برچسب: California

What does threatened federal funding do for California K-12 schools? | Quick Guide

Students read and write at Frank Sparkes Elementary in Winton School District in Madera County.

Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

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The U.S. Department of Education alarmed school leaders last week by threatening to withhold federal funding from schools and colleges that do not abandon “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs. President Donald Trump has also threatened to withhold federal funding from states or schools that allow transgender students to play sports on teams that align with their gender identity.

It is unclear exactly which federal funding could be targeted to be cut from schools. There are several different educational programs funded by the federal government. Many of these programs have been approved in federal legislation since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and have continued in the current Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

California K-12 schools received about $8 billion in federal funding in 2024-25, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office — about 6% of total K-12 funding. Federal funding may represent a much larger percentage of the budget in some districts, particularly those in rural areas.

Elizabeth Sanders, a spokesperson for the California Department of Education, emphasized that federal education funds “are appropriations made by Congress and would need to be changed by Congress, not by an executive order.”

Below are some of the largest K-12 programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education. All numbers were provided by the California Department of Education for the fiscal year 2024-25, unless otherwise specified.

Students from low-income families (ESSA, Title I, Part A) — $2.4 billion

California school districts and charter schools with large numbers of students from low-income families receive funding from Title I, intended to make sure children from low-income families have the same opportunities as other students to receive a high-quality education. Schools where at least 40% of students are from low-income families can use these funds to improve education for the entire school. Otherwise, schools are expected to use the funds to serve low-income students achieving the lowest scores on state assessments.

Students with disabilities (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) — $1.5 billion

This funding is specifically to help school districts provide special education and services to children with disabilities. Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, children with disabilities are entitled to a free public education in the “least restrictive environment” — meaning as close as possible to the education offered to peers who do not have disabilities.

The state also receives funding for serving infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families and preschoolers with disabilities.

Training, recruiting and retaining teachers and principals (ESSA, Title II) — $232 million

These grants, called Supporting Effective Instruction, can be used for reforming teacher and principal certification programs, supporting new teachers, providing additional training for existing teachers and principals, and reducing class size by hiring more teachers. The goal is to make sure that all students have high-quality principals and teachers in their schools.

English learners and immigrant students (ESSA, Title III, Part A) — $157 million

California schools use this funding to help recent immigrant students and students who speak languages other than English at home to learn to speak, read and write English fluently, to learn other subjects such as math and science, and to meet graduation requirements.

Student support and academic enrichment (ESSA, Title IV) — $152 million

These grants are intended to make sure all students have access to a well-rounded education. Programs can include college and career guidance, music and arts education, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, foreign language, and U.S. history, among other topics. In addition, funding can be used for wellness programs, including prevention of suicide, violence, bullying, drug abuse and child sexual abuse. Finally, funds can be used for improving the use of technology in the classroom, particularly for providing students in rural, remote and underserved areas expanded access to technology.

Before- and after-school programs (ESSA, Title IV, Part B) — $146 million

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants are for expanding or starting before- and after-school programs that provide tutoring or academic help in math, science, English language arts and other subjects. These grants are intended particularly to help students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools.

Migratory students (ESSA, Title I, Part C) — $120 million

These funds are used for programs to help students whose parent or guardian is a migratory worker in the agricultural, dairy, lumber, or fishing industries and whose family has moved during the past three years.

Impact Aid (ESSA, Title VII) — $82.2 million, according to the Education Law Center

These programs help fund school districts that have lost property tax revenue because of property owned by the federal government, including Native American lands, and that have large numbers of children living on Native American land, military bases, or federal low-rent housing. The money can be used for school construction and maintenance, in addition to teacher salaries, advanced placement classes, tutoring, and supplies such as computers and textbooks.

Career and technical education (Perkins V) — $77 million

This funding is aimed at programs that help prepare students for careers and vocations, including “pathway programs” in high schools.

State assessments (ESSA, Title I, Part B) — $27 million

This funding is used to develop and administer state assessments, such as the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress and the English Language Proficiency Assessments of California.

Children in juvenile justice system and foster care (ESSA, Title I, Part D) — $17 million

This funding is labeled for “prevention and intervention programs for children and youth who are neglected, delinquent, or at-risk.” It is intended to improve education for children in juvenile detention facilities and other facilities run by the state.

Homeless children (McKinney-Vento Act) — $15 million

This federal funding is specifically to serve children who are experiencing homelessness, as defined by the McKinney-Vento Act, which includes children whose families are sharing housing with others because they lost housing or because of economic hardship. The funds can be spent on a variety of different things, including identifying homeless students, tutoring and instruction, training teachers and staff to understand homeless students’ needs and rights, referring students to health services, and transportation to help students get to school.

Small rural schools (ESSA, Title V, Part B, 1) — $7.9 million, according to the Education Law Center

These federal funds are available to rural school districts that enroll fewer than 600 students or are located in counties with fewer than 10 people per square mile.

School breakfast and lunch (child nutrition programs) — $5.7 million

This funding from the U.S. Department of Education supplements a much bigger amount of funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture ($2.6 billion in 2023, according to the Public Policy Institute of California), to help provide free breakfast and lunch to low-income students during the school year, meals and snacks during after-school programs, and meals for low-income children during the summer.

Low-income rural schools (ESSA, Title V, Part B, 2) — $5 million

These federal funds are available to rural school districts where at least 20% of students are from families with incomes below the poverty line.

Native American students (ESSA, Title VI) — $4.6 million, according to the Education Law Center

This funding goes to districts for programs to help Native American students, for example, tutoring in reading, math or science, after-school programs, Native language classes, programs that increase awareness about going to college or career preparation, or programs to improve attendance and graduation rates.

Literacy (ESSA, Title II, Part B) — $3.8 million

This is funding for California’s Literacy Initiative, which seeks to ensure that all children are reading well by third grade.

Competitive grants for teacher training, community schools, desegregation and more

The U.S. Department of Education also has grants for which school districts can apply directly, rather than going through the state Department of Education. These are harder to track, but many school districts in California have received funding from these grants.

For example, in 2023, the department sent out $14 million in grants to help districts desegregate schools, some of which went to Oakland Unified. In 2024, Congress put aside $150 million for grants to help school districts set up full-service community schools, offering wraparound services to students and families.

Other grants have focused on teacher preparation, career pathways and other issues. The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it had already canceled $600 million in grants for teacher training.

California Department of Education staff

According to the California Department of Education, the department receives federal funding for 875 positions, about half of which are fully funded by the federal government.

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19/04/2025
California takes a big step in how it measures school performance, but there’s still more to do

Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

Accountability has been a central plank in California’s — and our nation’s — school reform efforts for over two decades. Over nearly that entire period, California has been criticized (including by me) for being one of the few states that does not include a measure of student achievement growth in our accountability system. The current approach, exemplified in the California School Dashboard, rates schools on their average performance levels on the state’s standardized tests, and on the difference between the school’s average performance this year and last year.

But the state doesn’t have, and has never had, a student-level growth model for test scores. Student-level growth models are important because they do a much better job than the state’s existing measures of capturing school effectiveness at improving student achievement. This is because growth models directly compare students to themselves over time, asking how much individual children are learning each year and how this compares across schools and to established benchmarks for annual learning. The crude difference models the state currently displays in the dashboard could give the wrong idea about school performance, for instance, if there are enrollment changes over time in schools (as there have been since the pandemic).

Growth models can help more fairly identify schools that are often overlooked because they are getting outsize results with underserved student groups. In other words, they send better, more accurate signals to report card users and to the state Department of Education about which schools need support and for which students. Along with Kansas, California has been the last holdout state in adopting a report card that highlights a growth model.

Though the state’s task force on accountability and continuous improvement, on which I served, wrapped up its work and recommended a growth model almost nine years ago, the process of adopting and implementing a growth model has been — to say the least — laborious and drawn-out. Still, I was delighted to see that the California Department of Education (CDE) has finally started providing growth model results in the California School Dashboard! This is a great step forward for the state.

Beyond simply including the results in the dashboard, there are some good things about how the state is reporting these growth model results. The growth model figures present results in a way I think many users will understand (points above typical growth), and results for different student groups can be easily viewed and compared.

There is a clear link to resources to help understand the growth model, too. The state should be commended for its efforts to make the results clear and usable in this way.

It doesn’t take a detailed look at the dashboard to see, however, that there are some important fixes that the State Board of Education should require — and CDE should adopt — as soon as possible. Broadly, I think these fixes fall into two categories: technical fixes about presentation and data availability, and more meaningful fixes about how the growth model results are used.

First, the data are currently buried too deeply for the average user to even find them. As far as I can tell, the growth model results do not appear on the landing page for an individual school. You have to click through using the “view more details” button on some other indicator, and only then can you see the growth model results. The growth model results should, at minimum, be promoted to the front page, even if they are put alongside the other “informational purposes indicator” for science achievement. A downloadable statewide version of the growth model results should also be made available, so that researchers and other interested analysts can examine trends. Especially in light of the long shadow of Covid on California’s students, we need to know which schools could benefit from more support to recover.

Second, the state should prioritize the growth model results in actually creating schools’ dashboard ratings. Right now, the color-coded dashboard rating is based on schools’ status (their average scale score) and change (the difference between this year’s average score and last year’s). It would be much more appropriate to replace the change score with these growth model results.

There are many reasons why a growth model is superior, but the easiest to understand is that the “change” metrics the state currently uses can be affected by compositional changes in the student body (such as which kinds of students are moving into and out of the school). Researchers are unanimous that student-level growth models are superior to these change scores at accurately representing school effectiveness. Even for California’s highly mobile student population, growth models can accommodate student mobility and give “credit” to the schools most responsible for each child’s learning during that academic year.

To be sure, I think there are other ways the dashboard can likely be improved to make it more useful to parents and other interested users. These suggestions have been detailed extensively over the years, including in a recent report that dinged the state for making it difficult to see how children are recovering post-Covid.

The adoption of a growth model is a great sign that the state wishes to improve data transparency and utility for California families. I hope it is just the first in a series of improvements in California’s school accountability systems.

•••

Morgan Polikoff is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

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

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19/04/2025
California extends state financial aid deadline until April 2

Sierra Community College in Rocklin.

Credit: Sierra College / Flickr

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California officials are giving students an extra month to meet the state financial aid priority deadline, saying fewer high school seniors have finished paperwork so far this year due to delays in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and uncertainty about federal education policy and immigration enforcement.

The California Student Aid Commission, whose executive director approved the 30-day extension from March 3 to April 2, reported a 25% drop in the number of California high school seniors who have completed financial aid applications this year compared with the same point in 2023.

The April 2 state priority deadline is the date by which students planning to attend a four-year institution must file applications for most state aid programs, including the Cal Grant. Students seeking Cal Grants to attend a community college can apply through Sept. 2. Students have until June 30, 2026, to complete the application for federal awards like Pell Grants.

The decline in completed applications is due in part to a two-month delay to the start of the federal 2025-26 financial aid application cycle, commission officials said. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, opened on Dec. 1 following the troubled rollout of the 2024-25 FAFSA. The form is typically available to students on Oct. 1.

People who work directly with students also say that concerns about the administration of President Donald Trump are giving some families pause about whether to file for federal student aid this year. The decision is especially fraught for students with undocumented family members in light of Trump administration rhetoric promising an unprecedented crackdown on unauthorized immigration. Federal law bars the use of data submitted through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, for any use other than determining financial aid, but both the National College Attainment Network and the California Student Aid Commission have cautioned mixed-status families that the federal form may not protect their data going forward. The California commission has recommended that families fearful of federal immigration enforcement complete the California Dream Act Application, or CADAA, a state financial aid program that does not share information with the federal government.

“Some of the parents are saying, ‘If they take me, they take me. But my kid is going to apply for financial aid for college’,” said Jasmin Pivaral, senior director of college culture at the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, an organization that works with five high schools in Los Angeles Unified. “It’s been really sad and really challenging to hear that parents are having to make this difficult decision, and we have no sense right now what kind of mental toll this is taking on students.”

The Trump administration has also threatened to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and pursued other efforts to freeze federal funding. Linda Doughty, the director of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Cal-SOAP Consortium, which works to boost college participation, said some families have mistakenly concluded that federal student aid will not be available next school year as a result.

“Our parents thought they canceled financial aid,” said Doughty, whose group is helping to organize several free financial aid workshops at area schools this weekend. “That’s misinformation.”

Doughty and her Cal-SOAP colleagues are among the organizations around the state working with the commission to host Cash for College workshops where students and their families can get advice from financial aid experts to file the FAFSA or CADAA. As of Thursday morning, there were 140 such workshops scheduled virtually as well as in person in cities including Bakersfield, Norwalk and San Bernardino.

EdSource reporter Zaidee Stavely contributed to this article.

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19/04/2025
How will changes in federal policy impact California education? Stay up to date here

Despite Congress working through a spending deal to maintain federal grant funding for Head Start over the next six months, staff members at Head Start are starting to fear for the program’s future and the potential impacts on the Bay Area’s preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds, the East Bay Times reported.

So far, there aren’t any signs that Head Start will face cuts. But Melanee Cottrill, the executive director of Head Start California told the East Bay Times that “the broad, overarching challenge is all the uncertainty.”

“Even in areas as relatively close-knit and compact as the Bay Area, every program is a little different to meet the needs of the community — whatever those are — in the places where they are,” Cottrill told the Times. “Regardless of what kind of organization you are, losing any chunk of your funding would be a challenge.”

Funding approved on March 14 isn’t enough to help Head Start employees keep up with cost of living increases. And earlier this month, a Head Start program run by the Santa Clara County’s Office of Education had to hand out pink slips.

Meanwhile, in February alone, roughly 3,650 children in Contra Costa County received subsidized preschool.

Contra Costa County’s Employment and Human Services Department director, Marla Stuart, told the Times said several actions taken by the federal government — including threats to reject grants that support Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — have already impacted the program.

She also pointed to Project 2025 and claims that Head Start’s federal office is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and should be cut.

“I don’t take the ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia at a board meeting, according to the Times. “We’re not going to know until the end, but if we want to advocate to say, ‘here’s the impact of these cuts,’ no one is stopping me from talking about that.”

Several legal experts, according to the Times, have said that grant money for Head Start isn’t in jeopardy, unless the program is specifically cut.

“I’ve got lists of where possible funding impacts can occur, and I think we have a responsibility to talk about that,” Gioia said, according to the Times. “We’re not creating fear, we’re talking about reality.”

—EdSource staff

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18/04/2025
Map: MMR and full vaccination rates in California kindergartners

This interactive map shows kindergartners’ vaccination rates at more than 6,000 public and private schools across California. According to the state health department, at least 95% of students need the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to maintain herd immunity and prevent outbreaks. Yet in many parts of the state — including areas around Sacramento, Oakland, the Central Valley, and Los Angeles — vaccination rates fall short of that threshold, raising concerns about community vulnerability.

Data source: California Department of Public Health and EdSource Analysis

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18/04/2025
California school vaccinations database

Find out how many students are vaccinated at your school

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17/04/2025
California tribal college looks to become independent, but financial questions loom

A California Indian Nations College flag inside the college’s classroom at College of the Desert’s Palm Springs campus.

Michael Burke/EdSource

After operating for the last six years as an affiliate of a nearby community college, California Indian Nations College (CINC) appears likely to become the state’s only standalone, fully accredited tribal college. It’s something education experts say would be a boon for Native American students who now start and complete college at lower rates than other ethnic groups.

But first, money has to be found to ensure the college can survive, let alone expand and build its own campus.

A two-year and mostly online institution based in the Coachella Valley in Riverside County, the college achieved a big step forward toward its goals recently. It got preliminary approval for accreditation, allowing it to independently offer classes and transferable credits and distribute financial aid. The college expects to have full accreditation within the next year.

The college opened its doors in fall 2018 as an extension of UC Riverside for one semester. Since 2019, its degrees have been awarded via a partnership with College of the Desert. Students dually enroll at both campuses, though starting next semester students will be able to enroll solely at CINC and still get an accredited degree.

College of the Desert also provides classroom space for the tribal college at its temporary Palm Springs campus, made up of a set of trailers. Inside the tribal college’s classroom trailer, visitors can find Native crafts such as dream catchers, fliers with information about transferring to four-year colleges and even a makeshift basic needs center — a filing cabinet with dry food.

College of the Desert’s temporary Palm Springs campus, where California Indian Nations College has a classroom.
Michael Burke/EdSource

CINC enrolls about 150 students and is planning for many more, but it faces an uncertain future even if it achieves full accreditation. It is running low on money and is asking the state for a $60 million infusion in this year’s budget: $50 million to build its own campus and another $10 million in annual funding for operational costs.

Officials say the money is necessary for the college to grow long term and offer a culturally relevant education to Native students who often distrust the U.S. education system. That distrust dates back to the 19th century, when the government began to forcibly send Native children to boarding schools intended to assimilate them, a practice that didn’t end until the late 1960s.

“There’s so many of us here who feel a void and think, ‘Who are we?’ So having an institution that’s empowering and teaching us the truth about who we are is really important,” said Mayra Grajeda Nelson, who graduated last year from CINC with an associate degree in sociology and another in social and behavioral sciences. Originally from Banning, Grajeda Nelson now works as a health educator for the Indian Health Council in northern San Diego County.

The college is not a typical community college governed by the state’s board of governors; instead, even with state funding, it would remain chartered by the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, a federally recognized tribe in Southern California.

It would be the only accredited tribal college in the state but not the first. D-Q University operated in Davis from the early 1970s until closing in 2005 after losing accreditation and eligibility for $1 million in federal funding. Across the country, there are more than 30 accredited tribal colleges and universities, spread out across the Southwest, Midwest and other regions. The first tribally controlled college, Diné College in Arizona, was established in 1968 and still operates.

California has the largest Native population of any state, with a concentration of tribes in the desert regions of Riverside County. Yet, American Indian or Alaska Native individuals have the lowest college-going rate of any racial or ethnic group in the state, according to a report published in December by the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at Cal State San Marcos.

“But if you look at American Indian students who go to tribal colleges or universities, they’re four times more likely to earn their bachelor’s degree,” said Shawn Ragan, CINC’s chief operations officer.

In a recent report following a campus visit, the accrediting commission praised the tribal college for providing “culturally sensitive, academically rigorous” courses and degrees that incorporate Native American culture and for “fostering an environment where both Indigenous and non-Native students can thrive.” The report found that CINC has “solid financial planning in place for the short-range” and noted that the college is still figuring out its long-term funding planning. Otherwise, the commission found only minor problems that college leaders say will be easy to address, such as requiring the college’s board of trustees to undergo a self-evaluation.

California lawmakers, though, have not committed to providing funding this year for CINC, and no funding was included in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal.

Assemblymember David Alvarez, chair of the state Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education, said in an interview that he’s supportive of the tribal college and that there is “room for conversation” about funding. But he acknowledged that the timing is not ideal: California’s public universities are facing budget cuts, and it could be difficult to find money for new spending.

To date, the state has given CINC $5 million — a one-time funding allocation in 2022 to help the college apply for accreditation.

Now that the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges has awarded the college candidacy status, CINC can also apply for federal funding, but that too is an uncertainty under the Trump administration. President Donald Trump recently rescinded a White House initiative aimed at strengthening tribal colleges. His proposed federal funding freeze, currently blocked by the courts, would also prevent the colleges from getting federal grants and contracts. The Trump administration’s hostility to any programs promoting racial diversity could also have a chilling effect and make it harder for those colleges to secure funding.

CINC previously received $9 million in seed money from the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians. Most of that has been spent, and the college is now surviving off its reserves, which should last for at least the next year.

Open to both Native and non-Native students, the college mostly uses part-time faculty and offers associate degrees in sociology and liberal arts. Students in the liberal arts program can pick one of three concentrations: arts and humanities, business and technology or social and behavioral sciences.

Students at California Indian Nations College’s 2024 graduation ceremony
Courtesy of California Indian Nations College

In addition to courses specific to their major, students are required to take general education classes as well as six units for a Native American breadth requirement. For that requirement, they choose between courses such as Native American literature, Native performing arts and Native languages.

Most classes are online, but the college often holds in-person events, including cultural workshops like basket weaving. There are also talking circles, an Indigenous practice similar to group therapy. Many of the events are led by Kim Marcus, the college’s Elder in Residence and an enrolled Tribal Elder with the Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians.

Grajeda Nelson, the recent graduate, enrolled at CINC in 2023, more than a decade after first enrolling in college at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa. She also attended Mount San Jacinto College, but didn’t receive a degree from either institution.

With some credits carrying over from her previous stops, she was able to finish two associate degrees within one year at CINC. During that time, she found the talking circles especially helpful to share her past challenges and get support from people with similar experiences.

“That’s how the Native community is. There’s that closeness and support because we’re all kind of dealing with very similar challenges, especially with intergenerational trauma, substance usage, depression, poverty,” she said. “So having that space gives us time to process those emotions so we don’t have to walk away and feel that grief.”

Kristina Glass, whose family is part of the Cherokee Nation, did make it to and through a non-tribal college, having graduated from Cal State Long Beach in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

In debt and laid off from her job as a graphic designer, Glass last year decided to return to college. She’s pursuing an associate degree in Spanish language from College of the Desert and has been taking general education classes at CINC, including Native American literature.

As a student at Cal State Long Beach, Glass said she felt isolated because she didn’t meet any other Native students. Her experience at CINC has been much better. Just hearing Native American blessings, performed before events on campus, regularly brings her to tears. “It’s special, because you feel that connection to this land and these people,” she said.

Faculty try to incorporate elements of Native culture into the curriculum, even in courses that aren’t part of the Native breadth requirement. Roseanne Rosenthal, an anthropology professor, instructs students to learn about the history of their tribes from elders in their communities.

“Having students going back and bringing that knowledge into the classroom, I think is great,” said Rosenthal, the college’s only full-time faculty member.

If the college can secure more funding, officials plan to add additional full-time faculty and new associate degrees including in business, engineering and food sovereignty.

At the top of their wish list, though, is their own campus, which would take a few years to build. In the meantime, the college will continue to use the College of the Desert facility and UC Riverside’s Palm Desert campus, where CINC’s administration is housed.

Ragan said the college is still looking at potential sites for a permanent campus but expects to stay in Riverside County. He said having a campus would “enable students to come together and build community” by having more in-person events and classes and would allow the college to offer more vocational training.

He added that the college is looking into additional funding possibilities, such as from other tribes, but said the state “is the best option right now.”

“What we’re asking for, it’s not a large amount. So ideally we’ll have some wiggle room and can get us added to the budget,” he said. “California has a tremendous need for tribal colleges. What we’re doing is historic and is going to change lives.”

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17/04/2025
Job hunting is awful. California believes its ‘Career Passport’ can change that

Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

Travon Reed is currently a housing navigator in South Los Angeles who helps those who live on the street to find housing through the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS). He credits the classes he took at East Los Angeles College for preparing him for his career in social work.

He described his classes at East L.A. as “the gifts that keep on giving.”

But when he was job hunting after graduating in 2022, employers didn’t seem to value what he had learned in his college courses. He settled for an entry-level social work position, repeating most of the training he had already received in college.

“I had to get here, and then kind of prove that I wasn’t brand-spanking new to the concept of social work,” Reed said. “I could have been given a little more recognition.”

Career education is something that happens in school, college, in an apprenticeship, on the job, through the military or even volunteering. But this valuable experience isn’t always reflected in the records of prospective employees like Reed.

That’s why California is embarking on a years-long effort to build infrastructure for a new virtual platform called the Career Passport. Its goal is to bring all these experiences into a digital portfolio — somewhat like a resume — called a “learning employment record.” This record, available to every Californian, would automatically update as a person gains skills and credentials with information validated by schools and employers.

Gov. Gavin Newsom described his vision for the Career Passport in a news conference in December.

“They take all your life experiences, take all of those skills you developed and create a passport where those skills can be utilized in the private sector and advance your opportunities as it relates to your career and your future,” Newsom said.

The concept of a learning employment record can sound deceptively simple, even obvious, but advocates for these records say that actually making this work isn’t easy.

“If this was easy to do, people would’ve done it a long time ago,” said Wilson Finch, vice president of initiatives at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), a national nonprofit that supports the creation of education-to-career pathways.

The idea of learning and employment records has been embraced by employers, colleges, workforce boards and political leaders around the country to resolve deep frustration among both job seekers and employers. The idea could have powerful ramifications for local and state economies, its backers contend, as long as potential issues such as fraud and fair representation of skills are solved.

“Any employer will tell you they’re not happy with the candidates they’re getting. They’re getting too many people, many of whom are not anywhere aligned to what they need,” Finch said. “And then you talk to the job seekers, and they’re applying for jobs all over the place and not hearing anything back.”

California won’t have to ‘figure out the potholes’

California’s Career Passport embodies many of the goals of the state’s Master Plan for Career Education, which aims to ease Californians’ sometimes fraught transitions between school, college, vocational training and, ultimately, a career.

Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget earmarks $100 million in one-time funding to begin building the infrastructure for the Career Passport and to expand Credit for Prior Learning, which allows students to receive college credit for training they get in the workplace, military service, a hobby or even volunteering.

The California Community Colleges system is leading the effort to build out the Career Passport. It will be a multiyear process, according to Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives.

He said the effort is “focused on colleges to start, but designed in a way that allows for other entities to ultimately use it and participate as well.”

Finch said he’s excited to see that the Career Passport’s scope is the entire state, not just one group, like unemployed Californians.

“I’ve been working in this space long enough to know that when you only target a specific area, the impact is very limited,” Finch said.

There is a big push for learning and employment records all around the country. Some are happening in metro areas, like Pittsburgh or Dallas-Fort Worth. In Colorado, community colleges have taken the lead. Alabama piloted its version, called Talent Triad, in specific industries, such as health and advanced manufacturing, where the need was particularly great. California could learn from other states’ efforts.

“California shouldn’t have to figure out the potholes, so to speak,” said Mike Simmons, the associate executive director of business development and strategic partnerships for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

What could be tricky is the sheer size and diversity of the state, whose workforce in Fresno looks really different from Silicon Valley, Simmons said.

Over the last year, the state’s Office of Cradle to Career Data hosted wide-ranging conversations about what its Career Passport will look like through a special task force. That group included employers, the California Department of Education, teachers, all three state higher education systems and many state agencies, including the Labor & Workforce Development, Rehabilitation and California Volunteers.

Reed represented the student perspective on the task force.

“I was so stoked to hear that there would be some linkage between schools and employers, and that everything would be cohesive,” he said.

Credit: California Cradle2Career Data System

The problem goes beyond technology

To apply for a job, an applicant may need to request school transcripts, submit copies of professional licenses and put together a resume that distills their work experience and training. This requires time, fees and energy to ensure that a lot of different organizations are swiftly communicating with each other.

“We heard from students that it’s really hard to request transcripts from different institutions,” said Mary Ann Bates, executive director for the Office of Cradle to Career Data.

That’s why the task force is focused on a related effort to improve and expand the state’s eTranscript system, making sharing student transcripts seamless and free.

But the problem goes beyond technology. Those promoting learning and employment records — or career education, in general — say that K-12 schools, colleges, state agencies, community organizations and employers aren’t working together the way they should.

It can feel like educators and employers are speaking different languages. There’s an emphasis on grades and credit for college transcripts, while employers are more interested in whether a prospective employee has certain skills, Finch said.

One problem is that employers don’t always accept that the training and experience are authentic, because anyone can exaggerate or outright lie on their resume. Reed believes that if his colleges had vouched for classes that provided specific skills, such as trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing, it might have saved him from unnecessary training.

The current employment system favors those who have a college degree. Some human resources departments will simply filter out applicants without a bachelor’s degree. A student who is only a few credits short of a degree looks the same on paper as someone with no college experience.

“It’s an all-or-nothing system,” Finch said.

Those who attended college but never received a degree — which describes roughly 1 out of 5 Californians over 25 years old — would benefit from a new system. A learning and employment record could demonstrate that an applicant has the skills needed for a job through specific college courses, job training and maybe a boot camp, Finch said.

Ultimately, the success of the Career Passport depends on buy-in. Employers will go wherever they can find potential employees, and job seekers will go wherever they can find jobs. Making it work requires a critical mass of both.

Reed said his biggest worry about the Career Passport is: “In the land of the free, will we get everyone to uniformly accept it?”

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17/04/2025
California educators nervous about federal plan to investigate schools with diversity initiatives

Flags fly outside of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington.

Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

The Trump administration doubled down on its plan to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the nation’s schools last week by opening an online portal where parents and other community members can report educators and schools that use the programs.

The announcement about the EndDEI.Ed.Gov portal came on Feb. 27 — the day before a deadline for schools to end diversity and equity programs or risk losing federal funding. The DEI prohibition was issued in a Valentine’s Day missive from the U.S. Department of Education.

The online reporting tool has teachers and other school staff nervous.

“I can say, in general, that there’s a sense of concern (among educators),” said Steven Frazer, president of Associated Chino Teachers, Chino Valley Unified’s teachers union. “… A tool to report teachers, who could just be making sure that their classroom is a safe place for all students, who could potentially be vilified. So, it’s certainly a unique and uncertain, unfortunate climate right now for educators.”

The San Bernardino County school district, which has a conservative school board, has little diversity, equity and inclusion programming, Frazer said. Despite that, teachers in the district feel susceptible to being reported to federal authorities.

The district’s board has already been at odds with the teachers union and the state over a board policy that required teachers and school staff to notify parents if they believe a child is transgender.

Frazer is concerned that the White House effort to end diversity, equity and inclusion will embolden the school district to disregard a California law requiring ethnic studies classes to be offered next school year. There is also concern for the future of clubs that support students of color and LGBTQ youth, among others, he said.

“Things like that, outlets like that, are what make school a safe place for many students,” Frazer said. “A lot of students don’t get recognized enough at home, and so school is an outlet for them. And really, what keeps their mental state positive, what encourages them to learn and be happy and successful, is being able to meet in groups like this.”

Definitions of DEI vary

DEI has become a divisive issue in recent years, with the term’s definition and value dependent on a person’s political ideology.

“For me, it means ensuring that the marginalized are included and that equity is served, in that everyone can receive what they need to thrive, especially in a school district,” said Janice Rooths, executive director of the Center Against Racism and Trauma, which serves the state’s Inland Empire region. “And so, when you say that everyone should get what they need to thrive, it applies to every student.”

Schools with successful DEI programs offer teachers and administrators cultural sensitivity training and ensure students understand that using negative racial epithets or other threatening words is unacceptable, Rooths said.

On the other side, critics of DEI see it as dividing students, or making white students feel uncomfortable or bad about themselves. They say DEI focuses on race and ethnicity over merit.

“For years, parents have been begging schools to focus on teaching their kids practical skills like reading, writing, and math, instead of pushing critical theory, rogue sex education and divisive ideologies, but their concerns have been brushed off, mocked, or shut down entirely,” said Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, in a statement included in a U.S. Department of Education news release announcing the portal.

Moms for Liberty is a far-right organization that has advocated against school curricula that include LGBTQ rights and instruction on race and ethnicity.

Portal opens just before deadline

The End DEI portal is separate from a webpage that already collects complaints of discrimination on the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights website.

“The U.S. Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination,” according to a media release announcing the portal.

In its Feb. 14 letter, the U.S. Department of Education letter claims that white and Asian American students have been discriminated against, and that “educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism.’ ”

The letter states that schools must cease using race preferences in their admissions, hiring, promotion, scholarship, prizes, administrative support, sanctions, discipline and other programs and activities, including race-based graduation ceremonies and dorms.

On Feb. 21, the California Department of Education and State Board of Education issued a joint statement to reassure state residents and school officials that federal laws regarding public education have not changed, and that executive orders from the White House and memos from the U.S. Department of Education cannot modify or override them.

“We advise continued compliance with state and federal laws, and recommend that administrators and governing boards consult legal counsel regarding the impact of any potential federal actions,” the statement read. “If federal laws or regulations do change, we will provide guidance and take action as needed in continued support of California’s students and local educational agencies.”

In his own letter to school district leaders, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said the California Department of Education and other state agencies will consider legal action if the federal government attempts to freeze or cut funding because districts have diversity, equity and inclusion programs in place.

Teachers unions file lawsuits

The U.S. Department of Education letter and its demands have already resulted in at least two lawsuits. Both include the nation’s largest teachers’ unions. The American Federation of Teachers and American Sociological Association filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 25, and the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union did the same on Wednesday.

The lawsuits urge the court to block the Department of Education from enforcing a directive that they say undermines civil rights, stifles free speech and dictates what educators can teach.

“Across the country, educators do everything in their power to support every student, no matter where they live, how much their family earns, or the color of their skin — ensuring each feels safe, seen, and is prepared for the future,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.

“Now, the Trump administration is threatening to punish students, parents and educators in public schools for doing just that: fostering inclusive classrooms where diversity is valued, history is taught honestly, and every child can grow into their full brilliance.”

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16/04/2025
California college professors have mixed views on AI in the classroom

Cal State Long Beach lecturer Casey Goeller wants his students to know how to use AI before they enter the workforce.

Tasmin McGill/EdSource

Since Open AI’s release of ChatGPT in 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and models have found their way into the California college systems. These AI tools include language models and image generators that provide responses and images based on user prompts.

Many college professors have spoken out against AI’s use in college coursework, citing concerns of cheating, inaccurate responses, student overreliance on the tool, and, as a consequence, diminished critical thinking. Universities across the U.S. have implemented AI-detecting software like Turnitin to prevent cheating through the use of AI tools.

However, some professors have embraced the use of generative AI and envision its integration into curricula and research in various disciplines. To these professors, students learning how to use AI is critical to their future careers.

An October 2024 report from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business found that 38% of the school’s faculty use AI in their classrooms.

Ramandeep Randhawa, professor of business administration and data science at USC, was one of the report’s 26 co-authors and organized the effort.

“As companies increasingly integrate AI into their workflows, it is critical to prepare students for this AI-first environment by enabling them to use this technology meaningfully and ethically,” Randhawa said. “Universities, as bastions of knowledge, must lead the way by incorporating AI into their curricula.”

All in on AI

At California State University, Long Beach, gerontology lecturer Casey Goeller has incorporated AI into his course assignments since fall 2023.

Students enter Goeller’s Perspectives on Gerontology course with various levels of experience with AI. By asking students for a show of hands, Goeller estimates the class is usually evenly split, with some students having no experience, others having dabbled with it and some who have used it extensively.

Goeller aims to help students understand how AI can be beneficial to them academically, whether it be assisting with brainstorming, organizing, or acting as a 24/7 on-call tutor.

To achieve this, Goeller’s assignments include students using an AI tool of their choice to address his feedback on their essays based on criteria such as content, flow and plagiarism concerns. Another assignment, worth 15% of their grade, emphasizes the importance of prompt engineering by having students use AI-generated questions to interview an older person in their life.

While Goeller gets a lot of questions from fellow faculty members about how AI works and how to implement it, he also hears plenty of hesitation.

“There’s a lot of faculty who’s still riding a horse to work, I call it,” Goeller said. “One of them said, ‘I am never going to use AI. It’s just not going to happen.’ I said, ‘What you should do if you think you can get away with that is tomorrow morning, get up really early and stop the sun from coming up, because that’s how inevitable AI is.’”

Goeller heeds the difficulties in establishing a conclusive way to incorporate AI into curricula due to different academic disciplines and styles of learning, but he does recognize the growing presence of AI in the workforce. Today, AI is filling various roles across industries, from analyzing trends in newsrooms and grocery stores, to generating entertainment, a point of contention for SAG-AFTRA members during 2023’s Hollywood strikes.

“If we don’t help our students understand AI before they escape this place, they’re going to get into the workforce where it’s there,” Goeller said. “If they don’t know anything about it or are uncomfortable with it, they’re at a disadvantage compared to a student with the same degree and knowledge of AI.”

California State University, Northridge, journalism lecturer Marta Valier has students use ChatGPT to write headlines, interview questions and video captions in her Multimedia Storytelling and Multi-platform Storytelling classes due to the inevitability of AI in the workforce.

The goal of the implementation is to teach students how AI algorithms operate and how journalists can use AI to assist their work. Not using it, she said, “would be like not using ink.”

“I absolutely want students to experiment with AI because, in newsrooms, it is used. In offices, it is used,” Valier said. “It’s just a matter of understanding which tools are useful, for what and where human creativity is still the best and where AI can help.”

AI tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot are frequently updated, so Valier emphasizes flexibility when teaching about these technological topics.

“I basically change my curriculum every day,” Valier said. “I think it reminds me as a professional that you need to constantly adapt to new technology because it’s going to change very fast. It’s very important to be open, to be curious about what technology can bring us and how it can help us.”

However, Valier acknowledges the issues of AI in terms of data privacy and providing factual responses. She reminds students that it is their responsibility to make sure the information ChatGPT provides is accurate by doing their own research or rechecking results, and to avoid reliance on the platform.

“Be very careful with personal information,” Valier said. “Especially if you have sources, or people that you want to protect, be very careful putting names and information that is sensitive.”

Valier sees a clear difference in the quality of work produced by students who combine AI with their own skills, versus those who rely entirely on artificial intelligence.

“You can tell when the person uses ChatGPT and stays on top of it, and when GPT takes over,” Valier said. “What I am really interested in is the point of view of the student, so when GPT takes over, there is no point of view. Even if [a student] doesn’t have the best writing, the ideas are still there.”

Balancing AI use in the classroom

Many AI-friendly instructors seek to strike a balance between AI-enriched assignments and AI-free assignments.

At USC, professors are encouraged to develop AI policies for each of their classes. Professors can choose between two approaches, as laid out in the school’s instructor guidelines for AI use: “Embrace and Enhance” or “Discourage and Detect.”

Bobby Carnes, an associate professor of clinical accounting at USC, has adopted a balance between both approaches while teaching Introduction to Financial Accounting.

“I use it all the time, so it doesn’t make sense to tell (students) they can’t use it,” Carnes said.

An avid user of AI tools like ChatGPT, USC associate professor of clinical accounting Bobby Carnes encourages AI experimentation for some assignments, but prohibits students from using it on exams. (Christina Chkarboul/EdSource)

Carnes uses AI to refine his grammar in personal and professional work and to develop questions for tests.

“I give ChatGPT the information that I taught in the class, and then I can ask, ‘What topics haven’t I covered with these exam questions?’ It can help provide a more rich or robust exam,” Carnes said.

He doesn’t allow students to use AI in exams that test for practical accounting skills, though.

“You need that baseline, but we’re trying to get students to be at that next level, to see the big picture,” he said.

Carnes said he wants his students to take advantage of AI tools that are already changing the field, while mastering the foundational skills they’ll need to become financial managers and leaders.

“The nice thing about accounting is that the jobs just become more interesting (with AI), where there’s not as much remedial tasks,” Carnes said.

Preserving foundational learning

Olivia Obeso, professor of education and literacy at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, believes establishing foundational knowledge and critical thinking skills through AI-free teaching is non-negotiable.

Obeso enforces her own no ChatGPT/AI usage policy in her Foundations of K-8 Literacy Teaching class to prepare her students for challenges in their post-collegiate life.

“AI takes out the opportunity to engage in that productive struggle,” Obeso said. “That means my students won’t necessarily understand the topics as deeply or develop the skills they need.”

Obeso is also concerned about ChatGPT’s environmental impact: For an in-class activity at the start of the fall 2024 semester, she asked students to research the software’s energy and water use.

The energy required to power ChatGPT emits 8.4 tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to Earth.Org. The average passenger vehicle produces 5 tons per year. Asking ChatGPT 20-50 questions uses 500 millliters (16.9) ounces of water, the size of a standard plastic water bottle.

By the end of the exercise, Obeso said her students became “experts” on ethical considerations concerning AI, sharing their findings with the class through a discussion on what they read, how they felt and whether they had new concerns about using AI.

“You are a student and you are learning how to operate in this world, hold yourselves accountable,” Obeso said.

Jessica Odden, a senior majoring in child development, said Obeso’s class helped them understand AI use in the classroom as an aspiring teacher.

“For people that are using (AI) in the wrong ways, it makes people reassess how people might be using it, especially in classes like this where we are training to become teachers,” Odden said. “What are you going to do when you actually have to lesson-plan yourself?”

Odden makes sure she sticks to learning the fundamentals of teaching herself so that she will be prepared for her first job.

AI in curricula

At the University of California, San Diego, some faculty members have echoed a concern for AI’s infringement upon independent learning.

Academic coordinator Eberly Barnes is interested in finding a middle ground that incorporates AI into curricula where it complements students’ critical thinking, rather than replaces it.

Barnes oversees the analytical writing program, Making of the Modern World (MMW), where her responsibilities include revising the course’s policy of AI use in student work.

The current policy enables students to use AI to stimulate their thinking, reading and writing for their assignments. However, it explicitly prohibits the use of the software to replace any of the aforementioned skills or the elaboration of the written piece itself.

Despite the encouraged use of AI, Barnes expressed her own hesitancy about the role of AI in the field of social sciences and the research and writing skills needed to work within it.

“One of the goals in MMW is to teach critical thinking and also to teach academic writing. And the writing is embedded in the curriculum. You’re not going to learn to write if you’re just going to machine,” Barnes said. “The policy is inspired by the fact that we don’t think there’s any way to stop generative AI use.”

When Barnes designs the writing prompts for the second and third series in the MMW program, she collaborates with teaching assistants to make assignment prompts incompatible with AI analysis and reduce the likelihood that students will seek out AI’s help for passing grades.

“Students feel absolutely obsessed with grades and are very pressured to compete,” Barnes said. “That’s been around. I mean it is definitely worse here at UCSD than it was at other colleges and universities that I’ve been at.”

A tool, not a cheat code

Dr. Celeste Pilegard

Celeste Pilegard is a professor of cognitive science and educational psychology at UCSD. She has been teaching introductory research methods since 2019, focusing on foundational topics that will prepare students for higher-level topics in the field.

Educators like Pilegard have been struggling to adapt after the widespread adoption of AI tools.

“For me and a lot of professors, there’s fear,” Pilegard said. “We’re holding onto the last vestiges, hoping this isn’t going to become the thing everyone is using.”

Pilegard is concerned that students rely on AI tools to easily pass their intro-level courses, leaving them without a firm understanding of the content and an inability to properly assess AI’s accuracy.

“It’s hard to notice what is real and what is fake, what is helpful and what is misguided,” Pilegard said. “When you have enough expertise in an area, it’s possible to use ChatGPT as a thinking tool because you can detect its shortcomings.”

However, Pilegard does believe AI can assist in learning. She likens the current situation with AI to the advent of statistical analysis software back in the 1970s, which eliminated the need to do calculations by hand.

At that time, many professors argued for the importance of students doing work manually to comprehend the foundations. However, these tools are now regularly used in the classroom with the acceptance and guidance of educators.

”I don’t want to be the stick in the mud in terms of artificial intelligence,” Pilegard said. “Maybe there are some things that aren’t important for students to be doing themselves. But when the thing you’re offloading onto the computer is building the connections that help you build expertise, you’re really missing an opportunity to be learning deeply.”

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15/04/2025