Resigning Cal Poly Humboldt President Tom Jackson Jr.
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt
Cal Poly Humboldt President Tom Jackson Jr. will step down on Aug. 11 following a spring semester that saw calls for his resignation after the university responded to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus bysending in police.
The Northern California campus was among many this spring that experienced student-led protests calling for an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Jackson faced criticism for the decision to use police to quash campus protests and to close the campus for the final weeks of the spring semester.
The incidents of the spring overshadow the end of Jackson’s five years at the university, a period of transformation in which Humboldt was transformed into the state’s third polytechnic institution. During Jackson’s tenure, the university upgraded laboratory space, expanded broadband, renovated buildings and launched new majors focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), buoyed by a $458 million investment from the state.
The polytechnic overhaul has been credited with boosting new student applications and turning around the university’s financial prospects at a time when many campuses have experienced declining student headcounts.
In a written statement, Jackson called the university “an amazing place with special people” and urged colleagues to remember that their work “makes a positive difference for our students.”
A Cal Poly Humboldt news release said Jackson “has been consulting with the CSU Chancellor’s Office to ensure an orderly transition since early spring semester.”
The spring marked a pivot point in Jackson’s presidency. In April, hundreds of students occupied the university’s Siemens Hall, joining a wave of campus protests calling on universities to sever financial ties with Israel.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that protesters used “furniture, tents, chains and zip ties” to block the entrances to the buildings.
The university responded by calling in law enforcement to remove protesters from the hall. The Appeal reported in June that police arrested 32 people.
The police response prompted Cal Poly Humboldt’s university senate to pass a vote of no confidence in Jackson, arguing that he and chief of staff Mark Johnson mishandled the protests by summoning “armed, non-university police officers.” The resolution said that action “created unnecessary escalation resulting in physical assault on students and faculty and injury of law enforcement personnel.”
The university ultimately closed campus on April 26, citing protesters’ attempts “to break into multiple locked buildings with the intention of either locking themselves in, vandalizing or stealing equipment.”
The university continued classes remotely through May 10, the end of the spring semester.
The backlash to the university’s response to the protests continued. Subsequent university senate resolutions called on the Humboldt County district attorney, Stacey J. Eads, to drop charges against students and faculty and asked the university to drop the interim suspensions of 69 students. The senate also sought an investigation into the events and decision-making that followed the April 22 protest.
A group of 320 faculty and staff ultimately signed a letter calling for both Jackson and chief of staff Johnson to be removed from their positions.
Becoming president
Jackson was appointed to the university presidency in May 2019, becoming not only the first Black president in Humboldt’s history, but also its first Filipino and Native American president, according to Cal State. Jackson previously served as president of Black Hills State University in South Dakota and vice president for student affairs at the University of Louisville and Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
At the time of his appointment in 2019, undergraduate enrollment was falling steeply. Undergraduate enrollment peaked at 8,242 students in 2015 but had dwindled to 6,443 by fall 2019. With the Covid-19 pandemic, it hit a low of 5,199 in 2021.
Declining enrollment threatened to have serious consequences for the university’s financial future. Under a multiyear agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature, campuses in the Cal State system are on the hook to increase enrollment in order to receive increases in state funding.
A polytechnic future
Becoming a polytechnic campus appeared to improve Humboldt’s outlook. Newsom set aside nearly $500 million to turn Humboldt into a STEM-focused campus with new majors like mechanical engineering, marine biology and fire science management. The university is about to start construction on a new engineering building, according to a news release.
The name change from Humboldt State to Cal Poly Humboldt became official in January 2022. The rebranded university enjoyed a record-setting application season for fall 2023, fielding almost twice as many applications as the previous year.
The transition was not without its growing pains.
In early 2023, the university announced that many sophomores, juniors and seniors would be housed in hotels and other off-campus options rather than on-campus residence halls to make way for new students. Hundreds of students protested the change. An online petition demanding “fair student housing” got more than 5,000 signatures.
New housing projects will help to meet the demand. EdSource reported in 2023 that a new 950-bed housing complex, the Craftsman Mall, was expected to open in 2025 and that a second, 650-bed project would open in 2026. Ultimately, campus leaders want to add about 4,000 more beds.
In fall 2023, the university’s undergraduate enrollment ticked up 2.2% to 5,419 students.
The news release announcing Jackson’s plans to step down promoted the university’s financial turnaround, saying Humboldt has balanced budgets after carrying a $25 million deficit. The university is also bringing in more than $67 million annually in research grants and contracts, according to the release, and attracted more than $50 million from a fundraising campaign. Budget data from the Chancellor’s Office shows the university’s revenues exceeded its expenses by $117 million as of 2022-23. It also touted the university’s work with the region’s Tribal Nations, cooperation with the two-year College of the Redwoods, expanded international programs and a bachelor’s degree program at Pelican Bay State Prison.
Looking ahead
Jackson will “retreat” to a tenured professorship at the College of Professional Studies and the College of Extended Education & Global Engagement.
“We do the very best we can every day, trusting the faculty, staff and students to do the same,” Jackson said in the statement.
Cal State Chancellor Mildred García praised Jackson’s leadership in establishing Humboldt as a polytechnic institution, saying in a statement that the transition “inspired significant state funding to expand academic offerings, facilities and campus services, and enrollment growth.” She also thanked him for “his lifelong dedication to student success and educational equity.”
An interim president will be appointed shortly, according to the news release, followed by a national search for a replacement within the next year.
Fresno Unified’s interim superintendent, Misty Her
Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
Since assuming the role of interim superintendent of California’s third-largest school district, Misty Her has been doing two things that she hopes will shape her tenure: listening and learning.
Despite being in the school district for over three decades, she’s conducting what she calls “listening” sessions with those in the Fresno Unified school community. In the two months since taking over, she’s held 16 sessions with students, district leaders, principals, retired teachers, graduates, parents, city officials and other community members, with more scheduled for next week and in the new school year.
Interim superintendency
On May 3, the school board appointed Misty Her, previously the district’s deputy superintendent, to lead the district on an interim basis during a national search to fill the permanent position. She started the interim superintendency on May 8 with outgoing superintendent Bob Nelson moving into an advisory role until his last day.
Misty Her has met with Fresno Unified district leaders to set expectations for her tenure as interim superintendent.Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
“People have been asking me ‘Why are you doing that?’” she said. “They were like, ‘You’ve been in the district for 30 years. Why would you still need to go listen and learn? Shouldn’t you already know a lot about the district?’”
“My role, now, is different,” she said, “so I’m really intentionally listening and learning.”
She’ll continue the sessions throughout her tenure and expects to make changes as progress is made, she told EdSource in a sit-down interview.
What she believes, even now, is that knowing and identifying each student “by name” and “by need,” much like she did as a classroom teacher, will define her time in the role.
“Sometimes when you step away from the classroom, people don’t see you as a teacher anymore … because they start to see the title,” Her said as she talked about her journey, her interim superintendency, the “teacher within” and her focus on students – first and foremost.
“At the heart of who I am, before anything else, I’m always going to be a teacher.”
First woman to lead district
When the Fresno Unified school board named Her as the interim superintendent, she became the first woman to lead the district since its 1873 inception.
“I’ve walked this hallway a thousand times,” she said about seeing her picture on the wall of the district office. “It took 151 years in this district, as diverse as this district (is), before a woman’s face got on that wall.”
Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource Lasherica Thornton/EdSourceMisty Her, Fresno Unified’s interim superintendent, is the first woman to ever lead the 70,000-plus-student school system.
A Hmong leader
According to Her and the Hmong American Center in Wisconsin, Hmong people, an indigenous group originally from parts of China and other Asian countries, have continually migrated, first to Laos, Thailand and Vietnam with many eventually coming to the United States, settling in states such as California and Minnesota, so “we don’t have a country.”
“The reason why Hmong people came here to the U.S. was because of the Vietnam War,” she said.
The CIA recruited Hmong soldiers for the “secret war” in Laos to prevent communism from spreading further into Southeast Asia. Congressional investigation and other events eventually brought the war to light.
“It was secret because no one knew that we existed, and no one knew that we were used to help the Americans fight,” Her said. “When the war ended, all the Hmong people were just left to die because (following their victory), the communists started coming after anybody who was helping the U.S. That’s actually how my family ended up here.”
Her face on that wall – and as the face of the district – embodies the fact that she is the first woman at the helm of the district as well as its first Hmong leader.
Born in a prisoner-of-war camp in Laos, Her’s family escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand after the end of the Vietnam War before coming to the United States and moving to Fresno when she was a young child, according to a district statement announcing her appointment. That firsthand experience and her understanding of the challenges faced by students from diverse backgrounds have shaped her into a passionate and effective leader, the district’s statement said.
Of the more than 92% of Fresno Unified students who are from ethnic minority groups, around 6,500 are Hmong. Behind Spanish, the Hmong language, which was only developed in written form less than 75 years ago, is the second most common home language of Fresno Unified’s English learners with over 10% speaking Hmong.
“Having someone that knows our kids, looks like our kids — that representation matters,” Her said.
Still, she wants to be in classrooms, constantly gaining a better understanding of the district’s students.
Classroom-centered, kids-first approach
With a mindset that keeps classrooms and kids first, Her started the listening and learning tour by seeking out student perspectives from elementary, middle and high school students.
“Our students … can teach us a lot about our system,” she said, “the things that we’re designing for them — what’s working, what’s not working.”
And she has gained insight from those conversations.
Among the students’ comments and questions that have stuck with Her: “We want to be engaged in classrooms” and third graders asking, “What are you and our teachers preparing us for?”
“I started with kids first because I wanted to put their voice in the middle of designing my 100-day plan,” she said.
Her drafted the plan for the district in May and June, following the initial listening sessions.
For third grade — the school year believed to be pivotal in determining reading proficiency and predicting future success — just 29% of third-graders are at grade level, a GO Public Schools 2023 student outcome report for Fresno Unified showed.
Her plans to implement, measure the effectiveness and monitor the progress of the district’s recently launched literacy initiative to achieve first-grade reading proficiency for students, two years before third-grade, when future success is predicted.
The Every Child Is a Reader initiative includes literacy plans to address students’ unique needs. The plans embrace high-quality instruction, interventions and parent and community partnerships, according to the initiative description.
“Every Child Is A Reader is a groundbreaking initiative that will lead our district to better instruction of reading for our youngest learners and ensure far better academic outcomes for our students,” she said.
Based on the 2023 GO Public Schools report, only 20% of seventh graders are at grade level in math, an indicator that most students are not prepared for algebra.
Her said the kids she has talked to reaffirmed the need to focus on those student outcomes, but also challenged her to reshape how student comprehension and application are taught.
“I was talking to (a) group of students and they said, ‘Don’t just teach us how to read and write and do math, but teach us how to apply that,’” she said.
An eighth grader told her his test scores indicate that he’s on a sixth-grade proficiency level.
“He said, ‘I’m so much smarter than that. I can do this, this, and this, but it’s just that, in my home, I never got books. I don’t have a tutor that comes in to help me. I rarely see my mom … because she works two jobs. My test shows that I should only be in sixth grade, but there are things that I can do. Can you guys use what I know to help me get me there?’” Her said.
“It really shifted what I thought would be goals for us to what are goals that can resonate with our students.”
Improving student outcomes
Her said she wouldn’t be leading Fresno Unified, based on what her test scores showed, if not for the support of teachers and mentors.
“If I was just measured by my proficiency level when I was a kid, then I probably wouldn’t even be here,” she said. “A lot of people poured into me because I had counselors who said, ‘You can go to college.’ Coming from a home where no one knew how to fill out a college application, my counselor filled out the application for me.
“But why do we reach some students and not others? That’s my question. (My brother) and I had some of the very same teachers, but there was an investment in me and not in him.”
That lingering question guides her.
To improve student outcomes across the entire district, she said, “We have to get everybody across the finish line” of proficiency.
“The goal is to get them there in whichever way works for them,” she said. “That’s really going deep to understand every single child by name, by need.”
Fresno Unified’s interim superintendent, Misty Her, adopted a 100-day plan for the school district.Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
As part of Her’s 100-day plan, Fresno Unified gathered state, district, school and student data to identify and prioritize ways to enhance learning for each child while also focusing on historically underserved student groups, such as English learners and students with disabilities, who have significant achievement gaps compared with other groups.
This upcoming school year, educators will be able to adapt teaching and leadership strategies based on real-time data via a district dashboard, according to Her’s plans.
“And, then, how do we provide the appropriate scaffolds and interventions so that we do get them there,” Her said, “but that we never take away their grade-level rigor that is needed for them to excel.”
Identifying student needs: ‘It’s ‘personal’
Her knows all too well the importance of providing such intervention while still offering challenging, grade-level content.
“This is very personal for me,” she said. “I remember when I was in first grade … I was put in a remedial class, pulled out for like three hours a day, missing core instruction,” she recalled. “There was no way I was ever going to get caught up.”
At the time, the young Her was learning English as a second language as she primarily spoke Hmong.
“And so if we keep doing that with our students, we’re actually doing them a disservice,” she said.
Challenges in leading Fresno Unified
Fresno Unified interim Superintendent Misty Her and district leaders talk about about her goals and set expectations for her interim role.Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr
There is no “silver bullet… to fix this,” Her said, so “I think people have to be open to new ideas that may be unconventional.”
This week, she and the district leadership team were at Harvard University for the Public Education Leadership Project meant to foster greater educational outcomes.
While employing new ideas and methods may be key to reaching her goals, there will be times when she must say “no.”
Fresno’s teachers union leadership has criticized the district for initiating programs just for the sake of expanding, rather than implementing the programs well.
“We are a district that says we want to do a lot of things,” Her said. “I am going to say no.”
But not without noting ideas that can work — at some point.
“Everybody knows I have a for-later folder, and it’s pretty thick right now,” she said, laughing. “So, as people bring really great, wonderful ideas, I just have to say, ‘Let me put it in my for-later folder.’”
Quality over quantity: Top priorities first
To Her, the district has had so many objectives that it impacts the quality of the goals. She spent weeks narrowing down those goals to what will be the most important for the entire district: improving student outcomes and achieving operational excellence.
“When a kid enters our system, we have to be able to say to our parents, ‘These are the … goals we’re working on. These are the guarantees that we can give you.’”
Student outcomes
Identify and focus on the needs of each child
Implement and measure the district’s first-grade literacy initiative
Empower educator autonomy, but with accountability measures
Adapt teaching and leadership strategies based on real-time data
Visit schools to observe the goals in action
Operational excellence
Her characterized operational excellence as each part of the Fresno Unified school system working together instead of in isolation.
“I think that sometimes we’ve created this very complicated system for our parents to figure out, and we need to simplify … for people to understand,” she said. “I took a call from a parent. By the time the parent got to me, the parent had gone through four different calls” because her English wasn’t strong, and people didn’t know what to do with her.
“I finally got on the phone; she’s like, ‘I just need my child’s homework, but I need it modified.’ And it was as simple as that.”
Holding interim position impacts chances for permanent role
The interim superintendency is an opportunity for Her, board members, students, staff and the community to see if she’s the best person to lead the district.
“It could go either way,” she admitted. “If I can’t get results, then, I shouldn’t be the superintendent.
“I just want it to be a win for our students.”
A change in perspective because of the search
So far, the search process has been engulfed in community angst over an alleged lack of transparency and accusations that the process had been tainted by politics, EdSource reported.
The school board in April said it would broaden its search — a shift from its initial decision to interview district employees first. Community outrage spurred the changes.
“Having gone through the challenges of the search, it really has strengthened me. It’s given me resilience that I didn’t think I had,” she said. “I describe it as (being) in a tornado, and you don’t quite know what you’re going to get hit with. Then, you start to get centered.”
That centering moment was in April when the search stalled.
“I just got up and said, ‘Cancel everything on my calendar for this week. I want to be at schools,’” she said. “I spent every moment with kids. I read. I did recess duty. I did lunch duty. (I told teachers), ‘I’ll teach your class for a little bit.’ I had to go find myself again. I went back to being a teacher and that got me centered (and) saved me in every way.
“I started to … dig deep to really understand why I want this job.”
‘More than a test score’
“I want to be superintendent because … I’m tired of people defining them by a test score at the end of the year,” Her said. “I want to find a holistic way in which we can still get our students there, but that our students feel valued and they feel important and they feel like they’re a part of something greater than just that proficiency level that is given to them.”
The State Seal of Biliteracy is a gold, embossed seal that can be affixed to a student’s high school diploma or transcript. It is awarded to recognize a student for achieving a high level of proficiency in speaking, reading and writing in both English and another language. California first began awarding the State Seal of Biliteracy in 2012.
What is the benefit of obtaining a State Seal of Biliteracy?
The State Seal of Biliteracy validates students’ hard work to learn more than one language. It can be shown to colleges and potential employers, to prove that you can speak, read and write in at least one language, in addition to English. Some colleges may give academic credit to students for the seal. In addition, some organizations, such as Language Testing International, award scholarships to seal recipients.
In one study, partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education and focused on a school district in New Mexico, students who earned a Seal of Biliteracy enrolled in four-year colleges at higher rates than their peers who did not earn the seal.
What languages does the State Seal of Biliteracy recognize?
The State Seal of Biliteracy can be awarded in any language other than English. The most common language recognized with a Seal of Biliteracy in 2022-23 was Spanish, followed by French, Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese), Japanese, American Sign Language, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog and German, in that order.
The state has also awarded the seal in many other languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Czech, Farsi, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Igbo, Indonesian, Italian, Latin, Mixteco, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Swahili, Urdu and Yurok, among others.
Do all public schools in California offer the State Seal of Biliteracy?
All public schools are eligible to participate, but participation is voluntary, not obligatory. In 2022-23, the latest school year for which data is available, 1,188 schools in 356 school districts or county offices of education awarded the seals. Check here to see if a school or district participates (click on the “Data” tab).
What can you do if your school does not yet participate?
You can contact a counselor, teacher or administrator at your school and share information about the State Seal of Biliteracy with them, to encourage them to participate.
How do you apply for the Seal of Biliteracy?
Contact your school counselor, principal or other administrator.
What are the requirements to prove you are proficient in a language other than English?
You must either complete coursework or take a test to prove proficiency.
For coursework, you must successfully complete a four-year course of study in a world language at the high school or college level and attain an overall GPA of 3.0 or higher in that course of study. In addition, you must demonstrate oral proficiency in the language comparable to that required to pass an Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate examination.
You also have the option to take one of four tests, instead of coursework:
Pass a world language Advanced Placement (AP) exam with a score of 3 or higher
Pass an International Baccalaureate (IB) exam with a score of 4 or higher
Pass both an ACTFL Writing Proficiency Test (WPT) and an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) with scores of intermediate mid or higher
Pass an exam approved by the school district that meets the rigor of a four-year high school course of study in the language and assesses speaking, reading and writing in a language other than English at the proficient level or higher. These are most often used in the case of a language for which AP, IB, or ACTFL tests do not exist. A list of locally approved world language proficiency assessments is posted on the California Department of Education’s State Seal of Biliteracy web page under the “Assessments” tab.
Can courses completed in another country count toward coursework in another language?
Yes. High-school level courses in another country in a language other than English, with the equivalent of an overall grade point average of 3.0 or above, can count toward the coursework requirement. These might be courses completed as an exchange student, or courses completed in another country by a newcomer student before arriving in the U.S. They must be verified by a transcript.
What if a language doesn’t have a written or spoken component?
If a language does not have a written system, or is not spoken (for example, American Sign Language), the district can approve an assessment on the components of the language that are used.
What are the requirements to prove you are proficient in English?
You must either complete coursework or take a test to prove proficiency.
For coursework, you must complete all English language arts requirements for graduation with an overall grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 in those classes.
You also have the option to take one of four tests to prove proficiency in English, instead of coursework:
Pass the California state standardized test (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) for English language arts administered in grade 11 at or above the “standard met” achievement level
Pass an English Advanced Placement exam (AP English Language and Composition, AP English Literature or Composition, or AP Seminar) with a score of 3 or higher
Pass an English International Baccalaureate (IB) exam with a score of 4 or higher
Achieve a score of 480 or above on the evidence-based reading and writing section of the SAT.
What additional requirements do English learners have to complete?
In addition to the requirements mentioned above, students who are currently classified as English learners and have not yet been reclassified as proficient in English must attain an oral language composite score of level 4 on the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC).
Can you apply for a State Seal of Biliteracy in more than one language other than English?
Yes. You can earn seals in more than one language, as long as you fulfill the requirements to show a high level of proficiency in each language.
Are the requirements different for students who qualify for special education and have IEPs?
According to the California Department of Education, the requirements to obtain a State Seal of Biliteracy may be modified for a student with an individualized education program (IEP), if the student’s IEP team determines it is necessary. The CDE website says the IEP team should review the student’s assessment plan and transition plan and determine what assessment(s) to use and what score would indicate proficiency, based on the student’s IEP.
How many students typically receive the Seal of Biliteracy every year?
President Trump is very much still hung up on the star power that boosted former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ultimately unsuccessful campaign.
In a pair of posts shared to his Truth Social platform Sunday night and Monday morning, Trump criticized several celebrities who publicly endorsed Harris in her months-long bid. Among the stars fueling the former “Apprentice” host’s ire were Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah and Bono. In his caps-lock-laden tirades, Trump accused the Harris camp of illegally paying Springsteen, Beyoncé and other stars to appear at campaign events and throw their support behind the Biden-era VP.
“I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” Trump wrote on Sunday, before accusing Harris and her team of paying for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”
The Boss did not back down on his fiery rhetoric against Trump on the second night of his “Land of Hopes and Dreams” tour in Manchester, England, on Saturday — a day after Trump lashed out against the legendary singer on Truth Social, calling him an “obnoxious jerk,” a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker,” and writing that he should “keep his mouth shut.”
Springsteen didn’t oblige. In a resolute three-minute speech from the Co-op Live venue, Springsteen thanked his cheering audience for indulging him in a speech about the state of America: “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore.”
He then repeated many of the lines that he used during his first Manchester show — the same words that upset Trump to begin with, including the administration defunding American universities, the rolling back of civil rights legislation and siding with dictators, “against those who are struggling for their freedoms…”
“In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now,” Springsteen said. “In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.” In a steady voice, he listed the many concerns of those who oppose Trump, his enablers and his policies.
“They are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers as prisoners. That’s happening now. The majority of our elected representatives have utterly failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government,” Springsteen said as the crowd applauded and yelled its support. “They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.” He finished on a positive note.
“The America I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its many faults, it’s a great country with a great people, and we will survive this moment. Well, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ ”
The 0.54% decline was steeper than last year but not as dramatic as the plunge at the peak of the pandemic.
The drop in enrollment was somewhat offset by the expansion of transitional kindergarten.
The number of students identified as homeless jumped 9.3% from last year.
New state data released Wednesday shows that California’s TK-12 enrollment has continued its steady post-pandemic decline. At the same time, the number of poor and homeless students has been increasing.
For the 2024-25 school year, enrollment statewide declined by 31,469 students or 0.54%, compared to last year. California now has 5.8 million students in grades TK-12 compared to 6.2 million students in 2004-05. The new data from the state is based on enrollment counts for the first Wednesday in October, known as Census Day.
This year’s decline is a little steeper than last year’s, which was 0.25%, but relatively flat compared to the enrollment plunge at the peak of the pandemic.
“The overall slowing enrollment decline is encouraging and reflects the hard work of our LEAs across the state,” said state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond in a statement.
The drop in enrollment was somewhat offset by the state’s gradual rollout of transitional kindergarten. More students were eligible for the new grade than last year, and the numbers reflect that. An additional 26,079 students enrolled in transitional kindergarten — a 17.2% increase — while most other grade levels saw dips in enrollment.
The new state data also reflect an increasing number of students who are experiencing economic hardship. An additional 32,179 students now qualify as socioeconomically disadvantaged, a 0.9% increase. This data show that 230,443 students were identified as homeless — a 9.3% increase from the last school year.
The number of students identified as English learners decreased by 6.1%. This is largely in response to Assembly Bill 2268, which exempted transitional kindergarten students from taking the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC).
Previously, schools tested transitional kindergarten students with a screener meant for kindergarten students, which was not appropriate for younger students and was therefore unreliable, according to Carolyne Crolotte, director of policy at Early Edge California, a nonprofit organization that advocates for early education. The state is in the process of creating a new screener, but in the interim, almost no English learners are being identified in this grade.
State officials attribute much of the enrollment decline to demographic factors, such as a declining birth rate.
Enrollment saw its greatest decline in regions of the state with higher housing prices, notably Los Angeles County and Orange County. There is growth in more affordable areas of the state, such as the San Joaquin Valley and Northern California, including the Sacramento area.
Enrollment in charter schools has steadily increased at the same time enrollment in traditional public school is decreasing. This year an additional 50,000 students attended a charter. Now 12.5% of students in California are enrolled in charter schools, which is up from 8.7% ten years ago.
The California Department of Education characterized transitional kindergarten numbers, which went up 17.2%, as a “boom.” A release from the department stated that 85% of school districts are offering transitional kindergarten at all school sites. It also said that transitional kindergarten is creating more spaces in the state preschool for 3-year-olds.
However, the enrollment numbers for transitional kindergarten are well below early estimates advanced by the Learning Policy Institute in 2022 which had estimated that 60% to 75% of eligible students would enroll in transitional kindergarten. The just released numbers show closer to about 40% of eligible students are opting in for transitional kindergarten, which according to Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, is “not exactly universal preschool.”
The Governor’s recently released budget revision noted that lower daily attendance prompted him to reduce funds aimed at transitional kindergarten by $300 million. The state plans to lower the student to adult ratio in these classrooms from 12:1 to 10:1 next year, but will need less money to do so because of lower enrollment.
Transitional kindergarten has been gradually expanding over a five-year period to include all 4-year-olds. This school year, all students who turn five years old between Sept. 2 and Jun. 2 were eligible. The expansion to all 4-year-olds will be complete in the 2025-26 school year.
The expansion of transitional kindergarten doesn’t seem to be reaching more eligible four-year-olds than the previous system of private preschools, state preschools and Head Start, Fuller said. He notes that enrollment in those programs has been in decline at the same time that transitional kindergarten has been growing.
Crolotte praised the state for its expansion of transitional kindergarten but said that some families may not know that their children are eligible for the program.
“I think more work needs to be done about communication to families and knowing that this is available to them,” Crolotte said.
An early arriving audience member sits amidst empty seats with campaign signs for former President Donald Trump at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wis. during the first day of the Republican National Convention on Monday.
Credit: Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
While the assassination attempt on Donald Trump overshadowed discussion of policy issues at the Republican convention in Milwaukee on Monday, the GOP’s platform committee nonetheless adopted a 20-page party platform on Monday in which education features prominently.
The platform is a reminder that a slew of controversial issues, from how the racial history of the United States is interpreted to complex issues around gender identity, are still very much alive on the political stage.
The last time the GOP had a platform was in 2016, when Trump first ran for president, and it was a hefty 60 pages long. The current one is stripped down to a third the length reflecting what are core priority issues for the former president. Trump himself was key in shaping it — and his imprint is evident throughout, down to the use of capital letters in odd places.
As Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, the chair of the platform committee, said yesterday, Trump had “personally reviewed, edited, and approved” the platform.
Most of the platform consists of issues drawn from the culture wars that have roiled many school districts around the nation in recent years. In a typical pledge, the platform argues that children should be taught “fundamentals like Reading, History, Science and Math, not Leftwing propaganda.” The focus, it says, should be on “knowledge and skills,” not “CRT and gender indoctrination.”
Other party positions include:
“Defunding” schools that engage in what the platform calls “inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using federal taxpayer dollars.”
Supporting schools that “teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization” while promoting “Fair and Patriotic Civics Education.”
Championing the “First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in schools.”
“Hardening” schools to protect against gun violence or other physical threats. “Hardening” typically refers to arming teachers, and erecting a range of physical barriers, from door locking systems to surveillance cameras, in lieu of gun regulation measures.
Keeping on the front burner the GOP push for “Universal School Choice in every State in America,” the central goal of the first Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, his secretary of education.
The GOP platform draws ideas from, but does not specifically endorse Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s detailed blueprint for a second Trump term.
Trump has tried put some distance between himself and Project 2025, but that was mostly because of its extreme positions on abortion — including banning the abortion drug mifepristone — and not because of any major objections to its 44-page education blueprint.
Some key education items in the platform are recycled from earlier ones, and reiterate promises Trump has made on the campaign trail. That includes vowing to close the U.S. Department of Education and “send it back to the states where it belongs.” This is an idea that Ronald Reagan first proposed in 1985 — and which Republicans have yet to deliver on.
The platform also endorses ending teacher tenure, and giving educators merit pay increases — in contrast to union-negotiated contracts in which salaries are based principally on years worked, and the number of college course credits and degrees earned.
But even as the GOP pushes for federal education policies to devolve to state and local levels, the platform makes no reference to the fact that the federal government has relatively little say over what happens in schools. That is much more a function of state and local school board policies.
What’s more, only about a tenth of state and local education funding comes from Washington, D.C. For that reason alone, it is unclear how much of the GOP platform could actually be implemented.
Contrary to expectations raised when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made attacks on alleged “woke” education policies related to gender and racial identity a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, education issues have played a relatively small part in the presidential race so far.
That’s likely because other issues like inflation, immigration and abortion are now more salient among voters’ concerns. Another factor was that DeSantis’ focus on hot-button education issues proved to be useless in promoting his ultimately unsuccessful campaign.
So, while education is unlikely to be a major item of discussion at the GOP convention, or even in the remaining months of the presidential race, it’s clear from not only the party platform, but also from Project 2025’s detailed agenda, and Trump’s own recent statements, that numerous education issues that have sparked controversy and conflict are still very much on the GOP agenda.
And many if not all of them have the potential to be revived in a second Trump term.
This is the first of two commentaries on the education platforms of the GOP and the Democratic Party. This week the Democratic Party is expected to release its full education platform that delegates will vote on at its convention in Chicago in August.
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Louis Freedberg, a veteran journalist who has written about education in California and nationally for more than three decades, is interim CEO of EdSource.
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.
Ben Katcher was a Teach Like A Champion Fellow from 2023-24. For his final project, he focused on developing a knowledge-rich AP US History curriculum. Ben discussed knowledge organizers with Doug on the Sweat the Technique podcast (here). Sign up for his free newsletter about how to apply the science of learning in the classroom here. He can be reached at KnowledgeFirstHistory@gmail.com. He reflects here on teaching students to be more effective in using retrieval practice to review for exams.
In my AP US History class, it’s vital that my students develop study skills that can help them learn and use a lot of content knowledge. Research tells us that most people (including adults!) are not very good at studying, spending too much time reviewing information and too little time retrieving information. Information becomes far more durable and better encoded in our long-term memory when we are quizzed on it, or when we quiz ourselves on it. With this in mind, partner quizzing has become an important system for retrieval practice in my classroom.
Partner quizzing can be a powerful way to help students speak and listen to each other, develop their ideas, and prepare to participate in whole-group discussions or construct thoughtful ideas in writing. But partner work can suffer from some common pitfalls, including:
One partner dominating the discussion
Students struggling to identify the resources they need to participate fully
The teacher struggling to monitor multiple, simultaneous conversations, leaving misconceptions unaddressed
I am excited to share one activity I use in my classroom that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the risks of partner work.
This activity is a partner Retrieval Practice drill. I use this activity toward the end of a unit of study, before students take a quiz on key terms and dates associated with that unit. The goals of this activity are to help students encode knowledge, practice effective study techniques in advance of the quiz, and self-assess their understanding.
To prepare for the activity in the video below, I took all of the key terms and dates from my Unit 8 Knowledge Organizer and turned them into question form, placing a checkbox next to each question (see a portion of both my Unit 8 Knowledge Organizer and partner quiz below).
As you can see in the video, I begin the activity by reviewing the expectations. I instruct Partner #1 to ask Partner #2 each retrieval practice question. I instruct Partner #2 to attempt to answer each question without their knowledge organizer. If Partner #2 is able to answer the question, then Partner #1 will place a check next to the term on the handout that belongs to Partner #2. If Partner #2 is unable to answer the question, then they are expected to look at their Knowledge Organizer and read the answer. In that case, Partner #1 will not place a check next to the term.
As students begin asking and answering the questions, I circulate throughout the class with a copy of the student handout on my clipboard. As I circulate, I listen to student conversations, but this only gets me a limited amount of information. I only have the opportunity to hear each student ask and answer 1-2 questions. Therefore, my main focus is looking at the students’ handouts to note which terms have check marks next to them, indicating that they have been answered correctly. I then tally the terms that do not have check marks. By the end of the seven minutes, I have reliable, student-generated data that indicates the most common gaps in knowledge.
After seven minutes, the timer goes off, indicating that it is time for students’ to switch roles. But before we do that, I take the opportunity to review common misconceptions. During this lesson, my formative assessment data indicated that common misconceptions included the Truman Doctrine and the Military-Industrial Complex, so I reviewed these terms with all students.
By the end of the activity, students have generated for themselves a personalized study guide that indicates which terms they know well and which terms they need to study in more depth before the assessment. I instruct students to focus their study time on the terms that their partner did not check off for them. And I instruct them to study in exactly the way they did in class; ask themselves the questions and see if they can answer without the Knowledge Organizer. If they can, then check off the answer for themselves.
Through this activity, my students have practiced a more effective study method than simply rereading information and prepared to study effectively on their own.
Republicans are struggling to get the votes they need to pass Trump’s budget bill. They have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, and they need almost every Republican vote to put the bill through. Much of the debate focuses on the fate of Medicaid.
Medicaid and Medicare are often confused. Medicare is health insurance for senior citizens, funded by their lifetime deductions from their income. Medicaid is health insurance for low-income persons.
Trump and most of the party want to cut Medicaid to pay for the Trump tax cuts, which are focused on high-income individuals and corporations. Even with deep cuts to Medicaid, the tax cuts will increase the deficits.
Hello from just outside the chambers of House Speaker Mike Johnson.
I am waiting with a handful of other reporters as a small group of House Republicans try to work out a compromise over the party’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.” (I am looking for a shorthand for the bill, perhaps OB3?)
Republicans do not have the votes for this — yet. But they could agree at any point in the next day or two. If not, they face a weekend standoff or the possibility of leaving for Memorial Day recess without the progress Johnson has promised.
There is much at stake here. We’d like to pull off one major piece and break down some highlights. Let’s talk about Medicaid.
The basics
Medicaid is the federal health care program for low-income Americans.
CHIP is the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which, along with states, provides health care for kids whose families can’t afford health care but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.
Medicaid expansion is a program in which the federal government pays 90 percent of the cost for any state that expands Medicaid to include those making up to 138 percent of poverty. In 2025, that is $21,597 a year for individuals or $44,367 for families of four.
The federal government and states share the costs of Medicaid. But the rate of federal sharing varies by state, based on a formula.
Something called FMAP, the Federal Matching Assistance Program, helps determine how much each state gets, based on the state’s average income level. These range from a 50 to 77 percent match in the states.
But that match rate is just one half of the formula. The other is how much states spend. Medicaid is often the largest single expenditure for any state. The largest portion of money comes from the state’s general fund or general budget.
But states also use something called a “provider tax,” which is a fee charged on health care providers. Think nursing homes or hospitals.
Here is the thing about the provider tax. It is a system whereby states can actually profit.
Think about it this way. States charge hospitals and nursing homes a fee. They spend that fee on Medicaid, upping the amount the federal government must match. (More state spending triggers more federal match.) And then those federal dollars go back to the state and to the providers, as people get care. So states and providers don’t lose money, in theory.
But they trigger more federal matching.
Why it matters
Fiscal conservative holdouts who oppose the current “One Big Beautiful Bill” want action on these provider taxes and potentially on the FMAP level.
But the latest draft instead reforms Medicaid primarily by setting up new work requirements for “able-bodied” people, or those without disabilities, in the program. That requirement is currently set to phase in over the next two years.
Per the Congressional Budget Office, this Republican Medicaid plan would lead to 8.6 million Americans losing their health insurance over the next decade.
(Changes to the Affordable Care Act would lead to millions more losing coverage, per CBO.)
Republicans argue that these are programs the United States cannot afford.
And all of it revolves around precisely how Medicaid works, and how states pay for it.
Amy Lemley, right, at an April reception for John Burton Advocates for Youth.
Photo Credit: John Burton Advocates for Youth
Amy Lemley was still a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the late ’90s when she founded First Place for Youth, the first housing program for former foster youth in California.
The daughter of a large-animal veterinarian and a hospice nurse, Lemley has long been a force in policy advocacy for system-impacted youth. After First Place, she joined John Burton Advocates for Youth, or JBAY, an influential nonprofit that advocates for California’s homeless and foster youth.
Amy Lemley
Lemley joined as JBAY’s policy director at its inception in 2006 and went on to become its executive director, a role she has held for the past eight years.
A handful of the policy actions led by Lemley during her tenure as executive director include establishing the nation’s first tax credit for foster youth, the extension of foster care from age 18 to age 21, and increasing state funding for housing for former foster youth.
Lemley, who will be leaving JBAY on Oct. 1, recently sat for an interview with EdSource about her work and what’s ahead. The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Early in your career, you worked at a group home in Massachusetts for pregnant and parenting youth. What led you to work at the group home?
I did what I thought you were supposed to do when you left college, which is to go into management consulting. My parents had paid a lot for that degree, and I felt like I was supposed to go get a big, fancy job. I was miserable, and then I remember breaking down with my mom. She’s like, “Why are you doing this job, honey?” And I said, “Because you guys sacrificed so much for me to have this education.” And she said, “You don’t really get what parenthood is. We want you to be happy.” I just remember the weight of the world coming off my shoulders, and I knew what I wanted to do is what both of my parents had done, which is to try and help people.
I really had to make a hard sell to this nonprofit where I worked because I, clearly on paper, was not qualified. Whether that was responsible to the young people in their care is another question, but it opened my eyes to a whole world of young people who have had this very unfortunate circumstance and kind of set me forth on my career.
What was your role in the group home?
I was a case manager, so I had 14 pregnant and parenting young people on my caseload. I remember thinking at the time, “This shouldn’t be hard. I just have to keep them enrolled in school, and make sure they know how to parent, and help them get a job, and help them navigate public benefits, and how hard could it be?” My eyes were opened very quickly about the complexity of their lives. I had young people who would run away from the group home because their younger siblings were at home and they were trying to protect them. There were so many young people who were victims of intimate partner violence, and their lives were extremely complex. I did my very best to help them make progress in these different domains.
Why did you pursue the path of founding First Place for Youth as a student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy versus a different path of support for this particular group of young people, foster youth?
I definitely have an entrepreneurial temperament. I also really deeply believe, as many others do, that with safe, stable housing, anything is possible. It’s the foundation on which lives are built, and without it, very little is possible. And so seeing the young people who I worked with in the group home age out of care, become homeless and then tragically lose custody of their children, it was clear to me that it’s completely unreasonable for an 18-year-old to be independent. I certainly wasn’t.
So the creation and opportunity to create something with my very dear friend Deanne Pearn, to do something right, to do it well, to meet the needs of these young people, was very appealing.
At the time, there was this kind of story we told ourselves, that young people don’t want a program; they want to be free; they just want to do their own thing. But in my experience, when you give young people something of value, something that’s actually helping them meet their practical needs, they’re very receptive to it.
I’m curious about the transition from First Place for Youth to John Burton Advocates for Youth. Why transition over to JBAY at the time that you did?
We co-founded First Place and got it to a certain size, and you can really only scale a program so far with private funding. And then I happened to have been introduced to John Burton after he was termed out of office (as a state senator) and really pitched to him taking the First Place program and funding it with public funding. He’d done that a hundred times over. What to me seemed like an impossibility, he had 40 years of experience doing it. So that’s why I left.
Once an organization gets to be a certain size, as the executive director, you’re not running around doing advocacy. Your whole job really is to manage and maintain the existing organization. I felt like First Place needed an executive director that wanted to do that, and that wasn’t me. I had a different mission. I had the good fortune of meeting John Burton and having the opportunity to kind of pursue that mission together.
How do you maintain your policy focus when there is so much need and a constantly changing landscape?
Whether it’s inflation, unemployment during the pandemic or the housing crisis, whatever larger kind of macroeconomic developments occur, these young people feel it the most deeply.
I think a really important part of our success has been to not try to be experts in everything. We have a specific kind of set of policies that we’re deeply informed about, and that we keep revisiting. We try to be very disciplined in terms of really knowing the body of policy, the public agencies that administer it, the details about the implementation, the different actors that implement it, so that we can develop really smart, strategic approaches that are based not just in a conceptual knowledge, but in a deep practical knowledge of how these programs are implemented in communities.
I always say we don’t want to be an inch deep and a mile wide. It really means saying no when it’s appropriate and continuing to dig deep into those issues and figure out what is the most pressing need of young people and then how to marry that very pressing need with what is practically possible in today’s economic and political environment.
What does the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last month in the Johnson v. Grants Pass case, which upheld an Oregon city’s ban on homeless residents sleeping outdoors, mean for youth in California and nationwide?
Unaccompanied homeless youth are less likely to be sheltered than the general population of homeless individuals. And we know that young people who are unsheltered, even for a very short amount of time, are more at risk of violence and exploitation because of the vulnerability of their age. And so every night that they are unsheltered, they’re in danger. The optimist in me hopes that the ruling can be a catalyst for a more coherent, statewide approach, assuming the federal government isn’t going to provide the level of coordination and funding we require.
What comes next for you?
I am going to kind of take a couple months off and then I’m going to raise my head and think about whether I want to try my hand at consulting, potentially working with those high-quality local nonprofits who are doing very high quality service to young people and helping them match that with public funding and public policy, and taking what can be a really wonderful intervention and broadening applicability to all young people.
I’ve promised my husband I will not found another organization. I already had my wheels turning, and he’s just like, “No, Amy, no.” And I was like, “Well, I’ll try my best.”
“Teachers, the school is currently in lockdown. Please lock your doors and close your windows. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”
When I was in 10th grade, my school’s assistant principal made this announcement during first period. Sparked into action, the teachers at once turned off the lights, locked the doors and closed the windows. It took all of half a second for the 1,500 students of Reseda High School to simultaneously, haltingly, fearing for their lives, come up with a single paralyzing phrase: “school shooter.”
High schoolers may be chastised for a lot of things: procrastination, breaking curfew, ditching class, or being overly dramatic. As it turns out, there was not a school shooter in that instance. We were on lockdown because LAPD was in a standoff with a domestic violence suspect nearby. But in this case, we were well within our rights to assume the worst. In the past decade, the number of mass shootings per year in the U.S. has nearly doubled. In 2021, 689 mass shootings were reported. That’s an average of nearly two mass shootings each day. As of Tuesday, the 198th day of the year, our nation has suffered more than 302 shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Since 2020, gun violence has overtaken motor vehicle accidents as the No. 1 cause of death for Americans under the age of 19.
I’ve grown up hearing stories of my classmates having to run home because they heard gunshots on their block. No one — let alone still-developing children and teens — can or should be expected to lead successful, productive lives in a state of such anxiety. Millions of people across the nation have risen up and spoken out against gun violence, and there have been many student walkouts demanding action from our leaders, but to no avail.
This must change. The time for action came 12 years ago with the Sandy Hook school shooting, but it is not too late to make change now. We must not be deterred by the fact that previous efforts to address gun violence have failed, but encouraged by the hope that we have the ability to prevent the next tragedy. Unfortunately, too many legislative and policy attempts at addressing the problem have fallen victim to partisan politics or relied on shortcuts that made them vulnerable to being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
For example, the court recently struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, devices that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire even more rapidly. The Trump administration issued the ban after a 2017 mass shooting at an outdoor Las Vegas concert in which 60 people were killed and hundreds more wounded. The court only ruled in this way because Congress failed to enact a law banning all high-fire weapons. If Congress had passed such a law instead of relying on administrative action, a different ruling would have ensued, and assailants would not be allowed to use bump stocks.
This weekend’s attempted assassination of presidential candidate Donald Trump, in which one person was killed and two others were critically injured, reminds us that no one is immune from gun violence. Hopefully, the nation’s attention on this tragedy will show politicians that both liberals and conservatives must work together to find creative, effective solutions.
This issue is not one that can be solved overnight. One single law will not suffice, but rather a multitude of innovative policies, such as limiting access to the most dangerous weapons, better licensing and education, more attention to mental health, background checks, gun buybacks to get unwanted firearms out of circulation, limiting children’s access to guns, and more can all work in a coherent fashion to reduce gun violence.
Local, state and federal politicians must brave the potential threat of losing voters and work together to figure out real, practical measures to reduce American gun violence.
Perhaps the three most famous foundational American ideals are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, on a daily basis, gun violence takes away these rights from students. Because of guns, American students are denied the pursuit of education, the liberty of feeling safe and, too often, stripped of their right to life.
We, as American citizens, entrust our rights in the hands of those we elect. They must, then, use their power to, with fidelity, find solutions to protect citizens.
The responsibility falls not only on politicians, but to the community as well. Publish your stories, pester your local leaders, join activist groups, and do anything you can to force change to happen. This is a problem that affects all of us, meaning it will require the entire community to solve it.
We shouldn’t have to be in an enduring state of checking before turning every corner. So let’s stop waiting. And let’s start living.
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Neel J. Thakkar is a rising senior at Reseda High School in Los Angeles.
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.
