Improving literacy instruction is once again in fashion among America’s policy circles. Between 2019 and 2022, state legislatures passed more than 200 bills that sought to push and pull public schools to embrace the “science of reading.”
But one year into closely following a big city school district’s effort to remake literacy instruction as part of a project with the Center on Reinventing Public Education, I can’t help but think these well-intended legislative efforts ignore the larger problem: teachers working alone in their classrooms are ill-positioned on their own to provide the support children most need to learn to read.
CRPE’s report on this project suggests that addressing the literacy crisis requires more than papering over the harms of bad curricula. It means rethinking the traditional teaching model, long a hallmark of public education in the United States, that leaves one adult in charge of supporting 25 or more children who arrive with wildly different levels of preparation and uneven or absent literacy support at home.
Thanks to the work of organizations like The Oakland REACH and the Oakland NAACP, the Oakland Unified School District started quietly overhauling its approach to literacy instruction two years ago. That work involved familiar investments in new curriculum and professional development.
But the real stars of the strategy were early literacy tutors, community members — including parents and grandparents — who were trained and paid to support small groups of students working to develop foundational literacy skills.
Thanks to the investment in early literacy tutors, Oakland schools were able to offer significantly more targeted and differentiated instruction than they would have otherwise. One school we visited used an “all hands on deck” approach that leveraged eight classroom teachers, two tutors, and two non-classroom educators to ensure that every student was getting the targeted literacy instruction they needed. Another school described using tutors to support literacy instruction in a first-second combination class, where students’ instructional needs varied by multiple grade levels.
In interviews, teachers and principals alike described the importance of having an additional adult to support reading instruction. A teacher we spoke to said having a trained tutor in her classroom meant she could support five literacy groups instead of two and provide extra support to children who were furthest behind. Without the tutor, this teacher said she would have had to rely more on whole-group direct instruction, pushing children who didn’t yet know their letter sounds to learn alongside those already reading.
A parent contrasted her child’s experience in an Oakland school supported by a tutor with her own experience: “I think back to when I was in school. If you were behind where the class was, you were really left behind, or if you were ahead, then maybe you were bored and your mind was wandering and you weren’t paying attention. I feel like with (early literacy tutors) … (students) get special time with an adult who is working with them. And I think that is really impactful.”
Importantly, in shouldering some of the work of literacy instruction, early literacy tutors provided a critical well of support for beleaguered educators, whose jobs have become ever more difficult coming out of the pandemic. Increasing behavioral challenges, an attendance crisis and larger variation in students’ learning needs are putting extraordinary demands on teachers at a time when public attitudes about work and the prestige of teaching are also evolving and eroding teachers’ commitment to their jobs.
Early literacy tutors could meaningfully help shoulder the load of reading instruction in large part because they were fully integrated into the district’s larger strategy around literacy. Unlike other tutoring programs that largely operate on the periphery of schools, Oakland’s early literacy tutors worked hand-in-hand with school staff charged with supporting literacy instruction.
Two years after they embarked on the new strategy, Oakland can’t yet claim to have solved the literacy problem, but there are glimmers of hope. Our study found that students who had access to evidence-based, differentiated literacy instruction — whether tutor- or teacher-provided — made statistically significant learning gains in reading and these gains were especially large in kindergarten. These results were achieved despite the fact that schools told us they needed additional tutors to fully optimize small-group reading instruction. Imagine what might be possible if every child had access to differentiated instruction that met their individual needs.
Expecting teachers, working alone in their classrooms, to provide both all the individualized support students most need was probably always a fool’s errand; continuing to embrace it as students struggle and deal with the lifelong consequences of illiteracy is simply irresponsible. As schools look to make up ground lost during the pandemic, those that support them should understand the limitations that come with investing too little into the effort.
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Ashley Jochimis a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, where her research focuses on identifying opportunities and obstacles to addressing systemic challenges in K-12 schools.She co-authored a report on the organization’s work in Oakland Unified School District.
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Students walk near Laxson Auditorium on the Chico State campus.
Credit: Jason Halley/University Photographer/Chico State
California lawmakers introduced a series of bills Monday to prevent and address sexual discrimination and harassment in the state’s colleges and universities.
The 12-bill package led by Assemblymember Mike Fong, who chairs the Assembly Higher Education Committee, follows a report released in February that detailed significant deficiencies in how the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges handle Title IX. That federal law prohibits schools from sex-based discrimination.
“This package is a crucial step in creating a system of compliance and oversight that will increase transparency and accountability to address and prevent sex discrimination and harassment on college campuses,” said Fong, D-Monterey Park. “While there is still much work ahead, I am confident in the impact this legislative package will have for campus communities, especially students and staff. I look forward to continual collaboration between the Legislature and all California’s higher education institutions to address this issue of safety and equity on campus.”
The 12 bills include:
AB 810, from Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Burbank, would require all public colleges and universities to use UC Davis’ policy to conduct employment verification checks to determine if a job applicant for any athletic, academic or administrative position had any substantial misconduct allegations from their previous employer.
AB 1790, from Assemblymember Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, would require CSU to implement recommendations made in a Title IX report conducted last year by the California State Auditor by Jan. 1, 2026. That report found the 23-campus system lacked resources and failed to carry out its Title IX responsibilities.
AB 1905, from Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-San Luis Obispo, would create parameters around employee retreat rights, letters of recommendations and settlements for administrators who have a substantiated sexual harassment complaint against them.
AB 2047, from Fong, would create an independent, statewide Title IX office to assist the community colleges, CSU and UC systems with Title IX monitoring and compliance, and create a statewide Title IX coordinator.
AB 2048, from Fong, would require each community college district and each CSU and UC campus to have an independent Title IX office.
AB 2326, from Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-Chula Vista, would create entities responsible for ensuring campus programs are free from discrimination and would require the community colleges, CSU and UC to annually present to the Legislature how their systems are actively preventing discrimination.
AB 2407, from Assemblymember Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, would require the California State Auditor to audit the community colleges, CSU and UC systems every three years on their ability to address and prevent sexual harassment on the campuses.
AB 2492, from Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, would create additional positions on college campuses to assist students, faculty and staff during the adjudication of sexual harassment complaints.
AB 2608, from Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, D-Encino, would require campuses to offer drug-facilitated sexual assault prevention training.
AB 2987, from Assemblymember Liz Ortega, D-Hayward, would mandate that the community colleges and CSU provide timely updates on the outcomes of sexual discrimination and harassment cases to the people involved. The bill would request the same of UC.
Senate Bill 1166, from Sen. Bill Dodd, would establish annual reporting requirements for the community colleges and CSU to conduct a report on sexual harassment complaint outcomes, and a summary of how each campus worked to prevent sex discrimination. The bill would request the same of UC.
SB 1491, from Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Hayward, would create a notification process for students who attend private institutions to disclose discriminatory events to the U.S. Department of Education, even if their college or university is exempt from Title IX.
The slate of bills follows a series of news nationally and statewide about mishandled Title IX cases. Last year, the CSU system was found to have mishandled a variety of cases based on reports from an independent law firm and the state auditor. CSU is currently implementing the changes and reforms called for in both reports, and it has already changed its policy allowing administrators who have committed misconduct to “retreat” to faculty positions.
“Whether it’s sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, or any other form of misconduct, no student should feel unsafe or unwelcome in their learning environment,” said Lisa Baker, a representative from the student senate for California Community Colleges. “Unfortunately, harassment remains prevalent on college campuses, potentially affecting students’ mental health and academic performance. We students, and future students, are relying on Title IX and this package of bills for our success.”
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.”
Bullard High School senior Isabell Coronado works with Gibson Elementary first grader Mayson Lydon on March 15, 2024, as part of Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy Program.
Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
In mid-March, Bullard High School students Merrick Crowley and Craig Coleman taught an interactive science lesson for a fifth-grade class at Gibson Elementary in Fresno.
At the front of the classroom, Coleman held an egg above one of three containers filled with liquids, such as saltwater. He and Crowley asked students to predict what would happen to each egg: Will it sink or float? The fifth graders, wide-eyed and smiling, raised their hands to share their predictions.
“You said if we took a field trip (to the Red Sea), we would float,” said one fifth grader to explain why she thought the egg would float in the saltwater.
Once Coleman dropped the egg in the water, the students expressed joy or disappointment, depending on whether their predictions were accurate or not. “Can anyone tell me why it’s floating?” Crowley asked as Coleman hinted that the answer was related to density.
The high schoolers were in Fresno Unified’s Career Technical Education (CTE) Pathway course, one of the district’s three Teacher Academy programs that has the potential to increase the number of educators entering the K-12 system.
According to educators and leaders in the school district and across the state, introducing and preparing students for the teaching field, starting at the high-school level, will be key to addressing the teacher shortage — a problem affecting schools across the nation.
Teachers are retiring in greater numbers than in years past, and many, burned out or stressed by student behavior, have quit. Fewer teacher candidates are enrolling in preparation programs, worsening the shortage.
Since 2016, California has invested $1.2 billion to address the state’s enduring teacher shortage.
Despite the efforts, school districts continue to struggle to recruit teachers, especially for hard-to-fill jobs in special education, science, math and bilingual education.
As a result, districts and county education offices have been creating and expanding high school educator pathway programs under “grow-our-own” models intended to strengthen and diversify the teacher pipeline and workforce. High school educator programs expose students to the career early on by “tapping into (students’) love of helping others” and “keeping them engaged,” creating a more diverse teacher workforce and putting well-trained teachers in the classroom, said Girlie Hale, president of the Teachers College of San Joaquin, which partners with a grade 9-12 educator pathway program.
“The high school educator pipeline is one of the long-term solutions that we can incorporate,” Hale said. “Through the early exposure and interest of these (high school) educator pathways, it’s going to have a positive effect on increasing enrollment into teaching preparation programs.”
Growing their own
Fueled by the expansion of programs, increased participation and positive outcomes, “education-based CTE programs over the past decade have increased in high schools,” said James F. Lane, a former assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education and CEO of PDK International, a professional nonprofit that supports aspiring educators through programs such as Educators Rising.
Educators Rising, a community-based organization with chapters in high schools in each state, teaches students the skills needed to become educators. Lane said the organization has seen 20% growth in the last two years, including the creation of a California chapter.
“District leaders are seeing the benefits of supporting future teachers in their own community due to the fact that 60% of teachers end up teaching within 20 miles of where they went to high school,” he said.
That isn’t the only benefit districts see.
Fresno Unified, the state’s third-largest school district, enrolls higher percentages of Hispanic, African American, Asian, Pacific Islander and American Indian students than other districts across Fresno County and California, according to California Department of Education data from 2022-23. The district’s current high schoolers resemble the demographics of the elementary students and the next generation of learners.
Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy Program can feed those high schoolers into one of the district’s teacher pipeline programs and back into schools, said Maiv Thao, manager of the district’s teacher development department.
“We know how important that is, to have someone that understands them, someone that looks like them and is able to be that model of, ‘If they can do it, then I can do it as well,’” Thao said. “We know that teachers of color make a huge impact on our students; they’re the ones who can make that connection with our students.”
In San Joaquin County, there are at least a dozen teacher preparation academies across five school districts, including a program launched in 2021 through a partnership with the county education office, a charter school, higher education institutions and nonprofit grant funding.
Students interested in pursuing a career in education can enter Teacher Education and Early College High (TEACH), an educator pathway program offered at the charter school Venture Academy to support students from freshman year of high school to the classroom as a teacher.
Through the early college high school model, students simultaneously take their high school classes and college courses and will graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate degree in elementary education from San Joaquin Delta College. Further, a relationship with Humphreys University allows students, who’d be entering as college juniors, to graduate debt free with their bachelor’s degrees. Then, students can complete the teacher credential program at the Teachers College of San Joaquin.
“The idea was to grow students within our community to become teachers and, then, have them return and serve as teachers in the communities that grew them,” said Joni Hellstrom, division director of Venture Academy.
But first, schools must get students enthusiastic about teaching.
Split model of learning: Time in the class as students
Students in TEACH in Stockton and the Teacher Academy in Fresno experience a cohort learning model and fieldwork opportunities. The teacher preparation is done over four years of high school in TEACH.
Because the entire program is meant to prepare them to be classroom teachers, core subject areas are taught so that students can evaluate the effectiveness of teaching styles on their own learning, Hellstrom said. For example, as students learn math, the teacher points out the strategies he or she is using in the lessons, preparing those students to “become teachers of math, not just learners of math,” she said.
Students also take classes each year to learn different teaching approaches, and they’re encouraged to incorporate the methods into class projects and lessons they’ll develop for elementary classes.
As freshmen, students visit elementary classes as a group to be reading buddies to the kids. Sophomores partner with the elementary teachers to design activities, such as a science experiment.
Three Teacher Academy options in Fresno Unified
Fresno Unified has expanded its program to offer various opportunities at its high schools, including the Teacher Academy Saturday Program, Summer Program and CTE course.
The Saturday program, requiring a commitment of four Saturdays in a semester,is a paid opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors and seniors to develop and teach STEM lessons.
The Summer Program, a paid internship also for grades 10-12, allows participants to work with students in summer school.
As juniors, students do field work in a class or subject area they’re interested in. For example, a student who enjoyed sports worked with a PE teacher this past year and taught lessons she designed, then reflected on what she learned from the experience and how the elementary school kids responded.
“It’s a really powerful learning opportunity for them,” Hellstrom said.
This upcoming school year, the first cohort of students, now seniors, will participate in internships in school districts across the county.
Under the umbrella of Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy Program, students learn, then apply skills at an elementary school through embedded workplace learning.
The CTE course is designed for juniors and seniors to develop their communication, professionalism and leadership skills as well as learn teaching styles, lesson planning, class instruction, cultural proficiency and engagement techniques while gaining hands-on experience in elementary classes.
In Marisol Sevel’s mid-March CTE class, Edison High students answered “How would you define classroom management to a friend?” as Sevel went one-by-one to each high schooler, performing a handshake and patting them on their backs — modeling for them how to engage students.
Key components of the lesson were: building relationships and trust; providing positive reinforcement; exhibiting fair, consistent discipline; and other strategies to create a welcoming classroom environment.
“These are things that should not be new to you,” Sevel said about concepts the students have seen in the classroom and experienced, “but what is going to be new to you is how do you handle it as a teacher?”
Time as teachers
Fresno Unified’s literacy team trained high school students in the district’s Teacher Academy Program on the science of reading teaching method, which the high schoolers use to help elementary students during small group or individual sessions. Pictured is Bullard High School student Alondra Pineda Martinez with Gibson Elementary first graders Sara Her and Rowan Bettencourt. Credit: Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource
With schools within walking distance, Fresno high schoolers walk to the neighboring elementary school, where they apply the lessons they’ve learned in class.
At Gibson Elementary, first-grade teacher Hayley Caeton helped a group of her students with an assignment as others worked independently. In one corner of the room, two first graders created a small circle around Bullard High student Alondra Pineda Martinez while another first grader sat next to Bullard High student Marianna Fernandez. “What sound does it make?” the high schoolers asked as they pointed to ABC graphics.
Each week, Pineda Martinez and Fernandez covered specific concepts with the first graders in their groups based on the lesson plans that Caeton prepared.
The first graders, guided by the high schooler in front or beside them, moved from one activity to the next — from identifying words with oo vowel sounds to reading a book with many of those words.
“Good job,” Fernandez told first grader Tabias Abell.
More of Caeton’s students get academic support, as do other Gibson Elementary students across campus, because the high school students can pull them into small groups or individual sessions.
For instance, in Renae Pendola’s second-grade classroom, high schoolers provided math support as the teacher went around the class answering questions about an assignment.
Isabell Coronado and a second grader used fake coins to explore different ways to come up with 80 cents while Rebecca Lima helped three students with an imaginary transaction.
“Wouldn’t you make it just $1.24?” a student asked Lima, who reminded the group that they only had one dollar to spare at the ice cream shop, per the assignment.
Learning the reality of teaching
From the professional development to the hands-on involvement with elementary students, high schoolers in Fresno are experiencing the “daily struggle” and “joyous moments” of being a teacher, students attending Bullard, Edison and Hoover high schools told EdSource.
“It’s preparing you for what’s coming,” Edison High student Alyssa Ortiz Ramirez said. “We’re not romanticizing teachers in here; we’re being real.”
A Gibson Elementary first grader drew a picture of Bullard High School student Marianna Fernandez. Photo courtesy of Marianna Fernandez
The high school students spoke about how difficult it is to engage and educate a class full of diverse learners.
“I was confused,” Edison’s Issac Garcia Diaz said about the first time he saw different learning styles among King Elementary students. “I thought everyone learned the same.”
The high schoolers aren’t the only ones learning from the experience; elementary students are more often engaged and supported.
“It’s not just academics. They’re connecting,” Gibson Elementary’s first-grade teacher Caeton said about the teacher academy. “With an older kid, (the elementary students) just come out of their shell a little bit more.”
Hoover High junior Saraih Reyes Baltazar was able to help the diverse learners at Wolters Elementary. Baltazar, who spoke only Spanish when she emigrated from Mexico, explained science concepts to Spanish-speaking students. She narrated parts in English and parts in Spanish, hoping to make the students more comfortable to open up and use more English.
Hoover High graduating seniors Vanessa Melendrez and Johnathon Jones also provided individualized support for Wolters Elementary first graders. Melendrez usually slowed down a lesson to help kids struggling to read at grade level, and Jones most often helped students with comprehending the material.
“There’s only one teacher in the room, and there’s over 20 students,” Melendrez said. “A teacher can’t answer every question while they’re up, teaching.”
Gaining skills
Crowley, the graduating senior who worked in the Gibson Elementary fifth-grade class, said leading whole-class presentations and small-group lessons taught him public speaking and effective communication skills.
“It got me ready for the real world,” he said.
Teachers and students said the Teacher Academy Program in Fresno develops and builds skills that can be used in the teaching profession or any career, including life skills of communication, soft skills such as punctuality and personal skills of confidence.
“It’s broken me out of my shy shell,” said Bullard High’s Fernandez. “It’s taught me how to connect with people — classmates, teachers, students, everyone. It’s made me communicate in ways that I haven’t been comfortable with.”
Fernandez, a graduating senior, was able to talk with substitute teachers about what students were struggling with.
Her mom is a day care provider, and she has always enjoyed working with kids. She joined the Teacher Academy Program to test whether she’d consider majoring in education once in college.
She decided to pursue teaching as a backup plan, she said.
Hoover High School junior Kyrie Green wants to be a math teacher for high school freshmen.
Green, who is shy, viewed stepping out of her comfort zone and leading a classroom as her greatest challenge in becoming an educator.
But her time in the program has helped her speak up, she said. Now she’s looking forward to the next steps in becoming a teacher: graduating and earning a teaching certification.
Making an impact
There isn’t yet a system to track the students who go from a high school pathway into a teacher credentialing program after college, then into the education career, partly because of the number of years between high school graduation and teacher certification.
Students who’ve participated in high school educator pathway programs, such as those in Fresno, have gone on to become teachers, including Thao, the department manager. She worked at an elementary school while in high school, obtained a teaching credential and started teaching at the same elementary school.
“I did what these kids did; I know it works,” she said. “Little by little … we are making an impact.”
Still, only 18% of Americans would encourage young people to become a K-12 teacher, according to a 2022 survey by NORC, previously the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago.
With the programs in Fresno and San Joaquin County, “We have a whole group of students that are excited to go into a profession that is waning right now,” Hellstrom, Venture Academy’s division director, said.
Whether reaffirming a plan to pursue education or weighing it as an option, students told EdSource that the program has changed their perspective about teaching and has empowered them even more to become educators or to make an impact in another way.
“If I can be a teacher who gives students what they need, like attention, love or anything,” Ortiz Ramirez said, “then that’s why I want to be a teacher.”
For years, California has been faced with a shortage of teachers that predated the pandemic but which the pandemic certainly did not help. A key factor that exacerbates this shortage are the high-stakes teaching performance assessments (TPAs) used in the state, such as the California Teaching Performance Assessment (CalTPA), the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), and the Reading Instruction Competency Assessment (RICA).
These act as overly restrictive barriers preventing us from solving not just the teacher shortage but also our significant teacher diversity problem. This is why the introduction of Senate Bill 1263 last year was a sign of hope and a step in the right direction.
The original version of SB 1263, in essence, sought to dismantle the use of TPAs in the state of California and was strongly supported by those of us at the California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education (CARE-ED), and the California Teachers Association (CTA).
But since its introduction, the bill has been modified to keep TPAs intact and instead implement a review panel to oversee the TPA and make recommendations about it to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), the agency tasked with overseeing the TPA.
We in CARE-ED and the CTA found this development to be deeply disappointing. While there are naturally differing viewpoints about the TPAs, with voices calling for keeping the assessments intact, it is education researchers and actual teachers on the front line who grapple with the realities of classroom pedagogy on a daily basis and are best positioned to know if TPAs are serving their stated purpose of ensuring qualified teachers or are actually undermining this very goal.
In theory, TPAs are designed to measure and assess the educational knowledge, skills and readiness of teachers and predict their effectiveness in the classroom. In addition to being a measurement tool, they are also framed as being a learning experience in themselves by providing student teachers with feedback regarding their performance.
In practice, however, TPAs are a severe source of stress and strain on student teachers, many of whom come from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds and are already overburdened in various ways.
In 2022, I was part of a team of researchers at CARE-ED that examined the pass rates of the edTPA, CalTPA, and RICA according to different demographic groups. What we found were consistent racial disparities across all three assessments. In effect, the TPAs are functioning as racialized gatekeepers systematically impeding candidates of color — especially Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, and Southeast Asian candidates — from attaining certification. This exacerbates the teacher shortage and the diversity gap, and undermines efforts to mitigate them.
Then there are the expenses involved with the TPA process which, while temporarily waived during the pandemic, have been resumed. The TPA consists of two cycles, each one costing $150. This is in addition to the California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET), which also costs anywhere from a minimum of $63 up to a few hundred dollars. Furthermore, there is the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA), which costs over $200.
These fees are all in addition to the expenses student teachers are already paying while completing their coursework, such as tuition, books, supplies and living expenses. And it’s helpful to remember that many student teachers are trying to make ends meet — while raising families, in many cases — with juggling the full responsibilities of leading classrooms of 30-plus students and completing coursework requirements and, at the same time, having to fulfill the stringent requirements of the TPA within the one year they are allotted upon registration.
Yet, despite the steep costs and stress of the TPAs that student teachers face on top of juggling so many other challenges, there is often also a lack of support from the teacher preparation programs they are enrolled in, as well as insufficient support from state and local government.
This is why providing concrete support, both financially and educationally, for student teachers is one of my priorities as interim dean for the school of education at Notre Dame de Namur University. If we can’t relieve student teachers of the burden of TPAs, then we can at least alleviate the burden of some of their expenses and provide as much educational support as possible while they navigate the TPA process.
Based on our research at CARE-ED and the CTA and our many collective years of working with student teachers, we believe the best-case-scenario would be to pass SB 1263 as it was originally written. But since the bill has been modified, I would urge that at the very least the review panel that has been proposed in lieu of removing the TPAs have fair representation.
This means that representation from the CTC, the aforementioned agency tasked with overseeing the TPA, should be minimal, and there must be a just representation of teacher educators and, most importantly, teachers themselves, because they are the ones who best understand the realities of teaching and what they need to do their jobs. This is critically important. Otherwise we run the risk of losing this precious opportunity to address California’s teacher shortage and lack of teacher diversity in a way that could make a real difference.
Unless Assembly Bill 2097 — requiring every public high school to teach a computer science course — advances in the state Legislature onThursday, access to computer science in California will continue to be inequitable across socioeconomic, racial, gender and geographic lines, according to the bill’s author.
“It’s predominantly our underserved communities, our Black and brown communities, our rural communities, where students are going to schools that don’t even give them access to computer science,” said Assemblymember Marc Berman about his bill, which would close gaps and increase access to computer science classes in California, as 30 other states do.
Currently, the legislation is under “suspense” in the Senate Appropriations Committee, a process in which the bill’s fiscal impact is considered. If it doesn’t come out of suspense Thursday, the bill dies.
According to a September 2021 report, California lagged behind the national average and about three dozen other states in the percentage of high schools offering at least one computer science course, which can build a foundational understanding of technology.
Across California, the home state of the Silicon Valley, only 42% of high schools offered computer science in the 2018-19 school year, and just 5% of the state’s 1.9 million students enrolled. Access to the course varied, depending on the socioeconomic status, racial makeup and geographic location of schools.
For example, the report showed that 31% of schools serving low-income students offered a course, compared with 69% of high-income schools.
Policy requiring schools to offer computer science has been implemented in states such as Nevada, where about 96% of the state’s schools offer a course, based on a national 2023 State of Computer Science Education report.
Closing equity gaps: The need for a computer science requirement
Since the 2018-19 school year, the percentage of California schools offering a computer science course has slightly increased to 45%, based on 2023 data. But California still lags the national average of 57.5% and still shows disparities among student groups and schools in certain communities.
“It’s been frustrating to see either the lack of progress or the remarkably slow progress that we’ve made, and that really emphasizes for me how important it is that we set this requirement,” Berman said. “If we don’t set that requirement, we’re never going to do the work necessary to accomplish it. Not having a requirement — it’s not yielding the progress that our students deserve.”
Based on the 2023 data from the 2022-23 school year:
55% of high schools don’t offer any computer science courses.
27% of rural schools offer a course, compared with 50% of urban schools and 52% of suburban schools.
“That’s why we need this effort,” Berman said about the proposed legislation bringing schools to the baseline of offering the course.
“The data is clear that depending on what ZIP code you grow up in is determining whether or not you get the chance to get computer science education, and that shouldn’t be the case in California.”
National data shows that 99% of high schools in Arkansas and Maryland offer computer science, with Nevada, Alabama, South Carolina and Indiana having rates above 90%.
Among other policies, all of those states require their high schools to offer computer science.
What is computer science? ‘A fundamental understanding’
Credit: Allison Shelley for EDUimages
AB 2097 defines computer science as “the study of computers and algorithmic processes, including their principles … implementation and impact on society, as described in the computer science academic content standards adopted by the state board.” Furthermore, the bill wants students to go beyond using the technology; they should understand how and why those technologies work.
The course teaches and prepares students to “meaningfully engage” in a digitally driven world, according to Computer Science for California (CSforCA), a group of educators, nonprofit organizations and industry leaders that has worked to improve equity in computer science access.
According to the group, computer science education can improve digital literacy, critical thinking and other skills that can be applied across multiple fields, including education, entertainment, agriculture, art, medicine and social justice. For example, a class may create an app that increases access to health care services or explore the ethics of data privacy.
“We require that (our seniors take government), not because we expect them all to become politicians,” said Modesto City Schools computer science teacher Amy Pezzoni, “but because if they are going to be citizens in our world, we want to make sure they understand how their world works, how to have their voice heard, how to make sure they’re not lost in the noise.”
Based on 2023 data, each month, California averaged 45,245 open computing jobs with an average salary of $153,544.
“We are not giving California students the opportunity and access to these jobs in the state they live in,” said Mary Nicely, the state’s chief deputy superintendent of public instruction, who represented Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond during a June 12 Senate Education Committee hearing.
Pezzoni said that offering at least one computer science course, such as introductory computer science, builds students’ “fundamental understanding” of technology.
“It’s in our personal lives. It’s in every industry,” she said. “We just want to make sure they have the skills and the knowledge — the understanding of tech — to be successful (with whatever) they choose to do.”
Pointing to computer science concepts such as artificial intelligence, web design and development, graphics, computer programming, robotics, cybersecurity and problem-solving, Pezzoni said, “It’s … the understanding of how technology works and how many different ways that you can engage with computer science.”
In 2018-19, high schoolers in Colusa, Mariposa, Modoc, San Benito and Sierra counties had no access to any computer science courses, according to the September 2021 Computer Science Access report.
In other California schools, only 34% of campuses with a high proportion of Black, Indigenous, Latino and Pacific Islander students offered a course. And only 30% of females were enrolled in computer science courses even though they made up 49% of the student population before the pandemic.
Opponents of the bill say the inequity in both access to computer science courses and basic digital skills could create difficulties for some students, making it hard for them to do well in the course. Mark Epstein, with the California Environmental Technology Education Network, said at an April 24 Assembly committee hearing that students need a prerequisite course on basic digital skills to even succeed in a computer science class.
But Pezzoni said she meets students where they are. At the beginning of the class, she finds out what motivated students to take the class and what they want to do with their lives.
“I give them the skill, but I allow them to apply it in a way … that’s going to be meaningful for them,” Pezzoni said. “And I have seen students who were hell-bent on getting out of the class end up becoming some of my best students because they realized what they could do with it in their own interest. I have some that are continuing on a path that’s not tech, but they’re really appreciating the skills that our classes are giving them.
“There is no reason students cannot engage in computer science.”
Berman echoed the importance of meeting students where they are.
“If they come in and they don’t have any computational skill, all the more reason for them to be taking this course and to get that experience,” he said. “I don’t think that we should penalize or punish students just because they haven’t had the chance yet to get these skills. I think that’s who we should be trying to support.”
Computer science skills apply to practically any industry a student will pursue in the future, Berman added. The CSforCA coalition, for example, explained how computer science can make agriculture more sustainable and productive, highlighting robotic machines used in farming.
And it can spark a passion for tech, Berman and Pezzoni said. Pezzoni has even had students who wanted to pursue medicine or business change their minds and decide to go into tech.
“They didn’t realize all of the opportunities they have to make a difference in tech, so they made that switch,” she said.
Implementation is a concern
Berman’s computer science bill would require the class to be offered in all public high schools by 2028-29. Even though the legislation doesn’t require immediate action, Berman said some school administrators have anxiety about implementation.
Pezzoni, who started and grew computer science courses in two low-income schools in the Central San Joaquin Valley, said it is achievable.
If “this could be done in a low socioeconomic area in the Central Valley,” Pezzoni said, “it could be done anywhere in California.”
After she started a computer science class in Ceres Unified in Stanislaus County, she said, “Students took it and were like, ‘OK, what’s next?’”
“‘What can we do with this now?’” she said students asked her. “It, organically, will grow. They will drive that demand. But if they never have the opportunity to experience it, they don’t even know what they’re asking for. Or they just make the assumption, ‘Oh, well, that’s not for me because if it was important, they would offer it.’”
Pezzoni said there is a misconception that implementing computer science is a “big scary hurdle to overcome” because of the needed equipment or upgrades and necessary teachers and curriculum.
“And really none of that is an issue,” she said. “I think once districts start diving in and making this happen, they’re going to be pleasantly surprised how easy this is going to be for them to do.”
Berman explained, “You don’t have to create curriculum. You don’t have to create professional development. That all exists already.”
According to a bill analysis by the Senate Appropriations Committee, school districts would have to purchase instructional materials and provide professional development to current teachers.
While the exact cost is unknown, “it could be in the millions to potentially low tens of millions of dollars in Proposition 98 General Fund each year,” the analysis concluded.
The Department of Finance opposed the bill based on its estimate of $50 million to $73 million in ongoing funding from Proposition 98.
California has invested nearly $100 million for professional development and certification of computer science teachers, Berman said. In 2016, the state updated credentialing guidelines to allow single-subject credentialed teachers in other disciplines to pursue a computer science supplementary authorization with required coursework, preparing educators to teach the course.
Last year, another bill requiring all high schools to teach computer science stalled in the Senate, in part because of the lack of teachers, CalMatters reported. The following October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1251, the “next step to increase accessibility for equitable computer science education in California,” the CSforCA coalition said in a news release at the time. The legislation requires the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to establish a work group to develop a teacher preparation pathway for computer science to address the number of teachers able to teach the course.
Graduation requirement removed from bill, but not from vision
Among the 30 states that require high schools to offer a course, eight mandate it as a graduation requirement.
“I think that should be an eventual goal,” Berman said. “I think the next logical step, especially as the economy continues to change and people continue to see the value and the benefit, is that every student should take it.”
When the bill was first introduced in February, it included requiring the course as a graduation requirement. According to Berman, the requirement was removed from the bill.
“I have some colleagues that feel like we’ve already created some additional graduation requirements and to add more is not appropriate at this time,” he said.
The computer science bill passed the Assembly in May and the Senate Education Committee in June. It now sits in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where a similar bill died last year. The bill faces a similar fate on Thursday if the Appropriations Committee doesn’t send it to the full Senate for a vote.
“What the bill does is, it says this is a priority. This is a priority for our students. This is a priority for our communities,” Berman said. “It forces school districts to make this a priority. But I think once they do that, the benefit is going to be massive.
“This bill will make computer science availability and access for every student a priority.”
Instead, with leaders of three other legislative ethnic caucuses also expressing support, they have introduced a bill to strengthen and broaden existing anti-discrimination protections based on race and ethnicity to include new wording to apply to national identity and religion.
The Assembly Education Committee will hold a special hearing on Assembly Bill 715, introduced by Assemblymembers Rick Zbur, D-San Francisco, and Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, on Wednesday afternoon at 1:30. That is the final day for moving forward any bill for possible passage this year.
“AB 715 demonstrates solidarity among California Legislative Diversity Caucuses to resolutely stand with the Jewish community to adopt meaningful legislation to root out hate in our classrooms,” Zbur said in a statement.
The bill would add teeth to the uniform complaint process in schools and create a state-level antisemitism coordinator to oversee compliance with anti-discrimination laws.
It also would apply anti-discrimination protections to content taught in class and to the contractors who write the courses’ lesson plans and train teachers. Although the bill does not mention ethnic studies, it presumably would apply to groups affiliated with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, which compares Israel’s repression of Palestinians with European colonialists’ subjugation of people of color in Africa and Asia, and white American settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans. Many of the complaints and lawsuits charging antisemitism have been against schools and districts that use the Liberated Ethnic Studies course content.
Zbur said that school districts have ignored or delayed responding to complaints by Jewish families of bias and a hostile school environment. “Families should not have to file lawsuits,” he said.
The key sections lay out broad intentions; the exact language is still being negotiated, Zbur said, and will be added as amendments to the bill in the coming weeks.
The Jewish Caucus’ prior bill, to replace the current ethnic studies voluntary framework with academic standards, would have faced years of contention and low odds of passage. It was opposed by the California Teachers Association and ethnic studies faculty at California State University and the University of California, who have created alternatives to the state-approved framework. The bill would have applied only to high school ethnic studies, not all courses and grades.
The chairs of the Legislative Black Caucus, the Legislative Latino Caucus and the Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus signed a statement endorsing AB 715. However, many groups that oppose the ethnic studies standards bill are gearing up to fight AB 715.
“Repackaging censorship under the guise of combating antisemitism does a disservice to the very real fight against hate. We already have laws protecting students from discrimination. AB 715 would effectively silence educators and erase Palestinian voices,” Hussam Ayloush, CEO of the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, wrote in a statement.
In 2021, the Legislature passed legislation requiring that all high schools offer a semester-long course in ethnic studies, starting in fall 2025, and for all students to take it for a high school diploma, beginning in 2029-30. But the law requires state funding to take effect, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has not proposed any funding, and indicated he would not do so in the 2025-26 state budget. Since AB 715 also would create a state mandate, it’s unclear whether Newsom would sign it.
What are education leaders doing about transformingthe way schools address learning, behavior and emotional problems? The current answer, it seems, is: not much.
We do see increasing discussions among education leaders about transforming education in general. Naturally, much of the focus is on improving instruction and making major changes in how schools are managed (e.g., financed, administered, held accountable). However, when it comes to improving how schools play their role in providing support when students are not doing well, proposals for transformative changes generally are not forthcoming.
The result: As the number of learning, behavior and emotional problems increases, schools continue to react in inadequate ways.
What’s wrong with what schools are doing now?
All schools devote resources to coping with student problems. Some are able to offer a range of student and learning supports; others can provide only what is mandated. In the majority of schools, what is available usually covers relatively few students. More resources would help. But school budgets always are tight, and adding the number of student support staff that advocates call for is really not in the cards.
In general, districts plan and implement student and learning supports in a fragmented and piecemeal manner, generating a variety of specialized programs and services. Over many years, increasing concern about fragmented approaches has produced calls for “integrated services” and, recently, for “integrated support systems.”
However, by focusing primarily on fragmentation, policymakers and school improvement advocates fail to deal with a core underlying problem. What drives the fragmentation is the longstanding marginalization in school improvement policy of the role schools must play in addressing barriers to learning and teaching.
A fundamental challenge for education leaders and policymakers is ending this marginalization. Meeting the challenge requires escaping old ways of thinking about how schools address learning, behavior and emotional problems.
What might a transformed approach look like?
Addressing the pervasive and complex barriers that impede effective teaching and student learning requires a systemwide approach that comprehensively and equitably supports whole-child development and learning. This involves districts and schools rethinking how they frame the practices they use to address learning, behavior and emotional problems.
In this respect, the current widespread adoption of some form of a multitiered “continuum of interventions” (commonly known as MTSS) is a partial step in the right direction. This framework recognizes that a full range of intervention must include a focus on promoting whole-student healthy development, preventing problems, providing immediate assistance when problems appear, and ensuring assistance for serious and chronic special education concerns. But moving forward, our research has clarified the need to reframe each level of intervention into subsystems designed to weave together school and community resources.
Moreover, our research indicates that the various programs, services, initiatives and strategies can be grouped into six domains of classroom and schoolwide student and learning support. The six arenas encompass interventions that:
Embed student and learning supports into regular classroom strategies to enable learning and teaching
Support transitions (e.g., new grade, new school, before/after school, during lunch and other daily transitions)
Increase home and school connections and engagement
Respond to — and, where feasible, prevent — school and personal crises
Increase community involvement and collaborative engagement
Facilitate student and family access to special assistance.
Organizing the activity in this way helps clarify what supports are needed in and out of the classroom and across each level of the continuum to enable effective teaching and motivate student learning.
We recognize that the changes education leaders are already pursuing represent considerable challenges and that the changes we discuss can be daunting.
But maintaining the status quo is untenable, and just doing more tinkering will not meet the need.
Transforming how schools play their role in addressing barriers to learning and teaching into a unified, comprehensive and equitable system that is fully integrated into school improvement policy and practice is essential to enhancing equity of opportunity for students to succeed at school and beyond.
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Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor are co-directors of the Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports at UCLA, an initiative to improve outcomes for students by helping districts and their schools enhance how they address barriers to learning and teaching.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Eight-foot gates surround Del Sol High School in Oxnard in 2023.
Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource
The shooting in September at Apalachee High School in Georgia, which left two students and two teachers dead and nine people wounded, was the latest in a line of multiple-casualty shootings at schools in the United States.
Given the incredible suffering and loss of life resulting from these tragic events, they understandably generate considerable media attention and public concern over the safety of students and staff. Schools should be safe places for children and adults to come to each day without the threat of violence.
But, despite the attention generated by high-casualty school shootings, the data indicate something very surprising. For nearly 30 years — approximately 98-99% of all homicides of school-aged youth (generally youth between the ages of 5 and 18) have occurred outside of schools.
It’s important for California policymakers and school leaders to understand the data so that they can best protect our youth. One injury or death caused by violence in the school setting is already too much, but let’s dig into the data a bit more to get a better sense of what’s going on.
The graph below shows the total homicides on school grounds using the School-Associated Violent Death Surveillance System (SAVD-SS) and the total number of homicides of school aged youth using the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) from academic year 1992-93 to 2019-20, in four year increments.
As we can see in the graph, school-related homicides have hovered between 1% and 2% of the total number of homicides of school-aged youth for these four-year increments.
How we got the data
We examined data routinely compiled by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for their periodic reports on school safety. Homicides and suicides that occur on school grounds are tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) School-Associated Violent Death Surveillance System (SAVD-SS).
The CDC’s survey tracks homicides and suicides that that occur on school grounds during normal operating hours, as well as those that might have taken place on the bus to and from school or at school events after hours (e.g., football games). The CDC’s National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) shows the total number of homicides of school-aged youth. Comparing the two datasets enables us to determine the proportion of homicides that occur on school grounds versus total homicides for school-aged youth (which would include those at school and those outside of schools).
Even for periods in which high casualty events in schools are included (such as the tragedies in Colorado, Connecticut and Florida in 1999, 2012 and 2018 respectively), the proportion of school-related homicides did not reach 2% of all homicides of school-aged youth.
An additional year, 2020-21, is now available from the U.S. Department of Education. Those data indicate there were 11 homicides of school-aged youth at school in 2020-21. This was a period in which many schools moved to a virtual learning environment due to Covid-19.
However, 2020-21 was one of the worst years ever for total homicides of school-aged youth: 2,436 young people were murdered. For this single year, homicides of school-aged youth at school represented less than one-half of one percent (0.45%) of total homicides of school-aged youth.
These data do not give us the full picture. For example, they do not reveal anything about preceding factors that may have led to the homicide: An altercation that occurred in school may have spilled over to a homicide that occurred later on the street. In such cases, although the homicide would not be captured by the school homicide survey, the school was very much related to what happened.
What should these data inspire us to do?
Yes, we absolutely must protect children— and staff — in school. Parents entrust their children to educators. In no way do we want to minimize the pain and suffering caused by a shooting such as what occurred at Apalachee High School, or other communities around the nation.
However, given that the vast majority of homicides of school-aged children do not occur in school — but in the home, on the streets and at other venues — a comprehensive approach to protecting children from violence is needed. If we truly care about children, we’ve got to do a lot more.
School and Community Strategies for Youth Violence Prevention
What about our educators and school leaders in California? We recommend that they advocate for evidence-based approaches in the community to help address factors contributing to youth violence in the home and neighborhoods where the majority of homicides of school-aged youth occur.
And given that the average child spends about 18,000 hours in school, they are often the most likely place for prevention and intervention programs. These need to be comprehensive and evidence-based to provide our youth with the skills they need to cope in and out of school environments.
For California state policymakers, we recommend that they balance the policy focus on evidence-based school safety measures with appropriate investments in evidence-based social services, mental health support, and violence prevention programs that reach into the heart of our communities.
At all levels, we need to inform policies with comprehensive data to guide policy use and evaluation to understand how such investments are faring in reality compared with their design and initial promise.
It is the rare educator, policymaker, parent or police officer who doesn’t care about children. But while caring is necessary, it is insufficient. These data should provoke us to do more to protect children everywhere. Yes, that means in school. But just as importantly, we need to do more to protect them in their homes and the communities in which they live.
A version of this article was previously published by the University of Oregon’s HEDCO Institute on Oct. 3, 2024.
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Anthony Petrosino serves as director of the WestEd Justice and Prevention Research Center. He is also an Affiliated Faculty and Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy.
Ericka Muñoz is a research associate at WestEd’s Justice and Prevention Research Center and is currently pursuing graduate studies in the Criminology, Law & Society program at the University of California Irvine.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
