“I find it most helpful for summarizing readings and just making really menial and time-consuming tasks a lot easier,” Miglani said. A premium ChatGPT subscriber, he said he regularly checks his math problems with the chatbot, though it often can’t handle the complex equations and concepts used in some of his classes.
Miglani said the preliminary models of ChatGPT were “pretty rudimentary,” struggling to produce quality written answers and useful for mainly short-answer assignments and creating outlines for his essays. Now, ChatGPT and other AI tools, including Microsoft Edge and Gemini, are Miglani’s near-constant companions for homework tasks.
For the first few semesters after ChatGPT’s debut, Miglani said students used it fairly freely without much concern about getting caught, as AI detection software didn’t yet exist. Now that commonly used submission programs like Turnitin allow professors to scan assignments for evidence of AI use, Miglani said he’s been more conscientious about writing essays that won’t be flagged.
“I have not gotten caught using AI yet,” he said. “In fact, now, as I take higher level courses, professors understand that people are going to use AI, and so I have started asking them, ‘Do you approve of AI use in and in what capacity?’”
Some of Miglani’s professors have allowed AI use for research and basic summarization, but many draw the line at using chatbots to generate citations or write essays.
My time on the high school football field was spent with a snare drum strapped around my chest. As a student who was easily distracted in the academic classroom and struggled to apply myself, band class was a welcome reprieve during the day.
Playing the drums was my niche, it was how I stood out. I carried my drumsticks around the way football players wore their varsity jackets.
During my school years, I was fortunate that the district I attended recognized the importance of arts education. In elementary school, there were classrooms devoted to art and music staffed by full-time teachers. There was also an orchestra teacher. My middle school had two full-time band teachers, and an art class was included in the curriculum. High school offered a full range of band and choir classes in addition to the chance to participate in the jazz band and marching band in after-school programs.
Even back then, it was clear that future students would not have these same opportunities. The program that allowed interested sixth-grade students to participate in a stage production disappeared while I was in school, a victim of budget cuts as the baby boom turned into a bust. During my time in high school, there were constant rumors of plans to reduce the number of band teachers.
This reduction in the availability of arts education was part of a nationwide trend that accelerated as the second Bush administration and then Obama’s placed an increasing focus on test scores. Ignoring evidence that music and art help increase academic performance, teachers were forced to spend more time teaching to standardized tests. Arts funding was seen as extravagant in a system that values data over a full educational experience.
When I visited my old elementary school in 2015, the band room did not even exist anymore. I grieved for the school’s students who no longer had the opportunity to find the joy of mastering an instrument.
California voters understood the magnitude of this loss when 64.4% of voters opted to approve Proposition 28 in 2022. This measure provided an additional source of funding for arts and music education for K-12 public schools with rules to ensure that districts used this money to supplement, not supplant, existing funding.
This included a requirement that schools with 500 or more students use 80% of the funding for employing teachers and 20% for training and materials.
Complaints grew as parents in Los Angeles noticed that their children were not seeing improved access to art and music funding as the Proposition 28 money started to flow into the district. As the author of the proposition, Austin Beuttner was well acquainted with the rules it set in place and agreed that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was not following the spirit or the letter of the law.
After months of trying to get the district to do the right thing, Beuttner joined parents, students,and teachers in filing a lawsuit against the district and current Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho.
The suit could have served as a wake-up call to LAUSD’s leadership that their actions were being watched, but they did not use it as an opportunity to ensure the Proposition 28 money was being spent properly. Carvalho saw the suit as a public relations problem, and instead of fixing the compliance issues, he tried to spin the narrative. As noted by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jeff Chemerinsky, he “has already decided to double down on explanations not grounded in fact.”
To resolve this issue, the plaintiffs are demanding that LAUSD:
Publicly acknowledge that it misspent the Proposition 28 funds in the 2023–24 and 2024–25 school years.
Fully restore the misspent and misallocated funding to schools.
Be fully transparent about how the funding is used in future years.
In a letter to the LAUSD’s general counsel, Chemerinsky reminds the district that, if it is found that the funds were not used properly, it will have to return the money to the state. Combined with possible penalties for “violating the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino students,” LAUSD could be facing a hit to its budget of over $100 million.
This is not a slip-and-fall lawsuit designed to squeeze scarce education funding from our children’s classrooms. Rather, it is intended to improve the educational experience of our students.
The suit would not have been brought if Carvahlo and the district had engaged with the community instead of ignoring their concerns. As Chermerinsky notes, “families, labor partners and concerned citizens spent months seeking answers. Regrettably, LAUSD refused to meaningfully respond.”
The lawsuit has also attracted the attention of California Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who has asked the state auditor to look into how the funds were spent.
If the audit proceeds, Bryan says, “The district is going to have to produce the necessary documents to show that they are in compliance.” Based on statements from Carvalho saying the author of the proposition has a “misunderstanding of the law,” LAUSD should be concerned that its creative budgeting will not pass muster when held up to scrutiny.
The LAUSD board must make it clear to Carvahlo that the concerns of their constituents can no longer be ignored by an increasingly detached bureaucracy. A good place to start would be by settling this lawsuit.
•••
Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, and serves as the education chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. Read more opinion pieces by Petersen.
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.
Multiple polls show that Trump has the worst ratings of any President in decades at this point in his term. But he doesn’t believe the polls unless they affirm his claims. While polls show that the public is opposed to his tariffs, economic uncertainty, and continued inflation, he continues to claim great success and to attack Joe Biden. One big change: he switched referencing “the late, great Hannnibal Lecter” and now refers to “the late, great Al Capone.”
In other words, he’s the same old Trump: boasting, lying, and insulting his enemies.
President Donald Trump, at his Michigan rally on Tuesday night marking 100 days in office, gave a shout-out to his traveling groupies from the campaign trail. There was “my friend, Blacks for Trump,” the guy in the brick-patterned suit he identified as “Mr. Wall,” the group of “beautiful women” from North Carolina and the “Front Row Joes.”
“I miss you guys,” he said. “I miss the campaign.” I believe him.
After 100 days on the job, Trump has found the hard work of governing to be less pleasant. His tariffs have destabilized markets and brought historic levels of pessimism to American businesses and consumers. His policies have alienated allies and emboldened Russia and China. He has the lowest approval rating that any president in generations has experienced at this stage of his presidency.
Those were simpler times, when he could make up nonsense claims about how Joe Biden, “the worst president in history,” had turned the United States into a “failing nation” and a “third-world country” — and could present an alternative in which Trump would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, spread peace across the planet and make a booming U.S. economy the envy of the world.
So what did Trump do to mark his 100th day in office? He renewed his campaign against Biden. “What’s better, Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe?” he asked his supporters in Michigan. “Ready? A poll!”
Having ascertained from the crowd that they preferred the moniker “Crooked Joe,” Trump revived a favorite campaign story about his retired former opponent. “He goes to the beach, right? And he could fall asleep … drooling out of the side of his mouth. And he’d be sleeping within 10 minutes.” The story went on in disjointed fashion: “Carrying the aluminum chair, you know, the kind that’s meant for old people and children to carry? It weighs like about four ounces. And he couldn’t get his feet out of the sand … He’d be in a bathing suit. Somebody convinced him that he looks great in a bathing suit.” [Imagine Trump in a bathing suit!]
Trump invoked Biden’s name 21 times on Tuesday night, not counting an additional nine references to “Sleepy Joe” and “Crooked Joe,” a transcript shows. This is on top of various and sundry disparaging references to the “last administration” or simply “this group” or “that guy.” By comparison, Trump made just two mentions of the economy in an hour and a half, and seven of inflation — and even these were often employed to describe “Biden’s inflation disaster” and the like.
Here was a president with so little to say about his own achievements that he dwelled on the imagined failures of another man: “Sleepy Joe, the worst president in history … Biden had no control … Joe Biden was down 35 points. The debate was not a good one for him … Whoever operated the autopen was the real president.”
On some level, Trump must have known it wouldn’t really work to blame Biden for his problems. Recounting a conversation with an appointee about the price of eggs, Trump said the price would have to come down, because “nobody is going to believe me when you get out there that it’s Sleepy Joe Biden’s fault.”
And yet that’s just what Trump spent the night doing. For 100 days, he has run the country with authoritarian sweep, unconstrained by Congress (with its subservient GOP majority) or by concern for what is legal or constitutional. If things aren’t going well, he has nobody to blame but himself.
Yet he looked everywhere for villains to take the fall. He mocked “Kamala, Kamala, Kamala” and “lunatic” Bernie Sanders “going around with AOC.” He blamed “fake polls” put out by the “crooked people” in the media. He cited the “totally crazy” backbenchers who want to impeach him and imagined that “the radical Democrat Party is racing to the defense of some of the most violent savages on the face of the Earth.”
He recited his grievances as if the months and years had never passed: Democrats “tried to cheat” in 2024. They “tried to jail your president.” He was “under investigation more than the late, great Alphonse Capone.” To his familiar list of persecutors, he added a few new entrants: “grandstander” Republicans,” the Federal Reserve and “communist radical left judges.”
Even so, he insisted that he presided over “the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that’s according to many, many people.” By “many people” he apparently meant “Stephen Miller,” for the presidential aide joined Trump on the stage and shouted at the crowd that Trump is “the greatest president in American history!”
Trump regaled his audience with phony achievements in lieu of actual ones. The cost of eggs is down 87 percent. We now have a trade surplus. His actual approval rating is “in the 60s or 70s.” Americans say the country is headed in the right direction for “the first time ever.” His tariffs are acts of “genius.”
The crowd cheered for his inventions. They cheered for Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth. They cheered for a video showing migrants, deported without due process, being humiliated at an El Salvador prison. They cheered him for pardoning the “political prisoners” who attacked the Capitol. They cheered when a junior aide joined him on stage and asked, “Trump 2028, anybody?”
The rally began, as during the campaign, with the song “God Bless the USA” and ended by doing his Trump dance to “YMCA.” Supporters waved placards proclaiming a new “Golden Age.” And yet, the magic was gone. The pool traveling with Trump’s motorcade found relatively few supporters lining the motorcade route. When Trump called a supporter onstage for a lengthy tribute ending with the words “President Trump, I love you,” a girl on the stage behind Trump yawned. Attendees started trickling out of the arena 30 minutes into his speech and continued doing so over the next hour.
Perhaps they had come seeking reassurance about their present troubles — only to hear from a man mired stubbornly in the past.
Born and raised in the agricultural foothills of Tulare County in California’s Central Valley, Greg Salcedo attended the only K-8 school and high school serving his rural town of about 3,000 people, where everything seemed out of reach — backpacks and notebooks, teachers and administrators and, in particular, school counselors and social workers.
Friends and family, Salcedo said, never spoke about adolescent depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or suicide, issues that have, for decades, disproportionately affected rural, high-poverty communities in the United States.
But after the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated a decades-long mental health problem in Tulare County — with psychiatric hospitalization rates for students 9 to 13 years old climbing 23% during the first year of the pandemic — Salcedo decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work. In his first year as a graduate student, he helped shape the county’s emergency response through Rural Access to Mental Health Professionals, a program that placed him as a student mental health support worker in schools serving his community.
“I was able to talk to students and set them up with resources, call parents to set them up for therapy referrals or services with outside agencies [and] do a lot of outreach to promote mental health,” Salcedo said. “Being in this community for so long has helped me have a better sense of empathy and understanding of these kids and what they’re going through.”
The program places early-career mental health workers in 33 of Tulare County’s high-poverty school districts. Through the program, Salcedo served a one-year unpaid internship at an elementary and high school in Tulare, after which he was hired full time as a social worker at a high school in the Tulare Joint Union High School District.
Participants are first- and second-year graduate students in social work who provide education-related services such as interim therapy and student group services, according to Marvin Lopez, executive director at the California Center on Teaching Careers, which helps coordinate the program. Since 2019, the center has supported 50 candidates through a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
“In our district alone, we started out with three social workers last year, and now, we have seven new social workers that came on through the grant,” Salcedo said.
In 2019, Tulare County had a student-to-counselor ratio of about 870:1 — one of the highest in the state and well exceeding the recommended ratio of 250:1.
Districts in Tulare County have improved shortages of mental health providers using funds from the state. Tulare Joint Union High School District, for example, reported that the district’s student-to-counselor ratio improved significantly from 300 students per counselor in 2019 to 268 students per counselor in 2021.
But, few participants could afford to stay in the school-based mental health field after completing their unpaid placements, said Lopez.
“It became evident that we needed to support candidates to make sure we retain them,” Lopez said. “We began looking at resources like clinical supervision and additional training, but also financial incentives that can allow them to continue working at school sites.”
Last year, the center secured a $15 million federal grant to develop Preparing Rural Inclusive Mental Health Educators, a program that pays final-year graduate students a $45,000 stipend for a yearlong internship and a three-year commitment to remain in the field of school-based mental health care. To date, the center has sponsored 23 interns.
According to Lopez, these candidates are able to offer more long-term, advanced care, such as individual student therapy, group therapy, parent and family consultation and school faculty support. The center intentionally recruits from partner universities closest to Tulare County, such as California State University Bakersfield and Fresno State, whose students largely come from the rural communities they will serve.
Jeovany Martin, who completed his master’s in social work at CSU Bakersfield, was an intern in the program at a local elementary school. Martin was raised in neighboring Kings County by his Mexican immigrant parents, and he applied for the program to serve families whose needs have been shortchanged by language barriers.
“I’m able to relate to these students. I speak their language, and I’m able to communicate with parents in their language, which goes a very long way in creating a working relationship with them,” Martin said.
Martin said that the program was also his most realistic path to the field of education-based mental health care. Most providers are overworked and underpaid — with nearly 59% of school counselors leaving their positions in their first two years — and non-white, low-income candidates have much less financial and professional support to enter the field.
Nationally, most school counselors are overwhelmingly white, and they do not represent the backgrounds of the students they serve. For Tulare County’s student population — where nearly 80% of students are Latino — the two programs address a shortage of cultural competence in mental health support available to students, according to program supervisor Rosie Hernandez.
“We’re also having folks who are bilingual be part of our program because it allows families to be a bit more open to services because of that simple fact that they speak their native tongue,” Hernandez said.
Most children living in rural, low-income households, Lopez said, are also more likely to experience higher rates of anxiety, depression and behavioral problems, often due to stressors such as food insecurity, parental job loss and geographic isolation.
“We’re recruiting, preparing and supporting candidates from our own communities who represent our student population,” Lopez said. “That, in itself, allows our students to connect at a much higher level with our interns to bring them comfort, a space where they can interact and feel safe.”
A legacy of bias and neglect
Martin and Salcedo’s internships in Tulare County also provided the opportunity to tackle a decades-long legacy of mistrust between social workers and immigrant families.
“A lot of our families, especially from the Hispanic culture, think of social workers as ‘the people that take away my kids,’” Salcedo said. In his first year, Salcedo felt stifled by the number of permission slips that would have allowed him to help more students, but were returned unsigned. “Our job is also about breaking down that barrier and [explaining] our role for them to understand, ‘This person is here to help my kid with anxiety. They’re not here to judge me as a parent.’”
The National Center for Youth Law found that across the country’s child welfare, education and mental health systems, providers and educators have routinely over-referred Latino students for behavioral issues and subjected them to harsher disciplinary measures than white children. Black and Latino children were also found to be removed from their families and into out-of-home care at higher rates, while receiving fewer mental health services, such as psychotherapy and counseling, than white children.
Families that include at least one undocumented member or non-citizen — 14.3% of Tulare County’s overall population — are also less likely to opt into care if they rely on citizen children to receive basic benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies, which can be jeopardized by family separation. In a county where more than a quarter of residents receive SNAP food assistance, and two-thirds of these recipients are children, signing a permission slip could come down to what some parents feel is a calculation between their child’s mental health and access to basic services.
To address fears of bias and neglect, which remain the highest barrier for underserved communities to access to mental health care, program interns adapt a traditionally siloed approach in school counseling to work more directly with parents, caretakers and community support systems.
Salcedo, for example, partnered with the local Boys and Girls Club to run a regular backpack drive for students in the neighborhood. He also helped set up a resource closet at his school, where students frequently stop by for necessities such as food, school supplies and personal hygiene products. Most recently, he partnered with a local church to serve boxed meals to students at the end of the school day and to parents on back-to-school nights.
“We have this daily check-in routine with our students, where we say, ‘Whether you’re needing to talk to a counselor, or you just need some deodorant, a snack, or pencils, we can provide it,’” Salcedo said. “‘If you’re looking for housing, or babysitting, or transportation to get to an appointment, we can try to help.’”
Broader post-pandemic challenges
Martin, who was hired as a social worker after completing his placement, said that the need for broader support has especially spiked for K-8 students in Tulare County, many of whom lost crucial social and cognitive development to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of Salcedo’s high school students, he said, withdrew from their counseling sessions online — some did not have reliable Wi-Fi or could not turn on microphones due to chaotic environments at home, for example.
Many also experienced life-altering trauma as a result of the pandemic. They grieved family members, experienced debilitating illness and lost access to basic needs like shelter and food.
“That’s why it’s important for us to take a holistic approach,” Martin said. “We might be doing an intervention here at the school for the student, but there might be something going on at home that the family needs extra resources for. We’re able to help bridge those gaps, wherever they might be, for the students and their families.”
The national rhetoric regarding the value of attending a college or university has reached a fever pitch. Being “better off” goes well beyond politics and the price of milk and eggs or an understanding of how tariffs work. Let’s face it: Education provides opportunity, and making higher education work for everyone must be a priority if we are to be a thriving, civilized society.
Let’s start with the current disruptive notion that poses the discomfiting question: Is a college degree worth it?
Many of us working in postsecondary education felt that question didn’t go far enough in looking for the opportunity to improve in new and better ways when the stakes are higher than ever.
So, we took that question on as a challenge and expanded it to ask: What is college worth, and how do we measure and improve its value, especially for low- and moderate-income learners? Answers to such questions should prove fruitful, especially given that a new Gallup survey reports Californians overwhelmingly value postsecondary degrees or credentials, particularly because of their career-related benefits. Yet, we know that many are hesitant to enroll in college or university because of the perceived unaffordability of earning a credential or degree.
This led our organizations to explore what kind of return on investment higher education institutions — part of a stale, antiquated system that does not always deliver on its promise of economic mobility and equity — provide to their learners. The ensuing report produced more nuanced data to inform continuing conversations on the value of postsecondary education, which, frankly, helps learners and their families make decisions on where they want to make a higher education investment from a value and return-on-investment perspective.
Our first step was to look at the value that California institutions offer their low- and moderate-income learners. We also wanted to know if certain college programs or credentials made a difference.
After all, learners who choose a postsecondary education should end up better off for it, right?
The good news we found was, yes, most students were better off for the most part. The troubling news, though, was that for some students, it was not always, and sometimes, never.
We’ve also learned that sometimes a student’s college major can matter just as much for an economic return-on-investment — if not more — than the institution itself. Some programs provide a strong return, but some offer none whatsoever, even leaving some degree or credential graduates making less than a high school graduate.
For example, we found that almost all programs (97%) offered at public institutions in California show their graduates being able to earn back the costs of obtaining a degree or credential within only five years. Essentially, these graduates earn enough of an “additional income” because of their college degree to make their college program worth it.
And, also impressive, nearly half of public college programs (48%) allow this within one year’s time. Programs at private nonprofit colleges in California generally take students longer, as only 7% enable graduates to recoup their costs within 12 months. And worrisomely, for-profit colleges show their graduates struggling to recoup their college costs, and nearly a fifth of their programs (17%) show no economic return whatsoever.
This work is not a denouncement of any specific program or desired area of study, but rather an opportunity for further research to understand why and how these institutions and college programs produce these outcomes and where there may be policy and practical implications.
A simple example of such a practical change may be for institutions to provide a clearer picture to students before they enroll of how much a specific program will cost — and provide information on how much former students typically earn. Another may be more geared toward college administrators to ensure that they are equipping students with the right skills — and necessary credentials — to pursue and succeed in careers within the geographic region where the institution is located.
Institutional leaders and elected officials must lean into discussions that are happening right now about the value of a college education and how it ties to learners’ futures and where improvements can happen.
While more questions must be answered — and more research will follow — one thing has become abundantly clear: Our higher education system can no longer be enabled by a “this is the way we do things” mentality in places where it is not working.
Postsecondary attainment must be tied to value, economic mobility and equity, as this is essential to creating a higher education system that drives a robust, inclusive economy that works for all Californians.
•••
Eloy Ortiz Oakley is president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, whose mission is based on a belief in the power of postsecondary opportunity.
Michael Itzkowitz is founder and president of the HEA Group, a research and consulting agency focused on college access, value, and economic mobility.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
EdSource receives funding from many foundations, including The College Futures Foundation. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.
Community college bachelor’s degree programs can provide a concrete pathway to socioeconomic mobility, while helping achieve the dream of completing a bachelor’s degree for students who have not been served by any other public college sector, especially among populations who are historically underserved.
Nationwide, 187 community colleges in 24 states are now authorized to offer at least one bachelor’s degree program. It has been nearly a decade since 15 California community colleges first offered a bachelor’s degree program, and there are now at least 38 California community colleges that can do so. A survey of students participating in California’s pilot program found that more than half would not have pursued a bachelor’s degree had it not been offered at their community college.
Given that these programs can improve access to bachelor’s degree programs and jobs, it is frustrating that the programs are not more widely available across the state’s 116 community college campuses, which are closer to home for far more of the state’s students than either a UC or CSU campus.
Unfortunately, community colleges have historically had a complicated standing within the higher education ecosystem, and their bachelor’s degree programs have been held back by stigma, suspicion and scrutiny.
Stigma is palpable in references to community colleges as “junior” or “lower-tier” colleges, despite California authorizing them to provide bachelor’s degrees nearly a decade ago. Suspicion is evident in claims that community colleges are not cooperating with other entities, despite California’s policies that give universities the power to delay and even prevent community colleges from offering bachelor’s degrees. Scrutiny refers to the numbers of hoops that community colleges must jump through, especially with bachelor’s degree program approval.
But California’s community colleges are an important feature of the higher education landscape. Serving nearly 2 million students annually, it is the largest higher education system in the country. Despite evidence of their success in providing a concrete pathway to jobs and socioeconomic mobility, community college bachelor’s degree programs continue to face many roadblocks that do not center students’ and communities’ best interest at heart.
Let’s address common myths about community college bachelor’s degree programs:
Myth 1: These programs duplicate existing academic programs and steal students from colleges.
Reality: By 2030, there is a projected state shortage of 1.1 million bachelor’s degrees. Community college bachelor’s degree programs are one solution to this supply problem. Research shows California’s community college bachelor’s degree programs provide a pathway to bachelor’s degrees for people who likely would not have had it otherwise. They especially benefit older students — 77% of community college bachelor’s degree program students are 25 or older, compared with just 23% at California State University (CSU). There is no concrete evidence, to our knowledge, that shows that community college bachelor’s degree programs are “stealing” students from other public education segments in California. Research in Florida shows no decline in regional public university enrollment when community colleges offered a bachelor’s degree.
Myth 2: Community colleges lack quality and produce poor outcomes.
Myth 3: It is easy for community college bachelor’s degree programs to get approved.
Reality: Current policies create unique hurdles for community colleges that want to offer bachelor’s degrees. While California’s process of approving community college bachelor’s degree programs is similar to other states in some ways, it is unique in terms of the power that the CSU and University of California (UC) systems have to delay or prevent them from happening at all. For example, when Feather River College attempted to offer a bachelor’s degree in applied fire management, Cal Poly Humboldt — a college 270 miles away — objected to the program, citing duplication despite the fact that the fire program at Humboldt did not even exist yet.
It is easy to get caught up in preconceived myths about community colleges. But the reality is that community colleges are beneficial for students, and, by offering bachelor’s degrees, they can support the economic mobility of more students.
As California faces growing demand for bachelor’s degree holders, these programs offer a practical solution that deserves recognition and support rather than continued stigma, suspicion and scrutiny. Given their success, policymakers should strengthen and support these programs, allowing them to grow alongside other college options in California.
Debra D. Bragg is president of Bragg & Associates and endowed professor emerita of higher education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Elizabeth Meza is a senior research scientist at the University of Washington and a New America Education Policy Program Fellow for Community Colleges.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
The international students office at Grossmont College in El Cajon,.
Amy DiPierro
Top Takeaways
About 14,000 international students attend California’s community colleges, many of them in the Bay Area.
Community colleges charge international students as much as 10 times resident tuition.
The Trump administration said it is restoring abruptly revoked international student visas, but anxiety persists.
As Kaung Lett Yhone finished high school at home in Myanmar, he knew he wanted to go to college in the U.S. So to find the perfect fit, he did what anyone would do: He searched online.
“I looked up on Google, ‘best community college,’ and De Anza showed up as No. 1,” he said. So he soon enrolled at De Anza College, a two-year school located in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, which has an international reputation for preparing students for transfer into their dream universities.
Yhone, a biology student, plans to transfer from De Anza to a four-year institution next fall. He has his sights set on two San Francisco Bay Area gems — Stanford or, failing that, Berkeley — just as international students are getting more scrutiny than ever from the Trump administration, provoking anxiety among them.
Yhone is one of 14,000 international students enrolled in California’s community colleges as of fall 2023, with the largest shares clustered at institutions in the Bay Area. Public two-year colleges, though better known for educating U.S. students from their immediate area, enrollroughly 12% of international students in California. Some community colleges have made overseas recruiting a specialty, as a way to boost tuition revenue and add cultural variety to their campuses.
International enrollment attracts more attention at higher-profile bachelor’s degree-granting campuses such as the University of Southern California and UC San Diego. Some people are surprised to learn that community colleges have substantial numbers.However, more international students attended community colleges in California in the 2023-24 school year than in any other state.
But with the Trump administration’s visa policies possibly discouraging their enrollment, the number of international students who will re-enroll next school year is an important question for California community colleges. Some community colleges, like De Anza, now depend on international students for as much as 7% of enrollment.
Media reports estimate that as many as 4,700 international students nationwide have had their visas abruptly revoked in recent weeks, including more than a dozen California community college students. In what appears to be a reversal, the Trump administration shifted and said it will reactivate those visas pending a new framework for visa terminations. But anxiety remains among college staff who work most closely with them.
“You have no idea how nervous I am,” said Nazy Galoyan, De Anza College’s dean of enrollment services and head of international student programs, before news of the Trump administration’s reversal broke. “To go to California and Silicon Valley and get your education, that’s something that is absolutely a dream, right? And students really work hard toward that. What we’re going through, I don’t know, that dream might be jeopardized.”
Galoyan’s college has experienced the student visa crackdown firsthand. De Anza enrolls 1,100 international students, according to federal data for fall 2023. And at least six had their F-1 visa records terminated in the initial round of Trump administration actions. It’s not alone among community colleges in having visas canceled. Santa Monica College, which enrolls almost 1,700 international students, reported seven visa terminations.
In interviews, international students at California community colleges were happy to explain why they came to school here, but declined time and again to discuss the threat of visa terminations.
Some community colleges could feel the effects of a student visa crackdown even if their students are not directly impacted or are granted a reprieve after having a visa revoked.
There is “no indication that it will become any easier for international students to gain new visas, and the chaos caused by the government’s revocation and later reversal will likely cause even more turmoil and unease in the international student community,” said Carrie B. Kisker, a director of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Center for the Study of Community Colleges, in an email. “Without clear guidance on what international students can expect in the coming months and years, I don’t think that the government’s about-face will ease any concerns about the U.S. being a safe and welcoming place to study.”
Non-resident tuition, diversity and ‘a little bit of prestige’
In international students, community colleges see a source of higher tuition, diversity and “even a little bit of prestige,” said Linda Serra Hagedorn, a professor emeritus at Iowa State University who has studied the role of international students in community colleges.
De Anza College is among those that have cultivated students from overseas. Many enroll from Asian countries, including China, Japan and South Korea. But the college also gets students from Europe, Africa and Latin America — “from everywhere,” said Galoyan, who makes two trips annually to recruit students abroad, one to central Asia and another to Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Nuri Illini Ahmad, who graduated from the College of San Mateo in 2019, came across the Bay Area community college while attending a recruitment fair in her home country, Malaysia. New York University and George Washington University were advertising their campuses, too, but she thought the San Mateo campus would be a better fit for her budget and interest in studying media. There was even a Malaysian student featured in the college flyer.
“We got in contact with the student, and then somehow, that person ended up being one of my closest friends as well,” she said.
International students at De Anza pay $276 per unit. At Santa Monica College, they and other nonresidents pay a total of $444 per unit — nearly 10 times as much as California residents.
But from the perspective of international students, a California community can still be a bargain. An international student on track to graduate from Santa Monica College in two years would pay $13,320 in tuition a year, assuming they don’t get any scholarships or other discounts. The same non-resident student would pay $19,770 at a California State University (CSU) campus, $50,328 at a University of California (UC) campus and $73,260 at the University of Southern California without financial aid.
Eyeing a path to top-tier universities — and, perhaps, a day at the beach
In brochures and other marketing materials, community colleges around California paint a glittering portrait of what it’s like to be an international student on their campus.
Irvine Valley College, which enrolled about 550 international students as of fall 2023, seeks to beguile prospective international students with a promotional video. “A lot of international students dream of graduating from a UC or top private university. Whatever you choose, your future starts at Irvine Valley College,” an unseen narrator intones, before the video cuts to a series of testimonials from international students. “You’ll enjoy great weather year round and world-class shopping, culture and beaches are nearby.”
Grossmont College in El Cajon, with almost 190 international students last school year, has its own promotional video interspersing images of nearby downtown San Diego and Balboa Park. Among other perks, a Grossmont website touts small classes and “camping in the desert, kayaking in San Diego Bay, and barbeques at the beach.”
Community colleges also pitch their campuses to international students as a less expensive route to a four-year degree, a place to fine-tune English language skills and prepare for bachelor’s degrees from prestigious institutions.
In fall 2024, De Anza College students who applied to aUniversity of California campus had an 81% acceptance rate; Diablo Valley and Irvine Valley students were not far behind, with roughly 80% and 79% acceptance rates to UC, respectively.
Dinara Usonova, a business major at De Anza, decided in high school in Kyrgyzstan to apply to U.S. community colleges rather than go straight to a four-year university. That, she believed, would allow her to adjust to the American higher education system and give her time to improve her English before attending a university. The cost was also attractive to Usonova, who pays rent and other living expenses on her own.
Usonova has been admitted to Berkeley and is waiting to hear from additional universities before deciding where to transfer this fall.
“Going to community college, paying cheaper tuition and getting all these kinds of experiences and building my foundation, I think it was a great choice,” she said.
‘I feel so much at home’
Statewide, international students at community colleges contributed $591 million to the California economy last school year, according to an analysis by NAFSA, a nonprofit association for higher education professionals who work with international students.
Santa Monica College’s international students added an estimated economic value of $56 million and another 245 jobs, NAFSA found.
Santa Monica’s international students, who are from about 100 different countries, contribute significant non-resident tuition revenue to the campus, said Pressian Nicolov, the college’s dean of international education, in an email. Losing those students and the nonresident tuition they bring “would result in a significant impact on college programs and, ultimately, on all students.”
But the loss of international students would not just be financial, he said.
“There would be fewer opportunities to engage with global viewpoints, fewer opportunities for domestic students to develop life-changing cross-cultural friendships and learn about diverse cultures,” Nicolov said.
Nuri Illini Ahmad, second from right, and other Malaysian MARA Scholars in their traditional clothing at the College of San Mateo’s 2016 World Village.Courtesy of Nuri Illini Ahmad
International students provide “huge value” to campus culture, Galoyan at De Anza added. Many experience culture shock when they first arrive, but most adapt and become active in the community, joining clubs and even the student government.
That’s the case for Yhone, who is the legislative liaison for the Inter Club Council, a coordinating body for more than 60 student clubs at De Anza. Since enrolling, he has also helped to reactivate two clubs: the De Anza Red Cross and the Business Information Technology Club.
“There are so many opportunities, so many clubs to expose yourself to here,” Yhone said.
Ahmad,the student who finished at San Mateo, succeeded in earning a four-year degree from a U.S. college — and then some. She earned a bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University, then advanced to a master’s program at Columbia University.
For now, Ahmad is watching the U.S. from London, where she’s seeking work as a freelance video producer after a job in New York ended abruptly, forcing her to leave the country. If she were a high school senior today, she said, she would probably start college in the U.S. all over again. “I know it sounds weird saying this,” she said, “but I feel so much at home when I was there.”
The California Teachers Association testifies in support of the compromise.
Co-author: Reaching a deal was by far her hardest challenge as a legislator.
Up against a deadline, an Assembly committee endorses a bill they haven’t actually read.
A new bill that could reshape early reading instruction quickly passed its first test in the Legislature on Wednesday, with a major opponent doing an about-face and publicly announcing support.
Members of the Assembly Education Committee unanimously passed Assembly Bill 1454 after a short hearing. The compromise legislation that Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas helped create, after months of stalemate, won over the California Teachers Association (CTA).
“Reasonable people can disagree on reasonable things, but we also can show the world how you can disagree and come together,” said Patricia Rucker, a lobbyist for the CTA and former member of the State School Board. “We’re committed to continuing the work on this bill to keep the bill moving forward.”
Advocates of a comprehensive statewide approach to early literacy say the bill would fill in significant gaps in what has been missing under the state’s current policy of local control over instructional decisions.
The main elements are:
The California Department of Education would select teacher training programs in reading instruction for TK-3 that are aligned with “evidence-based practices.”
The State Board of Education will designate appropriate TK-8 textbooks for reading instruction, also based on evidence-based practices and aligned to the state English language arts framework and English language development framework for English learners. School districts would have to choose among those or seek a waiver from the state board.
The Commission on Teacher Credentialing would update school administrator standards to include training for principals and district administrators on supporting effective literacy instruction.
Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, the author of a previous bill that stalled and is now co-authoring AB 1454, said at the hearing that negotiating the compromise “by far, has been the hardest thing that I have ever done in nine years as a legislator.”
“Sometimes I was ready to walk away,” she said, “but for the coalition (of supporters), parents, family members, and of course, our speaker, for finally sitting us down and saying, ‘Get it done. Get it done.’ ”
Several Education Committee members said they appreciated the effort.
“You can find people who are struggling readers in every community,” said Darshana Patel, D-San Diego. “To know that you are focused on making sure the very fundamental, foundational skill of learning to read is available for every single child is so meaningful and important.”
The language of AB 1454 and its implementation over the next several years will determine its effectiveness. Members of the Assembly Education Committee, however, relied on a staff analysis of the bill, not the bill itself. It has yet to be released, because the intense talks that led to the deal continued into this week, leaving not enough time for the Legislative Counsel to vet the wording before the final hearing for new bills.
AB 1454 contains many key elements of AB 1121, a contested bill, authored by Alvardo and co-sponsored by advocacy nonprofits EdVoice and Families In Schools, Decoding Dyslexia CA and the California NAACP. First introduced last year and reintroduced this year, it stalled because of disagreement with CTA and English learner advocacy groups over how much research-based training should emphasize foundational skills, starting with phonics in TK to Grade 2 and progressing to learning vocabulary, oral skills, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. Together, they are known as structured literacy or “the science of reading.”
English learner advocates, including Californians Together, argue that a rigid application of structured literacy would ignore the needs of English learners and attention to bilingual language learners.
Under AB 1454, reading instruction training would be optional, not mandatory, although districts must provide state-approved courses to be reimbursed by the state. The bill’s language will also call attention to the needs of English learners, and the California Department of Education will consult with a range of language-acquisition experts, including English learner organizations, when choosing the programs.
The bill will skirt fights over semantics by avoiding references to structured literacy and the science of reading. However, the bill is expected to require aligning training to existing statutory requirements for reading instruction, which specify foundational skills.
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, drew an optimistic analogy to the state effort to require universal screening for potential reading challenges. CTA and English learner advocacy groups initially opposed that initiative, but later supported the effort, after extensive negotiations and agreement on an advisory committee of experts. “This fall, 1.2 million kids, kindergarten, first and second grade will be screened for reading difficulties, including risk of dyslexia,” he said.
Tracking progress with data
Tuck said that under the bill, the state will begin collecting data for the first time on how many teachers complete the training, and which training programs, textbooks and materials districts choose. “And then collectively, we can all say, OK, these districts are making real progress. They had consistency. They used similar programs and they trained a lot of teachers. Maybe these districts aren’t making as much progress.”
Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, an English learner growing up, said the issue will be not just how widespread the training is, but whether it’s appropriately used. “At the end of the day, it’s what is happening with the students who are the ones who are struggling,” he said, adding that he appreciated the bill’s attention to biliteracy.
“This is a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said, adding that progress is happening in small reading cohorts with one-on-one literacy coaching. “How we track that would be helpful.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom included $250 million in his initial 2025-26 state budget he proposed in January, but since then the financial outlook has darkened; money for new programs is expected to be scarce. However, Rivas as Assembly speaker; Alvarez, as chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance; and Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, a co-author of AB 1454 and chair of the Assembly Education Committee, are well-positioned to see the bill passed and funded. Newsom, who has funded several early literacy initiatives in the past four years, may be receptive.
No member of the public spoke against the bill. Instead, EdVoice, Families in Schools, and Innovate Public Schools, based in San Francisco, organized dozens of parents, members of the Black Parallel School Board and supporters to travel to Sacramento. Although they signed up for Rubio’s stalled bill, they switched bills when they learned of the compromise. They were given time to say just one sentence.
“I’m a parent of a dyslexic who only learned to read in the third grade because of outside resources,” said Alyson Henry. “I’m here in support of 1454.”
“On behalf of the Sacramento Literacy Foundation, the Sacramento Literacy Coalition, the 200,000 kids who are not reading at grade level right now, and my son, a struggling reader, I am in support of 1454,” said April Jarvis.
Most of us have never met a transgender person. The first time I knowingly met a transgender person was 2016, in Los Angeles, where I met Caitlyn Jenner, once celebrated as the Olympic superstar Bruce Jenner. I attended a corporate luncheon, where she was the main draw for an audience of young people (of which I was not one).
Trump and his friends have made a major issue of demonizing trans men and women, although they are a tiny proportion of the population (1%?) and threaten no one. So far as I know, they are not murderers, rapists, or members of violent gangs. What they want is to live their lives in peace, without harassment.
My view, as I have often expressed in the comments section, is that it’s not up to me or you or Trump to tell them how to live. The decisions they make are not my business nor anyone else’s aside from their parents and medical professionals. In Caitlyn’s case, she decided to transition at the age of 65, a decade ago. She is a political anomaly, as she supported Trump in the 2024 election, despite the hysteria he promoted about trans people.
Here is a better representative of a trans woman: Hannah Szabó.
Hannah Szabó
A friend sent me a video of Hannah Szabó speaking at Central Synagogue in Manhattan on April 4. She is a senior at Yale. She is editor-in-chief of the Yale Historical Review and has a double major in Computing-&-Linguistics (B.S.) and Comparative Literature (B.A.).
Central Synagogue is a historic reform synagogue. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is the first and probably the only Korean-American rabbi in the country. Both my sons celebrated their bar mitzvahs in this synagogue almost 50 years ago.
Nature is a kind of therapy at TimberNook ,where children play in the woods to heal behavorial issues.
credit: TimberNook
Jumping off rocks. Climbing trees. Hanging upside down. Spinning so fast it would make an adult dizzy.
Meet Angela Hanscom, an occupational therapist who has come to the conclusion that children need adventurous activities to develop a healthy sense of body and mind. Not only do children need way more movement than our sedentary society allows them, she suggests, but they need precisely the kinds of movements that make adults gasp, if they are going to thrive.
Angela Hanscom, an occupational therapist who founded TimberNook. credit: TimberNook
Often brought into classrooms to solve behavioral issues, Hanscom realized that children today do not get enough free play, exploration and exercise to allow them to focus properly in school. She began using movement as therapy, helping kids heal through spinning too fast on the merry-go-round and flying too high on the swings.
Hanscom, a mother of three, founded TimberNook in 2013. It began as an experimental therapy program in her own backyard before expanding to three woodland sites in Maine and spreading to franchises nationally.
She recently discussed her philosophy of child development, which is also the theme of her book, “Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children.”
How dangerous is it for children to be too sedentary?
The current research is that kids sit in chairs for about nine hours a day. Being driven to school, being driven home from school, sitting for hours. And then they go home and they have homework. They might have some sports, but a lot of times they’re still in an upright position.
What really needs to happen is kids need to spin in circles. They need to go upside down because inside the inner ear are these little hair cells, and when we move in rapid ways, the fluid in the ears moves back and forth, stimulating those hair cells and developing what we call the vestibular sense. If that’s underdeveloped because kids are not moving enough, then what happens is it can affect what we call sensory integration, which is basically organization of the brain so they can learn.
Why is it important for kids to climb trees and jump off rocks?
It helps you know where your body is in space so you can stay in your seat without falling out. That’s actually an issue. Kids are literally falling out of the chairs in school now. The way we treat that as occupational therapists is that we have kids spin in circles, and that helps them gain more body awareness so they can navigate their environments effectively.
Sometimes I’ll see a kid spinning in circles and I’ll hear an adult say, don’t spin. You’re going to get dizzy or get off that rock, you’re going to get hurt. But if we, as adults, keep them from moving in those ways, we have actually become the barrier to the neurological development that needs to happen so they can become safe in their environment.
credit: TimberNook
Some may call your style of outdoor therapy radical and progressive, others might see it as common sense. How do you describe it?
I think of it more like a restoration. I don’t think this is a progressive idea. As an occupational therapist, for me, the true occupation of a child is play. And outdoor play is a really meaningful one for most of us. Most of us have fond memories of it, but it’s also really at risk. … That’s why it’s so therapeutic. That’s why a lot of therapists will train in this, because they see how healing it is. It’s giving children what you had, what they were always meant to have.
It’s actually a very traditional approach, as opposed to something radical.
Yes, we’re just trying to protect a tradition. We’re saying you can’t touch this. For instance, when we go into schools, teachers aren’t allowed to go into playtime and do teachable moments. We save that for later. This is their time where they have to figure things out. The children need that time.
Have you sort of recreated your own childhood?
Growing up in Vermont, it was a bunch of kids, we’d have like five or six of us. But at TimberNook, it’s like 25 children out in the woods creating societies with natural materials. It’s a dream come true for kids. It’s outdoor play for hours. It challenges them to think creatively.
When did you start collaborating with schools?
We started going to schools with TimberNook in 2017. That was a fascinating process. We’re in 10 schools now, but one in particular, Laconia Christian Academy, is really doing it right. They started it five years ago, and they did it once a week for two hours, TimberNook time at school, and immediately saw benefits. So they increased it to four hours of woodland time.
It’s a very academic school. So when they saw the benefits, they took their half an hour of recess and went to an hour, on top of their four hours of TimberNook time.
Did increasing play time have an impact on academic performance?
During the pandemic they saw no change in academics. If anything, they saw an increase. The headmaster said, we’re seeing joy, we’re seeing kids more resilient, stronger, able to figure out their own problems. So that’s been really interesting. We’re researching that now with the University of New Hampshire on how it’s changing the culture of schools. That study is just starting, but it’s really going to be fascinating, because I think it’s time to rethink what we’re doing in schools.
What lured kids away from playing outside? Screens? Or parental fear of dangers outside?
One of the biggest factors is due to fear. Fear is something that we cannot see, but it is one of the major reasons why parents and schools aren’t providing enough outdoor play time. Fear that there isn’t enough time for play in school settings. The tendency to feel schools need to push more academics. Fear that children will miss out if not playing enough sports at a very really early age. This leads to overscheduling of children for sports. … Screen time is also another major factor. It is highly addictive and is replacing a lot of good old-fashioned playtime. The kind where children are digging in the dirt for hours, rolling down hills, developing the muscles and senses for healthy child development.
For a lot of families, the pandemic meant forcing your kid to stare at a screen for hours for remote learning, and now it’s hard to walk that back.
We’re in a bigger hole than we were before. I think the pandemic unveiled a lot of the issues and then just made it worse, unfortunately.
Are you optimistic that we can try to make that change as a society?
I really think people are waking up. I think the time is now, there’s so much interest, and everyone you talk to now knows that this is an issue.
