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برچسب: Change
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Kindergarten enrollment change from 2019 to 2021 in California
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We must change how we think about career education
Credit: Pexels
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to develop a Master Plan on Career Education represents a critical step forward in helping Californians adapt to the projected radical transformations in the workforce. This could not have come at a more critical time. According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2023,” “almost a quarter of jobs (23%) are expected to change in the next five years.”
I applaud the governor’s goals, which include expanding career education pathways in K-12, ramping up dual-enrollment and work-based learning opportunities, and enhancing connections between secondary/post-secondary education and the business community.
But, while critical, these goals are insufficient to ensure that every K-12 student, regardless of ZIP code or life circumstance, will be afforded full career and life success opportunities.
To maximize success, the master plan must also incorporate strategies to dislodge the entrenched, bifurcated mindset that positions K-12 career education as isolated from and inferior to the prevailing K-12 academic curriculum. This can be achieved by implementing policies that mandate the inclusion of curriculum that uses the real-world application of knowledge and concepts found in careers as a context for academic learning in all K-12 grades and subject areas. In educational literature, this is referred to as contextualized teaching and learning.
Here’s what a career-contextualized learning component could look like:
An elementary grade math lesson would be enriched by connecting lessons on ratios and percentages to applications in diverse careers. For example:
- Digital media (image size and resolution; video/animation frame speed; file transfer speed).
- Architecture/construction technology (material weight to strength ratio, linear and cubic measurements, roof pitch, stair rise to run ratios, construction cost price per square foot)
- Data analytics (e-commerce: ratio of web page visits to link clicks; pro sports team performance: shots taken to field goals made; climate change: fossil fuel vs. alternative energy usage).
The master plan’s primary policy goal should be to expand educational equity, thereby promoting more equitable career opportunities.
Key strategies to achieve this goal include:
- Expanding differentiated instruction — tailoring teaching to meet individual needs — to better support students with diverse learning modalities, including English learners and students from low socioeconomic circumstances.
- Transcending geographic barriers by utilizing virtual technologies to connect classrooms with career professionals from diverse geographic regions.
- Amplifying student engagement and self-efficacy by expanding student opportunities to envision a “future self” by meeting diverse career professionals through participation in activities such as internships, mentorships and virtual meetings.
- Increasing participation in career pathways and dual enrollment programs by fostering an early interest in careers through the integration of curriculum in all K-12 grades and subject areas that utilize real-world career-based application of knowledge and concepts as a context for academic learning.
- Increasing exposure to opportunities for college and career through strategic engagement with the higher education and business sectors in developing and deploying K-12 contextualized teaching and learning curriculum.
- Cultivating skills identified by employers as a high priority through contextualized learning experiences that promote creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking.
The master plan must include strategies for planning and implementing a pilot study that involves creating, implementing and evaluating K-12 curriculum that utilizes real-world career-based application of knowledge and concepts as a context for academic learning. Collaborative teams with K-12, post-secondary and business community participants must lead this work. The pilot study must involve school test sites from geographically and economically diverse state regions. Insights derived from the pilot study will guide full statewide implementation.
For decades, our K-12 education system has been disconnected from the constantly evolving world of work. We are at a critical crossroads when we must advocate for transformational change to empower students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed for future life and career success.
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Brian F. Donnelly is the executive director of Learning Curved, a California nonprofit focused on creating opportunities for students to discover and explore emerging career paths.
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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Marching band can change your college experience
A part of the Cal Poly Mustang Band trumpet section in San Francisco for the Lunar New Year Parade in 2023.
Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource
Two hundred people took a deep breath.
The marching band had just run onto the football field and it was time for us to play. We played the first note and everything seemed to melt away except for that moment. For the next 10 minutes, all I could think about was our performance.
When the game was over — after hours of practice, performing and cheering on our team — we ran onto the field once more and played all our favorite songs to emptying stands. Then we marched out of the stadium with just as much energy as we had coming in.
While game days are exhausting, I wouldn’t want to spend my Saturdays any other way. Joining the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo marching band was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and it has enhanced my college experience in so many ways.
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Among the most important, it provided a community in which I could fully be myself.
For many, including Lindsay Gonor, a fourth-year liberal studies major and fellow trumpet player at Cal Poly, the community is the best part of being in band.
“I feel like a lot of people stay in band, not because they love marching, but because they love playing their instruments and because they love the people involved. And that’s definitely true for me,” Gonor said.
This community is welcoming and inclusive, bringing people from different backgrounds together. “It’s just a bunch of people with a common interest and like, similar weirdness,” Gonor said.
I love being part of this community and all the fun traditions we have like praising the sun when we stretch, waving to the mountain that appears to have a face that we’ve named “Big Lip Barbara” and singing our fight song super fast when we get dismissed.
Marching band is one of the most diverse groups on campus, at least at Cal Poly, and through this you learn to work as a team with people who are different from you to achieve a common goal. Leadership, accountability, time management, confidence and patience are all skills that members of a marching band gain, which can be applied to their academics and into their careers.
Nicholas Waldron, the associate director of bands at Cal Poly, describes these skills as the “intangibles.”
“What I mean by that is organization skills, communication ability, being able to collaborate, being understanding and empathetic,” Waldron said.
While studies have shown that participating in any extracurricular activity can be beneficial and help a person develop some of these skills, marching band is so uniquely positioned at the junction between a physical activity, a performing art and a social group that members reap all of these benefits.
Beyond the skills people attain and the relationships they build along the way, marching band provides a creative outlet to students that helps them de-stress.
“Not everybody realizes how important it is to have designated [time] not thinking about school,” Gonor said. “One of the most important things in college is to continue to have something that you enjoy doing outside of your major.”
Yuke Billbe, a third-year biomedical engineering major and alto saxophone player at Cal Poly said marching band saved her college experience in this way.
“In my academic career, (there’s) a lot of stuff going on, but I always am able to look forward to (marching band),” she said.
Marching bands also have benefits for the universities.
In his research, Adam Gumble, the director of athletic bands at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, found that marching bands can be powerful recruiting tools for universities.
I know this is true for me. When I was applying to colleges, one of my main requirements was that it had a marching band. Billbe also said she decided to go to Cal Poly after meeting a couple of members of the band.
Even my roommate, who is not in marching band, said seeing the marching band and how much spirit we bring was part of the reason she decided to go to Cal Poly.
Gumble’s research also found that participation in an activity such as marching band increases retention rates and feelings of connection to the institution.
While marching band is a big time commitment, it’s worth the investment.
If I could go back and do it all over again, there’s not a thing I would do differently. Giving up almost every Saturday during the fall for the past seven years has helped shape me into the person I am today, and I wouldn’t trade my time in marching band for the world.
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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.
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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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?
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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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Teaching performance assessments strengthen instruction and improve student outcomes; let’s not change that
A kindergarten teacher helps a girl and boy with a class activity.
Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages
Learning the art and skill of effective instruction starts long before a teacher’s first job in the classroom. Aspiring educators begin honing their craft in preparation programs that tie clinical practice to coursework on best teaching methods, including how to teach students to read.
Since 2002, this process has been reinforced in California by an embedded teaching performance assessment (TPA) as a key measure of professional readiness. A TPA directs teacher preparation candidates to provide evidence of their teaching knowledge and skills. This is accomplished through classroom videos, lesson plans, student work, and analysis of teaching and learning for English learners, students with disabilities, and the full range of students they are teaching.
The tasks TPAs require are the core work of teaching. Studies over the last two decades show that TPAs are educative for candidates and predictive of future effectiveness. Furthermore, the feedback they provide focuses educator preparation programs on preparing teachers in ways that are formative and learner-centered.
Thus, it is deeply concerning to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) and many in the field that this rich measure of teacher preparation would be eliminated with the passage of Senate Bill 1263, which would repeal all requirements relating to teaching performance assessments, including that future teachers demonstrate their readiness to teach reading.
The TPA is California’s only remaining required measure of whether a prospective teacher is ready to teach prior to earning a credential. All other exam requirements for a teaching credential have been modified by the Legislature to allow multiple ways for future teachers to demonstrate basic skills and subject matter competence. These legislative actions have been supported in large part by the requirement that student teachers complete a TPA to earn a credential.
Elimination of the TPA would leave California with no consistent standard for ensuring that all teachers are ready to teach before entering our classrooms. We would join only a handful of states that have no capstone assessment for entry into teaching. Passage of SB 1263 would also result in the state losing a key indicator of how well educator preparation programs are preparing a diverse and effective teaching force.
In 2021, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 488, which revamped how teacher preparation programs will instruct candidates to teach reading. As a result, the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) is slated to be replaced by a newly designed literacy performance assessment currently being piloted for incorporation into the TPA by July 1, 2025.
Participant feedback on the new literacy performance assessment (LPA) piloted this spring is optimistic. One teaching candidate shared that the LPA “was a vital learning experience when it comes to implementing foundational literacy instruction with young learners. I enjoyed that it’s a more hands-on experience for the students to be engaged and promotes full participation of the student and teacher.” A teacher said that the LPA “provided multiple opportunities for my candidate to reflect and observe exceptional moments as well as missed opportunities in the lesson. It encouraged conversations about how to implement direct, explicit instruction.” A university faculty member observed that the LPA pilot “has been a learning experience for the candidates and the program. … It shows what we are doing well and what other areas we need to create or enhance to support our candidates’ knowledge and skills in teaching literacy.”
If the TPA and RICA are eliminated, California will no longer have an assessment of new teachers’ capacity to teach reading, and we will have lost a valuable tool that can inform programs about how they can improve.
Recent Learning Policy Institute research demonstrates that TPA scores reflect the quality of teacher preparation candidates have received in terms of clinical support and preparation to teach reading and math (for elementary and special education candidates). Most programs support their candidates well. The study found that nearly two-thirds of teacher preparation programs had more than 90% of their candidates pass a TPA and showed no significant differences in passing rates by race and ethnicity.
As Aaron Davis, teacher induction director at William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita noted, “The TPA serves a very necessary purpose in creating a sound foundation for which a new teacher’s practice can grow with the mindset of having a positive impact on every student.” While the TPA requires time and effort to implement, it ensures that new teachers are prepared to start their career as an educator on day one, he said.
While the pandemic made it challenging to administer TPAs, most programs now ensure that more than 90% of candidates pass the TPA. The CTC is working with the small number of programs that struggle to adequately support their candidates.
The elimination of TPAs would unravel decades of progress to focus teacher education on clinical practice and ensure programs consistently meet standards for preparing teachers who are ready to teach.
Rather than eliminate the last common measure of an aspiring teacher’s preparedness, we recommend the Legislature uphold the future of a well-prepared teacher workforce by supporting the commission’s commitment to continuously review and update the TPA and to work to support program improvement. Doing so will maintain the quality and effectiveness of new teachers as they embark on their journey to provide the most effective and equitable learning experiences for all students.
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Marquita Grenot-Scheyer is chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and professor emeritus in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach.
Mary Vixie Sandy is executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, an agency that awards over 250,000 credential documents per year and accredits more than 250 colleges, universities, and local education agencies offering educator preparation programs.
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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Let’s stop tinkering and really change how schools address mental health
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
What are education leaders doing about transforming the way schools address learning, behavior and emotional problems? The current answer, it seems, is: not much.
We do see increasing discussions among education leaders about transforming education in general. Naturally, much of the focus is on improving instruction and making major changes in how schools are managed (e.g., financed, administered, held accountable). However, when it comes to improving how schools play their role in providing support when students are not doing well, proposals for transformative changes generally are not forthcoming.
The result: As the number of learning, behavior and emotional problems increases, schools continue to react in inadequate ways.
What’s wrong with what schools are doing now?
All schools devote resources to coping with student problems. Some are able to offer a range of student and learning supports; others can provide only what is mandated. In the majority of schools, what is available usually covers relatively few students. More resources would help. But school budgets always are tight, and adding the number of student support staff that advocates call for is really not in the cards.
In general, districts plan and implement student and learning supports in a fragmented and piecemeal manner, generating a variety of specialized programs and services. Over many years, increasing concern about fragmented approaches has produced calls for “integrated services” and, recently, for “integrated support systems.”
However, by focusing primarily on fragmentation, policymakers and school improvement advocates fail to deal with a core underlying problem. What drives the fragmentation is the longstanding marginalization in school improvement policy of the role schools must play in addressing barriers to learning and teaching.
A fundamental challenge for education leaders and policymakers is ending this marginalization. Meeting the challenge requires escaping old ways of thinking about how schools address learning, behavior and emotional problems.
What might a transformed approach look like?
Addressing the pervasive and complex barriers that impede effective teaching and student learning requires a systemwide approach that comprehensively and equitably supports whole-child development and learning. This involves districts and schools rethinking how they frame the practices they use to address learning, behavior and emotional problems.
In this respect, the current widespread adoption of some form of a multitiered “continuum of interventions” (commonly known as MTSS) is a partial step in the right direction. This framework recognizes that a full range of intervention must include a focus on promoting whole-student healthy development, preventing problems, providing immediate assistance when problems appear, and ensuring assistance for serious and chronic special education concerns. But moving forward, our research has clarified the need to reframe each level of intervention into subsystems designed to weave together school and community resources.
Moreover, our research indicates that the various programs, services, initiatives and strategies can be grouped into six domains of classroom and schoolwide student and learning support. The six arenas encompass interventions that:
- Embed student and learning supports into regular classroom strategies to enable learning and teaching
- Support transitions (e.g., new grade, new school, before/after school, during lunch and other daily transitions)
- Increase home and school connections and engagement
- Respond to — and, where feasible, prevent — school and personal crises
- Increase community involvement and collaborative engagement
- Facilitate student and family access to special assistance.
Organizing the activity in this way helps clarify what supports are needed in and out of the classroom and across each level of the continuum to enable effective teaching and motivate student learning.
We recognize that the changes education leaders are already pursuing represent considerable challenges and that the changes we discuss can be daunting.
But maintaining the status quo is untenable, and just doing more tinkering will not meet the need.
Transforming how schools play their role in addressing barriers to learning and teaching into a unified, comprehensive and equitable system that is fully integrated into school improvement policy and practice is essential to enhancing equity of opportunity for students to succeed at school and beyond.
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Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor are co-directors of the Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports at UCLA, an initiative to improve outcomes for students by helping districts and their schools enhance how they address barriers to learning and teaching.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. 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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How more Hispanic teachers could change the face of California education
Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource
California has had a racial imbalance between its teacher workforce and its student population for years, with a majority Hispanic student population being taught by teachers who are mostly white. That could be changing, as more people of Hispanic heritage enroll in college teacher preparation programs in the state.
Overall enrollment in teacher preparation programs in California has decreased in recent years, but the biggest declines have been among white teacher candidates. The result has been a higher percentage of people of color entering teacher preparation programs, according to the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
In the 2022-23 school year — the most recent year state data is available — more than half of the new teacher candidates identified themselves as a race other than white. Nearly 40% of the 17,337 newly enrolled teacher candidates that year were Hispanic, and just over 33% were white, according to CTC data.
That was a stark contrast to the racial makeup of the state’s teacher workforce that same year, when 55% of the state’s 312,124 teachers were white, and Hispanic teachers made up 25% of the workforce from transitional kindergarten (TK) through high school.
“Over half of our TK-12 student population identifies, and the majority of our English language learners also are Latino,” said José Magaña, executive director of Bay Area Latinos for Education. “The research is pretty clear that not just Latino students and English language learners, but all students, benefit from having a more diverse educator.”
Latinos for Education offers fellowships to support Latinos in the education system. The Bay Area branch of the organization also has a Latinx Teacher Fellowship program to support beginning teachers and paraprofessionals.
Research shows that when students are taught by educators who reflect their cultural backgrounds and understand their lived experiences, it results in stronger academic outcomes, greater social-emotional growth, and a profound sense of belonging, said Kai Mathews, executive director of the Urban Ed Academy in San Francisco, which recruits and supports Black male teachers.
“Increasing the number of Latinx educators is about more than representation — it’s about creating classrooms where every student feels seen, valued and is liberated to be their authentic self,” Mathews said.
Changing California demographics
The change in the racial makeup of teacher candidates coincides with the evolving population of the state, where 56% of the K-12 student population was Hispanic last school year, according to the California Department of Education. The number increases to over 60% for children younger than age 5, said Shireen Pavri, assistant vice chancellor of California State University’s educator and leadership programs.
In the years between 2018 and 2023, the percentage of Hispanic teacher candidates has slowly increased from 31.4% to 39.7%, while the number of white teacher candidates dropped by 10 percentage points, according to CTC data. The number of Hispanic teacher candidates also has been increasing, although it dropped from 7,154 in 2021-22 to 6,934 in 2022-23, when the overall number of teacher candidates declined for a second consecutive year.
California State University, which prepares the majority of the state’s teachers, had the largest percentage of Hispanic students in its teacher preparation programs in 2022-23 — nearly 50%, according to the CTC’s “Annual Report Card on California teacher preparation programs.” The number is currently 55%, Pavri said.
During that same time, the percentage of white candidates in CSU teacher preparation programs decreased, and the percentage of teacher candidates of other races remained flat.
CSU is leading the way
“Anecdotally, a lot of our Latinx population, who come into our teacher preparation programs, come in because they want to make a difference,” Pavri said. “They didn’t necessarily see people who looked like them when they were going through school. Many of them came in as English learners. They want to make an impact now on their communities and give back.”
Some of the recent success at diversifying the pool of teacher candidates at California State University can be attributed to the Center for Transformational Educator Preparation Programs, which has helped to recruit, prepare and retain teachers of color, according to the university.
Its Transformation Lab, a four-year program that recently ended, increased the retention rate of teacher candidates at some campuses and improved teacher placement numbers at others, Pavri said. At CSU Bakersfield and CSU Northridge, for example, the completion rates for Black candidates increased by 17% and 31% respectively between 2020 and 2023, and Stanislaus State doubled its student teaching placements for historically underserved teacher candidates at Modesto City Schools over a two-year period.
The center’s leadership is seeking additional funding to support similar programs in the future.
The university also operates CalStateTEACH, an online multiple-subject teaching credential program that focuses on recruiting male teachers of color from throughout California.
In University of California teacher preparation programs, 35% of the teacher candidates are Hispanic, 29% are white, 20% are Asian and 2.8% are Black. There are still slightly more white teacher candidates than Hispanic, 38% and 32.6% respectively, in teacher preparation programs at private universities and colleges.
State programs bearing fruit
The increase in the number of Hispanic teacher candidates in teacher preparation programs could be attributed, in part, to efforts by state lawmakers to ease the teacher shortage and diversify the teacher workforce by making earning a credential easier and more affordable. The state has offered degree and coursework alternatives to several tests, established residency and apprenticeship programs and paid for school staff to become teachers.
District grow-your-own programs and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program and apprenticeship programs are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.
“All of those state investments, particularly around affordability, have helped incredibly with bringing more Black and brown students into our teaching field,” Pavri said.
CSU teacher residency programs outpace even the traditional teacher preparation programs in terms of the number of teachers of color enrolled, she said.
Numbers for other ethnic groups flat
Despite the efforts, California State University continues to struggle to attract Black teacher candidates, hovering around 3% for years, despite several initiatives to improve their numbers, Pavri said.
“While we celebrate this progress, we must confront the persistent underrepresentation of Black, Asian and Pacific Islander educators,” Mathews said. “Our classrooms deserve to reflect the fullness of California’s diversity. Ensuring this kind of equity in the teaching workforce isn’t just good for students—it’s essential to building the inclusive, transformative and liberating system our communities deserve.”
Statewide, Black teacher candidates made up 4%, and Asian teacher candidates about 9.5% of total enrollment in California teacher preparation programs between 2018 and 2023, according to CTC data.
There are fewer Black teachers because of obstacles they encounter on the way to completing their education, including an unwelcoming school environment, disproportionate discipline and overrepresentation in special education, Pavri said.
Pursuing a teaching credential, where traditionally student teaching is unpaid, is not affordable for some. Teacher salaries, which are generally lower than the pay for other jobs with the same qualifications, and working conditions also are a deterrent for students from families with limited generational wealth, Pavri said.
More needs to be done to keep teachers
The increase in the percentage of Hispanic teacher candidates is positive, but not significant enough, Magaña said. In order to reflect student demographics, the state will need to make significant investments to recruit and retain educators.
“The numbers are staggering around the number of educators that are leaving the profession, especially our Latino educators,” he said.
Magaña, who was a classroom teacher for 15 years, said Latino educators often have to take on extra work on campus, whether it is supporting translations or family engagement.
“It can be a lonely role,” he said. “Sometimes there may be just one Latino educator on campus, and without mentorship and community, and network building, it makes it easier for folks to not feel supported.”
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How a new LAUSD board member hopes to inspire change following Trump’s inauguration
LAUSD school board member Karla Griego reading with students.
Credit: Courtesy of Karla Griego
A lot has changed in the life of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new board member, representing District 5.
In the past few months, Karla Griego was elected to LAUSD’s school board, was sworn in and now is having to find her stride as a new presidential administration takes charge on Monday.
While many of her priorities remain unchanged — including providing more support for community schools, investing in special education and charter school accountability — Griego said she’s rethinking some of her priorities because of another four years of President Donald Trump.
Despite the potential hurdles ahead, Griego, an educator of more than 19 years and backed by the district’s teacher’s union, emphasized that she is grateful to work with LAUSD’s community as part of a larger movement.
“Change doesn’t happen with individuals, change happens with movements,” Griego, the first Latina to serve her board district in more than 30 years, said in an interview with EdSource.
“And if that’s what we want in our schools — we want schools to be student centered and holistic educational experiences and schools that are healthy, green, racially just, affirming, community schools — then it’s a movement that’s going to make that happen.”
Here’s what she said she hopes to accomplish in her tenure on the board.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the most critical issues that you most want to address during your term on the Los Angeles Unified board?
The immigration issue is very big here in L.A. because there’s a lot of anxiety among our families, our communities, our students, and so that is definitely one thing that was not on my campaign platform, but it has now risen as a priority. And with that, I’m hoping that we could lead in having “Know Your Rights” sessions for families and parents and students, and provide social-emotional support. It was the student board member who highlighted the need for social-emotional support for students who will be dealing with a lot if their families are in fear of deportation. We saw in 2017 how children were affected by that. I am hoping that we can, as a district, lead in spearheading some of these workshops and support systems for our students and their families.
And then, of course, the budget is always very important. Every year, we need to make decisions. I want to make sure that I involve stakeholders, and I want to host meetings throughout my district to hear from families and parents and teachers, classified staff, administrators about what their priorities are. I want to hear from the community. I made that commitment when I was running, and so one of the first tasks is going to be to host listening sessions throughout the district.
And of course to expand community schools to allow them to grow and thrive as they’re meant to, and to make sure that we keep our promise to our Black students by maintaining the Black Student Achievement Plan.
And, just overall, that as we are making decisions, I bring that voice to the table of seeing the decisions that we make through the lens of supporting our students and supporting our students holistically— so let that be the driving force for all of our decision-making.
You’ve already discussed supporting families who fear deportation. But beyond immigration, how has the outcome of the November election impacted your priorities, if at all?
I’m a special education teacher, and with the federal government threatening to disband the Department of Education, special education could be dispersed to another department, and so it won’t have as high a priority. I definitely want to make sure that we continue to center one of our most vulnerable (groups of) students in spite of all the hits that we get (and make) decisions about what’s best for them to be able to access the curriculum and schooling and to be in a safe environment that is equitable and meets their needs.
Special education is an area of concern for me in terms of the new presidency, but it just means that we need to work harder, and we need to bring together special ed parents, special ed students and teachers and administrators to organize and push back on any cuts to what’s already a very small budget. And even though they’re threatening to cut even more, we continue to ask for more.
There are so many stakeholders who sometimes have conflicting views on critical issues, ranging from policing to charter schools. How do you plan to balance all of that feedback and decide what to act on?
When I was a community school coordinator, I learned to do different types of assessments and surveys, but also to have focus groups and to determine to come to a consensus as to what the priorities will be. And so that’s what I’m hoping to do.
Few parents say we want police and, likewise, we don’t want police. The first thing that comes out generally, in my experience with talking to families throughout the campaign and even now, is we want safe schools. And so, what are you going to do to create safe schools? And that’s what they want to hear from the district. I’ve always told stakeholders that I know that there is funding in community-based safety programs. I know that there is funding for restorative practices and de-escalation techniques, and so I want to make sure that we spend that money to support our staff and support our students and to implement Safe Passages in our neighborhoods, especially those where families feel that their kids are not safe going to and from school. I want to make sure that we use that funding for those things as they were meant to be used.
In terms of charters, it’s accountability. That’s huge with charter schools — making sure that they are held accountable in the same way that public schools are held accountable. If they say that they accept special ed students and English language learners, then I want to see that is the case, that that is happening, that children, that families are welcomed, and families are engaged.
How do you plan to engage student voices?
The student voice is super important, and the way that I want to make sure that I engage them is by meeting with different student organizations that already exist in LAUSD. And, in particular, we have a lot of groups of students who are affinity groups: the LGBTQ, trans groups, Latino groups or Black student unions.
I also want to make sure that when I visit school sites, that I also engage with students at the school sites and, at these listening sessions that I’m hoping to have, there’s going to be a concerted effort to make sure that students also attend and (that I) get ideas from them.
What message would you like to send to LAUSD’s student body?
Our students go through so much. All students experience so much stress either just by the mere fact that they are in the developmental stage that they’re in, or social factors. And so, what I want to tell them is to try to find joy in the things that you like and enjoy yourself as much (as you can), because you deserve it. And, yeah, it’s hard. I have an 18-year-old daughter, so I try to stress that to her, to just try to find joy.
There’s so much stress on our students about performance. Even if we don’t tell them, they feel it. They feel the stress of testing, performing graduation, doing better. It’s just the messages that we send to our kids sometimes are always about doing better, and how does that make us feel? That we’re never enough, that we’re just not quite there. And, I don’t want our students to feel that way. They are where they are, and they are strong and resilient.
And also, to lean on the support system that they may have: a sibling, cousin, a friend, an educator, a parent. Whatever that support system may be, lean on that because when you’re in community, you also feel a lot stronger.
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Job hunting is awful. California believes its ‘Career Passport’ can change that
Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource
Travon Reed is currently a housing navigator in South Los Angeles who helps those who live on the street to find housing through the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS). He credits the classes he took at East Los Angeles College for preparing him for his career in social work.
He described his classes at East L.A. as “the gifts that keep on giving.”
But when he was job hunting after graduating in 2022, employers didn’t seem to value what he had learned in his college courses. He settled for an entry-level social work position, repeating most of the training he had already received in college.
“I had to get here, and then kind of prove that I wasn’t brand-spanking new to the concept of social work,” Reed said. “I could have been given a little more recognition.”
Career education is something that happens in school, college, in an apprenticeship, on the job, through the military or even volunteering. But this valuable experience isn’t always reflected in the records of prospective employees like Reed.
That’s why California is embarking on a years-long effort to build infrastructure for a new virtual platform called the Career Passport. Its goal is to bring all these experiences into a digital portfolio — somewhat like a resume — called a “learning employment record.” This record, available to every Californian, would automatically update as a person gains skills and credentials with information validated by schools and employers.
Gov. Gavin Newsom described his vision for the Career Passport in a news conference in December.
“They take all your life experiences, take all of those skills you developed and create a passport where those skills can be utilized in the private sector and advance your opportunities as it relates to your career and your future,” Newsom said.
The concept of a learning employment record can sound deceptively simple, even obvious, but advocates for these records say that actually making this work isn’t easy.
“If this was easy to do, people would’ve done it a long time ago,” said Wilson Finch, vice president of initiatives at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), a national nonprofit that supports the creation of education-to-career pathways.
The idea of learning and employment records has been embraced by employers, colleges, workforce boards and political leaders around the country to resolve deep frustration among both job seekers and employers. The idea could have powerful ramifications for local and state economies, its backers contend, as long as potential issues such as fraud and fair representation of skills are solved.
“Any employer will tell you they’re not happy with the candidates they’re getting. They’re getting too many people, many of whom are not anywhere aligned to what they need,” Finch said. “And then you talk to the job seekers, and they’re applying for jobs all over the place and not hearing anything back.”
California won’t have to ‘figure out the potholes’
California’s Career Passport embodies many of the goals of the state’s Master Plan for Career Education, which aims to ease Californians’ sometimes fraught transitions between school, college, vocational training and, ultimately, a career.
Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget earmarks $100 million in one-time funding to begin building the infrastructure for the Career Passport and to expand Credit for Prior Learning, which allows students to receive college credit for training they get in the workplace, military service, a hobby or even volunteering.
The California Community Colleges system is leading the effort to build out the Career Passport. It will be a multiyear process, according to Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives.
He said the effort is “focused on colleges to start, but designed in a way that allows for other entities to ultimately use it and participate as well.”
Finch said he’s excited to see that the Career Passport’s scope is the entire state, not just one group, like unemployed Californians.
“I’ve been working in this space long enough to know that when you only target a specific area, the impact is very limited,” Finch said.
There is a big push for learning and employment records all around the country. Some are happening in metro areas, like Pittsburgh or Dallas-Fort Worth. In Colorado, community colleges have taken the lead. Alabama piloted its version, called Talent Triad, in specific industries, such as health and advanced manufacturing, where the need was particularly great. California could learn from other states’ efforts.
“California shouldn’t have to figure out the potholes, so to speak,” said Mike Simmons, the associate executive director of business development and strategic partnerships for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
What could be tricky is the sheer size and diversity of the state, whose workforce in Fresno looks really different from Silicon Valley, Simmons said.
Over the last year, the state’s Office of Cradle to Career Data hosted wide-ranging conversations about what its Career Passport will look like through a special task force. That group included employers, the California Department of Education, teachers, all three state higher education systems and many state agencies, including the Labor & Workforce Development, Rehabilitation and California Volunteers.
Reed represented the student perspective on the task force.
“I was so stoked to hear that there would be some linkage between schools and employers, and that everything would be cohesive,” he said.
Credit: California Cradle2Career Data SystemThe problem goes beyond technology
To apply for a job, an applicant may need to request school transcripts, submit copies of professional licenses and put together a resume that distills their work experience and training. This requires time, fees and energy to ensure that a lot of different organizations are swiftly communicating with each other.
“We heard from students that it’s really hard to request transcripts from different institutions,” said Mary Ann Bates, executive director for the Office of Cradle to Career Data.
That’s why the task force is focused on a related effort to improve and expand the state’s eTranscript system, making sharing student transcripts seamless and free.
But the problem goes beyond technology. Those promoting learning and employment records — or career education, in general — say that K-12 schools, colleges, state agencies, community organizations and employers aren’t working together the way they should.
It can feel like educators and employers are speaking different languages. There’s an emphasis on grades and credit for college transcripts, while employers are more interested in whether a prospective employee has certain skills, Finch said.
One problem is that employers don’t always accept that the training and experience are authentic, because anyone can exaggerate or outright lie on their resume. Reed believes that if his colleges had vouched for classes that provided specific skills, such as trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing, it might have saved him from unnecessary training.
The current employment system favors those who have a college degree. Some human resources departments will simply filter out applicants without a bachelor’s degree. A student who is only a few credits short of a degree looks the same on paper as someone with no college experience.
“It’s an all-or-nothing system,” Finch said.
Those who attended college but never received a degree — which describes roughly 1 out of 5 Californians over 25 years old — would benefit from a new system. A learning and employment record could demonstrate that an applicant has the skills needed for a job through specific college courses, job training and maybe a boot camp, Finch said.
Ultimately, the success of the Career Passport depends on buy-in. Employers will go wherever they can find potential employees, and job seekers will go wherever they can find jobs. Making it work requires a critical mass of both.
Reed said his biggest worry about the Career Passport is: “In the land of the free, will we get everyone to uniformly accept it?”
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8 Steps to Structured Literacy Change in Our District
There are numerous steps that our district and school took to help implement Science of Reading strategies and ensure structured literacy was our approach in ELA instruction. These are our steps to structured literacy success.
Before we begin, let’s define some terms. Science of Reading is the research behind how a child’s brain learns to read. Structured literacy is the application. Structure literacy applies the knowledge of Science of Reading to teach children to read in an evidence-based, explicit, and systematic way. Structured literacy approach incorporates skills including phonemic awareness, phonics, orthography, morphology, syntax (sentence structure), semantics.
For more information, I highly suggest the book Structured Literacy Interventions.
Our District’s 8 Steps to Structured Literacy Success
To prepare our teachers for the shift from our previous balanced literacy with guided reading groups to a structured literacy approach with a new curriculum, we took some critical steps. Looking back I believe these 8 steps have helped our teachers and district be successful in implementing a structured literacy approach to our ELA block.
1. Built the “Why”
We all want to know “why” we are doing something. We want to see the reasons, the proof, and the theory behind our change. Education is constantly changing and like many things in education we didn’t want our teachers believing that science of reading was only a pendulum swing. We wanted to prove to teachers this is the best approach to teach our students to be successful readers. We provided short articles and a few videos to introduce our teachers to the Science of Reading. We also started various book study groups working through Natalie Wexler’s book The Knowledge Gap.
2. Introduced Instructional Coaches
This new position of an instructional coach was designed to support teachers in their shift from balanced literacy to structured literacy approach. We are lucky to have one instructional coach for each of our elementary buildings. During our first months in this new role, we devoured all the information about science of reading, structured literacy, explicit phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, etc.. We attended any professional development opportunities. We became “experts” so that we could better support teachers throughout this process.
3. Demolished Guided Reading
At the beginning of the year, we demolished our previous guided reading group method and rebuilt a stronger approach to this precious time within our day. We first changed the title to WIN (What I Need) time. We wanted a clean break, even in name, from our previous guided reading group structure and instruction. Instructional coaches research best practices and after looking at school data, we helped to create more meaningful groups and provided teachers with a new framework for teaching. Many of our students had phonics gaps, so our first year we targeted this area while addressing other components. We also introduced teachers to decodable readers instead of leveled readers.
4. Pilot New ELA Programs
Our district was already piloting many programs before COVID. Honestly, COVID saved us from making a wrong decision in curriculums since all curriculum pilots were on pause for a year. During this time, Science of Reading information was exploding and we used this time to reevaluate some of our pilots. We dropped a few programs that were not Science of Reading aligned. We focused all our attention to a very few select programs and dove into them deeply. Coaches were able to observe teachers in the different pilots and talk with students about what they were learning. We were able to see mid-year data and formative assessments. In the end, it was a no brainer. We had made our decision!
5. Selected ELA Program & Celebrated!
In January we decided on a curriculum and moved forward with board approval and budget. Our next district professional development day in March was our biggest day. We celebrated with teachers! I have never been to a PD that was more exciting. We were moving forward! We were excited! We were ready to see our kids’ reading improve! During this day, we gave teachers a sneak peak at the new curriculum and our reps were there to answer questions. Pilot teachers provide the rest of the grade level teachers with a demonstration of a lesson so they could see the curriculum in action. We also had Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap, as our Keynote speaker.
6. Support!!
As our new year started, instructional coaches, pilot teachers, and administration were available and ready to support teachers with the new curriculum. We knew it would be a heavy lift but we knew the key to success was to provide help and support along the way. Instructional coaches attended private coaching training with our curriculum reps to find ways to better support teachers and brought that knowledge back to grade level PLC meetings. We also helped with unit planning and attending meetings where teachers could ask questions, voice concerns, or seek feedback/help. All hands were on deck!
7. Carefully Selected & Meaningful PD
Our new curriculum was a heavy lift. We knew that leaving teachers to work independently was not going to be successful. Also we knew our teachers would be drowning and we wanted to have lifeboats, life vests, and the whole Coast Guard ready to help. Therefore, our administration built a district calendar based around carefully selected days that teachers would have time to work together with grade level teams, curriculum reps, and coaches to build capacity one or two units at a time.
During each PD, instructional coaches were providing various training along with our curriculum reps. Teachers were provided time to work through a unit with their district wide team and instructional coaches while curriculum reps guided them through the process. Teachers had time for collaboration and sharing. Our administration did a great job at chunking the professional development offered by our curriculum company so that teachers could digest a small amount of information and implement it in their classroom before learning something new.
8. Building PD
Meaningful professional development is essential. There is nothing worse than leaving a meeting thinking- “That could have been an email” or “I didn’t learn anything”. One of our goals was to ensure that teachers learned something new and it was meaningful. In our district, instructional coaches are responsible for providing building-wide professional development. Our district is a large district with 8 elementary schools and growing quickly. The first year as a coach we noticed that every school did things differently. Our first main goal was to bring consistency to the buildings.. We took teacher feedback, classroom observations, and new implementations to build our professional development presentation together. This way each school was getting the same information from their instructional coaches.
Success
These steps crucial in our new curriculum being successful and our shift to structured literacy. Our teachers worked hard and had support at every turn. I truly believe these steps helped our district be successful.
“Most transformation programs satisfy themselves with shifting the same old furniture about in the same old room. But real transformation requires that we redesign the room itself. Perhaps even blow up the old room. It requires that we change thinking behind our thinking.”
Dahah Zohar (1997, p.243)