California enrolls a far lower percentage of English learners in bilingual education programs than other states, according to a report released in October from The Century Foundation.
The authors also found that California is investing less than other states in bilingual education. They recommend the state significantly expand investment in multilingual instruction, particularly dual-language immersion programs; prioritize enrollment in those programs for English learners; and invest more in recruiting and preparing bilingual teachers.
Prioritizing enrollment for English learners in bilingual and dual-language immersion programs is important, the authors stated, because research has shown these programs help English learners.
“New studies show every year that English learners, and especially young English learners, do best when they’re in some form of bilingual setting,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “They do best at everything, they do best at maintaining their home language, of course, they do best at learning English over time, and they do best in academic subjects.”
The Century Foundation is a progressive public policy think tank based in New York City and Washington, D.C.
California has more English learners than any other state. About 40% of students in California schools are now or were once English learners; about half of them are learning English currently while the other half have now mastered the language.
Yet, only 16.4% of English learners in the state were enrolled in bilingual or dual-language immersion programs in 2019-20. That percentage is more than three times lower than the percentage of English learners enrolled in those programs in Wisconsin (55.9%) and more than two times lower than in Texas (36.7%), Illinois (35.9%) and New Jersey (33.4%).
Williams recognized that California is still rebuilding its efforts to expand bilingual instruction, after a voter-approved measure, Proposition 227, significantly limited it from 1997 to 2016. Still, he said, “The efforts to rebuild have not been significant.”
“California is not committing very significant resources for a state of its size,” Williams said. “The investment in new or expanded bilingual education programs is pretty modest. It’s $10 million in a one-time grants competition. Delaware puts in a couple million a year and has been doing it for the past 10 years. Utah spends $7 million a year on dual language.”
The report finds that the funding invested in expanding bilingual education lags far behind the state’s stated goals. “Global California 2030,” written in 2018, for example, recommended expanding the number of dual-language immersion programs to 1,600 and enrolling half of California’s K–12 students by 2030, making at least 75% of graduating students proficient in two or more languages by 2040. There are currently about 750 dual-immersion programs in California, according to the California Basic Educational Data System.
The report’s authors stated it is also crucial for California to expand bilingual education in transitional kindergarten classrooms, where English learners could benefit from it at a younger age. Transitional kindergarten is an extra year of school before kindergarten. The state is gradually expanding access to the grade each year until 2025, when all 4-year-olds will be eligible.
The new report recommended changing credential requirements for transitional kindergarten in order to recruit more preschool teachers, since many more preschool teachers speak Spanish and other languages, compared with K-12 teachers.
Anna Powell, senior research and policy associate at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, said she and many other early education advocates agree that current preschool teachers face an “uphill battle” to become TK teachers.
According to CSCCE, an estimated 17,000 workers in preschool and child care programs have a bachelor’s degree, a teacher’s child development permit and at least six years of teaching experience in early childhood settings. However, Powell said the new credential proposed for pre-K to third grade would only allow work as a preschool teacher to be counted toward part of the required hours.
“Experienced educators would be required to go back to school and/or obtain additional qualifications first — likely while juggling a full-time teaching job,” Powell said. “Meanwhile, a public school teacher in a middle school could potentially teach TK without any new clinical hours or other time-consuming requirements, so long as they have taken 24 units of ECE or child development (or equivalent).”
“There is still time for California to right this wrong,” she added.
Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, an organization that advocates for English learners statewide, praised the report.
“Our state currently possesses an exemplary policy framework, but what’s lacking is a concrete, systemic plan, adequate, targeted funding for effective implementation and accountability for better educational opportunities and outcomes for English learners,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the California Department of Education should lead a coordinated, statewide effort to implement the English Learner Roadmap, a guide approved by the State Board of Education in 2017 for school districts to support English learners better.
One way to recruit more bilingual teachers both for TK and other grades would be to encourage high school graduates who were awarded the State Seal of Biliteracy to join teacher preparation programs, Hernandez said. To receive the State Seal of Biliteracy, graduates must show proficiency in both English and another language.
“A modest target of 5% from the over 400,000 candidates could significantly reduce the shortage,” Hernandez said. “The time for translating vision into action is now.”
Note: The research discussed in this article was supported by a grant from Sobrato Philanthropies. EdSource receives funding from many foundations, including Sobrato Philanthropies. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.
Pinole Valley High School principal Kibby Kleiman will be replaced next school year.
Credit: Spartan Ink / Pinole Valley High student newspaper
The news that a beloved high school principal in West Contra Costa Unified School District won’t be returning next school year has led the community to rally behind him in hopes school district officials will reconsider his reassignment.
Students are holding a rally at Pinole Valley High School on Wednesday morning in support of their principal, Kibby Kleiman. In the last week, hundreds of people have shown support for the longtime principal. Over the weekend, someone even wrote “Kibby” in white letters on the hill that borders the school.
Someone wrote “Kibby” on the hill that neighbors Pinole Valley High School following the news that the principal, Kibby Kleiman, will be replaced next school year. Credit: Courtesy of Erion Nick
“Kibby has always supported me and is always willing to work with students, no matter what we’re going through,” said Austin Snyder, vice president of Project Student Advocacy, a student club that organized the rally. “I feel like Kibby would do it for us.”
The rally follows in the wake of the March 6 school board meeting where hundreds of students, staff and community members — including the mayor of the East Bay city of Pinole — showed up to support Kleiman and share stories about why he was so special to the school and community. About 400 people attended in person and via Zoom, according to West Contra Costa Unified School District officials. More than 100 spoke during the meeting’s public comment period, many of whom were asking the board to keep Kleiman as principal.
“The comments made by students and parents and the whole community should outweigh any concern that the superintendent and the board would have that led to this action,” Mayor Maureen Toms said during the board meeting’s public comment period. “He is beloved in the community and has worked hard to build the trust and relationships between the school district and the city.”
That trust, which hasn’t always existed, could be “eroded” if Kleiman is removed, Toms said. She and her two children all graduated from Pinole Valley High.
Why replace him? WCCUSD officials declined to answer questions about why Kleiman is being replaced, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters.
During the meeting, the board voted during closed session to let go of one elementary and one secondary principal. No other details were provided.
“We understand that the recent personnel matter regarding the release and non-re-election of the two principals is a sensitive issue for our community,” WCCUSD spokesperson Raechelle Forrest said in an email. “The Board is aware of the frustrations of students, staff, and community members, and they are taking this matter very seriously.”
Kleiman declined to comment.
Camila Garcia Gomez, a ninth grader at Pinole Valley High, said she lost respect for the school board because it is supposed to represent the community.
“So many people came out and spoke for Kibby, and they still ignored that,” Garcia Gomez said. “I wish the school board would understand or give a valid reason, but they won’t speak on it.”
The district hasn’t communicated to parents why Kleiman is being replaced, said Josie Garay, Garcia Gomez’s mom. She said parents are upset and don’t feel heard. Unlike Kleiman, other principals her two children have had “weren’t that involved in school or invested in the kids at schools.”
“When there’s an issue, he’s always listening to the kids,” Garay added.
Kleiman has devoted his career in education to Pinole Valley High. He was a teacher there for nearly 20 years, an assistant principal for about five years, and has been the principal for the last decade. People described him as the kind of principal who knows every student’s name, drives two hours to cheer on the football team, never misses a PTSA meeting, checks in with students, and is a problem solver.
One parent said it would be “detrimental” for students if Kleiman was no longer principal. An alumnus said he was “irreplaceable.” A district staffer of 35 years said he was in the “pantheon of greatness.”
Tiffany McCoy said that after hearing the news, her son said he doesn’t want to return to Pinole Valley High if Kleiman isn’t there. Kleiman took the time to get to know her son and make sure he was comfortable around him.
“He said, ‘Mom I can go to him for anything,’” McCoy said. “Not any other principal or administrator has done that. That’s why he’s had such a huge impact on my son.”
A Change.org petition was started last week in support of keeping Kleiman as principal and has more than 1,000 signatures.
Project Student Advocacy is an example of why students feel heard by Kleiman, Erion Nick, president of the student club, said. The club meets every other week, and students can come to talk about their concerns. Nick and Snyder, vice president, relay those concerns to Kleiman and work together to find solutions.
“Kibby is nothing but supportive to students and gives his undying support to any program, clubs, or just events in general — that’s probably why there’s such a huge outcry,” Nick said. “They are trying to get rid of someone who really cares about the school and staff.”
An off-limits, aged and rusting play structure, Santa Rita Union School District
Credit: Santa Rita Union School District
In the coming days, Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to confirm his commitment to place a state school construction bond on the November ballot.
What he hasn’t committed to yet — but must decide in the next 10 days — is whether to reform a method of sharing state matching money that has long favored property-rich districts over their property-poor neighbors.
Along with a June 27 deadline to write ballot language, Newsom and legislative leaders face the threat of a lawsuit challenging the legality of the present system that ignores vast inequalities in districts’ ability to upgrade and repair schools. The public interest law firm Public Advocates filed its warning, a 21-page demand letter, with state officials in February. Public Advocates is calling for a new method that shares more state bond proceeds with districts that need more help. Their proposal focuses only on repairing and renovating facilities, not new construction.
The possibility of litigation drawing attention to funding inequalities would endanger the chances that a bond would pass — just when the state will run out of distributing the last matching money from the last bond, eight years ago. That would leave the state with no funding to help districts meet the rising cost of school construction.
Newsom’s aides and legislative leaders have expressed interest in proposals for a fairer system of allocating state funding, “but it is far from clear where the equity conversation will land,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney for Public Advocates.
“As long as state bond funding continues to exacerbate rather than redress local wealth disparities, the constitutional problem and our legal demands remain.”
Past California State School Board President Michael Kirst agreed. “We need to complete the job of making California school finance more equitable. This is a long-overlooked and needed area for political action.”
Late last month, Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee and authored a bill establishing a construction bond, predicted that the measure would be between $10 billion and $12 billion for TK-12 and community colleges. Whether it would include construction money for four-year universities hasn’t been announced.
The Coalition for Adequate School Housing or CASH, the influential lobby representing school districts and school construction contractors, opposes including the University of California and California State University. It argues schools and community colleges need the full $14 billion in Muratsuchi’s bill — and more — to meet higher costs of construction, demands for climate-resilient schools, requirements for transitional kindergarten classrooms, and evolving needs for student wellness and after-school activities.
Talks between Newsom and legislative leaders must also settle how much should be designated for new construction relative to repairing and renovating existing buildings, and how much should be set aside for removing lead in water.
But the most contentious issue will be the distribution formula: determining how much money districts must raise in property taxes to qualify for a matching amount from a state bond. For the past 25 years, every district has ponied up the same percentage match on a first-come, first-served basis: a 50-50 split for new construction and 40% district and 60% match from the state for upgrading facilities.
The result has been predictable: Those districts with higher property values have gotten a disproportionately large piece of the pie.
‘The very definition of a regressive tax’
The Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley examined the state funding distribution of the 813 school districts that received state modernization funding from 1998, when the current distribution method was created, through 2023. The analysis showed that the quintile of districts with the lowest assessed property value — those with a median of $798,000 per student — received $2,970 in modernization funding per student, while the districts in the highest quintile, where the median assessed property value was $2.3 million per student, received $7,910 per student — more than two-and-a-half times as much. As a result, districts with a lower assessed property value per student must impose higher property taxes on its residents than would a higher-wealth district to upgrade a school building.
“Imposing a greater tax burden on a community of lesser wealth is the very definition of a regressive tax,” said Jeff Vincent, co-director of the Center for Cities + Schools.
Compounding the problem of low property values in many districts is the state restriction that limits a district’s bonding limit to 1.25% of a district’s total assessed property value for elementary and high school districts and 2.5% of the total value for unified districts.
Combine those two factors, and you have the dilemma facing hundreds of districts including, the 3,200-student Santa Rita Union Elementary District and neighboring Salinas City Elementary School District, both in Monterey County.
“Our biggest difficulty is bonding capacity. We’ve basically bonded at our allowable capacity, and we did that to try to build up what we need for the state matching in particular,” said Santa Rita Superintendent Melissa Alderman.
The track in need of repair is at New Republic Elementary, Santa Rita Union School DistrictCredit: Santa Rita Union School District
Deteriorating school roof at Lincoln Elementary, Salinas City Elementary School DistrictCredit: Salinas City Elementary School District
Damaged outside window sill of a portable, Laurel Wood Elementary, Salinas City Elementary School DistrictCredit: Salinas City Elementary School District
A deteriorating entrance to an aging portable at Lincoln Elementary, Salinas City Elementary School DistrictCredit: Salinas City Elementary School District
With the latest bonds, Santa Rita nearly topped out at $27 million — far short of the more than $100 million the district needs to renovate, repair, and replace its four elementary and two middle schools at state standards.
The difference would provide what many districts take for granted: There would be appropriately sized gyms for middle school; the deteriorating track would be paved so that their schools could host meets; 40-year-old portable classrooms sitting on dirt would be replaced with more spacious modular classrooms on concrete foundations. There would also be transitional kindergarten classrooms the district can’t build and room for student and family service partnerships that the district has had to decline.
“All of our roofs would not be leaking; all of our gutters would be unrusted; tree roots wouldn’t be breaking up the sidewalks,” Alderman said. “Alarm systems not going off in the middle of the night because it rained too hard and something shorted.”
Santa Rita can generate only $7,740 per student in bond capacity; across the Salinas Valley, Carmel Unified can raise $190,000 per student. With English learners comprising nearly half of students and a high rate of poverty, Alderman worries about adding to families’ property tax burden — even if she could ask for another bond.
Santa Rita qualified for the state’s financial hardship assistance funding for the full cost of projects that exceeded funding capacity, but Alderman says the formula for determining the amount of hardship aid was insufficient.
“We’ve gotten just enough funding to always be making repairs and patching and hoping a big emergency doesn’t happen,” she said.
Salinas City Elementary School District, with 8,200 students whose families are similar to those in Santa Rita, is somewhat better off. It passed two bonds for $175 million two years ago, which has placed “an incredible burden” on the community but will cover about a third of its modernization needs, said Superintendent Rebeca Andrade. She worries whether, after chipping away at replacing roofs, ramps and windows, there will be enough left for a community priority: upgrading kitchens in every school so that children can eat fresh food like the vegetables grown and picked in nearby fields.
Public Advocates’ proposal
Salinas and Santa Rita would be among the districts that would get significantly more state funding under Public Advocates’ proposal.
Instead of a 60% match for all districts, money would be distributed based on assessed value per student. Under its latest proposal, the districts with the most property wealth — Beverly Hills, Carmel Valley, San Francisco Unified, and Sunnyvale School District Elementary in Silicon Valley — would be among those receiving a 5% state match for contributing 95% of the project’s cost.
The property-poorest—Bakersfield, Dinuba, Lindsay, San Bernardino City and Fresno Unified — would get a 95% match for contributing 5%. Salinas City Elementary would get an 81% match for contributing 19%, while Santa Rita would get 87% state funding for contributing a 13% local match, enabling the district to stretch its dollars and broaden its vision for creating a quality learning environment.
Affeldt said something like a 5%-95% scheme is needed to begin to offset local wealth disparities.
The Center for Cities + Schools has also calculated the impact of a 20%-80% match, which would be less progressive while flattening the gains and losses that districts would receive.
But there’s a caveat: The state match provides funding on a per-student basis, not on the size of a project, said Tom Pace, vice chair of CASH and the director of facilities of San Bernardino City Unified. “So we’re talking about a percentage of the grant amount, not a percentage of construction costs,” Pace said. “The majority of the costs associated with building schools are borne by local districts.”
Since the current system of matching funds started in 1998, school districts have raised nearly $3 for $1 contributed by the state — $125 billion to $43 billion, according to the Center for Cities + Schools.
A formula that sends a larger match to districts like San Bernardino would go a long way to solve inequitable funding, Pace said. But it will take an adequate level of state funding to address the full problem, he said. “San Marcos High School is one of the nicest high schools I’ve ever seen. I got confused with (CSU San Marcos) when I drove past,” he said. “There is no way that San Bernardino will ever have a high school that looks like that because of our low assessed value and growth.”
Big tax-base exceptions
There’s a correlation between residents’ income and assessed value per student. The quintile of districts with the highest assessed property per student generally consists of small, wealthy communities like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and, in Silicon Valley, Saratoga. The quintile of districts with the lowest property values per student are generally low-income communities.
But there are significant exceptions, including urban areas with big industrial and commercial tax bases. Oakland Unified, with 76% low-income families but $1.6 billion in bonding capacity, and Los Angeles Unified, with 81% low income families but $18.4 billion bonding capacity, would see their modernization match drop from 60% to 55%, under Public Advocates’ proposal. San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district, would see its state share drop from 60% to 51%.
CASH, which has underwritten previous campaigns to promote state school facilities bonds and on its own authored the last bond that voters passed, in 2015, also opposes Public Advocates’ proposal. Reforms that would prioritize school facility funding based on lower assessed valuation “appear to create winners and losers and disrupt the stability of the current School Facility Program,” CASH said in a May 23 letter to Newsom and legislative leaders. “CASH advises against hastily adopting significant changes to the (current program) without fully vetting their impact.”
CASH’s position is that improving access to the existing school facilities program is the way to address concerns. Tiny districts with under $15 million in assessed value would automatically get full assistance; its proposal also would reserve 20% of funding for districts that could qualify for up to 100% state aid. “Those typically end up being lower wealth districts that have struggled to provide local matches,” said CASH Chair Alan Reising, the business services administrator for Long Beach Unified.
Public Advocates argues a sliding-scale system would eliminate most of the need for the financial hardship program.
CASH would also permit supplemental funding for priorities like transitional kindergarten classrooms and climate resiliency measures. Public Advocates agrees with this concept and would include community schools’ additional space needs. It also supports setting aside 5% of state funding for technical guidance, since many districts lack the expertise to compete for what has been a first-come, first-served program.
But CASH would maintain at least the current 60% state match for all districts, with some districts entitled up to 70%, based on an index of high-needs students and bonding capacity. It’s a slight variation of Muratsuchi’s AB 247, the current proposal for the November bond. An analysis by Cities + Schools found that the nudge toward equitable funding would have little effect, other than to add costs.
“These are token changes that are really not going to move the needle in any meaningful way,” said Vincent, the co-director of the center.
Analogy with famous Serrano lawsuit
Public Advocates has filed a number of regulatory challenges and lawsuits over the past 25 years on education adequacy and funding, so it’s not surprising that it is focusing on facilities funding. What is surprising is that a similar threat hasn’t risen sooner.
Fifty-three years ago, setting a precedent for the nation, the California Supreme Court struck down relying on local property taxes to fund schools as violating the constitutional right of students in low-wealth districts to have access to an equal education. That led to a state system of equalizing K-12 funding and then, in 2013, to the Local Control Funding Formula. It directs extra resources to districts based on their numbers of English learners, low-income students, and foster children.
Public Advocates argues the current system of funding school facilities is comparable to the property-tax-based system of operating schools that the court rejected in the Serrano v. Priest decision.
Many states insufficiently fund school facilities, but California’s present system remains one of the most regressive because it ignores vast differences in property wealth, Vincent said. Public Advocates based its model on Kansas’ sliding scale.
It’s an open question whether Newsom, legislative leaders, and ultimately voters would agree to a formula with new “winners” and “losers” to achieve a more equitable distribution of state funding.
As an administrator of a district that would gain the most from Public Advocates’ plan and as one of 11 members of CASH’s board of directors, Pace said, “I like the sliding scale; I would just advocate that there be a base amount that you start with.”
Otherwise, he foresees the breaking apart of a unified front for a state bond, and it is critical for today’s children to pass a bond this year, Pace said. “To pass a bond, you have to have a coalition, and coalitions generally don’t vote for things that are equitable, because you’re going to have people that say, ‘Well, if I contribute (to the campaign), what do I get out of it?’”
Kirst, who co-authored the Local Control Funding Formula, nonetheless encourages state leaders to press forward. “The issue has flown under the radar for so many years,” he said. “School construction has been controlled by groups that sponsor the initiative, but that does not excuse the lack of attention.”
California needs to mandate bilingual education in districts with significant numbers of English learners and invest much more to support districts to offer it, according to a new report released Thursday.
The authors said California is far behind other states in enrolling students in bilingual programs, despite having published documents like the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030, that lay out a vision for significantly expanding bilingual education in the state.
“It’s particularly significant because of the loud promises the state has made on behalf of bilingual education,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes down to actual resources devoted, they’ve come so far short.”
The authors of the report recommend three main actions for California state leaders to take: Expand bilingual education programs with more funding and requirements for districts to offer them; prioritize enrollment of English learners in bilingual programs; and invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs.
In order to expand bilingual education programs, the authors said California should follow the lead of Texas and pass legislation that requires districts to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in any grade level that speak the same home language. In addition, they recommend the state provide districts more funding for every student enrolled in a bilingual program.
The authors said this “carrot and stick” approach in Texas has helped the state enroll a much higher percentage (36.7%) of English learners in bilingual programs. In contrast, California has enrolled only 16.4 % of English learners in bilingual programs.
The report cites research that shows bilingual education improves academic achievement, progress in learning English, retention of home language, high school graduation and college attendance, in addition to other benefits.
“Bilingual education should not be a partisan issue, because of the vast and wide-reaching benefits of it,” said Ilana Umansky, associate professor of education at the University of Oregon and one of the authors of the report. “It’s very telling that a state like Texas mandates bilingual education in a lot of circumstances and incentivizes bilingual education and has twice the enrollment of English learners in bilingual education as California.”
In addition to expanding the number of bilingual programs, the authors also called on state and district leaders to make sure there are spaces set aside in bilingual programs for English learners, that they are located in neighborhoods where English learners live or that they can easily reach by transportation.
“It’s critical to prioritize English learners, because it’s English-learner-classified students that most need and benefit from bilingual programs,” Umansky said.
Umansky said many dual-language immersion programs are often located in neighborhoods where most families speak English, because English-speaking parents are often the loudest advocates pushing for them. And she said some districts outright bar recent immigrant students from enrolling in bilingual programs, incorrectly assuming they are not beneficial for them.
Finally, the report’s authors are recommending the state also invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs and in making such programs more affordable for students. They pointed out that after voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting bilingual education in California, many bilingual teacher preparation programs were closed.
“Prop 227 had such a devastating effect on traditional bilingual teacher programs, we have got to invest in them. They have to be bigger, they have to be stronger, and we have to have support for the programs and support for the students,” Umansky said.
Proposition 227 was overturned in 2016, when voters passed a separate measure, Proposition 58.
“California has put its foot down about saying, ‘We believe in multilingualism, we’re going to get students to be multilingual,’” Umansky said. “Now is the moment to really start putting money and efforts behind those intentions.”
Like most of the nation, California students were stuck in low gear again in 2024. On the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), they performed significantly below their pre-pandemic scores in math and reading.
The gaps between the lowest-performing students, between low-income and well-off students, and among some racial and ethnic groups continued to widen overall, an ominous sign that many students are unprepared for high school and beyond.
“Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, noting that nationwide, the percentage of eighth graders reading Below Basic, the lowest achievers, was 33% and the highest in the assessment’s history. The 40% of fourth graders scoring Below Basic was the highest in 20 years.
On the fourth grade reading assessment for NAEP, scores in five states, in light blue, declined compared with 2022, no states’ scores improved, and 47 states, including California, saw no statistically significant change.Credit: National Assessment of Educational Progress
Also known as The Nation’s Report Card, NAEP is the only assessment that a representative number of students in fourth, eighth, and 12th grades in every state and Washington, D.C., take every two years—and thus, the most reliable measure of performance among states. The results for fourth and eighth graders were released today.
On NAEP’s 500-point scale, where one or 2-point gains are common, and movement of 3 or more points are notable, California’s scores have consistently trailed the nation in both reading and math, although the gap in reading has narrowed. That had been especially so for eighth graders, whose score equaled the nation’s in 2022.
But that result was the exception in a year in which scores fell sharply nationally and to a lesser extent in California in the aftermath of the pandemic and slow recovery. Nationally, math scores in 2022 dropped 8 points in eighth grade and 5 points in fourth, the largest drop in NAEP’s 25-year history.
The latest scores show mostly no progress. Scores in fourth and eighth grade reading fell again, leaving California 9 points and the nation 8 points below 2017. Math was mixed — up in fourth grade, but not enough to catch 2019, with eighth grade taking another dip.
The average scores, however, mask widening disparities between the highest and lowest-performing students. On fourth grade reading, student scores at the 90th achievement percentile fell 1 point between 2019 and 2024, and scores at the 75th percentile fell 3 points. However, scores for students in the 10th percentile fell 10 points, and for students in the 25th percentile, they fell 8 points.
The pattern looks about the same throughout the nation, with a serious long-term impact, said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who also was provided an early peek at the scores. “The top scorers are coming back, and the bottom is doing worse, which will affect income distribution over a lifetime,” he said.
On fourth grade reading, California scored higher than three states (West Virginia, New Mexico, and Alaska), statistically about the same as 35 other states and behind 13 states. Only two states, Louisiana in reading and Alabama in math, scored above pre-pandemic levels of 2019.
NAEP scores fall within four bands of achievement: Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic. The differences by race and ethnicity remained stark on all the tests. For example, on the fourth grade reading test, 7% of Black students and 19% of Latino students scored Proficient and Advanced, while 50% of Asian and 44% of white students scored that high.
For all students, only 31% of California’s fourth graders scored Proficient or Advanced, compared with 32% nationally.
NAEP defines students performing at the Basic level as having partially mastered knowledge and skills required to perform at a Proficient level. Proficient students have demonstrated a grasp of challenging material and can apply the knowledge to real-world situations and analytical skills. Advanced students showed superior performance.
Scoring Below Basic doesn’t mean students in fourth grade can’t read. “We’re saying that they’re unlikely to be able to determine the meaning of a familiar word using context from the text. That’s a critical skill that students will really need for entering middle school,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, an independent body that Congress created to set policy for NAEP.
Once education experts and advocates have had a chance to review the results and findings of surveys that the National Center for Educational Statistics conducted of students and teachers, there will be theories for the low scores and calls for efforts to address them.
In The 74 earlier this week, columnist Chad Aldeman evaluated a half-dozen explanations for declining scores nationwide. They include less reading and more TikTok; the abandonment of federal accountability for school performance, starting in the latter years of the Obama administration; the adoption of Common Core state standards a decade ago; and soaring student absenteeism rates post-Covid. While they have come down, the rates remain disproportionately high for the lowest-performing students, contributing to widening gaps in achievement.
Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and one of a few education experts who got an early look at the NAEP results, would add another cause to the mix: emerging evidence of grade inflation, connected to the pandemic, and perceptions parents have of their own children’s learning.
“So the most immediate information that parents get is not state or NAEP tests. It’s (high) grades that are not showing parents where their kids stand in real time, to allow them to provide feedback to their kids and encourage them.”
Goldhaber said there is evidence that teacher quality is largely what moves students; he’d focus on the inequitable distribution of schools with less qualified and credentialed teachers.
Not comparable to Smarter Balanced
Students also take annual state tests in math and English language arts, but NAEP officials warn not to make comparisons since each state’s measurements and standards are different. California aligns its tests to the Common Core standards, while NAEP’s tests are based on what experts say students in each grade should know. It’s harder to score Proficient or above on NAEP than on most state tests. In 2024, 44% of all California fourth graders students scored at or above Proficient on the Smarter Balanced test.
About 11,000 students in California took NAEP, and only portions of it. That’s too few for individual students, schools, and districts to receive scores, with one exception. Annually, a representative number of students in 25 large districts, including Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified, take the Trial Urban District Assessment or TUDA. They provided one of the few bright spots in 2024.
Los Angeles was one of three districts whose fourth grade math scores didn’t drop during the pandemic; it rose slightly from 2019 to 2024, and San Diego’s fell less than 2 points, a statistically insignificant amount. In eighth grade, Los Angeles dropped less than a point, and San Diego’s 8-point drop was lower than the national average for the districts. Los Angeles’ reading scores in fourth and eighth grade didn’t decline at all post-pandemic; San Diego’s increased a statistically insignificant amount in fourth grade, and its decline of 3 points was about the average for the TUDA districts.
California’s low percentage of students scoring Proficient or better on fourth grade reading and math (34% Proficient in fourth grade, 29% in eighth grade) will likely lead to calls for funding for teacher training on the new standards and evidence-based practices in kindergarten through second grade.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed allocating $500 million in the 2025-26 budget for teacher training and to encourage districts to use discretionary funding on summer programs and tutoring to make up for lost Covid learning. Some states whose scores exceeded California’s on fourth-grade reading, including Mississippi, Connecticut and Colorado, adopted comprehensive reading plans grounded in the science of reading.
It was no secret that Governor Abbott was intent on passing voucher legislation by any means necessary. In 2024, he called four special sessions to demand a voucher law, offering a big increase in public school funding as a sweetener. A coalition of rural Republicans and Democrats voted them down again and again. Rural Republicans know that their schools are the most important institution in their community. They know the teachers and the principal. They and everyone else in the community support the school and its activities. In rural areas, the public school is not only the hub of community life, but the largest contributor to the economy.
With the help of out-of-state billionaires and home-grown evangelical billionaires, Abbott succeeded in defeating most of the Republicans who opposed vouchers. He blatantly lied about them, claiming they opposed his tough tactics at the border (they didn’t), he claimed they didn’t support increased funding for their local schools because they voted against his bribe. He blanketed their districts with lies.
The Houston Chronicle tells a straightforward account of how the voucher vote went down, based on Abbott’s strong arm tactics. Fear won.
Pearland Republican Jeff Barry has long been skeptical of school vouchers, but on Thursday morning he voted to create what could become the largest voucher program in the nation.
Barry, a freshman House lawmaker, said it felt like he had no choice.
“If I voted against it I would have had every statewide and national political…figure against me – not to mention all of my bills vetoed,” Barry wrote in a post responding to one user who called his support for the measure a “betrayal.”
He added: “The consequences were dire with no upside at all.”
Barry wasn’t the only Republican House member who felt cornered after an unprecedented, years-long pressure campaign by Gov. Greg Abbott to bend the chamber to his will.
Only two GOP members joined Democrats in opposing the measure on Thursday, a remarkable turnaround from their widespread opposition to vouchers just a few years ago. It was a major vindication of Abbott’s governing approach of strong-arming lawmakers into submission.
Where his predecessors, including Gov. Rick Perry, often cozied up to members of the Legislature, Abbott has looked to exploit their weaknesses. His success on what was once seen as an impossible issue marks a potentially major power shift in state leadership, where lieutenant governors have long been seen to hold as much or more power than the governor, because of their control over the Senate.
“What Perry got by finesse, Abbott gets by force — and that definitely matters for the power structure,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “He, through expending a tremendous amount of political capital and money, was able to reshape the Republican party in his image. That’s something very few governors have been able to do.”
Abbott spent months on the road advocating for vouchers and poured nearly $12 million into unseating fellow Republicans who opposed the same legislation in 2023. Ahead of the vote this month, he met privately with GOP lawmakers on the fence, and on Wednesday morning he gathered the caucus for a call from President Donald Trump, who not-so-subtly reminded them of his success rate in Texas GOP primaries.
Just four years ago, before Abbott began seriously campaigning for vouchers, four out of five House members publicly opposed the thought of using taxpayer dollars for private education. That included House Speaker Dustin Burrows and state Rep. Brad Buckley, the education committee chairman who carried the bill this year in the House.
Just one of the remaining Republican holdouts voted the same way early Thursday morningas they did in 2021: state Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston, who narrowly survived a primary runoff election last year against an Abbott-backed challenger.
State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, also defeated one of Abbott’s primary challengers last year. He voted for vouchers this time, calling it a pragmatic move to retain at least some modicum of leverage.
“We made this decision with a clear understanding: the bill would pass with or without our support,” Darby wrote on social media shortly after the vote. “Rather than stand by, we chose to stay in the fight, negotiating critical amendments to reduce the impact on our communities.”
Those concessions included annual public audits of the voucher program and its contractors, clarified residency requirements for participants, a requirement that private schools be accredited for at least two years before participating and a permanent one-fifth cap of slots going to students from families that make more than 500% of the federal poverty line — or $160,750 for a family of four.
One of the aims, Darby and others said, was to block unproven private schools from popping up in areas with few other options, just to access the new state dollars. And critics hoped to prevent existing private school students with wealthy families from taking up a bulk of the voucher slots, as has happened in other states.
Darby’s wife, Clarisa Darby, also posted online that not backing vouchers would have jeopardized billions of dollars in new public school funding for teacher raises and special education.
“School funding would be cut by the Senate in retribution and bills affecting our west Texas economy had a high chance of being vetoed if they voted against the bill,” she wrote. “Bills affecting school funding, oil, gas, water, jobs, ASU, Howard College, are too important to be vetoed.”
Ahead of the vote Wednesday night, state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat, accused Abbott of intimidating Republican colleagues with the threat of a primary “bloodbath.”
“No one including the governor should ever threaten a lawmaker,” Talarico said. “We do not serve the governor, we serve our constituents.”
Abbott’s office denied the claim. But whether threats were real or implied, House Republicans were clearly feeling the heat after Abbott’s all-out offensive in last year’s primaries.
“He’s working behind the scenes to make sure he’s got the vote. There’s no question about that,” state Rep. Sam Harless, a Spring Republican, said Wednesday as the voucher debate was beginning.
Trump’s call Wednesday morning helped quash any lingering doubts among Republicans.
“Many of you I’ve endorsed, and I’ll be endorsing,” Trump told the members. “I won Texas in a landslide. Everybody who was with me got carried.”
State Rep. Wes Virdell, who campaigned on supporting school vouchers, said earlier this week it was “no secret that the governor is pressuring a lot of people” to support the proposal.
Steve Allison, a former Republican state lawmaker from San Antonio who lost his seat to an Abbott-backed challenger after opposing vouchers last session, said he liked the changes fought for by Darby and others but would have still voted against the bill.
“I think that members need to prioritize their districts… and I think that was interfered with here, not just in (my) district but elsewhere,” he said, adding that he’d spoken with several current lawmakers who’d been threatened by Abbott. He declined to say who. “It’s just unfortunate what the governor did,” Allison said.
The House GOP shift on vouchers stretched all the way to its top leadership. Even as he has helped block voucher legislation in the past, newly-elected Speaker Dustin Burrows was a vocal champion of the bill this year, appearing at multiple events with Abbott.
“Speaker Burrows was the real X factor in the debate,” said John Colyandro, a former Abbott adviser who lobbied for the legislation.
Burrows took the gavel from state Rep. Dade Phelan, one of only two Republicans to vote against the bill.
As speaker, Phelan had not openly opposed the legislation. And heading into the speaker’s race he said he would prioritize it.
But before the vote, he explained he was planning to vote against it because he felt voters in his Beaumont district did not support vouchers. He wanted to put it on the ballot in November, a failed proposal offered by Talarico.
Phelan, who narrowly fended off a Trump-backed primary challenger last year, shrugged off the fear of political threats — real or implied. He brought up the Trump call in an interview ahead of the vote, saying he wasn’t in the room but heard audio of it.
Trump noted only one of his endorsed candidates lost, apparently referencing David Covey’s failed bid to unseat Phelan, though the president did not name either candidate.
“He said he went 42 and 0,” Phelan said. “And then he remembers he lost one.”
