Teaching is often pegged as being an exhausting profession.
When I first became a teacher, I was constantly exhausted by the end of the day. As a budding teacher, I had a mentor who always brought up thought-provoking questions, allowed me to struggle in order to grow, and guided me as an effective mentor should.
Now, as a veteran teacher myself, one thing he told me really stuck with me: At the end of the day, the kids should be exhausted, not you.
When I first heard this, I didn’t really understand the significance of it. As time passed, and my teaching style evolved, I realized how right he was. Being a teacher means having a passion for the content and the kids. This can create a slippery slope of wanting to be the perfect teacher — the one showcased on social media and paraded by their district. But striving to be the perfect teacher can sometimes overshadow the real purpose of teaching: allowing the students to grow and shine.
As a first-year teacher, I felt like I needed to talk the entire period in order to be most effective. The truth is, the less I talked, the more students were encouraged to talk. When students are talking, the learning becomes more meaningful. Getting students to talk, research, write and share their ideas is going to exhaust them in the best way possible. The period will fly and opinions will be formed, changed and formed again. Getting students to talk, debate topics and see others’ perspectives is how meaningful and authentic learning occurs.
But, had you told me that during my first year of teaching, I would have brushed you off and claimed that it wouldn’t be feasible in a science classroom. Now, as a veteran teacher, I am happy to say that it works wonderfully in a science classroom, and I’m willing to bet it would work in any classroom or content area. I’ve created a few steps that you can explore to encourage student discourse.
Start small. In the first week of school, I always play a 10-minute game of “would you rather?” Students all stand up, much to their dismay, and I present them with two choices.These choices are silly, gross and downright stupefying. Students opting for choice 1 go to the right of the room, choice 2 go to the left. Then, I call on a few students to explain their choice. This silly game just created a small foundation in the classroom, one built on openness and encouraging discussion.
Be consistent. Each topic we learn, no matter what the content area, has room for debate. One topic I like to bring up is whether humans should create and maintain animal sanctuaries. At first glance, the topic doesn’t seem that controversial. However, once you take into account who pays for the services, the land used for them or the importance of keeping wild animals wild, the conversation naturally flows. By the end of the class, the students are hooked and want the conversation to continue. Each week, students read articles of high rigor to support or refute their stance. This creates the buy-in teachers are always looking for.
Allow all voices to be heard. When you create a classroom environment of open discussion, you have to be prepared for disagreement. Setting the stage for all voices to be heard, as long as they’re respectful, is vital to making a safe learning environment. Set the expectations, keep them consistent and allow all students to share their opinions on the topic. Encouraging them to make arguments based on evidence from the text or visual aids will take the learning even deeper.
Students are used to sitting in a classroom, filling out the worksheet, and moving on throughout their day. There is a huge difference between compliance and engagement. It is beautiful to take the same content, make it engaging and get students thinking hard. Students, no matter where they are academically or socially, have opinions. Sharing their views while using evidence will open doors and expand their understanding of the world around them. So, by the end of the day, are you exhausted or are your students?
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Kati Begen is a high school biology educator and credential coach in Fresno. She is currently working on her doctorate in curriculum and assessment at Southern Wesleyan University. More articles by Kati Begen.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Two years ago, I was ready to give up everything from my old life and move 3,000 miles away to pursue journalism at San Diego State University. This meant leaving behind my friends, family and my passion for singing and performance. I was sure I would have to leave behind my musical side to focus on my academics, take on a campus job and join the student newspaper.
Or did I?
I have been singing almost my entire life, and did so anywhere I could. The first evidence comes from a 2007 video, where 3-year-old me danced around my living room singing “I’m Wishing” from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” A few years later, I took the hobby from my living room to the stage. I joined the school choir and began performing in local productions.
From then until my high school graduation in 2022, there was not a month that went by where I wasn’t in a show, choir or dance class.
Music and theater were always my favorite hobbies, but not something I saw myself pursuing as a career. I decided to study journalism in college after discovering my passion for it during my senior year of high school.
But after dedicating countless hours of my life to performance, how could I leave all that behind in pursuit of my degree?
Luckily, I didn’t have to.
Performing served me so well during my time in high school, allowing me to form lifelong friendships and escape from my other endeavors, so I decided to take the risk and blend my old life into my new college one. I soon found the a cappella group I wanted to join: SoundWave.
I had never done a cappella before, but I wanted to give it a shot. Once I had settled into my first week of freshman year, I signed up to audition and was welcomed into a wonderful community.
Unfortunately, the rest of my first semester at university did not go so smoothly. I was in a rough living situation at my dorm and had trouble making friends. Every day, I wanted nothing more than to transfer home.
But when I went to rehearsal, I left those troubles at the door and found solace in a community that valued every single one of its members. At the time, I had wished that we had rehearsal every day.
Now in my third year of college, and feeling more settled, I am grateful that my SoundWave commitment is flexible, allowing time for my academics and outside endeavors, such as work and an internship.
I believe in the importance of career-focused pursuits. As a journalism major, I report and write for my college newspaper, The Daily Aztec, and am part of the leadership for our Society of Professional Journalists chapter.
However, I also believe in the importance of joining clubs that exist outside your academic realm. Not only do such activities make you stand out to potential employers, but they are also a great way to meet people with similar interests.
Jacob Opatz, a fourth-year computer science major who currently serves as the president of SoundWave, agrees.
“People always cite the studies that say ‘music is good for your brain,’ but on a deeper level, having a community on campus and working towards a creative goal is so important for my mental health,” he said. “Also, since my major is computer science, I’m desperate to find something creative and fun to break up my otherwise boring schedule.”
Extracurricular activities in grade schools have been proven to improve optimism and lower depression and screen time, according to a 2020 study by Preventative Medicine.
As a college student, I am on my laptop for at least eight hours a day. When I’m not on my laptop, I’m usually on my phone scrolling social media.
Rehearsal gets me to put the screen down and create something with the people around me.
We rehearse two days a week. Members are also expected to practice on their own each day. However, the competition season is more hectic. In the months leading up to the quarterfinals for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella, our two-hour rehearsals turn into three.
New member and third-year psychology major Lexy Sakrekoff has had to make some sacrifices to be in the group.
“I used to go home more on the weekends to visit my mom in Oceanside, but now I avoid that because of our Sunday rehearsals,” she said.
However, Sakrekoff says the sacrifice is worth it.
“It helps that [my friends and family] are also super supportive and excited that I’m in SoundWave. I even rehearse my songs in front of them, and that’s always fun for them to listen to,” she said. There have definitely been times when I was up late doing homework after rehearsal or had to cut down my work hours due to performances. But despite my junior year being the busiest so far, SoundWave has always felt like a vital outlet rather than an obligation.
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Students walking on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024.
Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource
Diego Lopez, a student in his last year at Cal State San Marcos, gives the north San Diego County campus high marks. The Army veteran likes his classes, feels the campus is generally well-managed and appreciates that at the school’s current size, “you can just chill, and relax, and not get too overwhelmed.”
But Lopez can tell the student body is expanding, especially at the start of the semester, when he has to navigate crowded parking lots.
“The parking lots are so full, so you have to make sure you get here early. And then just right across the street, you see all the construction being done,” he said. “You can definitely tell: This school is growing a lot, and it’s growing fast.”
The number of students at the suburban Cal State San Marcos campus has mushroomed over the past decade. It’s now home to 14,655 students, an almost 15% jump since 2015, among the sharpest increases of any Cal State campus in that period.
But that is not the case across the 23 campuses of the California State University system. Overall systemenrollment has settled at 2.7% lower than a decade ago after tumbling more deeply during the pandemic.Andbehind that numberis a more complicated picture, with some individual campuses showing double-digit percent increaseseven asothers have experienced big decreases.
While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system in spring 2023, prompting the university to open some housing to nonstudents.
Falling enrollment has prompted a period of tight finances at the Sonoma State campus. Tess Wilkinson, a fourth-year transfer student studying communications, said she saw fewer courses being offered. She suspects budget cuts are one reason why.
“I even noticed some professors that had regularly taught courses in my major were no longer on the course schedule at all,” she said. “Some courses were thrown together to accommodate abrupt faculty changes — and student engagement in my classes felt like it had decreased.”
The divergence between San Marcos and Sonoma shows how the enrollment challenge facing the nation’slargest university system defies a one-size-fits-all solutionabout how to serve students and where to spend money around the state.
The trend continued this fall, with enrollment up from the year before at 15 campuses and down at eight. That uneven distribution of new students is in part due to regional differences in population, the cost of living and labor markets. It may also reflect whether they cater primarily to commuters or on-campus residents, offer higher- or lower-demand degrees and serve more or fewer students sensitive to last year’s federal financial aid delays.
Even in a year when enrollment across the Cal State system rose a modest 1.5%, some campus leaders enjoyed a banner college acceptance season. Cal State Monterey Bay, whose 16% enrollment bump was the system’s largest 2023-24, sold out on-campus housing for the first time in a decade this fall, according to Ben Corpus, its vice president for enrollment management and student affairs.
At the other extreme, lower-enrolled CSU campuses must contend with the financial fallout from less revenue from tuition and fees. Sonoma State and Cal State Los Angeles, which notched the largest year-to-year enrollment drop in the system, have instituted hiring freezes and cut course sections to bridge funding gaps.
Those stakes have not escaped the notice of campuses at both ends of the enrollment yo-yo. EdSource interviewed students, faculty and administrators at Sonoma State and Cal State San Marcos about how they think course offerings, student clubs, construction and, yes, parking are changing as their schools get bigger or smaller.
Students walk on the campus of Sonoma State University.Credit: Ally Valiente / EdSource
Sonoma State
An hour north of San Francisco, Sonoma State University celebrates its location on the edge of the Russian River Valley by naming its dorms for wine varietals and regions from Beaujolais to Zinfandel.
But wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes in this region of the state since 2017, a shock from which its population and already expensivehousing market are still recovering. That has made it harder to recruit students from other parts of the state, who are a significant part of the student body, officials said. Sonoma State’s enrollment has slid almost 39% since 2015. Cal State’s 2022-23 financial statements put the school’s average residence hall occupancy at just 65%. The university has opened some of its student housing to faculty, staff, students with young children or even people visiting campus for a conference.
Collapsing enrollment over the decade slowed to a 1% dip this year. Still, the smaller student body has prompted a serious cash crunch. Sonoma State, which has a $130 million operating budget this school year, anticipates a $21 million budget deficit going into 2025-26.
“It’s pretty simplistic sort of math: We just don’t have enough students paying the tuition to fully cover all of the expenses we have,” Emily F. Cutrer, the university’s interim president, said at an Oct. 28 town hall to discuss Sonoma State’s budget forecast.
Cutrer said the university would have to add more than 3,000 students — a 52%increase over fall 2024 — to cover its current deficit, a goal she estimated is likely three or four years away. The loss of tuition and fee revenue is compounded by rising employee benefits costs, state funding cuts and an estimated $3.6 million that Cal State is expected to reallocate to other campuses.
Sonoma State is under a hiring freeze and is also pressing pause on some travel. The campus in recent years has offered employees early retirements and buyouts. Part-time and full-time lecturer headcount has fallen almost 25% in the last several years, a spokesperson said. Sonoma State notified the faculty union in October that layoffs could be on the way.
“I would ask people to stop asking us to do more with less. It’s exhausting,” Lauren S. Morimoto, who chairs the university’s department of kinesiology, said at the town hall. “We’re demoralized and we’re burnt out.”
Sonoma State’s struggles are a comedown from a campaign under then-President Ruben Armiñana to bill the university as a “public Ivy” – offering plush new facilities at a state university price – in the 1990s through 2010s. Armiñana’s critics charged that the strategy attracted a wealthier and whiter student body compared with the state’s other public universities.
Judy Sakaki succeeded Armiñana in 2016 with the explicit goal of making Sonoma State more accessible and less elitist. Sakaki’s 2022 resignation ushered in a period of leadership turnover; Cutrer is the third person to lead the university since then.
Tim Wandling, who chairs the English department and serves on the board of the California Faculty Association at Sonoma State, said he’s concerned about leadership instability on campus. He also worries that the university’s top brass “want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing blitzes and new programs, and what they really need to do is just downsize their administrative staff and focus on keeping the good faculty that they have, the good students they have.”
Sonoma State is not alone among Bay Area universities hurting for students. San Francisco State and Cal State East Bay are facing similar declines.
Sonoma State’s relative distance from major population centers has long encouraged admissions staff to look outside their own backyard for prospective students.
Sonoma currently draws 35% of its students from its home county, an additional 63%from elsewhere in California and 1.6%from out of state. University administrators and attendees speaking at the October town hall appeared to favor an all-of-the-above recruitment strategy.
Locally, the campus has struck guaranteed admissions deals with several of the region’s school districts and community colleges. And looking outside Sonoma State’s immediate region, the university is also recruiting in Southern California, looking at ways of retaining students it already has and bringing back students who do not immediately re-enroll each term.
Students work at a library on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024.Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource
Cal State San Marcos
On a mild December afternoon, Cal State San Marcos student Diana Ortega Caballero was reading a book on a terrace overlooking construction cranes. Building sites are among the most visible cues of how the campus is expanding after some pandemic dips.
Ortega Caballero, a transfer student from MiraCosta Community College in nearby Oceanside, said she had “a really easy transition” to San Marcos. Almost a third of San Marcos students start at a California community college.
San Marcos is in good company among Southern California’s CSU campuses that have welcomed more students over the past decade due to regional population growth. San Diego State University is leading the system in enrollment gains since 2015, followed closely by Cal Poly Pomona and San Marcos.
Students interviewed at the campus said they’re largely satisfied with San Marcos. Several noted that the campus feels more accessible than larger CSU campuses. But they conceded experiencing occasional snags as the campus expands, like trouble getting into certain classes or a long wait time to see an academic adviser.
Jackson Puddy, who is studying business administration, was standing outside the library waiting for students to arrive for a pickup chess game. He hoped the school’s growing enrollment would bring more money, more professors and perhaps even more members for the small chess club he runs. The only con? “The parking situation — it’s not going to get any better,” he said, even if students can now reliably find a space in a dirt lot downhill from the main quad.
San Marcos’ growth does not immunize it from the belt-tightening other CSU campuses have begun in anticipation of lower state funding. At a board of trustees meeting in September, President Ellen Neufeldt said a lack of additional faculty could lead to larger class sizes and noted that the school has deferred maintenance on aging electrical systems.
“The challenge we now face is that while we are growing, we are unable to hire the essential employees needed to support our mission of student success,” Neufeldt said. “We urgently require more advisers, success coaches, tutors, financial aid specialists and counselors, and the list goes on and on, to assist our amazing students.”
Ally Valiente, a student at Sonoma State University and a member of the Student Journalism Corps, contributed to this story.
Thom Hartmann is a brilliant journalist who is fast to figure out the stories behind the headlines. Here, he explains why Attorney General Pam Bondi had Milwaukee County Jusge Hannah Dugan arrested and paraded her out of her courthouse in handcuffs. FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted pictures of the judge in handcuffs.
The audience for Pam Bondi‘s performance yesterday — when federal agents swarm-raided a county judge — was not the general public. They don’t care if the story vanishes six or 12 or 24 hours into the news cycle, so long as vanishes. The real audience for their action was a very small number of people: the nation’s judges. They’ve pacified the Article I branch of government, Congress, and now they are in the process of pacifying the article III Judiciary branch. That will leave only the president in charge of the entire country under all circumstances in all ways. That is called dictatorship. Real dictatorship. Vladimir Putin style dictatorship. In fact it appears more and more every day that Putin is Trump’s mentor. If not his handler. And Trump is doing everything he can, with help from a South African billionaire, to destroy the traditional American infrastructure and nation and turn us into the newest member of the dictators club, joining Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, and the rest of the fascist and authoritarian world. And to get there, now that they have pacified Congress, they only have to seize control of the Judiciary and then nothing except we the people will stand in their way. And they know it. First, terrorize Congress. Second, terrorize the media. Third, terrorize the judges and lawyers. (the final step in that process for them will be the Supreme Court, and if they can first terrorize the entire federal judiciary it will be much easier to terrorize the Court). And finally begin terrorizing the individual citizens until the process is complete and we are fully Russia and all dissent is suppressed. And they know that time is running out because elections are coming and their popularity is already crashing. They are at maximum power right now and it is beginning to decline. This is another reason why they are pushing so hard to frighten judges. If Trump can do this as quickly as Hitler or Putin did, it could happen very quickly, possibly even in the next few weeks. Buckle up…
Hartmann also wrote about Trump’s habit of lying:
Busted: Trump stuns Time Magazine with outlandish lies to cover up his trade deal collapse. Donald Trump has lied his entire life, but China’s President Xi is committed to not letting him get away with lying about his trade negotiations with that country. On Tuesday, Trump sat down with two TIME Magazine reporters and repeatedly lied to them, saying that he was negotiating with China and that he’d already cut “over 200” deals with other nations to resolve the trade war he declared roughly a month ago. In fact, as the reporters pointed out, he’s not inked even one single deal so far and, to make things far worse for him, China is actively using social media to tell the world that they’re not even bothering to talk with his people, must less President Xi calling Trump himself. We’ve had some terrible presidents throughout our history and some have done some terrible things; John Adams imprisoning newspaper editors, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan conspiring with foreign countries to steal American elections. But lying to the press and the people on such a routine basis — over 30,000 documented lies in his first term, and daily lies now — is something new in the American experience. Democracy can’t work when a nation can’t trust its leaders to tell them the truth on issues of consequence, which appears to be exactly Trump’s (and Putin’s) goal: the destruction of our republic from the inside, just as Khrushchev predicted.
Then Hartmann wondered why some of Trump’s Wall Street pals are getting stock tips:
Are Wall Street insiders getting stock tips from Trump? And why is Apple moving their production to India instead of the US? Fox’s senior business correspondent Charles Gasparino told his viewers on Thursday that “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House” had informed him that they were getting tips from the Trump administration on trade talks that could (and do) swing markets. When Gasparino approached Treasury Secretary and billionaire Scott Bessent’s press team, they refused to deny the reports. Remember when Martha Stewart went to prison for six months because a doctor friend told her about the results from clinical trials of a new drug and she passed that info along to her stockbroker? Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe the astonishing level of corruption across this administration. Of course, they have a hell of a role model to emulate in Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Apple reports they’re considering moving their iPhone production out of China in response to Trump’s tariff threats. But are they bringing it to Texas or Kentucky? Not a chance. India is the new destination, according to news reports. So much for Eisenhower’s “patriotic American companies”; that was so 1950s. The entire concept of doing good by the country that made you rich is long dead, the victim of the Reagan Revolution’s embrace of neoliberal free trade and doctrine of putting profits above people and patriotism.
Hartmann warns about the grifting, which the Mainstream Media doesn’t seem to care much about:
While America is burning (both economically and from climate change), professional grifter Trump is making out like a bandit. Are Americans paying attention yet? Can you imagine how Republicans would have responded if President Biden had announced that he and his son Hunter were going to start selling autographed pictures of himself for a few thousand dollars each and would be running the business out of the White House? And that the top purchasers — even if they were foreign nationals — would be having a private dinner with him and get a tour of the White House? They’d be fainting in the streets, screaming in front of the cameras, and convening investigations, grand juries, and criminal prosecutions faster than a weasel in a henhouse. But when Trump announced this week that he was selling his meme coins — which are just serial-numbered digital images of Trump or his wife with no intrinsic value — and the top 220 “investors” would have dinner with him, not even one elected Republican stood up to object. This is how far the party has fallen; they’re all in on the grift, and many are looking for ways to cash in on it as apparently Marjorie Taylor Greene did when it was reported it looked like she was buying and selling stocks based on insider information.
California showed progress in some areas, such as health insurance, school discipline and absenteeism.
Allison Yin/EdSource
Top takeaways
Bill seeks to repeal criminal misdemeanor offense of state’s truancy law
CalWORKs sanctions over student truancy would be replaced by screenings for resources and access to work program
Districts in recent years appear less likely to lean on punitive measure to address unexcused student absences
In 2011, when criminal penalties were first tied to truancy, five parents in Orange County were arrested for their children’s truancy. Other counties similarly chose the punitive approach over the years, with Merced County initiating an anti-truancy push in 2017 that included the arrest of 10 parents. Those parents were charged with misdemeanors, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
If a proposed bill is passed this legislative session, jail time and fines of up to $2,000 for parents of truant students could soon be eliminated in California.
Assembly Bill 461, introduced by Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, D-Silicon Valley, would repeal the criminal misdemeanor offense of the existing truancy law, meaning that parents of truant students, 6 years of age or older, in grades 1-8, would no longer be punished by fines or up to a year in county jail.
The bill proposes an additional change: families receiving cash assistance via the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program, known as CalWORKs, would no longer be penalized if a student aged 16 years or older is chronically truant. The current penalty requires that a truant child is removed from the calculation of the family’s monthly cash assistance.
“Criminalizing parents for their children’s truancy ignores the root causes of absenteeism and only deepens family hardships,” said Ahrens in his author’s statement.
Under the state’s truancy law, parents of habitually absent students were previously arrested, but it remains unclear how many cases resulted in criminal charges in the nearly 15 years since it went into effect.
State law dictates that a district can declare a student truant and refer them to the district attorney after three unexcused absences of more than 30 minutes during one school year.
Once a student’s case is referred to the district attorney, prosecutors have wide discretion over how to charge parents for their child’s truancy, from an infraction – akin to a traffic violation, to a misdemeanor – contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
In California, the percentage of chronically absent students catapulted from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, as schools reopened for in-person instruction. The percentage has since dropped to about 20% in 2023-24, according to state data, though rates range widely across student groups.
State education law lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school, but most excused absences are related to illness and mental health. Unexcused absences often mean that students lacked documentation such as a note from a doctor, or that they provided no reason for their absence, or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence, school officials say.
Districts often try to avoid punitive measures
There is no central repository tracking truancy cases, but EdSource found last year that school districts have increasingly gone to great lengths to avoid referring chronically truant students to the local district attorney. Instead, they opt for alternatives such as sending more notifications to parents after a student’s absence than what’s required by law, or scheduling multiple meetings between parents and school staff to better understand and address the underlying reasons for frequent absences.
The decision by districts to lean into alternatives rather than available punitive measures is partly why Ahrens and AB 461’s supporters are pushing to change the law.
“If we’re not prosecuting these cases…then why should we have this in the books? We don’t need the stick if everything else is already working to the benefit of our families,” said Yesenia Jimenez, senior policy associate at End Child Poverty CA, an advocacy organization that co-sponsored the bill.
Eleven organizations have expressed support for the bill, with three of them co-sponsoring, and there is no listed opposition as of Monday.
Early conversations about Assembly Bill 461 focused solely on the link between public benefits and chronic truancy, Jimenez said.
CalWORKS provides cash assistance to families with unmet basic needs, such as housing, food, or medical care. Monthly grants range in amounts dependent on region, income, and the number of eligible family members, with the average monthly grant being about $1,000 during the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Provisions of the proposed law
AB 461 also proposes changes to the CalWORKS program, including:
Entirely eliminating the financial sanction on families if students are deemed truant
Making a family with a truant child eligible for family stabilization services and allowing a student 16 years or older to voluntarily participate in CalWORKS’ welfare-to-work program, so long as their participation supports and does not interfere with school attendance
Qualifying families for stabilization services if they’re undergoing homelessness, undertreated behavioral needs, and including individual or group therapy, temporary housing assistance and parenting education among the services they receive
Granting access to resources such as substance abuse services, vocational education, and mental health services to a truant student aged 16 years or older who opts into the welfare-to-work program
Jimenez, whose team researched the sharp rise in chronic absenteeism at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, said they knew the rates were steadily decreasing each school year.
While AB 461 began as a way to reform public benefits programs, the team behind the bill began to more heavily consider the criminal penalties families might face as a result of truancy once the Trump administration ramped up actions targeting immigrants, Jimenez shared.
“Now we’re just facing a completely other beast in the sense that our families are afraid to go to school because we’re seeing (the Department of Homeland Security) show up at elementary schools attempting to deport families, and families have already been subject to deportation,” she said, referring to a case early this month when immigration officials seeking information about five students in first through sixth grades were denied entry at two Los Angeles Unified elementary schools.
With the provisions of the proposed bill, supporters are looking to circumvent immigrant families from being penalized for school absences due to fear of immigration officials.
“We don’t want (truancy) to be the reason why our families, who we’re trying to protect, could be essentially pipelined not only into the carceral system but certainly into the deportation system at this point in time,” said Jimenez.
Some families opted to keep their children home from school early this year in Kern County after the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol arrested 78 people. At least 40 have been deported, according to a lawsuit filed in February.
A bill signed into law last year requires changes to the truancy notifications sent to families by removing threatening language about punitive measures they might be subject to and instead opting for sharing resources about supportive services, including mental health resources.
Advocates for AB 461 agree with the premise of the bill, said Jimenez, but they wish to go further in removing the potential for arrest.
More graduates in California and nationwide will walk across the stage to receive their high school diplomas in the spring of 2025 than in more than a decade — and more than in decades to come.
The “Knocking at the College Door” report, released Wednesday by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, predicts how many students might graduate across each state in the country, how demographics might shift, and the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic could have an impact still.
The researchers anticipate that the number of students graduating from high schools in the United States will peak next year and then fall gradually until 2041. The number of California graduates is expected to drop across all racial and ethnic demographics — except for multiracial students, who are expected to increase by more than 200%.
“After years of growth, higher education in the United States now faces a decline in the size of the traditional college-going population as well as shifting demographic patterns within that population,” the organization’s president, Demarée K. Michelau, stated in the foreword of the report.
“These enrollment factors and the pressures of inflation and constraints on government funds combine to present the most perplexing set of issues to face higher education planners and administrators in a generation,” the foreword continued.
Here are the key takeaways from the report.
The number of high school graduates is expected to peak in 2025
The number of students graduating from public high schools in both the state and the nation is projected to peak in 2025.
After that, the number is expected to fall steadily from about 3.5 million nationally to 3.1 million in 2041, largely because of decliningbirth and fertility rates, but also because students are projected to take longer to finish their K-12 journeys.
The report notes that net migration and mortality also play a role.
California is one of five high-population states that are expected to make up about three-quarters of the national decline, according to the report.
“When we hit the peak in 2025 and then start declining with the number of high school graduates, that puts more downward pressure on those postsecondary moments,” said report co-author Patrick Lane, who spoke at a press briefing Monday.
“So what are the responses?” Lane asked. “How do we address concerns that students have about value?”
Distributions across race and ethnicity will likely change
Nationwide, Hispanic or multiracial students should make up a greater proportion of high school graduates, while the share of students from otherracial and ethnic backgrounds will decline, according to the report.
But, according to data from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, multiracial students are the only group projected to see an increase in California.
Specifically, in California, between 2023 and 2041:
Multiracial students are projected to increase 224%.
Hispanic students are projected to decrease 25%.
American Indian and Alaska Native students are projected to decrease 58%.
Black students are projected to decrease 62%.
Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students are projected to decrease35%.
White students are projected to decrease 53%.
Not everywhere in the country will see the same trends
The report projects that the decline in the Western U.S. will mirror the nationwide trend. And California’s decline — anticipated to be roughly 29% across both public and private schools — is expected to account for roughly three-quarters of the regional decline.
Meanwhile, the report states that the South will continue to defy broader national trends — first seeing some growth and later a smaller decline.
The pandemic might have a smaller impact than anticipated
According to the report, the Covid-19 pandemic may lead to a slight drop in the number of high school graduates nationwide — only 1% less than what the organization previously projected for 2037.
The 1% change is “within the usual fluctuations,” but the report also states that the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education has historically underreported the number of future graduates and that they have found evidence “of a substantial number of students no longer enrolled, suggesting a modest impact overall.”
The decline, according to the report, is a result of falling enrollments in both public and private schools. And while the decline is smaller than anticipated, Lane said it will have an impact on the economy.
“When we look around our region, and more broadly around the country, we see workforce shortages in virtually any important employment sector that you can think of, from health care, teaching, nursing, engineering, to things that may not be as high on people’s radar, like diesel technicians. It’s a huge deal for a lot of the West,” Lane said at a press briefing Monday.
“But if these declining high school graduate numbers translate into even more downward pressure on enrollments,” Lane said, “it’ll be hard to meet some of these workforce demands.”
Samuel Abrams has deep experience in the study of education privatization; for many years, he directed an institute on that subject at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is now working with the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization.
He is also affiliated with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he published a new report on the problems with education savings accounts (aka, vouchers).
Read the report.
Here is his executive summary:
Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) were first enacted in Arizona in 2011 as a particularly deregulated way to offer vouchers for specific students, particularly those with disabilities. As opposed to conventional private school tuition vouchers, ESAs could be used to cover tuition plus a range of other educational services. Soon thereafter, four additional states substantially replicated this new form of funding. But in 2022, Arizona and West Virginia took ESAs to another level, constructing them as universal vouchers, with all students eligible to participate, without regard to family income, prior public school attendance, or student disability. ESAs in these states could be used to cover either tuition at minimally regulated private schools or pods (mini schools with children of likeminded parents); or costs associated with homeschooling, from books and online curricula to field trips and ancillary goods and services deemed essential. Nine states have since followed suit and more appear poised to do the same. These ESAs constitute a dramatic elevation of educational outsourcing, at once fulfilling Milton Friedman’s long-argued libertarian vision for vouchers and comport-ing with the Trump administration’s commitment to downsize government and let the market fill the void.
Because of the unregulated nature of ESAs, accountability issues quickly emerged regarding both spending and pedagogy. Proper monitoring of spending by parents dispersed throughout a given state, for so many different types of goods and services, has swamped the capacity of state offices. The same holds regarding accountability for the quality of instruction in private schools, pods, and homeschools now supported with taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, because ESAs and other voucher programs tend to serve families who have already opted for private schools or homeschooling, two fiscal outcomes have become apparent. First, the programs create a new entitlement burden for taxpayers; rather than merely shifting an existing subsidy from public to private schools, the programs obligate taxpayers to support new groups of students. Second, the new subsidies have incentivized private schools to bump up tuition, on the grounds that families now have extra money to pay the higher tuition.
In addition, ESAs impact public schools. These schools suffer when substantial funding follows students who use ESAs for homeschooling or attendance at private schools or pods. The stubbornness of fixed costs for core operations for public schools often necessitates cuts to staff, from teachers to nurses, and resources, from microscopes to musical instruments. The impact on rural public schools and thus rural civic life may be greatest. Charter schools and conventional vouchers have played little role in rural America, as filling seats in charter or private schools in sparsely populated parts of the country represents a steep challenge. But with ESAs, students may leave public schools for pods or homeschooling. If enough students leave some small rural schools, those schools will have to consolidate with schools in neighboring towns, meaning significant travel for students and the forfeiture of much community life.
As with conventional vouchers, ESAs can lead to inequities and discrimination in student admissions and retention. Few protections exist in private schools, particularly religious schools, against discrimination based on disabilities, religion, or sexual orientation. Participating schools have also been documented to push out low-achieving students, thus adding to the problem of concentrating these students in default neighborhood public schools. For faculty and most staff, participating religious schools also generally afford no protection from dismissal on the grounds of religious affiliation or sexual orientation.
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RECOMMENDATIONS:
Given the damage Education Savings Accounts can do, the following measures are recommended:
State Departments of Education
• Implement stricter oversight of what goods and services may be purchased with ESA funds.
• Strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.
• Require publication of all participating schools, their graduation rates, and their availability to students with disabilities.
State Lawmakers
• Most importantly, legislators should repeal existing programs.
• If ESAs cannot be repealed in states where they have already taken hold:
o Oppose any expansion of these programs to include new groups or cohorts.
o Pass legislation that imposes clear budget and spending limits on ESA programs to rein in cost overruns that have become common with these programs.o Require stricter oversight of what goods and services can be purchased with ESA funds and strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.
o Mandate periodic audits of curriculum and instructional practices in ESA-receiving schools.
o Require ESA-receiving schools to hire certified teachers.
o Require ESA-receiving schools to conduct the same annual academic assessments that public schools are required to administer.
o Require ESA-receiving schools to abide by existing federal and state civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, especially related to students with disabilities and LGBTQ+ students and faculty.
o Require that any effort to create a new ESA program be subject to open public hearings and, if feasible, public referenda.
Local Government Officials
• In states where ESAs exist, document the effects these programs have on students, families, and local public schools.
• In these same states, seek legislation to alleviate negative effects.
• Engage in awareness-raising efforts, such as informing local constituents of the po-
tential harms of ESAs, especially in rural communities, and adopting resolutions opposing ESAs.
Now, those two words — upon appropriation — loom large. The deadline to offer a semester of ethnic studies in 2025-26 is only seven months away, and requiring the course for graduation is due to begin with the graduating class of 2029-30.
Since 2022, the California Department of Finance has taken the position that there has been no appropriation to implement the course, and some other legislators agree — no money, no requirement to develop or offer classes. As a result, school districts might conclude that the law’s “guardrails” intended to prevent bias, bigotry, and discrimination from seeping into instruction could be ignored. However, the guardrails language was copied from existing state education statutes (Education Code 220), which would still prevail.
That lack of funding is creating uncertainty about the future of ethnic studies and suspense about whether Newsom will deliver the money next month when he proposes his 2025-26 budget — and, as importantly, whether he will condition funding on amendments to the law (Assembly Bill 101), including those championed by the Jewish Legislative Caucus.
“I come at this with a fresh set of eyes. It’s pretty clear that the law only really takes effect if there is funding for this during the budgetary process. There has been no budget allocated for that,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, who was elected to the Legislature in 2022 and chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance while serving on the Assembly Budget and Education committees.
“But that doesn’t mean that that won’t happen in the budget that’s to be released in January, which then funds the 2025-26 school year, which is when this would take effect,” he said. “I would expect it would” be funded.
Options ‘upon appropriation’
There is no statutory definition of “upon appropriation,” which is sometimes inserted in bills requiring significant funding. That leaves the governor and Legislature several options, according to legislative staff. One would be a significant one-time investment with dedicated funding in subsequent years. Another would be to eliminate “upon appropriation” by amending the bill — although that wouldn’t eliminate the state’s obligation to fund the mandate. The Legislature could then leave it to the Commission on State Mandates to decide how much should be reimbursed annually. Districts have complained that the commission tends to lowball reimbursements.
Advisers to and spokespeople for Newsom refused to discuss the unfunded mandate or what to expect in January, and leaders of one of the strongest advocates of ethnic studies, the controversial Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, aren’t answering requests for comment. An administrator of the San Diego County Office of Education, which is coordinating state grants to develop ethnic studies course curriculums, also declined to comment.
Finance Dept. states its position
A spokesperson for Newsom referred EdSource to the Department of Finance, which, in turn, pointed to a link to a Feb. 22, 2022, webcast of Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance hearing (watch between 2:57 to 3:07).
At the hearing, then-Assemblymember Kevin McCarthy, D-Sacramento, a strong proponent of ethnic studies, noted that the 2021-22 state budget included $50 million that would be disbursed to school districts to “launch this work.”
“Do we think that’s the adequate amount we need to make sure we have a successful ethnic studies requirement for high schools throughout California?” he asked state officials.
Amber Alexander, representing the Department of Finance, clarified that the $50 million was one-time funding for districts to create, not implement, the graduation mandate. “Nor,” she added, “does the Finance Department believe the $50 million would be sufficient, should the mandate progress.”
“I know that we have some debate about that, and I’m not sure why you need an appropriation because you’re going to have that class taught in a high school anyway, and you’ll have a teacher teaching that class as opposed to another class,” McCarthy responded. “Just simple mathematics; I don’t get it yet.”
Turning to Mike Torres, director of the curriculum frameworks division of the California Department of Education, McCarthy asked, “Do we think that we need, uh, any other resources? Um, on the lead-up to, uh, ethnic studies throughout California?”
Torres answered, “Gearing up for this requirement is likely to be a multi-year process with costs exceeding $50 million statewide (for districts) to make that happen.”
In an analysis of the financial impact of AB 101, the Finance Department estimated the implementation cost of ethnic studies at $272 million. Alvares said that the 2021 ballpark estimate would need to be recalculated, and he wouldn’t hazard a guess of the cost other than to say it would be well over $100 million annually to reimburse districts.
Jewish caucus finds an ally in Newsom
Despite uncertainty over funding, intense work continues on developing ethnic studies curricula and piloting courses throughout the state. This week, the California Department of Education launched a website dedicated to Southeast Asian ethnic studies, including separate K-12 lesson plans exploring Vietnamese, Cambodian and Hmong histories and experiences. Chapters on Native American studies are planned for next fall.
The site was developed by the county education offices in Orange, Humboldt and San Diego counties, with $14 million in state funding from the 2021-22 budget. San Diego County has also hosted multiple series of ethnic studies webinars for teachers.
Meanwhile, the spread of the liberated ethnic studies curriculum developed as an alternative to the state’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Framework has escalated tensions between its creator and promoter, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and the Jewish Legislative Caucus. The “liberated” version has been a focus of several lawsuits (see here, here andhere) brought by Jewish families and supportive law firms charging that its one-sided, ideological opposition to the state of Israel and its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza has fostered antisemitism in schools.
Critics say that “liberated” ethnic studies view race relations in America as a continuing struggle against white supremacy and its oppression of people of color. It stresses the importance for students to challenge capitalism and the forces of imperialism, including Israel, which the curriculum calls a modern outpost of “settler colonialism.”
At the urging of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, the Legislature wrote into AB 101 that school districts should not use unadopted portions of earlier drafts of the model curriculum — an oblique reference to the elements of the liberated curriculum that were excised from the first draft. Advocates of liberated ethnic studies charged that the clause and other “guardrails” seek to squelch their free speech.
But the Jewish caucus has found an ally in Newsom. In August 2023, Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and a Newsom adviser, wrote in a memo to school districts, “We have been advised, however, that some vendors are offering materials that may not meet the requirements of AB 101, particularly the second requirement (not reflecting or promoting any bias, bigotry, or discrimination), an important guardrail highlighted when the bill was signed. Accordingly, before any curriculum or instructional materials for ethnic studies courses are selected, we strongly encourage you to closely scrutinize them to ensure that they meet the above requirements.”
Newsom cites the need to include lessons about Jewish Americans in the ethnic studies curriculum in his 17-page Golden State Plan to Combat Antisemitism, issued in April 2024. It also includes, “The Governor will work with the Jewish Caucus and Legislature to pursue legislation strengthening the guardrails established by AB 101 to ensure all ethnic studies courses are free from bias, bigotry, and discriminatory content.”
Second attempt at tighter guardrails
That is the intent of Assembly Bill 2918, authored by Assemblymembers Rick Zbur, D-Los Angeles, and Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay. Introduced late in the last legislative session, it ran aground amid opposition from the liberated consortium and the California Teachers Association as well as criticism that it short-circuited the full legislative process. Addis and Zbur promised to start from scratch and confer with opponents and Latino, Black, and Asian legislative caucuses.
The bill called for strengthening vague wording of the guardrails as well as requirements that more opportunities for the public to weigh in on the development of local ethnic studies courses be created before a final vote for adoption by school boards. This has not been the case in some districts and is central to a lawsuit against Santa Ana Unified.
Newsom has not given any sign of whether he would treat funding and amending AB 101 separately or use funding as leverage for added protections. Zbur, a member of the Jewish caucus, said he’s not calling for that approach.
“I want ethnic studies to move forward. The entire Jewish caucus supported ethnic studies when it came up (for a vote). We (he and Addis) don’t view this in a context of leverage,” he said. “We actually have faith that the education unions and our colleagues want to ensure that we meet the goals of ethnic studies in a manner that’s appropriate for all students, including Jewish students.”
But Alvarez, who said he is “fully supportive of ensuring that the guardrails exist from the Jewish caucus perspective,” added that it’s appropriate to revise AB 101 while discussing how to fund it.
“We have an opportunity to ensure we get this right,” he said. “And so as we go forward and implement, we need to make sure that we do so in the best way possible. It’s germane to the requirement that it needs to be funded.”
STEM students at California community colleges will be able to enroll in calculus prerequisites like trigonometry if they didn’t take those classes in high school.
California math educators this fall have been locked in a vigorous debate: Will the implementation of a new law help more community college STEM students by skipping prerequisites and placing them directly into calculus, or will it set up the state’s least-prepared students for failure?
This week, critics scored something of a victory. In a move that already faces legal scrutiny, the chancellor’s office for the state’s community colleges issued a memo making clear that, when the law takes effect next fall, students in science, technology, engineering and math majors who haven’t passed courses like trigonometry in high school will still have the option to start college math with up to two semesters of courses that are considered preparation for calculus.
Previous guidance instructed colleges to enroll those students directly into calculus — sometimes with a simultaneous 1- or 2-unit support class — or place them in new semester-long preparatory classes offered on a trial basis.
The changes were made after some math faculty across the state criticized the original guidance, including during an EdSource roundtable on the topic hosted last month. They worried that students without a solid math foundation would struggle if forced to startright away in calculus and said the original guidance went beyond what is required by the law, Assembly Bill 1705.
Other math faculty joined advocacy groups in defending the initial rollout plan, citing research that students perform better when they can go straight into calculus regardless of their high school math preparation. Critics, though, say some of that research is flawed.
The chancellor’s office issued the memo after gathering feedback from faculty, administrators and students about whether the state’s least experienced math students, such as those who didn’t take a class higher than geometry in high school, would be ready for calculus without taking prerequisites, said Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the office.
“We’ve been listening to folks, examining the evidence that colleges are bringing to us, and we got to the point that we needed to make a decision,” added John Hetts, the college system’s executive vice chancellor for the Office of Innovation, Data, Evidence and Analytics. “If we didn’t make a decision now, it would not leave colleges enough time to prepare for fall 2025.”
Calculus is often a required course for many science, technology and engineering majors. In the past, research has shown that some students never get to calculus because they fail to complete necessary prerequisite courses like trigonometry or precalculus, effectively blocking those students from pursuing their degrees.
AB 1705, signed into law in 2022, requires the college system to evaluate the impact of enrolling students in prerequisites to calculus and, if they can’t prove students benefit from those classes, to stop requiring or even recommending them.
Some backers of the law interpret it as mandating a shift as much as possible to enrolling all STEM students directly into calculus. They cite a section that states students “shall be directly placed into” the transfer-level class that satisfies the requirement for their degree.
Chancellor’s office officials, however, maintain that the latest guidance is consistent with the law. “The guidance is fully within the parameters of AB 1705,” Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the system, said in an email.
Under the new guidance, students who didn’t pass Algebra II or its equivalent in high school will be allowed to take two semesters worth of calculus prerequisites, which could include some combination of college algebra, trigonometry or precalculus. Students who did pass that course but not trigonometry or precalculus will be allowed to enroll in a one-semester prerequisite course, typically precalculus.
The new guidance is a compromise, said Pamela Burdman, executive director of Just Equations, a nonprofit organization focused on the role of math in education equity.
“I think the chancellor’s office is trying to strike a balance here,” she added. “I do think there has been a tendency to place students in more prerequisites than they may need, but we don’t know enough from the research exactly what the optimal placement system is and how to identify which students need which levels of support.”
The guidance won’t be the final word on the issue. It could face a future legal challenge. Jetaun Stevens, an attorney with the civil rights law firm Public Advocates, said the chancellor’s new directive urges colleges“to violate the law.” Stevens said the firm is still “assessing what we can do” and did not rule out a lawsuit.
“This guidance gives colleges permission to completely ignore students’ rights to be placed in calculus. It creates exceptions in the law that don’t exist,” Stevens said. “This is illegal and beyond the chancellor’s office’s authority. They don’t get to pick what part of the law they want to enforce.”
Faculty, meanwhile, still plan to pursue legislation next year that would permanently clarify that colleges can offer “standalone foundational pre-transfer courses,” according to a memo being circulated by the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges, a faculty advocacy organization. Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the association, said the draft is being “shared widely with system partners and legislators.”
In the meantime, starting next year, the chancellor’s office plans to collect data from each college and examine how students are accessing calculus. Colleges will have to prove that students are at least as likely to get to and complete calculus when they start in prerequisites as when they start right away in calculus. If the prerequisite path shows worse results, guidance says those prerequisites will need to be eliminated for STEM majorsby 2027.
The updated guidance is “simple and based in common sense,” said Tina Akers-Porter, a math professor at Modesto Junior College and one of the leading critics of the original guidance. “If you’ve taken the preparatory courses, then go into calculus. But if you haven’t, then still offer the preparatory courses. That’s what we wanted.”
Tammi Marshall, dean of math, science and engineering at Cuyamaca College, was disappointed in the chancellor’s office’s new direction. She said the chancellor’s office has previously “done a great job of holding the colleges accountable” to evidence suggesting students perform better when placed directly into calculus witha companion support course than in longer sequencesof preparatory courses. Her college has been highlighted as an early adopter of AB 1705 and has reported improved calculus completion rates across racial groups.
“I felt like they were pressured into making a decision that isn’t completely based on the data,” she said of the new guidance.
Some math faculty said the new guidance leaves departments little time to adapt and may sap energy from attempts to reimagine math courses ahead of next fall. Many departments have designed new classes to prepare students for calculus in anticipation of AB 1705, but it’s unclear whether colleges will choose to offer those courses next fall, as they initially planned, or fall back on older courses.
“We just don’t know where to focus our energy right now,” said Rena Weiss, a math professor at Moorpark College, adding that she’s glad the chancellor’s office listened to faculty members’ concerns and is grateful for the option to place STEM students into courses like trigonometry.
Other faculty are hoping for more information about exactly which students they can now place into precalculus courses.
Forecasts of what the guidance means for access to STEM education varied. Marshall predicted greater inequity at colleges that opt to continue calculus prerequisite sequences with high attrition rates, which she said have a “disproportionate impact on our Black and brown STEM students.”
On the other side, Southwestern College math professor Kimberly Eclar said this week’s guidance gives more options to students whose high schools do not offer higher math classes. James Sullivan, a math professor at Sierra College, said the updated rules will benefit students who transition into a STEM career later in life but haven’t yet learned the concepts they’ll need for calculus.
Hetts, the executive vice chancellor, said the current evidence is simply “not strong enough” to prohibit colleges from offering prerequisites next year. The chancellor’s office, in consultation with the RP Group, a nonprofit that conducts research on behalf of the college system, plans to conduct additional research starting in 2025 “to more thoroughly understand” how students access calculus.
The RP Group is also deciding whether to conduct a follow-up study that would compare the longer-term outcomes of students who enroll directly in calculus to those who do not, according to Alyssa T. Nguyen, the organization’s senior director of research and evaluation. Such a study could examine how often each group of students completes associate degrees or transfers. Nguyen wrote in an email that RP Group will continue to draw from student records in its analysis and may also survey, interview or conduct focus groups with students.
Joyce Vance was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. She writes a smart blog called Civil Discourse, in which she writes about court cases and the law, in language accessible to non-lawyers. In this post, she explains how massive protests can change the course of history.
She writes:
This coming Tuesday marks Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, a tenure that has led to a steady decline in the economy. If we use that measure, which many voters said led them to vote for Trump, these first 100 days have been a failure. Even as Trump has successfully seized power from Congress and some organizations have bent the knee to his every request, lawyers are winning in court, and some law firms, businesses, universities, and individuals are standing up to the president who would rather be a king. Trump may not have lost the first 100 days, but he hasn’t exactly won them either. Our democracy has been weakened, but it can still be saved.
Thursday is May Day, May 1st. There will be renewed protest marches across the country, many of them focused on Americans’ increasing awareness that the fundamentals of democracy, which we’ve taken for granted for so long, are in danger. It’s not just due process concerns, although that is an enormous part of it, as the deportations continue. Last week we learned that included some involved American citizen children and children with cancer, with Secretary Rubio offering a sorry rejoinder on Meet the Press this morning, blaming the mothers who took young children back to their countries of origin with them, rather than being forced to abandon them. There are plenty of reasons to march.
This will not be the first time Americans have engaged in mass protests on May Day. In 1971, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Washington, D.C., to protest the Vietnam War. They began on May 3 and continued for two more days. By the time the protest ended, more than 12,000 protestors had been arrested. The protesters’ goal was to cause a traffic jam that would keep government employees from getting to work; their slogan was “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”
Mass protests that are large and sustained have an impact on even an entrenched presidency. They did with Nixon. The White House Historical Association’s official version of events concludes that “the enormity of the protest pushed Nixon to accelerate the nation’s exit from Vietnam.”
Even though it’s a different era, protests are bound to get to the thin-skinned president whose staffers, during his first term in office, had to prepare folders of positive stories about Trump for him to review twice each day. Imagine having thousands of people protesting within earshot of the White House. It must be even more galling because these protests are nonviolent and aim to support democracy through a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights. They make a powerful statement, in contrast to a president who has abandoned the rule of law.
In 1970, two-thirds of Americans had come to believe U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was a mistake. We are not quite there yet when it comes to people’s view of the Trump administration. The most recent NBC News Stay Tuned Poll shows only 45% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing. But, when asked about how strongly they hold their beliefs about the president, “the vehemence of the opposition outweighs the intensity of support from the president’s MAGA base.” Twenty-three percent of Americans said they were “furious” about what Trump is doing.
Thursday is also Law Day, an annual celebration of the rule of law. Although it has been in effect since 1958, it doesn’t usually receive much attention. This year, lawyers across the country have big plans for the day—make sure you look to see what’s going on in your area. President Dwight Eisenhower established Law Day as a day of national dedication to the principles of government under law. State Bar Associations hold essay competitions for school children, and there are state and national dinners most years. In 2025, Law Day takes on special significance as Americans’ concerns about due process come to the forefront. How fitting that the May Day protests sync with the Law Day commemoration.
I’ve been doing a lot of research and writing about the origins of Law Day for my book (Giving Up Is Unforgivable, due out October 21), so I’ll leave that for another time, but I want to make sure everyone knows about Law Day. This year, many lawyers across the country will retake their oath to show their support for the rule of law. There is no reason the rest of the country can’t participate too!
The president issues a proclamation every year for Law Day. Trump did during his first term in office, too. In 2019, the proclamation began, “On Law Day, we renew our commitment to the rule of law and our Constitution. The rule of law requires that no one be above the obligations of the law or beneath its protections, and it stands as a bulwark against the arbitrary use of government power.” Unfortunately, he never lived up to those sentiments. On Thursday, we can look for the proclamation and point out the inconsistencies between what we expect from our presidents and how this one is behaving. The hypocrisy is always full force, and we shouldn’t shy away from pointing it out.
Due process is the sleeper issue of the second Trump presidency. No one really expected democracy issues, let alone concepts like the rule of law and due process to animate a country’s protests. But it’s increasingly clear that Americans are smart, and when we are well-informed, we have no difficulty assessing what matters and what is true. We see more and more of that as Americans carry signs that say “No Kings” and “Due Process” at local rallies. All of us can be advocates for democracy, not just the lawyers among us.
Here at Civil Discourse, we all understand the importance of this. We need to make sure the rest of the country does too. Until the Trump administration is over, it has to be Law Day every day.
In 2024, the Law Day theme was “Voices of Democracy,” recognizing that the people are the rulers in a democracy. Americans express their views without fear of retribution because of the First Amendment and vote in elections to select their leaders. It’s up to us to make sure it stays that way.
This week will bring more briefings in the Abrego-Garcia case and others. There will be outrages, like the fact that Trump has a website hawking merchandise, literally selling the presidency. It’s not just the $50 price tag on the hat; there’s also the slogan, “Trump 2028,” a reference to Trump’s not-so-subtle hints that he’d like to serve a Constitution-busting third term in office. It’s not a joke. It never is with him.
So, make sure you take some time this week to celebrate Law Day. Invite people over. Go for a walk with friends or neighbors and share your views. Talk with your kids. Democracy is not automatic; it’s a participatory sport we must all play in together, one with critically important outcomes. Democracy is important. Let’s make sure we play for keeps.
