solution will help streamline the transfer process because students earning an associate degree for transfer can already get a guaranteed spot in the Cal State system.

UC has not yet formally endorsed the new bill, but McCarty said UC was involved in the negotiations that resulted in the legislation.

Yvette Gullatt, UC’s vice president for graduate and undergraduate affairs, said during Tuesday’s panel that UC sees the associate degree for transfer “as an opportunity to enhance transfer, particularly” at community colleges where few students successfully transfer.

“There’s always opportunity to explore more ways that ADTs can benefit students at UC, and you’ll hear more from us soon about some ways we plan to do that,” she added.

California is also in the process of expanding both dual enrollment, in which high school students take college courses, and dual admission programs, which guarantee high school graduates a future spot at a UC or Cal State after they first attend a community college.

The new statewide chancellor for the community college system, Sonya Christian, has said she wants every ninth grader to enroll in a college course through dual enrollment.

Lowe said Christian’s plan could help improve the likelihood that students eventually attend a community college and transfer to a UC or Cal State campus by “getting them on that pathway” earlier in their academic career.

“Helping them to get some of their transfer requirements done while they’re still in high school, exposing them to financial aid and the FAFSA and that process while they’re still in high school,” she added. “So we’re working on rolling out a comprehensive program around dual enrollment because we think that that’s going to continue to be an important lever.”

At the same time, new pilot programs in dual admission at both UC and Cal State are going into effect this fall. The programs are open to students who weren’t admitted to the system where they are applying for dual admission. Both segments will guarantee eligible students a spot in their chosen major and at their chosen campus, so long as they meet all their requirements. Not all majors are available and, in the case of UC, not all campuses are participating. More information about the programs can be found here for UC and here for Cal State.

Laura Massa, interim associate vice chancellor at Cal State, said during Tuesday’s panel that about 2,500 prospective students already have created an account on the portal for that system’s dual admissions program.

Dual admission has the potential to be a “very promising practice,” said Marisol Cuellar Mejia, one of the authors of the PPIC report and moderator of Tuesday’s panel, in an interview.

“It makes things more streamlined because from the beginning you know exactly where you are going, and then you avoid any duplication of courses or anything like that,” she said. “We are curious to see what it’s going to look like with these pilots.”

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17/07/2025
Let’s shatter stereotypes about what an AP class — and students — look like

Credit: Viviana Mendoza

If you were to show up at Natomas High School in the middle of the school day, you would likely stumble upon my students walking around the campus in lab coats and examining their environment, looking for answers to questions that they themselves have posed.

That’s because, as an Advanced Placement (AP) seminar and research teacher, I teach my students to think outside the box to fan the flames of their intellectual curiosity. And to this day, I never cease to be amazed by the theories they pose and the conclusions they draw.

There’s nothing more gratifying for me than challenging students who for too long have been shackled by low expectations to take my AP classes. Many of them are surprised to learn that these are often the most creative classes they’ve ever participated in. I then get to watch them thrive as they develop and practice life skills in research, collaboration and communication. In fact, a few of my students have gone on to be research assistants in college, using the skills we developed in my class as their foundation. And the critical thinking abilities that they develop through these classes expand far beyond the classroom walls — they promote intellectual curiosity no matter what career or life path students end up choosing.

I also think it’s time to shatter stereotypes about what an AP student should look like. Other people might look at the socioeconomic metrics of our school and see only despair, but I see unlimited potential. At Natomas High School, our total minority enrollment is 91%, with 72% of students coming from “economically disadvantaged” backgrounds. My AP classes also reflect the school’s diversity.

As a teacher, it’s my job to challenge and guide all of my students. In my experience, real learning is about meeting students exactly where they are and elevating their interests through a problem-solving approach. The fact is, students ask interesting questions in my classes. And when we explore them together, we take learning to the next level.

For example, one student wanted to know how sleep correlated with success in taking advanced classes. From that, we applied research methods including surveying peers through in-class polling activities and data analysis. Other students have asked questions focused on mental health and isolation after experiencing the pandemic. For that, students shared their personal experiences and analyzed them with both qualitative and quantitative data. These projects were meaningful not only in their content, but in the processes we used to explore them. Most importantly, this approach keeps my students engaged and actively learning.

When given the flexibility and resources we need, teachers have the power to make young people feel better about themselves, and eventually to help them become more confident as they consider what kind of humans they really want to be. My students know in their hearts that I believe in them to my core, and though many of them come from challenging circumstances, I strive to show them how to use their “lived experience” as motivation to build a better life for themselves.

This isn’t an empty mantra for me, and my students wouldn’t buy it for a second if it were. They know it’s authentic because I lived it too. I grew up with a single mom and a dad who was in and out of jail, with addictions he just couldn’t kick. But even though my mom didn’t have a college education or anyone to support her, she gave me everything she could — and more importantly, she believed in me.

I want to give that same gift to my students: a fundamental belief in themselves and the tools to become exactly who they want to be. But teachers like me need more than just basic resources to reach all of our students — we need the freedom to teach a curriculum that we know will resonate with them — because that’s when the magic of learning really happens.

I hope more students are presented with this opportunity to succeed and think about the world through a different lens. Once they put on that lab coat in my classroom to search for their own truth, they will find one that is uniquely and powerfully their own.

•••

Leonard Finch teaches AP Research and AP Language and Composition at Natomas High School in Sacramento.

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

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17/07/2025
A learning recovery that wasn’t – missed opportunities and the ongoing costs of Covid
Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource

Money is running low, and time is short to help America’s students fully regain the learning they lost since the pandemic. Based on their continued academic struggles and mental health challenges, a report released Wednesday concluded most probably won’t.

The second yearly report by a national education research organization examining the impacts of Covid on K-12 education offered that sobering outlook while highlighting some notable state and local efforts nationwide. It also called for a shift in the mission of high school to make connections for students adrift in the wake of Covid. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called it “blurring the lines between high school, higher education, and the workforce” in an essay in the report.

“The State of the American Student: Fall 2023,” produced by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which is affiliated with Arizona State University, focused on older students — recent graduates or those nearing graduation from high school.

“We not only owe them restitution for extended school closures and missed proms — we owe them a special sense of urgency, given how little time they have left before transitioning to the next phase of their lives,” wrote Robin Lake, the center’s director.

Data on younger students has been easier to collect. By some indicators — higher graduation rates and higher grades overall — older students may appear to have rebounded from Covid. But those measures are deceiving, said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education. Nationwide ACT college admission scores, which are the lowest in 30 years, point to grade inflation, and assessments by the company Renaissance Learning point to a steady decline in 10th grade math and reading scores since before the pandemic. Disparities in scores between Latino and Black students and white and Asian students underscore “staggering” inequalities.

Chronic absence rates are alarming, as are measures of mental health. The proportion of teenage girls reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 36% to 57%; 30% seriously considered suicide, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2021 report on youth risk behavior.

“The older the student, the more lingering the impact,” said Gene Kerns, chief academic officer of Renaissance. “The high school data is very alarming. If you’re a junior in high school, you only have one more year. There’s a time clock on this.”

Source: CD survey cited in CRPE’s T”he State of the American Student: Fall 2023″

According to the assessment publisher NWEA, it will take the average eighth grader 7.4 months to catch up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and 9.1 months in math. In the hardest-hit communities like Richmond, Virginia, and New Haven, Connecticut, students fell 18 months behind in math. Schools would have had to teach 150% of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row just to catch up. “It is magical thinking to expect they will make this happen without a major increase in instructional time,” wrote researchers Thomas Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford.

Tutoring’s unfilled promise

For whatever reasons — pandemic fatigue, a lack of state guidance, a labor shortage, the unwillingness of teachers to do after-school tutoring or summer school — districts have not achieved efforts at scale. Despite a consensus among researchers that high-quality, intensive tutoring is the most effective intervention, USC researchers found, based on a survey of 1,600 households, that less than 2% of students are “receiving tutoring that even meets a fairly moderate definition of ‘high-quality.’ And among those who likely need it most — students who receive grades C or lower — less than 4% are receiving high-quality tutoring.”

The report credited Texas, Tennessee and Colorado for launching “admirable tutoring efforts.” California piloted a tutoring and mentoring program, led by 3,200 college students reaching students in 33 districts through College Corps, a volunteer program, but mainly it’s been every district for itself. Some, like Los Angeles Unified, relied on remote tutoring that was more like homework help, while Oakland turned to the nonprofit Children Rising and to Oakland REACH, a parent empowerment group, to train its own tutors.

Having not heard crisis warnings from state or local leaders, many parents haven’t recognized the severity of the challenge, the report said. Good grades sent a contrary message; one USC survey found that only 23% of parents were interested in summer school, and 28% were interested in tutoring. Another survey cited in the report found that about 90% of parents, including those in Sacramento, believed their child was working at grade level or above.

At first, there was no “voice in the back of my head” to raise doubt, said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union.

Rodrigues and others in the report called for states to show more transparency for parents, with report cards that are candid about their children’s learning. It credited a half dozen states, such as Connecticut , for their candor.

Source: 2023 survey by Learning Heroes cited in CPRE’s “The State of the American Student: Fall 2023”

Money, labor troubles loom

Lake called tutoring “a massive missed opportunity” and added, “What also concerned us is that the wind seems to be going out of academic recovery efforts just at a time when we think things are about to get much harder for schools and for teachers.”

Those headwinds include, according to the report:
- The Sept. 30, 2024, deadline to commit spending money from the American Rescue Plan, the final and largest chunk of nearly $200 billion in federal Covid relief, about $13.5 billion for California.
- That, combined with declining enrollments in most states, including the majority of districts in California, will result in a drop in state attendance-based funding. The impact of the expected “fiscal cliff” will vary by district. But some districts, such as San Francisco and West Contra Costa, are already feeling the pinch.
- A continued staff and teacher shortage in California. Last year was the first reduction in new credentials in eight years. The 16% drop — 3,130 fewer credentialed teachers — will compound the difficulty of meeting the demand for elementary and special education teachers.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature’s allocation of $8 billion has the potential to expand mental and physical health programs for students and address academic inequalities — if used effectively. The money is split between creating thousands of community schools, funding six weeks of summer school and extending the day by three hours for low-income schools.

Since school budgets for the year are already set, there’s still time for districts to plan a major summer learning effort in 2024, Kane, the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, wrote in his contribution to the report. The Biden administration could be persuaded to extend spending for one more year, although he and Lake agreed it should be restricted to proven strategies, like tutoring, summer learning and salary increases for an extended year.

“Part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership,” Kane said. School district officials need the “political cover” to undertake significant reforms needed for students to catch up, he said.

States and districts need to provide high school students with hope and innovation, the report said. It’s called for federal funds for a “gap year” as an immediate strategy for coming out of the pandemic. An idea usually associated with privileged students who take a year of enrichment before college, this would involve investing in community colleges “to help kids get back on track and help them prepare for their next steps in a really creative and positive way,” the report said.

The report also recommended putting more emphasis on adult-student relationships, rethinking high school school-to-career pathways and investing in a “New American High School,” which Lake argues “would connect students to meaningful work in their communities and expert knowledge around the globe.”

It cited Purdue Polytech High School in Indiana, a public charter school network with higher ed and industry partnerships for careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, and Seckinger High School, an artificial intelligence-themed high school in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It pointed to Colorado, where about 53% of high school graduates earn college credit or industry credentials through dual and concurrent enrollment; the vision is for every high school student to graduate with an associate degree and an industry-recognized credential.

None of the examples pointed to California, although in the last several years, the state has funded nearly $1 billion in dual enrollment programs, apprenticeship opportunities and Golden State Pathways, for students to explore college and noncollegiate pathways by 10th grade. The executive order last month to establish a master plan for career education within 13 months should provide a wider vision pulling components together.

The aim moving forward, the report said, should be “a new definition of student success that focuses more on fulfillment and long-term happiness in careers than college as an end unto itself.”
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17/07/2025
Cal State students will see 6% tuition hike

Students, faculty and staff protest a potential tuition increase across the California State University system on Sept 12, 2023.

CREDIT: MICHAEL LEE-CHANG / STUDENTS FOR QUALITY EDUCATION

California State University students will see a 6% annual tuition increase starting fall 2024.

The system’s board of trustees voted 15-5 for the five-year tuition rate hike Wednesday despite vocal opposition from students, faculty and staff during more than 2 1/2 hours of public comment. The rate increase will affect the system’s 460,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The board also agreed to sunset the increase after five years and be reevaluated for the 2029-30 academic year.

The vote means that the first annual increase would be $342 to $6,084 for full-time undergraduate students in 2024. Full-time graduate students will see tuition increase by $432 to $7,608.

CSU outlined its need for the new revenue from the tuition hike. CSU is facing a $1.5 billion deficit. The increase will generate $148 million in new, ongoing revenue in its first year and about $840 million over the five years.

“This is really a difficult decision for all of us,” trustee Leslie Gilbert-Lurie said. “I reluctantly support raising tuition because, for the moment, I don’t feel we have found an alternative path, and I think part of the reason that we heard the anger and the anxiety from the public is that it is shocking that we have created a culture where people don’t expect tuition to be raised.”

California State University Tuition Rate Approved Increases

Cal State tuition has only been raised once in the past 12 years, according to the chancellor’s office.

“Somewhere along the way, we gave people the impression that this system is magically going to create money to sustain itself, and what we see instead, as I have toured campuses, is shocking disrepair of buildings and salaries we can’t pay,” Gilbert-Lurie said.

The CSU is facing demands to improve its Title IX policies and close equity gaps in student academics and graduation rates. It also has about $30 billion in capital maintenance and construction needs, enrollment challenges and demands to improve employee compensation and wages, trustee Jack McGrory said. “We start with a $1.5 billion dollar structural deficit that accumulated over the years because we didn’t take tough actions along the way,” he said.

The board also approved a new tuition policy that requires that any future tuition hike be assessed 18 months before it goes into effect and increases institutional financial aid by at least a third of any expected additional revenue received from tuition increases or enrollment growth. The trustees will also review the tuition policy every five years because rate increases will not be longer than five years.

“The system is facing revenue shortfalls,” interim Chancellor Jolene Koester said. “We have also proposed a salary step structure for our staff, and the bottom line is that the total new proposed financial commitments that have been offered to our faculty and staff for the current year, 2023-24, far exceeds the entire amount of new funding available to the CSU in the 2023-24 state budget.”

Koester said the university presidents must make “extremely difficult, extremely painful decisions regarding how they’re going to reallocate their already limited financial resources” to meet those compensation obligations.

Student-trustee Diana Aguilar-Cruz offered trustees an alternative solution to shorten the tuition rate hike from five years to three or four, but the other trustees rejected that idea.

“This will benefit students in the long term and in the years to come,” she said. “But right now, it will harm our students.”

With students applying to CSU campuses for admission starting Oct. 1, Steve Relyea, the system’s chief financial officer, said the trustees could not delay voting on a tuition rate increase.

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17/07/2025