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برچسب: California

  • California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students

    California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students


    California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

    Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    More than 20 years ago, California passed a law allowing some undocumented immigrant students to attend college with in-state tuition, if they meet certain requirements.

    But immigrant rights advocates say many students who should have been eligible have been wrongfully denied in-state tuition because of confusion over requirements, misinformation and different interpretations of the law at different college campuses.

    “We lose that incredible brain power and colleges are losing enrollment,” said Nancy Jodaitis, director of higher education for Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit organization that advocates for undocumented people to achieve educational and career goals.

    Immigrants Rising brought together officials from all three public college systems — California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California — to discuss and agree on answers to frequently-asked questions about the law.

    The result is a document called the Systemwide AB 540 FAQ, which all three systems have now signed. The document includes answers to 59 questions, such as:

    • What if a student graduated from a California high school (completing three years’ worth of high school credits), but did not attend three years at a California high school?
    • Does a student have to take classes full time for their attendance to count?
    • Does all their coursework have to be taken at the same school?

    Spokespeople from UC, CSU and California Community Colleges all celebrated the document.

    Paul Feist, vice chancellor of communications and marketing for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said the document is particularly important because there are several different laws regarding the nonresident tuition exemption.

    The first bill exempting some undocumented immigrants from out-of-state tuition, Assembly Bill 540, was signed into law in 2001. Since then, three other bills have been passed to expand the law, in 2014, 2017 and 2022.

    “While the intent was to expand access to AB 540 financial assistance, they had the unintended effect of making it more difficult to navigate,” Feist said. “This FAQ is designed to provide clearer explanations and provide additional resources in advising students.”

    Under current California law, students who are undocumented or have temporary protection from deportation such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are eligible for in-state tuition and state financial aid, if they attended at least three years of high school, adult school or community college in California and obtained a high school diploma or equivalent, an associate degree or fulfilled the minimum requirements to transfer to a UC or CSU. 

    Access to state financial aid and in-state tuition can be a critical factor for undocumented students, who are barred from receiving federal financial aid. Without the law in place, some of them would be charged tuition rates for international students, often much higher than in-state tuition.

    “This is huge,” said Maria Gutierrez, a college counselor at Chabot College in Hayward and a doctoral student at San Francisco State University. “It helps us be aligned and have something in writing.”  Before the FAQ document, Gutierrez says college staff in charge of approving exemptions from out-of-state tuition were sometimes afraid to make decisions without written proof of how to interpret the law.

    Gutierrez herself has benefited from AB 540. She came to the U.S. when she was 5 years old on a visa, which later expired. She attended elementary, middle and most of high school in California. She also graduated from high school in California. But when she applied to attend community college in California, different campuses disagreed on whether she was eligible for in-state tuition because she had spent two years of high school in Utah. At the time, a second law had recently been passed to allow colleges to consider years of attendance in elementary and middle school for AB 540 eligibility.

    “One college that I went to in So Cal, I was approved for AB 540. When I had to go back to the Bay Area, I was not approved for AB 540. So then I was confused that there was this inconsistency,” Gutierrez said.

    A few years later, when she applied to transfer to a four-year college, both UC and CSU campuses told her she was not eligible for in-state tuition, even though by then, a law had passed that clarified that attendance at community college could be counted toward the requirements. She spent a semester paying out-of-state tuition at San Jose State University, before the university finally acknowledged she was legally eligible for in-state tuition. 

    As a college counselor, Gutierrez continues to meet students who have been incorrectly told they are not eligible for in-state tuition.

    “It’s crazy because in reality it hasn’t changed much,” she said. However, she said, the financial burden is harder now, because most students graduating from high school cannot apply for work permits under DACA, because the government has not accepted new applications since 2017. 

    “I see my students now and I see the struggles they’re going through. If I didn’t have DACA, I honestly don’t think I would be where I am now,” Gutierrez said. “There’s no way that I would’ve been able to pay nonresident fees or wait for whoever it is that is determining that to learn what they need to do for me to be able to go to college.”

    Advocates say they hope the document will help colleges give correct information and avoid students having to research on their own for information.

    California also recently streamlined the process for undocumented students to apply for financial aid and exemption from in-state tuition on the same application when they fill out the California Dream Act application. In the past, students had to both fill out a California Dream Act application and an AB 540 affidavit form for each college. Now, the AB 540 form will be part of the same application.

    Diana Aguilar-Cruz said that change is significant. Aguilar-Cruz is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public health at Cal State Fullerton. When she first began her undergraduate education at Cal Poly Pomona, she was charged nonresident tuition, which was almost double the in-state tuition. She had immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico City in 2015, when she was 14 years old, and lived with her grandmother in Baldwin Park while attending high school. 

    She had completed a California Dream Act application, but no one told her she also had to complete a separate form. After researching it herself online, she found the form and completed it, at which point the university finally changed her tuition to in-state.

    “If I didn’t find it in my Google search, would I be paying in-state tuition for my four years of college?” Aguilar-Cruz said. “I always think to myself, what would have happened if I was a more fearful student or a student who did not have a strong support system at home?”

    This article was corrected to clarify how Maria Gutierrez immigrated to the U.S. and that Chabot College is in Hayward.





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  • We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change

    We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change


    Piedmont seventh graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco in 2019.

    Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

    I live on the coast of California, near the Point Reyes National Seashore. In February 2023, we endured an abnormally violent storm with 60 mph wind gusts that brought down a large redwood tree onto two cars parked in my driveway. I was shaken but grateful to be alive. I was also grateful for the generosity of my neighbor who allowed me to borrow her car for the next two weeks as I sorted things out.

    When the time came to return the borrowed car, I made sure to wash it, clean it out and return it with a full gas tank. I recalled hearing my father’s voice telling me to always return something you borrowed in better shape than when you got it.

    I realize that my generation of baby boomers has essentially “borrowed” and used the planet for our own purposes for the past 50 years. And now it is time for us to return what we borrowed — and turn it over to the next generation.

    Fifty years of population growth, industrial expansion, carbon burning and general lack of care has initiated a process of climate change that is generating a multitude of physical, economic and social crises. We are trying to mitigate these changes, but no matter how well we do that, we will nonetheless be turning over the planet to the next generation with irreparable damage done and in a state of accelerating decline.

    So what else can my generation do? 

    I think our generation owes it to the next generation to prepare them as well as we can for the world they will face. If we cannot return the earth to them in good shape, we can at least give them a powerful education so that they can survive — and do better than we have done — when it is their turn to assume stewardship of the planet.

    Preparing our children for the world they will inherit is the right thing to do — for them and for us.  But it also could be very good for the California education system. Preparing students for the world they will inherit could help schools find renewed purpose and achieve the relevance that students are demanding.

    In 2015, California published its Blueprint for Environmental Literacy. The document points out that K-12 students in California do not currently have “consistent access to adequately funded, high-quality learning experiences, in and out of the classroom, that build environmental literacy.” Many receive only a limited introduction to environmental content, and some have no access at all.

    Why has so little changed in our schools over the nine years since the blueprint was published? 

    One answer is that the state has not made environmental or climate change education a priority, nor has it invested in long-term, well-crafted initiatives to develop the capacity and propensity of the educational system to change itself. The state does relatively little to develop the curriculum, assessments and professional development that is required to create learning opportunities that can help students prepare for a world dominated by climate change. 

    Over the next five years, California is planning to invest about $10 billion a year to combat the effects of climate change. By contrast, the state presently invests less than 0.1% of this amount to support the development of climate change education.

    This means that for every $100 the state spends fighting climate change, it spends less than 1 cent on educating its students to understand the need for those efforts.

    For every student in California, we spend over $20,000 a year on their school education. Of this amount, we devote less than $2 per student annually to develop our capacity to promote climate change literacy.

    The Covid pandemic provides a clear example of what happens when investment in science and investment in education are not well-balanced. The nation succeeded in creating vaccines that were successful at fending off the worst effects of this new Covid virus. However, the lack of public understanding of vaccines, and in the science behind them, severely limited their timely adoption and success. 

    The same is true with climate change. In the long term, we will not be able address climate change without an equal emphasis on climate change education.  

    California is taking the lead in the nation in supporting policies and research that fight climate change. It could do the same with climate change education. 

    We very much need the next generation to be smarter and wiser than mine. This is not just my generation’s idea of what is good for our youth. They are already demanding of us that we do better in terms of mitigation, adaptation and education. Can we look them in the eye and honestly say to them that we are doing everything we can do to prepare them for what is coming?

    •••

    Mark St. John is founder of Inverness Research, a nonprofit organization that studies education initiatives, and a consultant to Ten Strands, a nonprofit organization promoting environmental literacy for California students.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • How earning a college degree put four California men on a path from prison to new lives | Documentary 

    How earning a college degree put four California men on a path from prison to new lives | Documentary 


    Jennifer Molina
    May 9, 2024

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypfojKZMnGQ

    Samual N. Brown, Allen Burnett, Charlie Praphatananda and Dara Yin have stories to tell.

    Their time in prison was shrouded by their reality. Three of the four were charged with murder and sentenced to life without parole. It’s what one of them, who entered prison at 20, describes as death by incarceration.

    Taking college courses had been going on for decades in California prisons, but in 2016, California State University Los Angeles became the first college to offer bachelor’s degrees to people in prison.

    Now, eight of the state’s 34 adult prisons have started or are soon to begin partnerships that award four-year degrees, making California a leader in expanding college degree programs into the state’s prisons.

    The trend touches only a sliver of incarcerated people, however. While California incarcerates about 95,600 people in its prison system, about 230 enrolled in the fall in a bachelor’s degree program. For the four men whose stories are told in this documentary, just the chance to earn the degree made it possible for them to see themselves living a different life outside of prison. Three ultimately got their sentences commuted. The fourth was paroled.

    Read more:

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    EdSource has been on it when big shifts happen – like the Department of Education shutting down many areas of their work. But we also remain committed to following the long-term stories in our communities and having an impact through our reporting.

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  • Getting California kids to read: What will it take?

    Getting California kids to read: What will it take?


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xd4Alvvblo

    Leading literacy experts agreed that more young California students need to learn how to read, but they couldn’t reach a concensus on how to make it happen.

    While several participants in EdSource’s May 14 Roundtable discussion, “Getting California Kids to Read: What Will It Take?” suggested they would work together to pass a literacy bill, they also acknowledged that their disagreements remain in the details.

    Moderated by EdSource reporters John Fensterwald and Zaidee Stavely, the lively hourlong roundtable focused on how to achieve literacy for California children. The panel grappled with a myriad of thorny issues including state policy dynamics, the needs of dual-language learners and long-standing disagreements over how best to teach reading amid rising illiteracy rates. 

    Putting the needs of children and their teachers first should be the North Star when trying to solve the deepening literacy crisis, panelists agreed.

    The bottom line is grim. In 2023, just 43% of California students were reading at grade level by third grade, state data shows. Worse still, far fewer Black and Latino students met that standard.  

    “This is also a matter of civil rights,” said Kareem Weaver, an NAACP activist, co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM and a key figure in the “The Right to Read” documentary, who has long argued that literacy is a matter of social justice too often obscured by esoteric debates about pedagogy. “Kids need access to prepared teachers, and communities like ours, I feel like we’re bearing the brunt.”

    Against the backdrop of an ongoing battle over state policy and crippling pandemic learning loss, the stakes are perilously high for children who graduate from high school unable to read. They struggle to navigate the world, from job applications to rental agreements, and studies point to the connection between illiteracy and incarceration. 

    “We’re counting on reasonable people to come together and figure this stuff out,” said Weaver. “These decisions that are made, they do fall on real kids, real communities.”

    What will it take to make sure that all kids, including English learners, read by third grade?

    While the state has taken some steps to get all kids to grade level, such as funding for tutors and testing students for dyslexia, a reading disability, there is no comprehensive plan. Given local control policies, districts decide how reading is taught, and many use methods that have been debunked by some experts. That’s a problem because consensus is key to reform, experts say. 

    “You want to make sure that whether you’re in the district office or you are a teacher in the classroom, you’re singing the same song,” said Penny Schwinn, former Tennessee education commissioner, who led that state’s renowned reading reform initiative, Reading 360. “The curricular materials are aligned, the professional development is aligned. All of that has to row in the same direction. Otherwise, you have people who are all doing different things in different ways and kids get confused.”

    What’s standing in the way of systemic change in California? One key question underpinning this debate is whether a statewide approach can meet the needs of English learners.

    “I do have to say that many times students and biliteracy programs are not included in the literacy conversation,” said Martha Hernández, executive director of Californians Together, an advocacy group. “Our literacy policy must have a focus on student-responsive teaching. I will say that multi-literacy is really the way of the future, particularly for our diverse state in this 21st century. It must be a cornerstone of literacy, biliteracy education policy in California.”

    Another key obstacle is the resistance to any top-down mandate that the state imposes on schools. 

    “When you do not have educators at the center of this, along with parents and students, it is set up to fail,” said David B. Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association. “Frankly, going and passing legislation that reinforces a top-down approach, it’s antithetical to what all of our goals are about: really having all students succeed.”

    In hopes of giving the state a comprehensive plan focusing on phonics and other skills like vocabulary and reading comprehension, supporters backed Assembly Bill 2222 authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park. It also had the support of the California State PTA, state NAACP and more than 50 other organizations. But the bill died last month in committee before it could even get a hearing, succumbing to opposition from the state teachers union and English language advocates.

    Getting a literacy bill passed, as hard as that may be, is just the beginning, experts warn.

    “That is the easiest part of the process,” said Schwinn. “You can pass legislation, but implementation is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, because you have to win hearts and minds and you have to make sure you do it with respect and make sure you are operating with extreme dignity and professionalism and with a high quality bar for the people who are in the profession every day.”

    In a state as big and diverse as California, consensus can be elusive, noted Claude Goldenberg, emeritus professor of education in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. While almost everyone agrees that literacy instruction should be culturally relevant and content-rich as well as foundational, there remain disagreements about what exactly that looks like in the classroom. 

    “One of the big problems is when we speak at this level, there’s a lot of agreement,” said Goldenberg, “but we know the devil is in the details. … Time is limited in schools. Six hours tops, maybe six and a half, maybe five and a quarter. … We’ve got to make some choices and we’ve got to make some priorities at different stages of reading development. And that’s where the conversation kind of breaks down, because it gets very weedy, it gets very difficult. … We end up looking like we agree, but the subtext here is we’re still disagreeing.”

    One of the big hurdles is over whether the state should embrace what is known as the science of reading, which refers to research on how the brain learns how to read. In response to a question from moderator Fensterwald on what is irrefutable about that research, Goldenberg said there was no doubt about how children need to be taught how to read.

    “We have research on what to do when kids are having difficulty getting traction in beginning reading, whether they’re in Spanish reading programs or in English reading programs as English language learners,” said Goldenberg. “We know that there’s a reason they’re called foundational literacy skills. Because if you don’t have these skills, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to become literate.”

    While she agreed on many broad themes, Hernandez pointed out that children have differing needs. 

    “Of course, you know, science is never settled,” said Hernandez. “What works for one student may not work for another.”

    As the president of the state’s largest teachers union, Goldberg, for his part, noted that any approach that does not center the expertise of teachers is likely to be a non-starter. Teachers must have a seat at the table, he argued.

    “We have had decades of disinvestment in public education,” said Goldberg. “So when we hear educators, when our voice is constantly not listened to … when educators do not feel like their agency is respected, like the fact that we are educating many kids with diverse language needs, all kinds of issues, not the flavor of the month … it has to have deep engagement at the very base level to get educators to buy in.” 

    He is also concerned that the voices of students of color will be overlooked in the debate.

    “As a bilingual educator, how it comes across is that bilingual students, students of color in particular, their needs are always being pushed into silence,” said Goldberg.  “And so I hear what you’re saying, but if these programs have any legitimacy, they must put the needs of the most vulnerable people at the center.”  

    Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, an advocacy group, suggested that a statewide literacy initiative could be more akin to guardrails than a mandate. Certainly, many other states, including those with substantial bilingual populations, from Florida and Mississippi to Tennessee, have already launched comprehensive state policy reforms to change the way reading is taught, with impressive results. 

    “It’s not about one-size-fits-all because, just like in other states, there would be many choices of reading professional development and instructional programs,” said Potente. “And the choices would be vetted by state experts to ensure that they provide what California kids need to learn.”

    She argues that it’s actually the most vulnerable kids who may have the most to gain from a comprehensive literacy plan. Her organization fought long and hard for dyslexia screening legislation, for example, that only recently passed.

    “It took eight years and four bills to make it happen. We are in this for the long haul because we know that matters,” said Potente, a veteran teacher and the mother of a dyslexic child.  “We talk about structured literacy a lot. … It really needs to be the standard of care. Non-negotiable. Why is it not? That’s really what sticks with me. Why is it so hard to find access to evidence-based instruction that works for all kids? Why?” 





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  • Why one California university leader thinks year-round operations will aid enrollment

    Why one California university leader thinks year-round operations will aid enrollment


    Students in a science class at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

    Credit: Arabel Meyer / EdSource

    Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo recently announced that it will become the first public university in the state to shift to year-round operations starting summer 2025. The change would give students the option of starting in the summer and taking their academic break during a different term, and it would allow the university to admit more students per year.

    Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong said other universities have had success with this model. 

    “Secondary to growth (in enrollment), I think we’re going to see student success,” Armstrong said. 

    Taking inspiration from schools that have had year-round operations for years, like Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of Waterloo in Canada, Armstrong said he hopes to put a “Cal Poly twist” on the idea to benefit all students. 

    Beginning next year, students will be able to choose to start either in summer or fall during the application process. Faculty and staff will also be able to choose which terms they will work.

    Armstrong said students and faculty will have enough information to make an informed decision about what their schedule will look like and “they will know what they’re getting into.”

    If a student opts to start in summer, they might have a greater chance of being admitted to Cal Poly, which currently has an admit rate of 28% and is highly impacted with more applications than available spaces, Armstrong said.

    “We’re not changing our standards,” Armstrong said. “What we’re doing is using year-round to open up more spaces so more students can get in.”

    Starting the year in the summer would be different from simply taking summer classes or taking a couple of classes in the last few weeks of summer through summer start programs to help students adjust to college.

    Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo President Jeffrey D. Armstrong
    Credit: Cal Poly SLO

    Students who start their year in the summer would have full course offerings equivalent to what is offered during the other terms, and classes would be for a full term, according to Armstrong.

    When asked about the expected cost of the change to year-round operations, Armstrong said, “Overall, we believe the investments required will not be significantly out of line as what would be required for enrollment growth through traditional non-year-round operations means.”

    Following the year-round model, students, including freshmen, would have more opportunities to participate in “high-impact practices” such as internships, study abroad and undergraduate research, according to Armstrong. 

    “We know when students participate in high-impact practices, it enhances their retention, it enhances their chance to graduate,” he said. 

    A student who chooses to start in summer could then study abroad or do an internship during the fall term and come back for spring term, for example. 

    Armstrong said students could also decide to take classes every term and graduate earlier, though this would not be required.

    It’s about “flexibility for all students, really,” he said. “I think it’ll be very positive, and it’ll expand access to high-impact activities. We want it to be more equitable.”

    Financial aid would still cover a full academic year (three quarters or two semesters) no matter when a student starts, Armstrong added. 

    In an ideal world, Armstrong said about a third of students would start in summer, though starting out, the numbers might be more like 15-20%. 

    “It’s allowing us to grow, [and] it’s taking the number of students in the regular academic year down, so it’s relieving some of the pressure,” Armstrong said.

    Cal Poly began discussing this shift in 2019, but it was delayed because of the to the pandemic. The change was then set to begin summer 2024 but delayed again after Cal Poly met its enrollment goals for the year by increasing course availability, allowing more students to enroll full time. 

    As college enrollment rates increase, universities have been trying to find ways to do so without increasing costs too much. In 1999, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report recommending universities switch to year-round operations. 

    Cal Poly is the only public university in California to make this switch, though other schools are making different efforts to increase their enrollment and expand summer instruction.

    According to Hazel Kelly, CSU spokesperson, other CSU campuses are also considering ways to offer more flexible academic calendars.

    “The Chancellor’s Office is working with those universities as they consider a range of implications of alternative calendars including student enrollment, campus budgets, financial aid, accreditation, labor agreements and facilities, among others,” Kelly said.

    California State University, Long Beach is working on expanding enrollment during the fall and spring semesters, focusing on “underserved majors with available space,” according to CSULB spokesperson Gregory Woods. 

    “To bolster enrollment, our strategy is to enhance retention rates and average-units load for current students, and to expand the class size of the incoming first-time, first-year student level,” Woods said. 

    San Diego State University, which has the second-lowest acceptance rate of all the CSUs and is also highly impacted, does not have a plan to move to year-round operations like Cal Poly but is exploring other ways of increasing enrollment, SDSU spokesperson La Monica Everett-Haynes said.

    “We have, however, implemented efforts toward summer enrollment and, overall, continue to see high levels of enrollment growth during both the academic and summer session periods,” Everett-Haynes said.

    The University of California has similarly been working to expand summer enrollment without moving to the year-round model. 

    “Every UC campus is committed to expanding capacity and enhancing educational equity for California students through overall enrollment growth as well as more nontraditional approaches, including efforts to improve timely graduation and to expand online, summer and off-campus opportunities,” said Ryan King, UC spokesperson. 

    According to the “Building 2030 Capacity Report” issued in 2022, UC has turned to increasing online course offerings and financial aid for summer to help meet their enrollment goals. King noted that the report shows a spike in summer enrollment in 2020, and “UC campuses recognized this surge as an opportunity to increase summer enrollment and capacity over the long term by growing the number and mix of online and impacted fall-winter-spring course offerings.”

    Cal Poly decided that switching to the year-round model, and not just expanding their regular summer offerings, would be the most beneficial. 

    Armstrong said this shift to year-round operations will benefit all students, not just the ones who choose to start in the summer, because classes will be offered more often throughout the year, there will be more opportunities to participate in high-impact activities and the campus community will grow.

    As part of the effort to increase enrollment, Cal Poly is working on building more on-campus housing so that all first- and second-year students can live on campus, a project that “will result in several thousand beds added between now and 2030,” Armstrong said. 

    Armstrong also expects the switch to year-round operations, along with increased financial aid, to help Cal Poly’s efforts to increase diversity. 

    As Cal Poly begins this shift, students will only be able to choose between summer or fall starts, and only incoming students will get this option. Armstrong said he hopes everyone will have this option in the future, and that a spring start will also be available.

    “We think it’s going to be very significant,” Armstrong said. “Our evidence from polling and asking questions of prospective parents and students shows that the interest is very high in the year-round concept.”

    Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism major and French and ethnic studies minor at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • To teach math effectively, California must focus on deep, conceptual learning

    To teach math effectively, California must focus on deep, conceptual learning


    Third graders discuss possible ways to solve a new math problem.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Fierce wars continue to rage around math instruction, but there are many practical changes we should make for mathematics students upon which most of us can probably agree, that could transform their ability to achieve. 

    A promising new initiative for California that we have both been involved with tackles two of the most pressing flaws of traditional math instruction with elegant solutions that should be appealing to many, no matter which camp they occupy in the debates. Ask any teacher of math what they wish they did not have to deal with, and they will tell you the excessive amount of content they need to teach, which leads to the second problem — the shallow coverage of hundreds of methods that students do not learn in meaningful ways.

    U.S. math textbooks are massive and heavy tomes. By contrast, math textbooks in Japan and China are small and slim. The reason for this is that U.S. curriculum repeats content every year. In China and Japan, content is taught less frequently but more deeply and conceptually. As teachers in the U.S. are forced to “cover” an extensive amount of content in every year of school, students only gain a shallow experience of mathematical methods and rules.

    The second problem, linked to the first, is that students are taught hundreds of methods as though they are all equally important, without experiencing the more foundational concepts deeply and conceptually. Some concepts are much more central than others because they link to other areas of content, and they deserve to be learned deeply, over multiple lessons, through applied tasks that relate to students’ lives.  An example of a central concept in grade four is “factors and groups.” Instead of learning about these through short questions and answers, students can learn them through rich tasks in which they are more deeply engaged, as can be seen here.

    Students can learn all foundational concepts, such as fractions or functions, by drawing, building and learning about them through real-world examples. Every important idea in mathematics can be learned visually, physically and conceptually, including algebra and calculus. Instead, most students work through pages of numerical calculations, absent of any connection to the world, and spend hours of algebra class manipulating X’s on a page.

    A solution to both of these problems is to teach the “big ideas in mathematics” for every grade, as set out in the California Mathematics Framework,  such as “being flexible within 10” (kindergarten) or “unit rates in the world” (grade seven), making sure that for each of the eight or so big ideas in every grade, students have a deep and rich experience of their underlying concepts: by drawing them, building them and talking about them. Even if it is only these eight or so ideas that are experienced in this way each year, they will serve as a foundation for everything else students learn as they progress.

    Many California school districts are now waiting for funding to be devoted to the training of teachers to move to the approaches set out in the framework. But in Kern County, leaders have been sharing these ideas for the past three years. Semitropic Elementary school, which serves mainly Latinx, English learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged students, is one example of a school that has moved to the approach of the framework. In the 2018-19 school year, before Covid-19 and the implementation of the new framework, only 5.6% of Semitropic students met or exceeded standards on math Smarter Balanced tests in grades 3-8, with less than 5% in grades four and five, and no students in grades 6 or 8. After the leaders in Kern County supported teachers in learning and implementing the ideas of the framework, through a series of professional development sessions to build capacity, with classroom demonstration lessons to model the new strategies, in action with their students, and coaching to meet teachers where they were, proficiency levels shot up, increasing to 16.3% overall, with the fourth grade showing the most significant increase, to 36.8%. There is more work to be done in this and other districts, but the demonstrable positive changes already unfolding are impressive.

    What changed in the classrooms of the schools in Kern County? The teachers focused on big ideas, such as “being flexible within 10” which starts in kindergarten and extends through the elementary grades. Instead of students learning 10 as a fixed number that they use to calculate, they now spend time learning how 10 is made up, and all the ways they can make 10. A powerful strategy teachers started to use was “number talks,” in which teachers pose a number problem and collect the different ways students approach the problem, representing them visually. They also started using richer, deeper tasks, encouraging students to discuss ideas and learn with visuals and manipulatives. The superintendent and county math coaches were thrilled with the high levels of engagement they saw in the classrooms, as well as the significant changes in state test scores.

    There are several problems with the systems of mathematics education in many states, and proposed solutions often spark disagreement. But perhaps we should all agree on one thing: Students need to learn important mathematical concepts deeply and well. They should not be working through sets of procedural questions that mean nothing to them, but rather should experience rich applied mathematics that inspires them, helps them learn effectively, and shows them that mathematics is important to their lives.

    •••

    Jo Boaler is a Stanford professor and author of “Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity & Meaning in Mathematics.” She was one of the writers of California’s new mathematics framework.

    Cole Sampson is the administrator of professional learning for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • To improve how California students read, we must get past confusion and misinformation

    To improve how California students read, we must get past confusion and misinformation


    A student holds a flash card with the sight word ‘friend’ during a class at Nystrom Elementary in the West Contra Costa Unified School District in 2022.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    The “science of reading” confuses and confounds many of us. It’s understandable. There is much misleading and outright false information floating around.

    On one hand, too many science of reading advocates claim an unwarranted degree of certainty, for example, that we know from the science how to get 95% of all students on grade level. Vague and unhelpful definitions make matters worse. I’ve even heard advocates say we should treat all children as if they were dyslexic, a claim for which there is zero evidence.

    On the other hand, science of reading skeptics spread mischaracterizations and outright fictions. An egregious example was a recent California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) webinar intended to “debunk” the brain science behind the science of reading by claiming that a key tool used to study the brain (functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI) could not detect brain activity that involved meaning or comprehension. The world’s foremost reading neuroscientist debunked the would-be debunker by pointing out that 20 years of research have shown that writing and speaking “activate extremely similar brain circuits for meaning.“

    How can we ever make progress when we’re locked in an eternal game of whack-a-false-mole?

    We can all agree learning to read is complicated, and so is the teaching. But there are also a few straightforward and irrefutable findings from research that should constitute the foundations for reading policies. This is particularly important for the students who are most harmed when we fail to use the best knowledge available: low-income students and students who have difficulty learning to read.

    • Learning to speak and understand oral language is fundamentally different from learning to read and write. A first language is typically acquired effortlessly if we’re with people who speak it. Learning to read requires explicit teaching to one degree or another.
    • Oral language is foundational to reading, because reading requires visually accessing the oral language centers in our brains. Our brain is prepared from birth to make sense of what we hear when people talk, but to read we must learn how to see written language (print), connect it to oral language, and then make sense of it. Neuroscientists have identified the transformation of brain centers and the development of neural pathways that enable an individual to connect print to speech and speech to print.
    • Without those connections, literacy is difficult, if not impossible. Foundational literacy skills — usually called “phonics” or “decoding” — are essential for connecting spoken English to written English. Teaching these skills is “nonnegotiable,” and explicit, systematic instruction in how the sounds of the language (“phonemes”) are represented by letters is the approach most likely to lead to individuals’ learning to read.
    • In contrast, “balanced literacy” (sometimes called “3-cueing”) is far less effective and even counterproductive — particularly for students who benefit most from direct and clear instruction — because it does not clearly and systematically teach the necessary reading skills described above. (“Balanced literacy” is a misappropriation of the National Reading Panel’s use of “balanced” to mean phonics instruction balanced with language and comprehension-oriented instruction.)
    • After acquiring decoding skills, word recognition must become automatic. Decoding a word each time it’s encountered is an obstacle to comprehension. Individuals must know and apply spelling (orthographic) rules, including the exceptions, then practice and apply the rules to words they know orally as they encounter words in print. This creates a growing bank of words that are instantly recognizable once readers have connected each word’s sounds, spelling and meaning several times. This is very different from memorizing whole words. Connecting (“binding”) individual sounds to corresponding letters, then to the word’s meaning is critical. Once readers can read words they didn’t already know, reading becomes a way to learn new words.
    • The importance of language development, comprehension, knowledge and other skills is widely acknowledged by those who actually understand the research into how people learn to read. These skills and attributes must be a focus of attention even before reading instruction commences and should continue as children develop foundational literacy skills and throughout their school careers.  (See Scarborough’s iconic “Reading Rope” depicting much more than phonics and decoding, and including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge.)
    • Language, vocabulary, knowledge and other skills must merge with automatic word recognition skills to produce fluent reading and comprehension, which then must be continuously supported and improved as students progress through school. Continued practice and development of skilled fluent reading is particularly critical for students most dependent on schools for successful literacy development. Neither word recognition nor language comprehension alone is sufficient for successful reading development. Both are essential.
    • All of the above is true for students in general, and especially true for vulnerable populations. Some students require additional consideration. For example, English learners in all-English instruction must receive additional instruction in English language development, such as vocabulary, since they are learning to read in English as they simultaneously learn to speak and understand it. 
    • English learners fortunate enough to be in long-term bilingual programs can become bilingual and biliterate. The processes involved in becoming biliterate are essentially the same in each language: Building on spoken language skills, foundational literacy skills link print to the sounds of the language, then to the oral language centers in the brain. Ongoing development of language, vocabulary, knowledge, and other skills and dispositions is essential for continued biliteracy development, as it is for literacy development in a single language or in any language.

    California has a long way to go if we are to develop useful policies around reading education for every student. All relevant parties, including teachers and parents, must have a voice in formulating such policies.

    But those voices must be well-informed. Misinformation and falsehoods must be eliminated from the conversation, replaced by clear understandings of the best knowledge we have.

    With fewer than half of California’s students — and even fewer English-learners, low-income students, and students with disabilities — able to read at grade level, can we afford to waste another day?

    •••

    Claude Goldenberg is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and a former first grade and junior high teacher.

    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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  • California eyes master plan to transform career ed

    California eyes master plan to transform career ed


    Alexis Ayala, left, goes over plans for the construction of a tiny house with instructor Rodney Attkisson at Fresno City College’s Career and Technology Center.

    Credit: Ashleigh Panoo / EdSource

    Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to transform career and technical education to help students get training for lifelong work and careers.

    Progress has been made in recent months toward creating a new state master plan for career education that goes beyond traditional concepts of vocational and technical training, according to the governor’s top education adviser.

    The aim is a report that will say, “Here’s how we can move from where we are now, which is a mishmash of systems, to a more coherent set of systems that align towards supporting careers,” said Ben Chida, Newsom’s senior adviser to develop the state’s Cradle-to-Career Data System, which aims to track students’ progress through data collected from birth into jobs. 

    The goal is to get a plan written and released to the public by the end of this calendar year that would create “more equitable access to living wage, fulfilling work,” according to the website for the Governor’s Council for Career Education.

    Then the governor and Legislature are expected to work on bills and funding measures that could make a splintered education and training system better organized and better connected to employers.

    A document released in January listed “core concepts” the upcoming master plan should address. Those include establishing a new coordinating council that will try to better link high schools and colleges with each other and with employers and will allocate state and federal funds for training. Another concept is to increase opportunities for work-based and hands-on learning, with the possibility of financial aid and other benefits for adult learners too.

    The process began last August when Newsom signed an executive order calling for the state to create a master plan for career education. That would aim to remove barriers students face as they move from K-12 to trade school, colleges and beyond into their employed years.

    Public meetings were held around the state in recent months to get input from educators, industry and the public on turning ideas into action. Nominations from various constituencies are being sought to participate in online meetings in the fall to further discuss the state’s needs and to “identify missing topics and red flags,” according to the website.

    The early “concepts” document does not specify the types of technical training most needed and what is available in California now. Officials say that is because the future master plan should be open-ended and flexible enough to adapt to changes in the job markets and technologies.

    Its focus appears to be well beyond the traditional notion of teaching skills like welding, robotics and cooking. It calls for “training systems over an individual’s lifetime” at schools and workplaces that include “21st century skills.”

    One goal is to not force students so much into education tracks that so strictly separate college-bound students from those aiming for vocational/career paths. ”One of the biggest things that we’re going to tackle in this master plan is how do you start thinking about high school and post-secondary in a way that doesn’t require you to basically track students into one or the other path,” Chida said.





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  • Federal grant cuts hit California universities hard, putting research in limbo

    Federal grant cuts hit California universities hard, putting research in limbo


    Noé C. Crespo, a professor of Health Promotion & Behavioral Science, poses outside the School of Public Health at San Diego State University.

    EdSource

    Noé Crespo, a professor of public health at San Diego State University, was on the verge of cracking a question he had spent years trying to answer. 

    In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Crespo and his colleagues applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study ways to boost vaccination rates among Latinos. They designed a community outreach plan, paid a team to implement it, and collected results. All that remained this spring was to analyze their hard-earned data.  

    But in April, Crespo’s grant was terminated by the Trump administration as part of a controversial pullback on research funding in both the sciences and humanities nationwide.

    Crespo has all the data he could want, but no money to pay a statistician to analyze it. 

    “We invest so much — time, energy, resources — to implement a project that is meant to help the public,” he said, “and so it does feel discouraging that we’re put in a position where we can’t continue that work.”

    Around the country this spring, many faculty members who rely on federal funding for research have received similarly abrupt termination notices. The moment is particularly poignant for Crespo’s institution, San Diego State, which this year accomplished the long-awaited goal of joining a prestigious club of top-tier research universities known as R1s. 

    While a dip in federal support is unlikely to jeopardize that coveted recognition, it has disrupted research at San Diego State into subjects like mental health care and HIV/AIDS. The university’s research and development spending hit $158 million in the year ending June 2023, much of it fueled by federal dollars. 

    The cancellations are part of efforts under President Donald Trump to cut federal funding and align it more closely with the president’s political objectives. The White House has targeted grants related to a wide range of areas, from climate change to gender and sexuality. Critically for Crespo, Trump’s NIH has also axed research related to racial inequities in health, vaccine hesitancy and Covid.

    California’s colleges and universities have much at stake when it comes to federal research funding. The state’s higher education institutions notched $7.2 billion in federal research and development (R&D) spending in 2023, according to the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. 

    That figure includes more than $250 million spent at California State University campuses like San Diego State and more than $4.6 billion across the University of California system. The state’s private universities, including Stanford University and the University of Southern California, spent a combined $2.3 billion in federal R&D.

    Fear of ‘losing a whole generation of scientists’

    Putting an exact figure on grant cancellations nationwide has proven elusive, in part because the federal spending databases that track such spending sometimes contradict each other. 

    One recent analysis by researchers at Harvard, Yale and associated teaching hospitals estimated that $1.8 billion in NIH grants were terminated in a one-month period. Meanwhile, as selected grants get reinstated — and as attempts to block terminations advance through the courts — the number of canceled grants has become a moving target. 

    The impact on California could be substantial, even counting terminations at NIH alone. Grant Watch, a project tracking the cancellation of federal scientific research grants since Trump returned to office in 2025, estimates that California researchers have lost $273 million in NIH grants, counting funding that was not paid out because of terminations.

    At San Diego State, Hala Madanat, the university’s vice president for research and innovation, estimates that the university typically receives about 70% of its research funding from the federal government, though that can vary from year to year. The university has so far identified 50 terminated federal grants with about $26 million remaining to be spent, she said, many of them related to climate change, LGBTQ communities and workforce pipeline programs.

    “If we halt doctoral education because there’s no funding for three to four years, you are losing a whole generation of scientists,” Madanat said.

    San Diego State has appealed virtually every grant termination, Madanat said. So far, none have been restored, though two subcontracts were reinstated outside the formal appeal process.

    With appeals still pending, two federal grant recipients reached while reporting this story declined to comment, saying they are worried speaking out could endanger their chance of having funding reinstated. That potential risk is on Crespo’s mind, too.

    “Do I have concerns? Yes,” he said. “At the same time, I was trained in public health to speak the truth, and that’s what scientists do.”

    A poster on the campus of San Diego State University advertises the university’s new status as an R1 research institution.
    EdSource

    A ‘soul-crushing’ loss of federal funding

    As Trump took office in January, San Diego State was capping off an ambitious campaign to become an R1, a distinction requiring it to spend at least $50 million on R&D and confer at least 70 doctoral research degrees. 

    The university saw research funding rise 64% in just three years. It conferred 123 doctoral degrees in 2022-23. And to cement its R1 bona fides, it plans to invest in a multiuse “innovation district” with technology and research facilities.

    But funding for some of the university’s vaunted research projects is starting to vanish as the White House slashes selected grants and contracts.

    In 2023, for example, the university celebrated the establishment of the SDSU Center for Community Energy and Environmental Justice. Equipped with $10 million in federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), San Diego State would guide historically underserved communities to apply for grants that could help them weather environmental threats like droughts and pollution. 

    “What we were doing was sort of the ‘teaching to fish,’” said Rebecca Lewison, a professor of biology at San Diego State who led the center, one of more than a dozen EPA Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers nationwide.

    But then came some bad news. In February, EPA terminated the center’s funding, citing an obligation to ensure its grants do not support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The center is likely to lose an estimated $8 million it left unspent.

    The funding reversal came as the White House has moved to roll back environmental justice-related initiatives. An EPA spokesperson said in an email that the San Diego State grant had given “radical [non-governmental organizations] millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars” and that those groups were “forcing their agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

    For Lewison, the loss of federal support for San Diego State’s center has been “soul-crushing.” She said such technical assistance is “really a bipartisan initiative” and that the EPA statement appears to misunderstand the nature of the center’s work.

    “I appreciate that we were in the environmental justice sort of program umbrella and that that’s become a word that is associated with something negative,” Lewison said. “But honestly, ‘Thriving Communities’ is really what it sounds like: it’s wanting communities all over to thrive.”

    Lewison is now exploring options to keep the center alive. San Diego State has set aside $1 million to sunset certain projects, Madanat said, and is also turning to private philanthropy. 

    ‘I would love to know that answer’

    At the time that Crespo filed a project summary for his vaccine grant, Covid had taken a dire toll on Latinos in California. UCLA researchers would later confirm that Latinos had experienced a disproportionate rate of Covid cases and deaths during the pandemic’s first year.

    “If there’s a wildfire in a particular part of town, we would want to send the firefighters over there to put out that fire,” Crespo said. “And that’s what we do also in public health and in research: we identify where there are problems, and in some cases, there are subgroups of people that are disproportionately affected.”

    NIH awarded Crespo and his colleagues a grant of $1.8 million in 2022, as highly transmissible subvariants of the Covid virus circulated. The team finally could put in motion the study they had planned at 10 San Diego-area health clinics.

    There was still $314,690 remaining in the grant at the time it was canceled, according to data on grant terminations published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Without the ability to use those funds, the team will have to seek other ways to pay collaborators with data analysis expertise. 

    In the meantime, Crespo is left wondering: What worked and what didn’t?

    “The data are there,” he said, “so I would love to know that answer.” 





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  • How California can achieve what the public actually wants from education

    How California can achieve what the public actually wants from education


    Three high school Linked Learning pathway students don lab coats as they collaborate on a hands-on science experiment, bringing classroom learning to life through real-world application.

    Courtesy: Linked Learning Alliance

    California’s Golden State Pathways Program is a historic commitment to career-connected learning.

    In January 2025, $470 million in grants began flowing to hundreds of school communities across the state. These are huge investments, based on a proven approach to education called Linked Learning, which carefully integrates rigorous, college-bound academics with hands-on career learning experiences and strong student supports — all connected by an industry theme that meets workforce needs within the local community.

    For example: In Porterville Unified School district, which serves California’s rural central valley, nearly every high school student is enrolled in a Linked Learning college and career preparatory pathway related to thriving local occupations, including those in energy, aviation, agricultural technology, and other fields. The district has an impressive 99% graduation rate, 94% of its alumni enroll in postsecondary education, and 25% percent of students earn industry-recognized certificates while still in high school. Similarly, by offering Linked Learning pathways focused on health sciences, information technology, child development and other high-growth careers, the more urban Oakland Unified School District has boosted its rates of high school graduation and completion of college-preparatory credits, and reduced absenteeism and discipline issues.

    Both the extraordinary new Golden State Pathways Program (GSPP) funding and the California Master Plan for Career Education, recently released to guide educators and labor market leaders across the state, empower school leaders to build such learning pathways for their students. We wholeheartedly affirm this work.

    But truly effective Linked Learning practice — the kind that extensive third-party research links to excellence and equity — requires more than working through a checklist of courses and activities. It takes intentional integration of each aspect of student experience, thoughtful measurement and supportive policy.

    To this end, we offer three key recommendations: 

    1. District leaders should push for true college and career integration. Rather than maintain the long-standing divide between college prep curricula and career-technical education, Golden State Pathways Program resources can be applied to make core academic subjects more engaging and useful by connecting them to themed pathways focused on the high-opportunity, high-wage careers that correspond to real workforce needs in each region. Classroom learning should sync with similarly themed sequential career-technical education courses and work-based learning, like internships and apprenticeships. Districts should engage students and families to ensure pathway options are well understood, aligned with student interests, and connected to workforce demands. As modeled in Porterville and Oakland, the right industry themes bring learning to life in very tangible ways, and they build skills and mindsets that translate to success in any field of future study or employment.

    2. Researchers should inform and strengthen program implementation. Rather than wait for parents and legislators to ask, “did this pathways investment work?” participating regions should develop a robust and proactive research agenda in coordination with local communities to begin generating evidence that improves outcomes along the way. Understanding student experiences, opportunities and outcomes in pathways is essential for strengthening the program over time. Research on the conditions that return the strongest results can help spread best practices across rural, suburban and urban communities.

    3. Policymakers should remove barriers to effective implementation. We cannot keep asking high schools to do everything they currently do and layer additional tasks on top of it all. State and local policies that enable waivers, flexibility, or alternatives to A–G requirements for UC/CSU admissions would increase time and space in students’ schedules to engage in work-based learning. Policymakers should also build in incentives for collaboration and coordination between K–12 and postsecondary institutions to enable purposeful dual-enrollment opportunities that accelerate all students toward a valuable credential. To further our recommendation in point two above, policymakers should also ensure data systems that tag students in pathways to lower the barriers and costs of high-quality research on program outcomes. 

    Washington DC and California are moving in dramatically different directions on education. Where the nation is pulling back, we are charging ahead. We must continue to see this progress through. By acting on these recommendations, we prove a point: that government can respond in good faith to the public it serves. And we do not fail to miss the point of it all: that our future depends on getting education right for young people.

    •••

    Ash Vasudeva is president and CEO of ConnectED: The National Center for College and Career, an organization that partners with school, district, and community leaders to transform education through Linked Learning pathways.

    Anne Stanton is president and CEO of the Linked Learning Alliance, an organization that leads the movement toward educational excellence and equity for every adolescent through high-quality college and career preparation.

    Editors’ note: Anne Stanton is a member of the EdSource board of directors. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage. 

    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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