Many student-run newspapers throughout the Cal State system now provide content in Spanish. But how they do it — and the reasons why — varies from campus to campus.
A campus newspaper’s ability to publish in Spanish hinges on having Spanish speakers on staff, and the turnover of student journalists from semester to semester can make or break a newspaper’s ability to publish in Spanish.
Adriana Hernandez, editor-in-chief of San Francisco State’s Golden Gate Xpress knows her publication is one of the luckier ones.
“We either translate or do original reporting (in Spanish) — depending on the situation or urgency — for our Spanish section,” Hernandez said.
San Francisco State is the first campus among the Cal State schools to offer a major dedicated to bilingual Spanish journalism, giving its student journalists consistency from one year to the next.
Contrast this to California State University, Sacramento. The State Hornet struggles to find students who are prepared to provide Spanish-language content to their peers.
“Last semester we had four staffers, this semester we had five,” said editor-in-chief Mercy Sosa. “I will say that every semester we have adapted, grown, and found more tools that are at our disposal, but we are still obviously learning ourselves, so not everyone is as confident with Spanish writing.”
Fernando Gallo, adviser for The State Hornet said, “It is a challenge to find students that can read and write in Spanish here.”
At San Diego State University, Jennifer Aguilar is a senior and a first-generation transfer student. Aguilar is the editor of Mundo Azteca, an entire Spanish section of San Diego State’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Aztec. She says her role is to “translate or help others write their stories in Spanish.”
“We recruit students every year, which is how we keep it going as students leave,” Aguilar said.
And at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, students who are not journalists but are instead majoring in Spanish have contributed to The Mustang News. Martha Galvan-Mandujano, an assistant professor of Spanish, has encouraged her students to assist.
“Some of my students have helped as editors, translating or writing news in the past. I think they started in 2021-22,” Galvan-Mandujano said. She teaches a course on Spanish journalism for the university’s world languages and cultures department, and has “recommended students (to The Mustang News) in the past and tried to encourage my advanced Spanish students to participate” in working with the newspaper.
Beyond logistics is the bigger picture of why it matters.
“I think it’s important to include Spanish language in our reporting to be able to give the community a voice to represent themselves,” Hernandez said of San Francisco State’s Golden Gate Xpress. “It also reflects on how diverse our newsroom is — our sourcing, and the kind of work we do. Every community deserves to have their voices heard and be well-informed.”
Hernandez admits that metrics for their Spanish stories aren’t high. “However, we have seen outliers from story topics [that] connect with our community. We have seen a lot more activity in our Spanish multimedia content, ranging around 5,000-9,000 views on social media,” adding, “We have seen a lot more engagement from our Spanish-language audience through Instagram, for example, as well as reaching others outside of SF State.”
At Cal Poly Humboldt, what was once a Spanish-language insert into The Lumberjack, the campus newspaper, has become the main news source for the region. El Leñador (The Lumberjack in Spanish) moved beyond covering campus events to topics of broader interest to the Humboldt County community, such as housing and immigration, as well as profiles on local Latino businesses.
El Leñador was formed in 2013, after Cal Poly Humboldt was designated a Hispanic-serving institution. Twenty-one of California State University’s 23 campuses now meet the criteria for becoming HSIs.
Gallo, adviser to Sacramento State’s The State Hornet, also highlighted the importance of the paper’s bilingual efforts, given that the university is an HSI with a Hispanic population of more than 35%. The stories are not only important to the audience but to the journalists writing them.
“Spanish is the one that I know, it is the one that I grew up with,” The State Hornet’s Sosa said, “so it is the one that I can work with at the moment. But I think it is important for us to know that even though we live in the United States, there are people here speaking in other languages that deserve to have this service, which is what I think journalism is.”
Similarly, Daniel Hernandez, the Spanish visuals editor for San Francisco State’s Golden Gate Xpress, said that he thinks it is necessary to have other languages included in their publication, as well. The next one may be Mandarin or Cantonese, he said, but it’s important to really focus on the Spanish language now and “build the foundation on how to keep a stable Spanish section going.”
Emmely Ramirez graduated with a journalism degree from California State University, Sacramento. Olivia Keeler is a fourth-year communications and media studies major at Sonoma State University. Both are former members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
Teacher Jennifer Dare Sparks conducts a reading lesson at Ethel I. Baker Elementary School in Sacramento last year.
Credit: Randall Benton / EdSource
California’s largest teachers union has moved to put the brakes on legislation that mandates instruction, known as the “science of reading,” that spotlights phonics to teach children to read.
The move by the politically powerful California Teachers Association (CTA) puts the fate of Assembly Bill 2222 in question as supporters insist that there is room to negotiate changes that will bring opponents together.
CTA’s complaints include some recently voiced by some advocacy organizations for English learners and bilingual education that oppose the bill and have refused to negotiate any changes to make the bill more acceptable.
The teachers union put its opposition to AB 2222 in writing in a lengthy letter to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi last week. The committee is expected to hear the bill, introduced in February, later this month.
The letter includes a checklist of complaints including that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and cuts teachers out of the decision-making process, especially when it comes to curriculum.
“Educators are best equipped to make school and classroom decisions to ensure student success,” the letter said. “Limiting instructional approaches undermines teachers’ professional autonomy and may impede their effectiveness in the classroom.”
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised that CTA would oppose legislation that would ensure all teachers are trained to use the latest brain research to teach children how to read.
“Unfortunately, a lot of folks in the field haven’t actually been trained on that, and a lot of the instruction materials in classrooms today don’t align with that,” Tuck said.
Tuck said CTA appears to misunderstand the body of evidence-based research known as the science of reading. It “is not a curriculum and is not a program or a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said. “It will give teachers a foundational understanding of how children learn to read. Teachers will still have a lot of room locally to decide which instructional moves to make on any given day for any given children. So, you’ll still have significant differentiation.”
A nationwide push
California’s push to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy is in sync with 37 states and some cities, such as New York City, that have passed similar legislation.
States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it trains children to use pictures to recognize words on sight, also known as three-cueing. The new method would teach children to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.
Although phonics, the ability to connect letters to sounds, has drawn the most attention, the science of reading focuses on four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would require that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour-minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
The legislation goes against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.
“It’s a big bill,” said Yolie Flores, president of Families in Schools, a co-sponsor. “We’re very proud that it’s a big bill because that means it is truly consequential in the best way possible for children. It’s not a sort of tweak around the edges kind though, it’s the kind of bill that really brings transformation. So we are hoping that the Legislature sees beyond the sort of typical pushback and resistance, and in the end, I think, teachers will see that this was a huge benefit for them.”
Seeking compromise
The bill’s author, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, said she took CTA’s seven-page letter not as an outright rejection but as an opportunity for negotiations.
“I’m glad they sent this letter,” she said. “They outline their objections and the reasons why, and that’s something I can work with. It’s not a flat, ‘No, we don’t want you to do it.’ They gave me specific items that I can look at and have a conversation about.”
She said that Assemblymember Muratsuchi asked her to work with the CTA on a compromise. She is also meeting with consultants for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, “to look at the big picture,” she said.
But Flores says the state’s budget problems, with predictions of no money for new programs, may be a bigger hurdle to getting the bill passed than the CTA opposition. The cost of paying for the required professional development for teachers would total $200 million to $300 million, she said. Because it is a mandate, the state would be required to repay districts for the cost.
“That is a drop in the bucket for something so transformational, so consequential,” Flores said. “I hope that the Legislature really comes to that realization. We’re in a budget deficit, but our budget is a statement of priorities.”
Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandate instruction in the science of reading. In 2023, just 43% of California third graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.
“It’s foundational,” Flores said. “It’s not the only thing teachers need to know. It’s not the only thing that teachers will need to do and to adhere to, but it’s sort of the basic foundational knowledge of how children’s brains work in order to learn to read.”
The bill would sunset in 2028 when all teachers are required to have completed training. Beginning in July, all teacher preparation programs would be required to teach future educators to base literacy instruction on the science of reading.
Needs of English learners
The CTA and other critics of AB 2222 charge that it ignores the need of English learners for oral language skills, vocabulary and comparison between their home languages and English, which they need in order to learn how to read. Four out of 10 students in California start school as English learners.
Tuck disputes this. “We actually emphasize oral language development,” he said. “This would be the first statute that would say when instructional materials are adopted, and when teachers are trained in the science of reading, they must include a focus on English learners and oral language development.”
Representatives from Californians Together, an advocacy organization for English learners and bilingual education, applauded the CTA’s opposition to the bill. They oppose the bill, rather than suggest amendments, because they disagree with its overall approach.
“We just don’t think this is the right bill to address literacy needs,” said Executive Director Martha Hernandez. “It’s very restrictive. We know that mandates don’t work. It lacks a robust, comprehensive approach for multilingual learners.”
Instead, Californians Together and the California Association for Bilingual Education have both said they would prefer California fund the training of teachers and full implementation of the English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework.
The framework was adopted in 2014 and encourages, but does not mandate, explicit instruction in foundational skills and oral language development for English learners.
The California Language Teachers Association has requested the bill be amended to include information about teaching literacy in languages not based on the English alphabet, such as Japanese, Chinese or Arabic, according to Executive Director Liz Matchett. However, the organization has not yet taken a position on the bill.
“I agree that we want to support all children to be able to read. If they can’t read, they can’t participate in education, which is the one way that is proven to change people’s circumstances,” said Matchett, who teaches Spanish at Gunn High School in Palo Alto. “There’s nothing to oppose about that. I’m still a classroom teacher, and all the time, you get kids in high school who can’t read.”
Education Trust-West urges changes in the bill to center the needs of “multilingual learners” — children who speak languages other than English at home — and to include more oversight and fewer mandates, such as those that may discourage new teachers from entering the profession.
“If our recommended amendments were to be accepted, EdTrust-West would support it as a much-needed solution to California’s acute literacy crisis.”
Claude Goldenberg, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, said “it was disappointing” to see CTA’s opposition, particularly because the union did not suggest amendments. He said he had met with representatives from CTA and urged them to identify what could be changed in the bill.
In a recent EdSource commentary, Goldenberg urged opponents to “do the right thing for all students. AB 2222’s introduction is an important step forward on the road to universal literacy in California. We must get it on the right track and take it across the finish line.”
Referring to the CTA’s opposition, Goldenberg said, “Obviously my urgings fell flat. They identified why they’re opposing, but there’s no indication of any possible re-evaluation.”
Goldenberg, who served on the National Literacy Panel, which synthesized research on literacy development among children who speak languages other than English, has called on the bill’s authors to amend it to include a more comprehensive definition of the “science of reading” and include more information about teaching students to read in English as a second language and in their home languages.
The CTA has changed its position on bills related to literacy instruction in the last two years. It had originally supported Senate Bill 488, which passed in 2022. The legislation requires a literacy performance assessment for teachers and oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation. The union is now in support of a bill that would do away with both.
The change of course was attributed to a survey of 1,300 CTA members, who said the assessment caused stress, took away time that could have been used to collaborate with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students, according to Leslie Littman, vice president of the union, in a prior interview.
Veteran political observer Dan Schnur said he’s not surprised CTA would oppose the bill since some of its political allies are against it; the question is how important CTA considers the bill.
“If it becomes a pitched battle, CTA will have to decide whether it is one of its highest priorities in this session,” he said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t indicated his position yet, but Schnur, the press secretary for former Gov. Pete Wilson, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and USC, said, “This is not the type of fight Newsom needs or wants right now. If he has strong feelings, it’s hard to see him going to war for or against.”
When first grader Jordan Muñoz stopped going to school during the 2022-23 school year, his mother attributed it to depression, following the deaths of Muñoz’s great-grandfather and uncle. Some days, his mom couldn’t get him out of the house. Other days, she’d get him dressed and to the corner of Fresno’s Fremont Elementary, but he’d take off running. Most often, she failed to get him beyond the school parking lot.
“I tried to just take him. Leave him at school. But he would get right in front of my car so I wouldn’t leave,” said Muñoz’s mom, Deyanira Pacheco.
Aware of the difficulty, administration, counselors, psychologists and teachers at his Fresno Unified school developed a plan to support Muñoz, according to Cecilia Aguayo, the district’s child welfare and attendance specialist.
The district of over 70,000 students had made such plans before in an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism rates, which went from 50.3% during the 2021-22 school year to 35.4% in 2022-23. While this is still higher than pre-pandemic years, the decrease stands in sharp contrast to other districts, like Oakland Unified, where chronic absences rose from 47.5% to 61.4% during the same years.
Statewide, nearly a quarter of K-12 students remained chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year — a decline of about 5 percentage points from the previous school year, but a sign of the lingering effects of the pandemic that led to sharp drops in student attendance after schools reopened for in-person instruction. Students who are chronically absent from school are sometimes also the same children who do not have their basic needs met: Federal data shows that nearly half of all California homeless students, 44.5%, were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year.
Nearly a third of the 930 districts statewide that reported data had a higher rate of chronic absenteeism in 2022-23 than the year before. A small number of districts, 33, had a chronic absenteeism rate over 50% in 2022-23, the most recent data available.
EdSource’s analysis of data from the California Department of Education offers insight: The statewide average rate of excused absences for the 2022-23 school year was 54.7%, with unexcused absences at 39.2%. Both numbers are similar to pre-pandemic levels.
While both excused and unexcused absences are counted toward chronic absenteeism rates, a school’s knowledge of the reasons behind the absences can better help them support and re-engage students.
Researchers and school staff have long tried to better understand how to re-engage chronically absent students, or students who missed 10% or more days in one school year.
State education code lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school; however, interviews with districts show that many excused absences are mental health and illness-related. Unexcused absences could indicate that students did not have proper documentation to mark them excused, or that they provided no reason for their absence or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence.
Fresno Unified is in the Central San Joaquin Valley and is the state’s third-largest district. Across the 30 districts in Fresno County, all but four decreased their chronic absences between 2021-22 and 2022-23. Altogether, the average change was 11.62 percentage points, with Fresno Unified, the county’s largest district, above average with a gain of 14.9 percentage points.
Child welfare and attendance specialist Aguayo made phone calls, visited Muñoz’s home and popped up at the school when Pacheco picked up her other child, a kindergartner, who soon followed his brother’s example and sometimes refused to attend school. The district referred them to counseling services.
Although Pacheco, the kids’ mother, said the visits and calls helped in a way, she didn’t pursue counseling, perhaps thinking it wouldn’t work, Aguayo said.
By the end of the 2022-23 school year, Muñoz had attended only 27 days out of 179 days enrolled — a 15% attendance rate. Of the days missed, only six were excused. The school district didn’t give up on him, however. They used every tool to get him back to school.
Oakland Unified’s rising chronic absences
Farther north, in Oakland, chronic absences increased from 47.5% in the 2021-22 school year to 61.4% the following school year. But the high rate was already clear prior to the pandemic, at 34.4% during 2018-19.
“There hasn’t been a ‘normal’ year in many years,” said Heather Palin, the district’s director of multitiered systems of support, about chronic absences, in October. “Just broadly speaking, this is way higher than pre-Covid.”
Oakland Unified, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a diverse district of 46,000 students that is currently facing a significant budget deficit. Most districts across Alameda County, of which Oakland Unified is the largest, either saw a decrease in chronic absenteeism or had virtually no change between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Oakland Unified ranked last and stands out with an increase of 13.9 percentage points.
The district has adopted a plan aimed at reducing its 61.4% district absentee rate by 25 percentage points with similar drops in each individual school, Palin said.
Each Oakland Unified school is expected to have an attendance team that meets regularly and includes an administrator, community school manager, attendance specialist and principal. Teams’ plans for increasing attendance include offering incentives like attendance certificates, celebrations and swag.
“It was an expectation that was set last year, and we have more capacity to support it, and we’re more kind of unified as a system in the messaging around the importance of that team,” Palin said.
The district offers a virtual school, Sojourner Truth Virtual Academy, but it’s not aimed at students who are chronically absent. Rather, it’s a different learning format offered to all students.
Cumulative enrollment data shows that this school remained a popular choice for students: it had 250 enrolled students pre-pandemic, then jumped to 1,533 students during 2021-22. The following year, 2022-23, nearly 1,000 remained enrolled.
Palin said that district authorities do not know why all students are chronically absent because schools were unable to reach some families. The students they reached mostly said they no longer wanted to attend school or requested a transfer to the virtual academy. Students also cited illness, family relocation, mental health and safety concerns.
How insight from families can help
While school administrators can excuse absences based on students’ individual circumstances — even if the reason is typically not covered by state law — they can only do so if they know the difficulties absent students are experiencing.
According to a recently published PACE report that examined California attendance data across the 2017 and 2022 school years, schools with higher rates of unexcused absences often have lower attendance rates overall. The same study by the nonprofit research group found that “socioeconomically disadvantaged students are much more likely to have their absences labeled unexcused.”
To address the number of illness-related absences, Fresno Unified clarified expectations, informing families about appropriate scenarios in which to send their kids to school. Consequently, excused absences increased from 41.3% in 2021-22 to 54.8% the following year, while unexcused absences decreased from 64% to 43.4%.
When the district knows what’s impacting student attendance, they can support, not penalize families, which many feared, said Tashiana Aquino, executive director of support programs, and Abigail Arii, director of the district’s student support services.
The very few excused absences that Muñoz had, along with conversations with his mother, helped the district set up a plan to increase his attendance.
Staff sent letters, called, visited the home, and educated Pacheco about attendance laws. “They asked me why he didn’t want to stay at school,” Pacheco said.
But even with a plan in place, Pacheco couldn’t get Muñoz, 7, to school.
By Sept. 23, 2022, she’d enrolled Muñoz in the district’s eLearn Academy, hoping he’d complete the work from home. Still, he wouldn’t. Six weeks later, he was re-enrolled at Fremont but was still not attending school.
Pacheco faced a school attendance review board (SARB) case in June 2023, a step “we really tried to avoid,” Aguayo said.
But the case was the “wake-up call” that pushed Pacheco to get the help she and Muñoz needed, said district staff.
“I think that’s where she realized, ‘I need to step up, too,’” said Tainia Yeppez, the SARB technician.
During the case, Fresno Unified again referred the family to counseling services. This time, in summer 2023, Pacheco started Muñoz in therapy.
New, more flexible solutions
Ongoing chronic absenteeism requires new thinking, advocates say, to ensure students do not fall back on foundational academic skills.
“Just because kids are not in the school building doesn’t mean we can’t still figure out creative and innovative ways to educate them. These chronic absenteeism rates are not going to just drop,” said Lakisha Young, CEO and founder of parent advocacy group Oakland REACH. “Everybody is in uncharted territory. So the question is: ‘Can we change the conversation?’”
At the height of the pandemic, Oakland REACH established a virtual learning hub for Oakland Unified’s K-2 students, offering tutoring that kept them engaged and attending school regularly. Early results showed that 60% of their students improved two or more reading levels on the Oakland Unified assessment, while 30% improved three or more levels. The organization now offers paid fellowships for Oakland caregivers to work as tutors producing high academic results.
Part of the challenge with common alternative learning formats to re-engage absent students while meeting their academic needs is that they are not always viable for students whose homes do not have the space to designate for schoolwork, said Young.
“A family who chooses to home-school has a different setup than a kid that’s chronically absent, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be given that option,” she said. It’s up to each district to find the solutions that would best serve their students, she added.
Southern California’s Glendale Unified is one of the few school districts with a slight decrease of 1% in their absenteeism rate plus low excused and unexcused absences: 20.6% and 22.3%, respectively.
Last school year, more students met with the district SARB, said Hagop Eulmessekian, Glendale Unified director of student services.
To address increasing mental health concerns, every Glendale Unified school has a wellness center where students can take a break during the school day. If a student is experiencing behavioral challenges, they are transferred to a community day school where they take each class in the same room throughout the day while teachers rotate for different subjects.
“There’s no wiggle room for the students who kind of disappear” throughout the day, said Eulmessekian. “They get the same education, they get fed, they get additional support, whether it’s counseling or therapy, and then when we see they’re able to go back on our comprehensive campuses, we transfer them back.”
Oakland REACH’s Young encourages educators to think outside the box.
“We have got to get creative about these babies,” said Young. “At some point you have got to do something different. You have got to just say: ‘This kid’s at home, how do I still get them educated?’”
Back in Fresno, Muñoz has done a complete 180. As of March, his attendance rate is 98%.
“Counseling really does help a lot,” Pacheco said.
She also needed to learn skills to address the boy’s behavior, Aguayo said. “I think she kind of got the power she needed. She finally got control.”
Of 128 days, he’s only missed two, one of which was excused. Even on days when he’s sad about losing his great-grandfather and uncle, he goes to school, Pacheco said. In fact, he made a commitment at the beginning of the school year to attend every day.
“Now, he wakes up at 6 in the morning, ready to go,” Pacheco said with a grin. Muñoz, now 8, likes going to school to play soccer with his friends.
He is behind academically — the impact of not attending school for most of his first-grade year, Pacheco said. The school provides additional academic support through remediation classes.
“All he needed to do was attend,” Yeppez said.
Because of his current high attendance rate, the court dismissed the SARB case in December, and Muñoz ended counseling in February.
For other families with students not regularly attending school, Pacheco said schools and districts must help them by talking to them and figuring out the problem, much like Fresno Unified did for her, and families must utilize the provided or recommended services, such as counseling.
“I think it was a little bit of everything that helped mom,” Yeppez said. “She was willing to get the help, accept the help and make that change. She was willing to make that change for her son’s success.”
Nearly a third of the 930 districts statewide that reported data had a higher rate of chronic absenteeism in 2022-23 than the year before. Use this interactive map to explore rates of absenteeism by Unified and Elementary districts or High School districts and contrast rural, urban and suburban districts across California.
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Source: EdSource analysis of California Department of Education data
Joanne Scott, left, practices pharmaceutical compounding, part of Mt. San Antonio College’s short-term vocational pharmaceutical technician program.
Michael Burke/EdSource
Top Takeaways
Short-term vocational certificates, especially those in health fields, are growing across community colleges.
At Mt. San Antonio College, 83% of students complete the programs on their first try.
Officials see vocational training as a way to recover enrollments, which dropped sharply during the pandemic.
Joanne Scott had been without full-time work for about two decades and was struggling to reenter the workforce. Then she learned this year about a short-term pharmacy technician program at Mt. San Antonio College in eastern Los Angeles County.
Scott, 45, is a stand-up comedian who performs about twice a week in Los Angeles, usually at The Elysian Theater in the city’s Frogtown neighborhood, but was looking for a more consistent paycheck. She and her husband have twin 11-year-old boys, and Scott wanted to contribute more.
“Obviously, being a performer is not steady,” she said.
Scott thought something in the medical field would be promising because of the high demand in the job market. She landed on the pharmaceutical program in part because it fit her schedule. The noncredit program is just 20 weeks long, and classes are during the day, allowing Scott to still perform comedy in the evenings. Students who get their certificate often enter the workforce right away as a pharmaceutical technician, either at a retail location like Walgreens or within a hospital.
The program is one of 48 short-term vocational programs that Mt. San Antonio has added in the past five years as part of an effort to serve more adults and prepare them for the workforce. Most of the new programs are in health fields, but the college has also added programs in areas such as tax accounting, welding and appliance repair.
It’s reflective of a growing trend across the state’s community colleges to target more programs at adult students who, because they often work or have family to support, have less time for school than traditional-aged students do. College officials say that enrolling those adults is one way to reverse steep pandemic declines across all populations.
Serving large portions of the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire, Mt. San Antonio has prioritized noncredit vocational programs because many adults in the region are interested in upskilling or finding new careers, said Martha Garcia, the college’s president and CEO.
“If we look at trends for our traditional students, 18 to 24, that population is decreasing,” Garcia said. “I’ve analyzed our demographics, and if I want to impact this community at the greatest level that I can, I need to focus on serving adult learners, because that’s where we have the greatest level of need.”
The number of adult learners in the community college system took a massive hit during the pandemic: Head counts for students age 35 and older declined by about 25% between 2019 and 2021, an even higher rate than students in the 18 to 24 age range.
Those enrollments have, however, been steadily recovering in recent years, especially among students aged 35 to 44, who are now enrolled near their pre-pandemic levels.
One of the reasons for that is the expansion of short-term, noncredit vocational programs.
The programs are tuition-free for students, which is common for noncredit programs across the state. That helps the community colleges compete with for-profit colleges and other institutions that offer their own short-term programs, often with much higher tuition rates.
The colleges also benefit because they receive state funding for students enrolled in noncredit programs.
In 2023-24, community college enrollment statewide in noncredit career programs rose to nearly 82,000 full-time equivalent students, up about 37,000 from pandemic lows and also much higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Mt. San Antonio now has 89 noncredit vocational programs, and about 83% of students who enroll complete their chosen program on the first try. That’s much better than the percentage of students who typically finish longer degree programs at California’s community colleges: Fewer than 1 in 10 students complete an associate degree or transfer to a four-year university within two years of enrolling, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Most of the vocational programs at Mt. San Antonio have a limited number of spots and are open to students with a high school diploma or equivalent on a first-come, first-served basis. The college’s licensed vocational nursing program has more stringent admission standards, requiring students to submit high school transcripts, write a personal statement and demonstrate basic skills competency.
On a recent Tuesday morning on the Mt San Antonio campus, Scott and other students in her program were practicing pharmaceutical compounding, a process that involves mixing or altering drug ingredients to create a medication. In a classroom on the other side of the campus, students in the medical assistant program — another noncredit vocational program — were practicing cleaning minor wounds on one another.
Many of the programs also include an externship, essentially an unpaid internship with a local employer in which students shadow employees or get additional hands-on training. Pharmacy technician students complete a 120-hour externship at a retail location or at a nearby hospital such as Casa Colina in Pomona. Students who do well in their externships often get hired right away, said Amy Kamel, the instructor for the pharmaceutical technician program.
Whenever Mt. San Antonio designs a new vocational program, it’s typically based on labor market data and filling a need, said Diana Lupercio, the college’s director of short-term vocational programs.
“One of the main questions that students will ask us is, what can I do with this? They want to make sure it’s going to lead to a job,” Lupercio said.
Other times, students enroll as a first step to a more advanced degree, like going to pharmacy school or a registered nursing program. Registered nursing programs at California’s community colleges are typically competitive, with the number of applications often exceeding the number of available spots.
Sabrina Hernandez, 29, enrolled in the medical assistant program because it seemed like a “good stepping stone” to a career in health care. Hernandez, who is considering becoming a nurse, initially attended Fullerton College after high school and dropped out to work. She recently finished the medical assistant program at Mt. San Antonio and has started applying for jobs, which she’s hopeful will give her a better sense of whether she wants to continue on her current path.
“I thought this was a good way to make sure I actually like being in a hospital,” she said. Hernandez eventually plans to return to college if she can get admitted to a registered nursing program and is hoping her new certification will bolster her application.
Scott, the pharmaceutical tech student, has some interest in pursuing a more advanced degree and going to pharmacy school, but isn’t certain because doing so would lead to a more stressful career.
For now, she is going to class from 8 am to about 1:30 pm each Monday through Thursday and hoping to land a job at a hospital, which she said she would prefer to a retail job because she’d be interacting with doctors and nurses rather than directly with patients.
“I’m just looking forward to a reliable paycheck,” she said. “All my friends are performers who are poor, and I’ve been texting them saying, ‘You gotta go back to college.’”
Flanked by fourth-place winner Ellie McCuskey-Hay, left, and first-place winner Loren Webster, right, second-place winners AB Hernandez, center right, and Brooke White share the podium during a medal ceremony for the long jump at the California high school track and field championships in Clovis.
Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
Top Takeaways
California Department of Education vows to protect “all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity.”
Sixteen-year-old transgender athlete AB Hernandez shared three medals with cisgender competitors under newly rejiggered rules at California’s track and field championships last weekend, sparking controversy.
The U.S. Department of Justice warned California schools they may be held in violation of civil rights protections for girls.
The California Department of Education on Tuesday weighed in on the escalating controversy over transgender athletes in school sports, advising schools to hold the line in the wake of threats from the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday issued a letter warning California school districts they will face legal trouble if they don’t pledge to bar trans athletes from competition by June 9, citing civil rights concerns. The CDE countered Tuesday, advising schools to hold fast and let it respond to the Justice Department regarding matters of gender identity on behalf of the state.
“Let’s be clear: sending a letter does not change the law,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in a statement. “The DOJ’s letter to school districts does not announce any new federal law, and state law on this issue has remained unchanged since 2013. California state law protects all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity. We will continue to follow the law and ensure the safety of all our athletes.”
Last weekend’s fracas over California’s track and field championships in Clovis has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign to target transgender athletes in girls sports, a divisive hot-button issue that conservatives have pushed aggressively of late.
President Donald Trump has threatened financial penalties for California public schools after a 16-year-old trans athlete, AB Hernandez, won three medals in last weekend’s California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field Championships. Hernandez placed first in the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump.
In the wake of a key last-minute rule change, Hernandez shared the podium with her cisgender competitors. The hastily rejiggered rules allow girls to receive medals based on where they would have finished if a transgender athlete had not been allowed to compete.
This compromise did not mollify the president.
“Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so,” Trump wrote in a 12:56 a.m. ET post on June 2. “As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” he added, referring to Newsom.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, argues that letting transgender athletes into girls sports competitions constitutes sex discrimination, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” Dhillon has said. “Therefore, you cannot implement a policy allowing males to compete alongside girls, because such a policy would deprive girls of athletic opportunities and benefits based solely on their biological sex.”
The Civil Rights Division has also announced investigations into the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado for allegedly allowing males to live in intimate and communal spaces earmarked for females.
Town leaders in Clovis, the largely conservative city in Central California that hosted the track and field championships, called it unfair to include a transgender athlete in girls sports, The Fresno Bee reported. Chino has also filed a lawsuit on the issue.
California is among 22 states with laws that allow transgender athletes to compete with girls. Amid the state’s nearly 6 million TK-12 public school students, experts say, the number of active transgender student-athletes is estimated to be in the single digits.
Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has often jousted with Trump on social issues, shocked many on the left when he admitted that he felt allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls was “deeply unfair” during a recent interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
While Newsom himself has not as yet weighed in on this specific controversy, Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, has praised the new rules as “a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness — a model worth pursuing.”
For her part, Hernandez, a junior at Southern California’s Jurupa Valley High, has been characterized as poised and unruffled amid the heated controversy.
“We could not be prouder of the way this brave student-athlete conducted herself on and off the track,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.
A Walnut Valley Unified kindergarten teacher shows her students a book during class.
Credit: Walnut Valley Unified / Facebook
An underused, little-known public school choice program allowing students to enroll in other districts that open their borders has been reauthorized six times in the past 30 years. Under a bill winding its way through the Legislature, it would become permanent, with revised rules.
Under the District of Choice program, districts announce how many seats they make available to nonresident students by the fall of the preceding year, and parents must apply by Jan. 1. By statute, enrollment is open to any family that applies, without restrictions — and with a lottery if applications are oversubscribed. The program bans considering academic or athletic ability or, if an applicant is a student with special needs, the cost of educating a student.
“This bill is a crucial step towards creating a more inclusive and equitable public education system — one where all students have the opportunity to grow and thrive,” said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, the author of Senate Bill 897.
With enrollments dropping statewide — and projected to continue — districts could view District of Choice as a strategy to stem the decline and bolster revenue that new students would bring. But few districts have seized the option. At most, 50 districts out of nearly 1,000, mostly rural or suburban and small, have signed on.
That number, in turn, has restricted the openings for families; fewer than 10,000 students annually have transferred through the program — about 0.2% of California’s students, according to an evaluation of the program by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2021.
The list of districts for 2024-25 will be 44, the same as this year. That is down from 47 districts in 2021-22, when a total of 8,398 students transferred, according to the latest data available from the California Department of Education.
Of those, 2,574 students — 31% of the total — transferred to a single district, Walnut Valley Unified, a 14,000-student district in the San Gabriel Valley. The district includes the cities of Walnut and Diamond Bar and abuts Pomona Unified. Newman, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, represents Walnut Valley; his predecessor, Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, also championed District of Choice and shepherded a previous five-year reauthorization.
Together with five other districts receiving the most students — Oak Park Unified, Glendora Unified, West Covina Unified, Valley Lindo Elementary School District and Riverside Unified — the five received 82% of the students in the program statewide. Riverside, with 1,100 of its 42,000 students enrolled through District of Choice, is the only large district using the program.
Robert Taylor, Walnut Valley Unified’s superintendent, said the district had participated in the program for decades, in the belief that the district “should provide any child an opportunity regardless of special needs, socioeconomic status or street address. And that’s still today. We take every kid who wants to come.”
Taylor cited the “diversity of well-rounded opportunities” that draw outsiders: Arts offerings in elementary schools, starting in kindergarten, include dance, theater and music and are taught by professionals in the arts, he said. There is a counselor in every elementary school, and counselors stay with the same students throughout high school and meet one-on-one with them during the summer. The graduation rate is 100%, he said.
Responding to an allegation he hears, Taylor said, “No, we don’t cherry-pick students. We don’t want to, and it’s been against the law to.” The 2017 reauthorization of the law requires that districts give low-income students priority for transfers, and SB 897 would add homeless and foster children as well. The 23% of low-income students from other districts enrolled at Walnut Unified are slightly less than the 25% overall in the district.
Students from 30 districts have enrolled through District of Choice, Taylor said, and some parents drive from more than an hour away. One district that has not been sending additional students is its larger, less affluent neighbor, Pomona Unified, where 85% of its 22,000 students are from low-income families.
Under an arcane rule, a district can cap the number of students it permits to leave for districts of choice at a cumulative 10% of its average daily attendance since it first joined the program — even if many students have long since graduated from high school. Pomona reached that limit a half-dozen years ago, after going to court to prove that Walnut Valley had already exceeded the target, said Superintendent Darren Knowles.
SB 897 would delete that clause and replace it with a new annual cap: 10% of a district’s current average daily attendance for districts with fewer than 50,000 students and 1% for districts with more than 50,000 students. Sending districts would also be exempt if county offices of education verified that a loss of students to the program would jeopardize their financial stability.
Pomona Unified was the only opponent listed at a hearing last month in the Senate Education Committee, where the bill passed unanimously. Rowland Unified, a 13,000-student district to the west of Walnut Valley, has also complained about the financial impact of the transfer program.
Knowles said he doesn’t oppose the concept of school choice, if the distribution is equitable. But before reaching the cap, Walnut Valley drew disproportionately high numbers of white and Asian families from the wealthier neighborhoods in Diamond Bar that lie within Pomona Unified. The latter may be attracted to the two dual Chinese language immersion programs in Walnut Valley.
Wealthier families are able to drive their kids to Walnut Valley; low-income Latino families with both parents working more than likely can’t, said Knowles.
“The District of Choice does not create a good distribution for Pomona Unified,” Knowles said. “We need kids excelling as well as those struggling. Taking out the smartest kids in any district is not a good situation.”
Pomona Unified already has closed six elementary schools due to declining enrollment, Knowles said. The new cap could “decimate us within five years,” Knowles said. “Give us time to recover, a reprieve.”
Newman said that he is open to further accommodations for an adverse financial impact. “We don’t want well-intended legislation to have unintended consequences,” he told EdSource.
Who chooses?
In its 2021 evaluation, the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that District of Choice “allows students to access educational options that are not offered in their home districts,” including college prep courses, arts and music and foreign languages. Nearly all the students transferred to districts with higher test scores.
Newly required oversight measures found no districts discriminating against interested students, and that the program appeared to increase racial balance for some districts and reduce it for others, the LAO said, “although the changes for most districts are small.” It found that statewide, fewer low-income students used the program, compared with other students in their home districts; however, the proportion of those students had risen over four years from 27% to 32%. Participation of Latino students, though also on the rise, was smaller than the Latino enrollment in their home districts — similar to Pomona and Walnut Valley.
Among the last children to transfer from Pomona to Walnut Valley six years ago, right before the limit was reached, is Ethan Fermin. Then entering kindergarten, he is now in sixth grade at Suzanne Middle School. His sister, now in second grade, was admitted through an interdistrict transfer, a more restrictive permit process that requires both districts to approve the move. A family must make the case for the transfer or cite a hardship — in this case, the transportation challenges of having kids in two different districts. Parents whose children are denied a transfer can appeal to the county board of education, which often reverses a decision.
Ethan’s father, Billy, graduated from Pomona Unified schools; he was high school class president and active in many school activities, Fermin said. From his home, he can see the elementary school his kids would have attended — a two-minute walk from their house. Friends from high school are Pomona teachers. His kids would have attended his high school, Diamond Ranch High.
Leaving the district wasn’t easy, he said, adding, “But it’s a different world from when I went to school.” What caught his eye in Walnut Valley, he said, was a program in two elementary schools that leads to the International Baccalaureate, a rigorous high school program that stresses inquiry-based learning. He liked the early years’ focus on developing well-rounded, creative and open-minded learners and risk-takers. “Given the choice, it was night and day,” he said.
Taylor said Walnut Valley doesn’t market its programs as District of Choice, and he doesn’t speak negatively about other districts. Fermin said the district is smart to use social media heavily to show off what’s happening in its schools, and banners go up at the start of the sign-up period.
Possible reasons for so little participation
Charter schools are by far the largest public school choice program in California. The more than 1,200 charter schools served 685,553 students in 2022-23 — 11.7% of statewide enrollment, compared with about 2% through interdistrict transfers and 0.02% through District of Choice.
The Legislature passed laws permitting charter schools in 1992 and the District of Choice a year later. Both were viewed as strategies to counter a school voucher initiative that would have provided public funding for private school tuition, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s analysis. Voters trounced the voucher initiative, which drew only 30% support in the 1993 vote.
Why so few districts have participated in the program is a matter of conjecture. The five-year reauthorization periods raised the risk for districts and parents that their participation might be cut short. Ken Kapphahn, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office who did the evaluation, said some districts are able to receive as many interested transfer students as they want through the interdistrict permit process, under which they can set academic and behavior conditions.
Some districts would involve long drives to get to, while others assume they don’t have special offerings to lure lots of students, he said. And it’s his impression, he said, that many districts still don’t know the program exists; the California Department of Education does not promote it.
Newman said there is an entrepreneurial potential of the program that many superintendents haven’t recognized. The ability to draw students from nearby districts could inspire “a high level of innovation” that best serves students’ interests, he said.
Former President of the State Board of Education Mike Kirst, who said he supports making the program permanent, suggested another reason: It could be that district superintendents consider District of Choice a violation of an unwritten education commandment, Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s enrollment.
“It’s a professional norm that you don’t try to ‘poach’ students from other districts,” he said.
A bill that would have required California teachers to use the “science of reading,” which spotlights phonics, to teach children to read has died without a hearing.
Assembly Bill 2222, authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, will not advance in the Legislature this year, according to Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who described the state’s student reading and literacy rates as “a serious problem,” adding that the bill should receive a “methodical” review by all key groups before there is a “costly overhaul” of how reading is taught in California.
“I want the Legislature to study this problem closely, so we can be sure stakeholders are engaged and, most importantly, that all students benefit, especially our diverse learners,” Rivas said in a statement to EdSource, referring to English learners.
The bill, which had the support of the California State PTA, state NAACP and more than 50 other organizations, hit a snag two weeks ago, when the California Teachers Association — the state’s largest teachers union — sent a letter stating its opposition to the bill to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Al Muratsuchi.
The union claimed that the proposed legislation would duplicate and potentially undermine current literacy initiatives, would not meet the needs of English learner students and would cut teachers out of decisions, especially on curriculum.
Rubio, who could not be reached late Thursday, told EdSource last week that Muratsuchi asked her to work with the teachers union on a compromise.
Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice, an advocacy nonprofit co-sponsoring the bill, said he was surprised the bill didn’t get a hearing considering the importance of the issue.
“We understand it’s a tough budget year, but we also believe that the most important priority for the education budget is helping our kids learn how to read,” he said.
But he called the move to table the bill a “bump in the road.”
“When we launched with Assemblymember Rubio and the sponsors behind this, we knew it might be a multi-year effort,” he said. “So you get up tomorrow and keep it moving forward.”
Advocates say that it is imperative that California mandates this change in reading instruction. In 2023, just 43% of California third-graders met the academic standards on the state’s standardized test in 2023. Only 27.2% of Black students, 32% of Latino students and 35% of low-income children were reading at grade level, compared with 57.5% of white, 69% of Asian and 66% of non-low-income students.
“The California NAACP was right, this is a civil rights issue,” said Kareem Weaver, a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM. “And you don’t play politics with civil rights. The misinformation and ideological posturing on AB 2222 effectively leveraged the politics of fear. We have to do better, for kids’ sake, and can’t give up.”
What is the science of reading?
Science of reading refers to research-based teaching strategies that reflect how the brain learns how to read. While it includes phonics-based instruction that teaches children to decode words by sounding them out, it also includes four other pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, identifying distinct units of sounds; vocabulary; comprehension; and fluency. It is based on research on how the brain connects letters with sounds when learning to read.
The legislation would have gone against the state policy of local control that gives school districts authority to select curriculum and teaching methods as long as they meet state academic standards. Currently, the state encourages, but does not mandate, districts to incorporate instruction in the science of reading in the early grades.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour-minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
English learner advocates opposed bill
It appears lawmakers heard the pleas of advocates for English learners who opposed the bill.
“We know that addressing equity and literacy outcomes is a high priority for California and that our state is not yet where it needs to be with literacy outcomes for all students,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, one of the organizations that opposed the bill. “AB 2222 is not the prescription that is needed for our multilingual, diverse state.”
She said she is willing to work with lawmakers for a literacy plan that is based on reading research, but that “centrally addresses” the needs of English learners.
California’s proposed legislation to adopt the science of reading approach to early literacy would have been in sync with other states that have passed similar legislation. States nationwide are rejecting balanced literacy as failing to effectively teach children how to read, since it de-emphasizes explicit instruction in phonics and instead trains children to use pictures to identify words on sight, also known as three-cueing.
Muratsuchi had until the end of the day Thursday to put the bill on the calendar for the April 17 meeting of the Assembly Education Committee. It would then have had to be heard by the Assembly Higher Education Committee before the April 26 deadline for legislators to get bills with notable fiscal impacts to the Appropriations Committee. Now, the bill will have to be reintroduced next year to get a hearing.
“It’s really too bad. Lots of kids are not being well-served now. But on the other hand, I hope this will be an opportunity to regroup and present a more robust version of the bill,” said Claude Goldenberg, a Stanford University professor emeritus of education, who supported the bill.
Goldenberg said a future version of the bill should include a “more comprehensive definition” of the “science of reading” and should make clear that this includes research on teaching reading to all students, including English learners.
“English learners, for example, would benefit if teachers knew and used research that is part of the science of reading and applies whether they’re learning in their home language or in English. Same for children with limited literacy opportunities outside of school and children having difficulty learning to read,” Goldenberg said.
‘Backroom politics’
Lori DePole, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, one of the supporters of the bill, expressed frustration Thursday evening over the decision to table it.
“It is shameful that when more than half of CA kids aren’t reading at grade level that our legislators are okay with the status quo, and they have killed this literacy legislation without even allowing it to be heard,” she said in a statement.
“… CA kids’ futures are too important to allow backroom politics to silence this issue. We will no longer accept lip service in addressing our literacy crisis. It is time for action, and we aren’t going away.”
Advocates for students with dyslexia support the phonics-based teaching methods as especially effective for children with the learning disability.
Muratsuchi said he supports the science of reading. “However, we need to make sure that we do this right, by serving the needs of all California students, including our English learners,” he said in a statement to EdSource. “California is the most language-diverse state in the country, and we need to develop a literacy instruction strategy that works for all of our students.
“I thank Speaker Robert Rivas for his decision to pursue a more deliberative process involving all education stakeholders before enacting a costly overhaul of how reading is taught statewide,” he said.
EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza contributed to this report.
Thomas Ultican reviews the current state of billionaire support for charter schools in California. Most people, certainly the charter industry, has long forgotten or never knew that the original charter school idea was that they would be created by teachers and operate under the aegis of local school boards. The reason for the linkage was that charter schools were supposed to be places that tried innovative practices, especially for the neediest students, and fed their results to their host district. They were supposed to be like R&D centers for local school districts.
They were not supposed to compete with public schools but to help public schools.
They were not supposed to undermine public schools. They were not supposed to be for-profit or operated as chains or entrepreneurs.
Students at Rudsdale Continuation High School in Oakland, California.
Credit: Anne Wernikoff for Edsource
Magaly Lavadenz was excited about what she felt could be a game-changer for students who are learning English as a second language.
The Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) at Loyola Marymount University, which Lavadenz directs, had just won a grant in October 2024 for $5.7 million from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Comprehensive Center on English Learners and Multilingualism.
The center would provide resources, training and materials to state education agencies and tribal education agencies so they could, in turn, help districts provide the best support to English learners.
“There was so much excitement about this work,” Lavadenz said.
Then, four months later, in February, Lavadenz received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education terminating the grant and claiming that it violated President Donald Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.
It was a chilling foreshadowing of what would come.
The Trump administration later cut the vast majority of the staff of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), which is charged with administering federal funding for English learners, providing resources and training to schools, and making sure states provide the instruction and services they are required to provide to English learners.
Then, in Trump’s budget request released May 2, he proposed eliminating the federal funding earmarked for English learners and immigrant students under Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law.
“To end overreach from Washington and restore the rightful role of State oversight in education, the Budget proposes to eliminate the misnamed English Language Acquisition program which actually deemphasizes English primacy by funding NGOs and States to encourage bilingualism,” reads the budget proposal. “The historically low reading scores for all students mean States and communities need to unite—not divide—classrooms using evidence-based literacy instruction materials to improve outcomes for all students.”
Researchers, advocates, and school district administrators say the termination of grants and proposed cuts to funding for schools are misinformed and violate federal law.
“There are civil rights laws that protect English learners,” Lavadenz said. “We believe that the U.S. Department of Education is in violation of those.”
Both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 require public schools to ensure that English learners can participate fully in school at the same level as their English-speaking peers. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Lau v. Nichols case in 1974 that schools must provide additional instruction to students who do not speak English fluently to make sure they can understand the content of their classes.
Education leaders in California said the cuts to Title III would be devastating. Title III funds are sent to state education agencies, like the California Department of Education, to distribute to schools based on the number of immigrant and English learner students they have. They are to be used to help students understand academic content in their classes and to help them learn English.
Debra Duardo, the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools, said she was “deeply concerned” by the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate Title III. In the 2023-24 school year, schools in L.A. County received approximately $30 million in Title III funding for English learners, she said, which was used for tutoring, support staff, instructional coaching, and high-quality supplemental materials. In addition, they received $2.5 million for immigrant students, which were used to help support family literacy and outreach, school personnel, tutorials, mentoring, and academic and career counseling.
“This decision would have devastating impacts on Los Angeles County schools, where we serve one of the nation’s largest populations of English learners and children from migrant families,” Duardo said.
Lavadenz said if the funds are cut, districts may stop providing services to English learners, or they may remove funding from other areas to keep providing services.
“There’s going to be potential not just for the elimination of services, but we’re going to be pitting student groups against each other,” Lavadenz said.
Nicole Knight, executive director of English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement at Oakland Unified School District, agreed.
“Ultimately, cutting support for English learners jeopardizes the quality of education for all students, as districts would be forced to divert resources from other critical priorities in order to meet their legal obligations to provide language services,” Knight said.
In addition, a loss of funds would likely mean no federal monitoring, collection of data on English learners, or oversight to make sure states or school districts are actually providing the services they are required to under the law.
“I am devastated to see that work dismantled at the federal level,” said Knight. “It feels like years of progress and good work are being erased.”
Efraín Tovar, who teaches recent immigrant students at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma Unified School District in the Central Valley and is also the founder of the California Newcomer Network, said his district has used Title III funds to buy supplemental curriculum and computer software for newcomer students. He said some districts have used the funds to create innovative Saturday programs for recent immigrant students to help them learn.
“Here in Selma, those funds have helped me directly impact my students’ educational journey,” Tovar said. Every single dollar in public education helps. If those funds are not given by the federal government, the question we have at the local level is, will the state then make it a priority to fund those special programs?”
Many California leaders disagreed with the administration’s arguments that bilingual education or encouraging bilingualism makes students less likely to speak English.
“Decades of research clearly support dual-language and multilingual programs as the most effective models for helping students acquire English and achieve long-term academic success,” Knight said. “I can only hold on to hope that our lawmakers will attend to the evidence, the research, and their conscience to make the right decision for our young people.”
Lavadenz is not convinced, however, that Congress will end up cutting all that funding, especially given that some Republican states like Texas have a long history of encouraging, or even requiring, bilingual education for English learners.
“This is an evolving story,” she said. “The states that have a lot more to lose are not necessarily progressive states like California.”
