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  • Literacy bill compromise gains support of a former foe and passes first hurdle

    Literacy bill compromise gains support of a former foe and passes first hurdle


    An elementary student reads on his own in class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    KEY Takeaways
    • The California Teachers Association testifies in support of the compromise.
    • Co-author: Reaching a deal was by far her hardest challenge as a legislator.
    • Up against a deadline, an Assembly committee endorses a bill they haven’t actually read.

    A new bill that could reshape early reading instruction quickly passed its first test in the Legislature on Wednesday, with a major opponent doing an about-face and publicly announcing support.

    Members of the Assembly Education Committee unanimously passed Assembly Bill 1454 after a short hearing. The compromise legislation that Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas helped create, after months of stalemate, won over the California Teachers Association (CTA).

    “Reasonable people can disagree on reasonable things, but we also can show the world how you can disagree and come together,” said Patricia Rucker, a lobbyist for the CTA and former member of the State School Board. “We’re committed to continuing the work on this bill to keep the bill moving forward.”

    Advocates of a comprehensive statewide approach to early literacy say the bill would fill in significant gaps in what has been missing under the state’s current policy of local control over instructional decisions.

    The main elements are:

    • The California Department of Education would select teacher training programs in reading instruction for TK-3 that are aligned with “evidence-based practices.”
    • The State Board of Education will designate appropriate TK-8 textbooks for reading instruction, also based on evidence-based practices and aligned to the state English language arts framework and English language development framework for English learners. School districts would have to choose among those or seek a waiver from the state board.
    • The Commission on Teacher Credentialing would update school administrator standards to include training for principals and district administrators on supporting effective literacy instruction.

    Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, the author of a previous bill that stalled and is now co-authoring AB 1454, said at the hearing that negotiating the compromise “by far, has been the hardest thing that I have ever done in nine years as a legislator.”

    “Sometimes I was ready to walk away,” she said, “but for the coalition (of supporters), parents, family members, and of course, our speaker, for finally sitting us down and saying, ‘Get it done. Get it done.’ ”

    Several Education Committee members said they appreciated the effort.

    “You can find people who are struggling readers in every community,” said Darshana Patel, D-San Diego. “To know that you are focused on making sure the very fundamental, foundational skill of learning to read is available for every single child is so meaningful and important.”

    The language of AB 1454 and its implementation over the next several years will determine its effectiveness. Members of the Assembly Education Committee, however, relied on a staff analysis of the bill, not the bill itself. It has yet to be released, because the intense talks that led to the deal continued into this week, leaving not enough time for the Legislative Counsel to vet the wording before the final hearing for new bills.

    When published within the next few days, the new wording will replace a spot bill, about heating and cooling, that is there now.

    AB 1454 contains many key elements of AB 1121, a contested bill, authored by Alvardo and co-sponsored by advocacy nonprofits EdVoice and Families In Schools,  Decoding Dyslexia CA and the California NAACP. First introduced last year and reintroduced this year, it stalled because of disagreement with CTA and English learner advocacy groups over how much research-based training should emphasize foundational skills, starting with phonics in TK to Grade 2 and progressing to learning vocabulary, oral skills, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. Together, they are known as structured literacy or “the science of reading.”

    English learner advocates, including Californians Together, argue that a rigid application of structured literacy would ignore the needs of English learners and attention to bilingual language learners.

    Under AB 1454, reading instruction training would be optional, not mandatory, although districts must provide state-approved courses to be reimbursed by the state. The bill’s language will also call attention to the needs of English learners, and the California Department of Education will consult with a range of language-acquisition experts, including English learner organizations, when choosing the programs.

    The bill will skirt fights over semantics by avoiding references to structured literacy and the science of reading. However, the bill is expected to require aligning training to existing statutory requirements for reading instruction, which specify foundational skills.

    Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, drew an optimistic analogy to the state effort to require universal screening for potential reading challenges. CTA and English learner advocacy groups initially opposed that initiative, but later supported the effort, after extensive negotiations and agreement on an advisory committee of experts. “This fall, 1.2 million kids, kindergarten, first and second grade will be screened for reading difficulties, including risk of dyslexia,” he said.

    Tracking progress with data

    Tuck said that under the bill, the state will begin collecting data for the first time on how many teachers complete the training, and which training programs, textbooks and materials districts choose. “And then collectively, we can all say, OK, these districts are making real progress. They had consistency. They used similar programs and they trained a lot of teachers. Maybe these districts aren’t making as much progress.”

    Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, an English learner growing up, said the issue will be not just how widespread the training is, but whether it’s appropriately used. “At the end of the day, it’s what is happening with the students who are the ones who are struggling,” he said, adding that he appreciated the bill’s attention to biliteracy.

    “This is a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said, adding that progress is happening in small reading cohorts with one-on-one literacy coaching. “How we track that would be helpful.”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom included $250 million in his initial 2025-26 state budget he proposed in January, but since then the financial outlook has darkened; money for new programs is expected to be scarce. However, Rivas as Assembly speaker; Alvarez, as chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance; and Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, a co-author of AB 1454 and chair of the Assembly Education Committee, are well-positioned to see the bill passed and funded. Newsom, who has funded several early literacy initiatives in the past four years, may be receptive.

    No member of the public spoke against the bill. Instead, EdVoice, Families in Schools, and Innovate Public Schools, based in San Francisco, organized dozens of parents, members of the Black Parallel School Board and supporters to travel to Sacramento.  Although they signed up for Rubio’s stalled bill, they switched bills when they learned of the compromise. They were given time to say just one sentence.

    “I’m a parent of a dyslexic who only learned to read in the third grade because of outside resources,” said Alyson Henry. “I’m here in support of 1454.”

    “On behalf of the Sacramento Literacy Foundation, the Sacramento Literacy Coalition, the 200,000 kids who are not reading at grade level right now, and my son, a struggling reader, I am in support of 1454,” said April Jarvis.





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  • Parents of truant students won’t face jail, sanctions under new bill

    Parents of truant students won’t face jail, sanctions under new bill


    California showed progress in some areas, such as health insurance, school discipline and absenteeism.

    Allison Yin/EdSource

    Top takeaways
    • Bill seeks to repeal criminal misdemeanor offense of state’s truancy law
    • CalWORKs sanctions over student truancy would be replaced by screenings for resources and access to work program
    • Districts in recent years appear less likely to lean on punitive measure to address unexcused student absences

    In 2011, when criminal penalties were first tied to truancy, five parents in Orange County were arrested for their children’s truancy. Other counties similarly chose the punitive approach over the years, with Merced County initiating an anti-truancy push in 2017 that included the arrest of 10 parents. Those parents were charged with misdemeanors, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

    If a proposed bill is passed this legislative session, jail time and fines of up to $2,000 for parents of truant students could soon be eliminated in California.

    Assembly Bill 461, introduced by Assemblymember Patrick Ahrens, D-Silicon Valley, would repeal the criminal misdemeanor offense of the existing truancy law, meaning that parents of truant students, 6 years of age or older, in grades 1-8, would no longer be punished by fines or up to a year in county jail.

    The bill proposes an additional change: families receiving cash assistance via the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program, known as CalWORKs, would no longer be penalized if a student aged 16 years or older is chronically truant. The current penalty requires that a truant child is removed from the calculation of the family’s monthly cash assistance.

    “Criminalizing parents for their children’s truancy ignores the root causes of absenteeism and only deepens family hardships,” said Ahrens in his author’s statement.

    Under the state’s truancy law, parents of habitually absent students were previously arrested, but it remains unclear how many cases resulted in criminal charges in the nearly 15 years since it went into effect.

    State law dictates that a district can declare a student truant and refer them to the district attorney after three unexcused absences of more than 30 minutes during one school year.

    Once a student’s case is referred to the district attorney, prosecutors have wide discretion over how to charge parents for their child’s truancy, from an infraction – akin to a traffic violation, to a misdemeanor – contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

    In California, the percentage of chronically absent students catapulted from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, as schools reopened for in-person instruction. The percentage has since dropped to about 20% in 2023-24, according to state data, though rates range widely across student groups.

    State education law lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school, but most excused absences are related to illness and mental health. Unexcused absences often mean that students lacked documentation such as a note from a doctor, or that they provided no reason for their absence, or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence, school officials say.

    Districts often try to avoid punitive measures

    There is no central repository tracking truancy cases, but EdSource found last year that school districts have increasingly gone to great lengths to avoid referring chronically truant students to the local district attorney. Instead, they opt for alternatives such as sending more notifications to parents after a student’s absence than what’s required by law, or scheduling multiple meetings between parents and school staff to better understand and address the underlying reasons for frequent absences.

    The decision by districts to lean into alternatives rather than available punitive measures is partly why Ahrens and AB 461’s supporters are pushing to change the law.

    “If we’re not prosecuting these cases…then why should we have this in the books? We don’t need the stick if everything else is already working to the benefit of our families,” said Yesenia Jimenez, senior policy associate at End Child Poverty CA, an advocacy organization that co-sponsored the bill.

    Eleven organizations have expressed support for the bill, with three of them co-sponsoring, and there is no listed opposition as of Monday.

    Early conversations about Assembly Bill 461 focused solely on the link between public benefits and chronic truancy, Jimenez said.

    CalWORKS provides cash assistance to families with unmet basic needs, such as housing, food, or medical care. Monthly grants range in amounts dependent on region, income, and the number of eligible family members, with the average monthly grant being about $1,000 during the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

    Provisions of the proposed law

    AB 461 also proposes changes to the CalWORKS program, including:

    • Entirely eliminating the financial sanction on families if students are deemed truant
    • Making a family with a truant child eligible for family stabilization services and allowing a student 16 years or older to voluntarily participate in CalWORKS’ welfare-to-work program, so long as their participation supports and does not interfere with school attendance
    • Qualifying families for stabilization services if they’re undergoing homelessness, undertreated behavioral needs, and including individual or group therapy, temporary housing assistance and parenting education among the services they receive
    • Granting access to resources such as substance abuse services, vocational education, and mental health services to a truant student aged 16 years or older who opts into the welfare-to-work program

    Jimenez, whose team researched the sharp rise in chronic absenteeism at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, said they knew the rates were steadily decreasing each school year.

    While AB 461 began as a way to reform public benefits programs, the team behind the bill began to more heavily consider the criminal penalties families might face as a result of truancy once the Trump administration ramped up actions targeting immigrants, Jimenez shared.

    “Now we’re just facing a completely other beast in the sense that our families are afraid to go to school because we’re seeing (the Department of Homeland Security) show up at elementary schools attempting to deport families, and families have already been subject to deportation,” she said, referring to a case early this month when immigration officials seeking information about five students in first through sixth grades were denied entry at two Los Angeles Unified elementary schools.

    With the provisions of the proposed bill, supporters are looking to circumvent immigrant families from being penalized for school absences due to fear of immigration officials.

    In Southern California this month, an undocumented father was arrested while leaving home to drive his teenage daughter to school. Some advocates have compared the ordeal to the 2017 arrest of an undocumented father who similarly was detained by ICE during a morning school drop-off.

    “We don’t want (truancy) to be the reason why our families, who we’re trying to protect, could be essentially pipelined not only into the carceral system but certainly into the deportation system at this point in time,” said Jimenez.

    Some families opted to keep their children home from school early this year in Kern County after the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol arrested 78 people. At least 40 have been deported, according to a lawsuit filed in February.

    A bill signed into law last year requires changes to the truancy notifications sent to families by removing threatening language about punitive measures they might be subject to and instead opting for sharing resources about supportive services, including mental health resources.

    Advocates for AB 461 agree with the premise of the bill, said Jimenez, but they wish to go further in removing the potential for arrest.

    AB 461 most recently passed through the Committee on Human Services and on Tuesday will be heard by the Committee on Public Safety.





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  • No compromise on literacy bill as hearing deadline looms

    No compromise on literacy bill as hearing deadline looms


    A Fresno Unified student reads a book during class.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    TOP Takeaways

    The sponsors and opponents of a comprehensive, statewide approach to teaching early literacy are no closer to a deal than a year ago.

    The latest bill would require the State Board of Education to designate courses in research-based methods of teaching reading, also known as the science of reading, and for all K-5 teachers to take them. The board would approve textbooks and materials for teachers to use.

    The ongoing feud pits the bill’s sponsors — the NAACP, Coding Dyslexia CA, EdVoice and Families in Schools — against the California Teachers Association, Californians Together, and the California Association of Bilingual Education.

    Phonics instruction is again at the center of the debate. Opponents say an excessive amount would harm English learners; supporters say the bill is clear: Decoding is essential for all students, but so are other elements of reading.

    Last April, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas pulled a bill on early literacy instruction and asked proponents and adversaries to reach a compromise on legislation for improving the reading skills of California students, which overall are dismal.  

    That hasn’t happened. After several broad discussions yielding little, the three main opponents — the California Teachers Association, the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), and Californians Together — released statements within the past month opposing the latest version of the legislation. 

    Both sides say they are willing to keep talking. However, the April 30 deadline for an initial hearing of bills is fast approaching, and with it, the rising level of frustration of the revised bill’s author, Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park.

    “The kids don’t have unions. They only have us. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road. Our kids are not achieving, and not doing anything different is not working,” Rubio said.  “We have a great opportunity right now so we don’t keep falling behind.”

    Like its 2024 version, Rubio’s Assembly Bill 1121 would require state-funded training of all K-5 teachers in reading instruction grounded in decades of evidence-based studies and brain research known as the science of reading. The bill would require the State Board of Education to approve a choice of textbooks and materials aligned to those practices.

    The advocacy groups sponsoring AB 1121 — Decoding Dyslexia CA, EdVoice, Families In Schools, and the California NAACP — insist that failure to approve the bill would stall the piecemeal progress by the Newsom administration and the Legislature. It would leave big holes vital to establish a coherent statewide system of teaching reading.

    “Teachers are doing their best with what they know and can’t figure out why their kids are not reading at grade level,” said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that advocates for parents.

    The state’s approach of creating academic frameworks and letting districts implement them as they want is harming children, she said. “Guidance isn’t cutting it. This bill is about taking it to the next level and making sure that teachers get this training and have the right materials.” 

    Wide disparities in proficiency

    On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the 41 percentage point gap in proficiency between economically and non-economically disadvantaged students was among the widest in the nation — and growing. Only 8% of Black and 23% of Hispanic fourth graders in California were proficient in reading, compared with 56% of white and 67% of Asian students.

    On the 2024 results from California’s standardized tests, only 43% of all students were proficient in English language arts in third grade, a critical predictor of future academic success; a third of low-income students were proficient, compared with 63% of non-low income students. Of the third-grade English learners taking the initial English Language Proficiency Assessments for California, 14% were proficient.

    The opposing groups say they share concern over low test scores but that AB 1121 is not the solution. Their disagreement appears deep-seated and perhaps unbridgeable.

    The opponents are centering their criticism on phonics, a contentious issue for 40 years. They assert the bill overemphasizes decoding skills of phonics and phonemic awareness at the expense of developing other foundational skills needed by all children, but especially English learners: oral fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension. Phonics refers to explicit instruction on how to connect letters to sounds. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize elements of sound. 

    Rubio and the bill’s supporters say the opponents are mischaracterizing the intent of the bill and what it actually says.

    “I don’t know anyone who advocates for just a phonics-based approach. That would be ridiculous,” said Leslie Zoroya, reading project director for the Los Angeles County of Education. “Why would you teach them just to decode and not work on vocabulary and background knowledge and fluency and all the other pieces that are included?”

    With a $5 million state grant, more than 8,000 teachers have taken “Getting Reading Right,” a short course on the principles of the science of reading offered by Zoroya’s office; they include all K-2 teachers in Long Beach, the state’s fourth-largest district.

    “It’s not either-or. We do decoding work, vocabulary work, oral language, knowledge building, the whole kit and caboodle,” Zoroya said. “There’s been more of a heavier emphasis on phonics over the last couple of years in California because our teachers don’t understand it. They weren’t taught it in their teacher ed programs. I got a reading certificate from USC, and I didn’t get it.”

    David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association union, stated that the union opposed the bill in its current form because “it negatively impacts locally made decisions to set priorities that meet the instructional needs of their students.”  

    Adding an unlikely precondition for supporting the bill, Goldberg insists that “any comprehensive, statewide approach to literacy must include fully funded and staffed schools with qualified educators and staff.”  

    Californians Together, an organization that advocates for the spread of bilingual education as well as the needs of English learners — who make up a fifth of California’s students — wrote in its three-page opposition letter that “without a clear emphasis on meeting the needs of multilingual learners, the bill’s professional development requirement is inadequate and misaligned with the needs of California’s diverse student population.”

    The letter also criticizes the bill for taking “an overly narrow approach that prioritizes foundational reading skills at the expense of other critical components of literacy.”

    An authority in English learner education who disagrees is Claude Goldenberg, a Professor of Education, emeritus, at Stanford University, who said that passage of the bill would be “an important, even if  modest, step forward.”

    “The fact is that the research that applies to kids who know English already applies to kids who are learning English, it’s just that they also need English language development,” he wrote. 

    State policy’s shift toward the science of reading

    Under Newsom, the state has implemented pieces of a coherent, evidence-based system of reading instruction that shifts from a “balanced” and “whole” language approach to reading instruction. Balanced language downplays phonics in favor of teaching words through looking at pictures and guessing based on a word’s context in a paragraph.

    • Starting next fall, the state will require kindergarten through second grade teachers to test students for potential reading challenges like dyslexia with a multi-language screening tool.
    • The Legislature passed a law that requires teacher credentialing programs to teach science of reading instruction. 
    • Using one-time money, Newsom appropriated $500 million to train reading coaches in lowest-income schools in the science of reading.
    • The Department of Education is creating guides and instruction modules for a “literacy road map.” It emphasizes “explicit instruction in phonics, phonemic awareness, and other decoding skills” in the early grades. 

    While the new guidance is helpful, Zoroya said, “we have not put the same amount of effort into wide-scale professional learning for teachers. And that’s a disservice to them.”

    ‘It only makes sense, Rubio and allies argue, to take the next step and universally provide the same evidence-based instruction to all elementary school teachers and textbooks that support it. Otherwise, newly trained teachers face the confusing prospect of working in a “balanced language” district where instruction will contradict what they just learned.

    Rubio and the sponsors had assumed they answered opponents’ main concerns in writing AB 1121. They deleted the previous bill’s numerous references to the “science of reading,” a source of contention. Instead, they tied the bill’s wording to the existing, but unenforced, requirements for evidence-based reading instruction in the state’s English Language Arts and English Language Development instructional frameworks and in the California Education Code.

    Their opposition letters showed that the opponents were not at all mollified.

    The sponsors said they have repeatedly asked CABE, Californians Together and CTA for further changes to AB 1121 but haven’t received any.

    “The author has been clear; the sponsors are clear. We are very open to improving the bill if there are improvements,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, who has participated in the discussions with opponents.

     In an email responding to questions about her group’s opposition to the bill, Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, wrote, “We understand that amendments to AB 1121 may be forthcoming, and we remain committed to engaging in the process with a focus on ensuring that any policy advances equitable access to effective, research-based literacy instruction for English learners.”  

    ‘Rubio was blunt. “I  can’t guess what they’re thinking. That’s the whole point of a negotiation. They have to bring something to the table. I can’t negotiate against myself.” 

    Rubio said she expects the bill to get a hearing before April 30 and will ask Speaker Rivas for a way forward, regardless of the continued opposition.

    Meanwhile, Assembly Education Chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, is discussing a compromise with individuals he wouldn’t name through a separate bill he is authoring. It would create incentives but not require school administrators to take similar early literacy training that teachers would receive under AB 1121. But, like CTA, he said he favors “local control of allowing local school districts to determine what works best for their kids.”

    Rivas was noncommittal. Stating he was tracking negotiations, a statement from his office said, “The Speaker looks forward to legislation that reflects greater consensus on this issue, and one that supports all students, including multilingual learners.”





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