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Michael Cohen: Texas Sat on a $30 Billion Surplus and Refused to Build a Flood Warning System

The leaders of Texas have shown again and again that they are indifferent to the lives of the people of their state. Governor Greg Abbott has repeatedly refused to participate in the federal summer lunch program for low-income children, which would have fed nearly four million children. Abbott and his fellow Republicans imposed one of the strictest laws in the nation blocking abortion and the death rate of pregnant women has shot up. He has repeatedly refused to expand Medicaid to reach more than one million Texans who have no health insurance. Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick want to do as little as possible to provide public services or to improve the lives of the poor. They want low taxes. They believe in individual responsibility. That’s their highest priority.

The following article was written by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer. It appeared on the Meiselas blog. He called it: “When the System Drowns Its People.”

Cohen writes:

There are disasters, and then there are premeditated failures dressed up as acts of God. What’s unfolding across Central Texas isn’t just a freak storm or an unfortunate tragedy; it’s the culmination of arrogance, willful neglect, and a depraved obsession with austerity over human life. More than 100 are confirmed dead, and over 160 remain missing. This is not just weather. This is the rotting fruit of a political doctrine that puts dollars before dignity, and ideology before infrastructure.

This is Flash Flood Alley. They’ve called it that for decades. Scientists warned. Local officials knew. But Texas chose not to prepare. The topography is unforgiving: limestone hills, shallow rivers, rapid runoff. When the sky opens up, this region doesn’t flood. It drowns. It suffocates. And still, nothing. No modernized alert systems. No meaningful statewide plan. Just the usual chest-beating about “personal responsibility” while entire families were swept into the dark.

Here’s the insult to injury: Texas is sitting on $30 billion in a rainy-day fund. That’s not a metaphor; that’s a literal pile of untouched cash that could’ve bought sirens, early-warning systems, elevated infrastructure, floodplain mapping, and the staffing to support it all. Instead, it sat in a bank account while children drowned in their camp bunks.

Now comes the scapegoating. Right on cue, Texas officials have turned their aim at the National Weather Service, claiming it failed to provide sufficient warning. But the San Antonio Express-News called it what it is: a coward’s deflection. The NWS issued alerts—repeatedly. The problem wasn’t the forecast. The problem was that the system built to respond to that forecast had been deliberately dismantled.

Let’s talk about DOGE: the Department of Government Efficiency. This isn’t satire. This is a real federal agency, created in 2025 under Trump’s second administration. Its stated mission? To “streamline” government. Its real job? Gut it from the inside out. Think of DOGE as the ideological Molotov cocktail thrown into the machinery of public service. Under the guise of saving taxpayer money, it laid off meteorologists, froze critical positions at FEMA, slashed NOAA’s coordination grants, and eviscerated the very agencies that make emergency response possible. Efficiency? No. This is strategic sabotage dressed up in a four-letter acronym.

DOGE didn’t just cut fat; it amputated limbs. In the name of small government, they made us small-minded. In the name of freedom, they left us unprotected. And in the name of fiscal responsibility, they created the exact scenario that led to over a hundred preventable deaths in Texas. It’s bureaucratic manslaughter. And it’s spreading.

Texas didn’t just follow DOGE’s lead; it internalized it. Governor Abbott didn’t need to be told to ignore warnings. He’s been doing it for years. Flash Flood Alley has seen repeated disasters, and each time, the response has been more anemic than the last. Why fund a new emergency alert system when you can cut taxes and call it liberty? Why invest in preparedness when you can just blame someone else after the storm?

But here’s the fundamental question: What the hell is government for if not to protect its people?

If your ideology leads you to hoard billions while people drown, then your ideology is broken. If your system prioritizes “lean governance” over living children, then your system is immoral. And if your political leaders shrug at death tolls while quoting spreadsheets, then they shouldn’t be in office; they should be in court.

We live in a nation of deep denial. We still treat climate change as an abstraction. We pretend billion-dollar disasters are flukes. But we are in the age of permanent emergency. The floods are coming every year now. The fires, the heat domes, the inland hurricanes—they’re all part of the new American experience. And yet, our government—federal, state, and local—is being stripped down to the studs in the name of a 1980s fiscal fever dream about trickle-down competence.

Let’s not forget: FEMA, too, is on the chopping block. The same anti-government crusade that birthed DOGE has its sights set on dismantling the last institutions capable of responding to disaster. Because in the minds of these so-called “efficiency experts,” saving lives is a luxury. The bare minimum is too expensive.

Texas is the cautionary tale. It’s what happens when the government decides its job is not to serve the people, but to shrink until it disappears. The dead in Flash Flood Alley didn’t need to die. They died because warnings went unheeded, because funds went unused, and because the infrastructure built to protect them was methodically, proudly destroyed.

So no, this wasn’t just rain. It wasn’t just a storm. It was a policy choice. And that choice killed people.

Let this be the moment we stop pretending that slashing budgets is a moral good. Let this be the moment we say, with clarity and fury: government is not the problem; government is the responsibility. And if it can’t do the basics—warn, protect, rescue—then it isn’t just broken. It’s complicit.

Flash Flood Alley didn’t have to be a graveyard. But thanks to DOGE and the cowardice it inspires, it is.

And if we don’t change course, it won’t be the last.

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11/07/2025
Chico State professor hit with legal fees in failed libel case

Suspended Chico State professor David Stachura’s failed effort to sue a colleague for libel has hit him in the wallet.

A Superior Court judge has ordered Stachura to pay the California State University system more than $64,000 it spent to defend a lecturer he sued after she said at a campuswide forum nearly a year ago that Stachura threatened to shoot up the biology department. The university indemnified the lecturer, Betsey Tamietti.

Judge Stephen Benson threw out the suit in July under a California statute that allows successful defendants to recoup the cost of beating back such litigation. He issued the fee order late last month. Stachura also sued his estranged wife for libel but withdrew the suit.

“As a public institution, we must be responsible stewards of the money allocated to us by the state of California,” Chico State spokesperson Andrew Staples said in an email. The school looks “forward to recovering the attorney’s fees the university was forced to incur to fight this lawsuit that the court agreed was without merit and would have chilled free speech.”

Stachura’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad, didn’t respond to a request to comment on the ruling.

David Loy, legal director of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, said the law worked as intended in the Stachura case. “It protects those who speak out on matters of public concern from being intimidated by frivolous and costly lawsuits,” he said. It allows defendants to quickly beat back bogus suits meant to intimidate critics without years of costly litigation. In libel cases, “the process itself is the punishment,” Loy said.

The lecturer’s remarks came days after EdSource reported that Stachura’s estranged wife said in court documents in the couple’s divorce case that he threatened to kill two colleagues who cooperated in a university investigation that found Stachura had an inappropriate affair with a graduate student that included sex in his office.

A different judge in August granted Chico State a three-year workplace violence restraining order against Stachura. It requires him to stay off campus and away from Tamietti and others, including the professors who reported his affair with the student.

Stachura was put on paid suspension in December, a status that continues, Staples said. An investigation of the threats against the co-workers and other matters “is complete and has moved to the next stage of the personnel process,” he said.

The CSU chancellor’s office in Long Beach is overseeing an outside investigation of how the Chico State administration handled the Stachura affair, including the original investigation of the sex case and the gun threats. It is expected to be concluded in a month or two, Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson, said in an email. Stachura received light punishment in the sex case and was later named the school’s ‘”outstanding professor” of the 2020-2021 academic year.

During hearings in the restraining order case, Shanna McDaniel, a deputy state attorney general, said that the fact Stachura was likely to lose the libel case and be hit with the type of fee motion that Benson approved made him even more dangerous and a greater threat to the campus community.

In a written declaration in the libel case, Stachura said he’s suffered financially over the last year, losing consulting jobs he had for several companies. He is now listed as the founder and chief executive of a company called Philanthropic Pharma, according to its website. He is listed as its only employee.

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11/07/2025
Community college professors allege new diversity policies infringe on academic freedom

Bill Blanken, a chemistry professor at Reedley College, claims that a diversity and equity policy in California’s community colleges amounts to a “loyalty oath.”

Photo courtesy of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Bill Blanken, a chemistry professor at Reedley College, said a new diversity and equity policy in California’s community colleges amounts to a “loyalty oath” and “compelled speech” that runs afoul of free speech and academic freedom.

Community colleges’ DEIA goals: address diversity and especially racism

The push for new diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) policies came out of a long-running effort to improve student outcomes in California Community Colleges. The systemwide plan called Vision for Success outlined goals for improving transfer rates and other outcomes for students.

In 2019, the board of governors for the California Community Colleges voted in favor of establishing a framework for evaluating all its employees on their competency in serving a diverse student population. More than seven out of 10 students in the California Community College system are not white, according to 2022-23 enrollment data from community college’s Data Mart site.

But in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020, discussions over how to address diversity and especially racism on college campuses became more pointed. In August 2020, the Student Senate for the California Community Colleges held town halls where students could discuss the racism they had experienced on their college campuses and offer possible solutions.

These discussions led to Anti-Racism: A Student Plan of Action, a report which called for changes to the curriculum and for training of all college employees in areas of cultural diversity and concepts like unconscious bias.

During the first town hall, several students spoke about being assigned texts that contained racial epithets. Students said they did not object to the texts themselves, examples of which include “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” The students said, however, that they objected because professors, who were not Black, read these epithets aloud. Other students said they did not take issue with being assigned white authors who held racist views, but that authors with opposing perspectives were excluded from the syllabus.

Some students detailed explicit racism they faced from professors.

Joseph Merchain, a student at Pasadena City Community College from South Los Angeles, said that as a Black man, he felt singled out when his professor told him that his dreadlocks were not professional in front of the class.

Merchain said, “So I’m taking a whole two-hour bus ride every morning and every night just to get to and from school, just to be racially profiled?”

Blanken, along with five other tenured professors in State Center Community College District, are challenging new California Community College diversity policies that change the way employees are evaluated. A lawsuit, filed in August, describes the plaintiffs as critics of anti-racism and diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion (DEIA) principles who are concerned that these stances could result in negative performance evaluations or even losing their jobs.

“We need legal protection,” Blanken said in an interview with EdSource on Oct. 12.

Last year, the Board of Governors for the California Community Colleges adopted new regulations requiring local districts to evaluate employees, including faculty, on their competency in working with a diverse student population. Local districts were required to be in compliance last month.

Blanken disagrees with the DEIA policy’s premise that racism is embedded in institutions, including California’s community colleges, or in disciplines such as chemistry, math and physics. He argues that these fields should be taught in a way that is race- and gender-neutral. That is at the crux of the lawsuit by the six plaintiffs.

Filed by free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the suit names California Community College Chancellor Sonya Christian, the board of governors of the California Community Colleges as well as the chancellor and governing board of State Center Community College District.

A related suit, filed in June on behalf of Bakersfield College history professor Daymon Johnson, targets the chancellor and board of the Kern Community College District.

State Center Community College District, which serves Fresno and surrounding central San Joaquin Valley communities, is one of the first districts in the state to include these new diversity requirements in its latest faculty contract. The district said in a statement that it will defend its implementation of the state’s DEIA regulations and its collaborative effort with the State Center Federation of Teachers.

“The District now and forever will be a welcoming place for a diverse population, with a commitment to access and inclusion,” wrote Jill Wagner, spokesperson for State Center Community College District. “DEIA initiatives have sparked many important conversations spanning decades, and as this issue continues to evolve, efforts to address them will continue to be at the forefront.”

The district’s new evaluation process requires instructional faculty to demonstrate “teaching and learning practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles,” in addition to a written self-evaluation on the faculty’s “understanding” of DEIA competencies and “anti-racist principles,” with the goal of improving “equitable student outcomes and course completion.”

How these principles will play out in the next rounds of evaluation is still uncertain. Blanken said he has not received guidance from his department. A September memo by State Center’s human resources department noted that the district and academic senate have yet to develop uniform training guidelines for evaluations, and that meanwhile, “evaluatees should, in good faith, review the language in the contract and do their best to speak to how they have demonstrated or shown progress toward practices that embrace the DEIA principles.”

Daniel Ortner, the FIRE attorney representing the State Center professors said, “That’s not good enough when free speech is on the line.”

Ortner added that broad, undefined regulations could have a “chilling effect” on speech in the classroom. Plaintiffs are particularly concerned about a framework released by the California Community College Curriculum Committee that warns professors not to “‘weaponize’ academic freedom and academic integrity in an academic discipline or inflict curricular trauma” on historically marginalized students.

In the suit, plaintiffs said they have changed the way they teach their classes this semester because of the new DEIA policies. Loren Palsgaard, English professor at Madera Community College, said he will no longer assign texts that contain racial slurs, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and works by William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.

A response filed on Oct. 2 by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, on behalf of thc chancellor and the board of governors challenges the claim the DEIA policies bar professors from using these texts, adding that this framework is not binding and only provides a reference for college districts creating their own DEIA policies.

The guidance “expresses competencies the Chancellor’s Office endorses, but does not require,” wrote Melissa Villarin, spokesperson for the state Chancellor’s Office. “The regulations do not impose penalties on district employees. They are intended to contribute to employee professional development.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said that it is well within a college’s rights to not only prescribe the curriculum for courses but to insist that faculty be sensitive to teaching a diverse student body. He added, however, that schools cannot require that faculty espouse a particular viewpoint in their teaching.

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“The question is whether this is more the former than the latter,” Chemerinsky wrote in an email to EdSource, adding that he believes the government has a strong argument that this is within its realm of prescribing a curriculum.

“It is hard to say on this record that the First Amendment has been violated,” Chemerisky wrote. “It would be different if a teacher was being disciplined and bringing a challenge.” None of the plaintiffs in the suits has been disciplined.

A separate suit, filed by the Institute for Free Speech on behalf of Bakersfield College professor Daymon Johnson, points to the firing of Matthew Garrett, a professor who had been critical of DEIA initiatives. Garrett was not subject to new DEIA policies affecting faculty evaluations. However, Johnson’s suit claims that he worries that he, too, could lose his job, because he shares many of the same conservative values and anti-DEIA stances as Garrett.

The Kern Community College District said in a statement that Garrett was not terminated because of his opinions on DEIA or other free speech issues.

“Matthew Garrett was terminated after a lengthy and detailed examination of his disciplinary violations at Bakersfield College,” said district spokesperson Norma Rojas.

Garrett, who was terminated by the college in April 2023, contests these alleged disciplinary violations. He filed a lawsuit against the college in May 2021, claiming that he faced retaliation for exercising his free speech. He said in a statement to EdSource, that the district has “fabricated an absurd pretext that simply does not hold up under scrutiny.”

Plaintiffs in both suits have asked the court for a preliminary injunction that would prevent the California Community Colleges’ DEIA policy — as well as State Center Community College District’s faculty contract — from going into immediate effect. The request remains pending in federal court, and no hearing date is currently set.

Ortner said he is not aware of any other lawsuits from California’s 116 community colleges that are targeting the new DEIA policies, but he’s keeping his eye on the issue statewide.

“A lot of colleges have anti-discrimination protections that make students feel welcome, such as tutoring, mentoring. There are a lot of things that you can do that don’t impinge on free speech,” Ortner said. “California colleges are much more aggressive and forward in advocating for these principles.”

Editors’ note: This story has been updated to include a statement from Matthew Garrett.

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10/07/2025
Ted Cruz Slashed NOAA Funding for Weather Forecasting in Trump Budget

Since the disaster in Texas, where more than 100 lives were lost to a flash flood in the middle of the night, Senator Ted Cruz has been readily available to comment for every television camera.

He has warned Democrats and Republicans alike not to politicize the tragic events (forgetting that Republicans pounced on the Los Angeles fires to blame Democrats and DEI as the 98-mile-an-hour winds were still spreading disaster. They blamed Mayor Karen Bass [who is female and Black], they blamed the female leaders of the LA Fire Department, they blamed Governor Gavin Newsom for refusing to turn on an imaginary faucet in Northern California).

What Cruz has not mentioned is that he inserted a cut into Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that slashed $150 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget for forecasting the weather.

The Guardian reported:

“There’s no doubt afterwards we are going to have a serious retrospective as you do after any disaster and say, ‘OK what could be done differently to prevent this disaster?’” Cruz told Fox News. “The fact you have girls asleep in their cabins when flood waters are rising, something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way.”

The National Weather Service has faced scrutiny in the wake of the disaster after underestimating the amount of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that caused the deaths and about $20bn in estimated economic damages. Late-night alerts about the dangerous floods were issued by the service but the timeliness of the response, and coordination with local emergency services, will be reviewed by officials.

But before his Grecian holiday, Cruz ensured a reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) efforts to improve future weather forecasting of events that cause the sort of extreme floods that are being worsened by the human-caused climate crisis.

Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, before its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting.

Cruz was vacationing in Greece with his family when the flood occurred. A few years ago, when the power grid in Texas collapsed during a bitter cold spell, Cruz and family were on their way to Cancun. Maybe he should put out public alerts about his vacations so we can all be prepared for disasters.

Politifact debunked the claim that Trump totally defunded NOAA and the National Weather Service, it acknowledged that cuts were made (at the insistence of DOGE).

“While the administration has not defunded the NWS or NOAA, it is proposing in 2026 to cut significant research arms of the agency, including the Office of Atmospheric Research, a major hot bed of research,” Matt Lanza, Houston-based meteorologist and editor of The Eyewall, a hurricane and extreme weather website, told PolitiFact. “Multiple labs that produce forecasting tools and research used to improve forecasting would also be impacted. The reorganization that’s proposed would decimate NOAA’s research capability.”

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10/07/2025
Trump and Newsom are stealing from our children to avoid hard choices

From left, President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Credit: Official White House photo / Molly Riley and AP Photo / Rich Pedroncelli

For all of their differences, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. President Donald Trump have one thing in common: both are stealing from the future to pay for their budgets.

Trump’s thefts take the form of budget deficits that are financed by issuing U.S. Treasury securities that must be paid back by future budgets, plus interest, with money that future governments won’t be able to use for their own services. His latest budget is expected to add $4 trillion to the national debt.

Newsom’s thefts take the form of drawing from budget reserves that are supposed to be used to provide services during recessions and borrowings from Special Funds that are supposed to provide special services. Newsom has taken so much from budget reserves that his own Department of Finance forecasts the next governor will face his or her first budget without reserves. He also skips or shorts deposits to retirement funds that set aside money for future retirement payments to employees.

How did Trump and Newsom end up with deficits during an economic expansion? The short answer is that Trump cut taxes while Newsom increased spending. Deficits are expected to continue in both Washington, D.C., and Sacramento. To make matters worse, by issuing budget debt during economic expansions, Trump and Newsom set up future governments for a double whammy during recessions when those governments will have to cover Newsom’s and Trump’s thefts, even as their own tax revenues fall.

Another thing Trump and Newsom have in common is throwing people off of Medicaid rolls while throwing money at favored classes. Trump’s latest budget subjects adults to work requirements, reduces funding and adds administrative hurdles, while Newsom’s latest budget imposes asset limits, freezes enrollment of new undocumented adults, and levies new fees on enrollees. Trump’s favored classes are corporations, higher-income taxpayers, tip-based workers and Social Security recipients who got tax cuts, while Newsom’s favored classes are government unions that got more jobs and higher salaries, and entertainment companies that got more corporate welfare.

Trump and Newsom aren’t the only ones budgeting with thefts from the future. In his most recent budget, Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho skipped an annual contribution to a fund set up to cover health care costs for retired employees. You would think he would know better since a principal reason for the deficit he is struggling with is past skips and shorts that have led LAUSD’s annual spending on retirement debt to nearly triple over the last 10 years to nearly $2 billion per year.

Each has their own reasons for their actions — Trump asserts that tax cuts will eventually produce more tax revenues, while Newsom and Carvalho assert that deficit spending is needed now — but all are adding to past thefts that are already robbing citizens of huge levels of resources. The federal government is already spending more every year on interest than the $833 billion it spends on defense; California is already spending as much on bonded and retirement debt than on the $23 billion it sends to the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems combined; and LAUSD is already spending nearly 20% of its revenues on retirement costs.

By their actions, Trump, Newsom and Carvalho have just added to those burdens. Our country desperately needs leaders who care about the future.

•••

David Crane is a lecturer in public policy at Stanford University and president of Govern for California, a political philanthropy that works to counter special interest influence over California governments.

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

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10/07/2025
Nonprofit offers high schoolers in foster care guidance on getting to college

Students at the First Star Sacramento State Academy attend a lecture.

Credit: Linda Howe-Ram / First Star Sacramento State Academy

First Star Academy, a college-preparation program launched at UCLA in 2011, has been working to help foster youth students graduate from high school and reach levels of higher education.

Foster youth have the worst reported education outcomes in the nation as they lack school stability. According to the California Department of Education, only about 60% of foster youth in California complete high school, compared with 85% less than their non-foster counterparts. In addition, no more than 15% of California’s foster youth are considered college-ready, compared with 44% statewide.

First Star Academy is determined to bridge this gap.

Originally piloted at UCLA, First Star Academy is designed to provide support to high school students who have experienced foster care. This support is offered through tutoring, resources and connections to other foster youth programs to guide them toward higher education.

First Star students have access to youth mentors who help them through college applications, academic planning and life skills. Among these youth mentors is Ariana Fernandez, a student at California State University, Sacramento.

Fernandez, 21, has been working with First Star Sacramento State Academy for over a year. She hosts weekly office hours for students, provides tutoring and offers knowledge on things like how to apply for a driver’s license, build a resume and develop good study habits.

Sacramento’s First Star chapter currently serves 25 students and has five youth mentors. Students are assigned a specific mentor and are expected to meet with them weekly.

Fernandez is passionate about her students and wants them to view her as a resource, but she also had doubts about returning for the 2023-24 academic year.

“Initially, I was hesitant about joining First Star again because I had trouble forming connections with the students. But after the summer program, they really opened up to me, and that really gave me the confidence I needed to continue serving for First Star,” Fernandez said.

Her hesitation stemmed from her midterm arrival to the program. Fernandez didn’t want to impose on the existing relationships with students and their mentors.

“I came late, so most of the students had already bonded with their mentor, and I didn’t want them to feel like I was disrupting that connection,” she said.

A senior at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento and a scholar at First Star Sacramento State Academy, she values the friends the program has urged her to make.

“First Star gave me the opportunity to make connections with people I never would have met. I always look forward to in-person events to do fun activities with my friends,” said the student.

“I wish there were more in-person events, more Saturday sessions and more immersion programs.”

In the summer and Saturday sessions, students can experience life on a college campus and create bonds through numerous activities such as rock climbing, karaoke, cooking demos and kayaking. This bonding encourages the students to develop close relationships with supportive staff, mentors and peers who understand the challenges of being foster youths.

This past summer, First Star Sacramento State Academy took students to the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Lake Natoma and to see Broadway shows at Music Circus.

Sacramento State’s First Star program coordinator is Victoria Garcia. With her background in family studies, Garcia, 25, facilitated workshops based around mental health and wellness this past summer.

According to the National Foster Youth Institute, it’s estimated that as many as 80% of children and adolescents entering foster care have mental health issues.

“This is a great opportunity for the youth to be able to express their feelings and share their experiences in the foster care system with other scholars who have similar stories,” Garcia said. “This session helped bring our group closer together and break down some built-up walls.”

First Star Academies continue to expand nationally, with new campuses around the country regularly joining the program.

Aya Mikbel is a fourth-year student studying political science and journalism at California State University, Sacramento and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

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10/07/2025
How we can harness the power of debate in the classroom

We have all witnessed the turmoil that can occur in the comments sections of our social media platforms. Close-minded remarks, hurtful rhetoric and disgraceful carnage happen between strangers, friends and even co-workers.

But, as an educator, I refuse to simply shake my head and put the blame on society. Instead, I have made it my focus to teach my students to listen with intent, reply with relevant facts and discern biases. As an overwhelmed educator, this task seemed daunting at first. I teach biology; how would I bring debate into the classroom?

First, I looked at my science standards. Where did I see a spot for something with a little controversy? In my case, I decided to look at the issue of the wolf population at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan. At face value, we see a typical story about wolves and their dwindling population. I showed students the videos, we discussed the progression of the issues, and they read several articles about what had happened (MLive, APnews, MTU). The students indicated that they understood the content. They were feeling a connection to the animals and were starting to form an opinion. I knew I could stop there and move on to the next content. However, I wanted to spark a little debate to further the connection.

I wanted students to dig in deeper and choose a stance. So, I posed the question: Are humans responsible for fixing the wolf population issue? Should taxpayer money be spent rehabilitating the wolf population on Isle Royale? This divided the class almost in half. Half the students thought that nature should take its course. Half thought it was up to humans to protect the animals. At this point, I could have let the students debate/duke it out over their stances. However, that wouldn’t be focusing on my goal of promoting constructive debate. To keep behavior standards high, I set the expectations beforehand. This included raising our hand, voice level that was loud enough for the class to hear, and sentence frames on how to disagree respectfully (I appreciate your viewpoint; I see it like ____. According to the text, _____. Thank you for sharing; my view is that ____). Keeping behavior structures and expectations high, I opened the floor to discussion, questions and statements. Students pulled information from their notes. Students listened with intent. The primal need to be correct was coursing through them. They were connecting to content in a way I hadn’t seen before.

This shift from simply reading and moving on to being passionate sparked something new in my educator soul. I saw how students could make a point without being disrespectful. They could listen with intent. They could see different sides and even change their stance. Kids can possess these skills, even though some adults behind their screens do not. As educators, we know that life skills are necessary. Given the social and political climate of our world, we now need to make sure that the ability to have healthy and meaningful conversations is taught as a skill.

So, dear educator, how can you make a topic you teach into a healthy debate? Do you dive right in and look at the social and racial injustices happening worldwide? Do you start small and look at something local? Or maybe you just try to look at perspectives in the book you’re reading in class? However you choose, make an effort to teach the skills that we may not have been taught. Make an effort to show students it’s OK to have different opinions. It’s OK to feel passionate about something. Most importantly, it’s not OK to belittle or diminish others’ ideas when they’re not aligned with your own.

Hopefully, with a shift in this mindset, they can be the future we all need.

•••

Kati Begen is a high school biology educator and credential coach in Fresno. She has earned a multiple-subject credential, a single-subject credential and a master’s degree in teaching. She is currently working on her doctorate in curriculum and assessment at Southern Wesleyan University.

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.

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10/07/2025
Soon-to-be retired California reading instruction test gets high marks in national analysis

Kindergarten students at

in Robin Bryant’s class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School are learning how to add and subtract.

Photo: Andrew Reed/EdSource

This story was updated on Nov. 15 to correct information received from a source.

Most exams to prove teachers are prepared to teach reading are ineffective, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Only six of the 25 licensure tests currently used in the U.S. are considered to be strong assessments, including the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, which California will do away with in 2025.

Fifteen of the 25 reading licensure tests being used in the U.S. were “weak” and four were “acceptable,” according to the analysis. One state does not require a reading licensure test.

Council researchers based their rankings on whether the licensure exam adequately addresses the five core components of the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. They also took into consideration whether the tests combined reading with other subjects and tested teachers on methods of reading instruction already debunked by researchers.

“The science of reading or scientifically-based reading instruction is reading instruction that’s been informed by decades of research on the brain and research on how people and how children learn to read,” said Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan research and policy organization.

California will replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, or RICA, with a literacy performance assessment that allows teachers to demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips and written reflections on their practice.

“The state really needs to ensure that this new assessment is aligned to the science of reading and can provide an accurate and reliable signal that teachers have the necessary knowledge and skills to teach reading effectively,” Peske told EdSource.

The RICA addresses more than 75% of the topics in each of the five components of the science of reading. The state also gained points for not combining reading and other subjects in the examination, according to the analysis.

In California, the reading instruction assessment is required of teacher candidates seeking a multiple-subject, a prekindergarten to third grade early childhood education or an education specialist credential.

The RICA has not been popular in California in recent years. Critics have said it does not align with current state English language arts standards, is racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.

Between 2017 and 2021, more than 40% of teachers failed the test the first time they took it, according to state data. Black and Latino teacher candidates overall have lower passing rates on the test than their white and Asian peers.

“I think that when you have a test that is aligned to the research like the RICA and … a third of candidates are failing, it signals that they’re not getting the preparation aligned to the assessment, aligned to what’s on the test,” Peske said.

Low student test scores nationwide have most states reconsidering how they teach literacy. Fewer than half of students who took the California Smarter Balanced Tests met or exceeded state standards in English language arts in 2023.

California Senate Bill 488, passed in 2021, called for new literacy standards and a teacher performance assessment that emphasized teaching foundational reading skills that include phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency. The new standards also included support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs. The California Dyslexia Guidelines have been incorporated for the first time.

The California literacy performance assessment that will replace the RICA on July 1, 2025, is based on new literacy standards and teaching performance expectations approved by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing last year. The standards and teaching expectations are derived from state literacy policies and guidance, including the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework and the California Comprehensive State Literacy Plan.

The performance assessment was designed by a team of teachers, professors, researchers, nonprofit education advocacy organizations and school district administrators. It will be piloted in next spring, said Nancy Brynelson, statewide literacy co-director at the California Department of Education, who serves as a liaison to the assessment design team.

“There was a view that a performance assessment would do a better job of showing what a teacher can really do, how a teacher can apply their knowledge about literacy to a classroom situation and to particular students who need support,” Brynelson said. “And there had been a call for changing that test for quite a while.”

The assessment will be revised in the summer and field-tested with a larger number of teacher preparation programs in the 2024-25 school year, said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

“High-stakes standardized tests evaluate whether prospective teachers know enough about a subject, while performance assessments measure whether students can apply the knowledge appropriately in various contexts,” Sandy said. “As such, performance assessments serve to strengthen and deepen a prospective teacher’s knowledge and skill based on authentic practice in real classrooms.”

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10/07/2025
It is time to support high school journalism

Students working to distribute the February 2022 edition of the Lowell high school paper.

Credit: Courtesy Rae Wymer

My career in journalism has been a serendipitous path, which began because of a sabbatical.

The architecture teacher in my high school had taken the year off, and I was left with a gaping hole in my course register at 10 a.m. Demoralized and hoping for a reprieve from algebra and biology, I sought out the advice of my counselor, who recommended an introductory journalism course as a possible mitigation. I had never reported before or considered a career in the news industry.

I took her advice and enrolled, taking to the work of the news industry almost instantly. A year later I was interning for KQED in San Francisco, the local NPR affiliate, and four years later I would graduate as editor-in-chief of a publication I stumbled my way into joining. If it wasn’t for my high school’s publication, I probably would never have found my love of reporting as soon as I did.

I may have never even pursued journalism.

As college publications have stepped into the limelight in recent years, the news industry has begun singing the praises of college reporters; but it is impossible to celebrate the work of local journalists without recognizing the importance of high school publications to provide the foundation for many college reporters.

College publications do professional work, reminding us that the main difference between student journalists and their professional counterparts is that students are balancing school and reporting. Some key examples of stellar work include Michigan State’s The State News exposing abuse by Larry Nasser and North by Northwestern’s coverage of racist allegations against Northwestern’s football coach. It is this work and the daily coverage by publications that builds a foundation of solid reporting, teaching many students the tools necessary for future employment.

For schools, the importance of journalism is only growing. Journalism is an important part of education, especially when controversy arises on a local level, as seen in Temecula Valley Unified. When covering controversies, student journalists have unfettered access to the thoughts, opinions and fears of high school students. Students may be more willing to discuss the realities of what goes on behind school doors from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. with someone they have physics with than an adult reporter.

San Francisco, my hometown, has around 17 public high schools — yet when the city hosted the JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention in April, not a single public school attended. Only two public high schools in San Francisco have newspapers, and another two have smaller programs. This is sadly not an anomaly for urban public schools because producing a paper is expensive and requires an adviser with journalism experience.

Personally, Lowell High School, my alma mater, provided no funding for the newspaper. Our publication was funded entirely by grants, alumni donations, advertisements and extensive bake sales. Beyond school site support, the district provides no funds for establishing these programs. There are no established incentives for school districts to support the creation of high school publications.

High school papers, especially in low-income or urban districts, are in short supply. A lack of student publications can exacerbate potential news deserts in smaller districts where schools and communities rely on a dwindling number of local newsrooms for coverage; it places the burden of reporting on larger circulation papers.

It is local high school publications that are the unsung heroes of the journalism industry — they help teach future generations of reporters. Many of my fellow college journalists got their start in high school with a newspaper or yearbook. It is not just the job of colleges to maintain their newspapers; there is also an onus on high schools to provide the opportunity for their students to try their hand at journalism.

There is something special about the work done by high school publications. In many ways, it is a commitment and an enduring love for their school that produces this work. I am still proud of the work my friends and I did for our high school paper, and I wish more students had this type of opportunity.

Good high school journalism can change lives. I know it changed mine.

•••

Rae Wymer is a second-year urban studies major at UC Berkeley, minoring in journalism and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

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.

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10/07/2025
Bill to provide descendants of slavery preference in college admissions moves forward
UCLA campus in Westwood on Nov. 18, 2023.

Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource
Top Takeaways

Assembly Bill 7, which would allow colleges and universities to give preference to students who are descendants of slavery, cleared the Senate Education Committee.

Affirmative action is not permitted at the state or federal level, but proponents say being a descendant of a slave isn’t a proxy for race.

Experts doubt the bill will become law and anticipate legal challenges.
A bill that would give California colleges and universities an option to provide preference in admissions to descendants of slavery has cleared the state’s Senate Education Committee with a 5-2 vote after being passed in the Assembly with overwhelming support. But as the bill moves to the Judiciary Committee, even its proponents say they are pessimistic that it will become law at a time of increasing scrutiny over measures suggesting racial preferences.

Assembly Bill 7, authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, is the first statewide measure of its kind to address the harms of slavery, said UCLA education professor Tyrone Howard, and it has been backed by nearly two dozen organizations, including the California Federation of Teachers and the University of California Student Association.

“Disparities in admissions persist and reflect deeply rooted structural inequalities, including the afterlives of slavery. In addition, California had a long history of legacy admissions, up until last year, that favored students who came from wealthy and well-connected family situations,” Bryan said at Wednesday’s hearing. “[AB 7] empowers universities with the option, not a mandate, to acknowledge and respond to this historical context when evaluating applicants.”

Lance Christensen, the vice president of Government Affairs & Education Policy at the California Policy Center, said he doesn’t see the need for such a measure in California — and felt the bill “looks to be an underhanded approach at racial preferences.”

“I think we’re getting close to the place where we should stop race-baiting a lot of our bills. If California truly is a terrible or bad actor in the issue of slavery, we should do everything we can to fix and address those issues,” Christensen said. “And there are places where we were really not good to a lot of Black people, Asians, Native Americans and other disparate people. This is not one of those places where I think that we should focus our time and attention.”

Organizations such as the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation also previously expressed concerns about AB 7 leading “to de facto racial preferences without facilitating any meaningful changes to ameliorate structural problems at the K-12 level, including declines in academic performance and the persistent achievement gaps among different demographic groups.”

Neither state nor federal law allows a student’s race to be a factor in admissions, and affirmative action continues to be barred in California under Proposition 209, which 57.2% of voters opted to keep in place in 2020.

But supporters of the bill said at Wednesday’s hearing that descendants are not a “proxy for race” and “could look like anybody in this room,” noting that Indigenous people also have histories of being enslaved. Meanwhile, not all Black Americans have ancestors who were slaves.

The bill did not receive any formal opposition at Wednesday’s hearing.

“We have seen reparations for different communities, and we’ve seen the benefits,” said Senate Education Committee Chair Sasha Renée Pérez, noting reparations measures following Japanese internment during World War II. “Unfortunately, we have not seen the same type of investments placed towards those that are descendants of slavery and Black Americans across the country.”

Proving lineage

AB 7 is unique because it specifically pertains to students who are descendants of slavery, Howard said. But, even if the bill passes, qualifying for any preference in admissions could be difficult, and Christensen added that ancestral records are often “incomplete or scattered at best,” which could lead to logistical issues.

“Admissions reviewers have a lot to already digest when they’re going through the process of admissions as it is — when you think about transcripts and grades and coursework and extracurricular activities,” Howard said. “And so now, to add to that, you’ve got to prove lineage. That might prove to be a bit challenging.”

Any preference in admissions would apply to students who can show a clear lineage to someone who was subjected to American chattel slavery before 1900, according to the bill analysis.

In order to receive preference, students will also have to meet at least one other criteria, which includes having an ancestor who was emancipated, acquiring freedom through abolition measures, being a fugitive from bondage, considered contraband or “rendered military or civic service while subject to legal restrictions based on ancestry historically associated with slavery.”

When it comes to affirmative action, there “is this misnomer that somehow a large number of unqualified and unprepared … Black students are getting these opportunities solely because of the fact of their race or ethnicity,” Howard added. “This would be one variable that would attempt to at least give some consideration.”

Potential challenges

Despite its support at Wednesday’s committee hearing, many experts are wary that the bill will not become law in the first place.

“As progressive as we are, I don’t know that we have the appetite as a state to go so far as to say, ‘Yes, we acknowledge that there are descendants in this state who are harmed by the legacy of slavery — and therefore we’re going to try to take redress by turning when it comes to college admissions,’” Howard said.

Howard pointed out that even if AB 7 is successful, the language in the bill requires that colleges and universities ensure any changes in the admissions process are in compliance with federal laws.

Given the current political climate, “Federal guidelines are not going to allow something that gives anything that resembles an advantage or an opportunity to one group of others to fly,” Howard said. “I just think that all the attacks we’ve seen on DEI, anything that’s seen in that way, I think would be dead on arrival.”

Shaun Harper, a USC professor of education, public policy and business, said he supports the measure and other efforts to secure reparations.

But, if passed, he anticipates it would face serious legal challenges, including from those who believe it violates Prop. 209 or contradicts the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action.

“At best … it does some acknowledgment of the wrongs that have been done to enslaved Africans here in the United States,” Harper said. “Ultimately, if it doesn’t happen, or it stalls, once again, Black folks have been set up to expect some amends for the wrongdoing, and we’re going to be left once again disappointed.”
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10/07/2025