Nearly a third of the 930 districts statewide that reported data had a higher rate of chronic absenteeism in 2022-23 than the year before. Use this interactive map to explore rates of absenteeism by Unified and Elementary districts or High School districts and contrast rural, urban and suburban districts across California.
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Source: EdSource analysis of California Department of Education data
Students who are missing too much school might be facing mental health issues, poverty and housing insecurity — issues that might seem daunting if not impossible for the school system to tackle by itself.
But relatively simple strategies, such as improved communication with parents via phone calls, emails or postcards, can be effective while costing little, according to a panel convened by EdSource on Wednesday called “Getting students back to school: Addressing chronic absenteeism.” Communication alone can motivate parents to improve their children’s attendance — and it can also help schools understand the causes of chronic absenteeism.
“Engagement is mostly free,” said Jessica Hull, executive director of communication and community engagement for Roseville City School District in Placer County. “It doesn’t take any money to sit and listen to the barriers that exist for our families.”
Researchers and educators know what a serious problem chronic absenteeism is, but parents don’t, according to Amie Rapaport, co-director of the Center for Applied Research in Education at University of Southern California (USC). Rapaport calls this the “parent/expert disconnect.”
“If parents don’t know that their children are struggling in school, then they’re not going to be seeking intervention or support for their child,” Rapaport said.
That appears to be what is happening. Rapaport’s research as part of a new USC report on school absenteeism found that fewer than half of the parents of chronically absent students were worried or concerned about it. But research has found that chronic absenteeism can cause a cascade of academic problems for students throughout their schooling.
The pandemic played a role in diminishing parents’ belief that school attendance is valuable, according to Thomas S. Dee, professor of education at Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He said this “norm erosion” has been a national phenomenon.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen nearly 20 years of test score gains evaporate,” Dee said. “We’ve seen an accelerating youth mental health crisis that’s attested by a declaration from the American Academy of Pediatrics, (and) a rare public health advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General.”
Schools are still seeing the effects of the pandemic on their students, even as federal funding to address those problems is drying up, Dee noted. For schools to address this crisis, they need interventions that are easy to scale and don’t cost a lot of money — and have research to back it.
“I think if I were to encourage people to leave today’s webinar with one piece of information, it’s that most promising (intervention) is low cost, scalable parent engagement through outreach, through texting, through postcards,” Dee said.
The way that educators frame the problem to parents is important, according to Hull. That can mean celebrating when a student who has been absent returns to school. But it can also mean explaining why missing a couple of days each month can take a toll on a student. Avoiding jargon or confusing language is also key.
When confronted with a chronic absenteeism rate that soared to 26% from a prepandemic level of 6%, Roseville City School District began a campaign to educate parents about the importance of attendance. One piece of that was designing an infographic, in parents’ home language, that explained what chronic absenteeism is and the consequences of too many unexcused or even excused absences.
Dee said that the state could also play a role by integrating data about attendance with a text messaging system, for instance, alerting parents that their student is missing too much school.
“But California’s a place that’s put a heavy emphasis on local control, and so it’s down to our many districts and schools to navigate those challenges,” Dee said.
Some schools might see that certain issues — such as school safety, transportation or economic or health barriers — are especially prevalent in their communities, Dee said. Understanding what those issues are from the community is important. That, too, requires parent engagement.
Communication needs to be a two-way street, according to Jennifer Hwang, a Los Angeles Unified parent. LAUSD educators initially brushed Hwang’s concerns aside when she told them her son was struggling with attendance, due to anxiety and neurodivergence. Hwang wishes that her school had simply listened to her concerns when she first raised them.
“It took a while for me to just go in constantly, reach out to the teacher and reach out to the school. If that initial reaction would have been much more helpful, then I don’t think that he would have been as absent as he was,” Hwang said.
Zaia Vera, an education consultant with Sown To Grown, credits conversations with students for inspiring a novel way of addressing attendance. Students said they were struggling with money and that they needed adults who cared about them. So Oakland Unified conducted an experiment while Vera was the head of social-emotional learning.
For 10 weeks, the district provided mentors and $50 a week to encourage students to improve their attendance. It paid off with improved attendance that continued well beyond the experiment.
“The key finding here was that the money incentivized the students to come to school, but it was the relationships that they built that kept them there, and coming back,” Vera said.
Research demonstrates that good relationships with teachers are key for encouraging students to come to school — and so are factors such as the school environment and the quality of instruction, Dee said.
But Dee cautions schools to not get too overwhelmed trying to tackle all the problems that can exacerbate chronic absenteeism, especially at a time when school finances are tight.
“The notion that (schools) should do all the things seems really problematic,” he said. “I’m seeing things like, ‘Well, maybe to promote attendance, you should fix housing and security or solve the American health/healthare system.’ I think that’s great advice for a state legislator or federal legislator, but not appropriate for districts and schools.”
A silent crisis is unfolding in our schools and impacting millions of California students: chronic absenteeism. The consequences of unchecked absenteeism are severe and far-reaching.
It starts innocuously with a few missed days, but can quickly spiral, decimating a child’s future prospects. When dropout rates increase and college readiness declines, the ripple effects harm entire communities.
Traditionally, students and their families are penalized for missing school, but this hasn’t resolved the issue and instead, targets marginalized student groups. As an educator with years of experience in the classroom and administration, I propose a radical shift in our approach — treating chronic absenteeism as a public health emergency.
The rise in social isolation, health concerns and economic hardships have dramatically increased the number of students consistently missing school nationwide. In California, we are seeing consistent, distressing high chronic absence rates, particularly among high school studeents and historically marginalized populations.
We can’t simply discipline our way out of this crisis. Instead, we need a comprehensive strategy that addresses the complex roots of absenteeism, from persistent health issues to limited transportation access, from heightened stress to trauma.
Imagine if schools treated chronic absenteeism with the same urgency and collaboration used during the Covid-19 pandemic. We mobilized resources to fight a global crisis, and we can apply that same level of commitment to ensuring every child attends school regularly.
By framing chronic absenteeism as a public health crisis, we open the door to more effective interventions. One crucial strategy for dealing with public health emergencies is risk communication, which helps convey urgency, provide accurate information, and mobilize stakeholders to take collaborative action. The impact of proactive attendance management has shown to improve attendance rates threefold for chronically absent students.
Here are strategies schools can implement, drawing from public health approaches:
Convey urgency: Research shows attendance is the most crucial predictor of school success. Schools must create a “relentless drumbeat” about the importance of attendance through daily text messages, visual aids, public recognition and personalized follow-ups with absent students.
Provide accurate information: Transparency is key. Schools should share clear data on absenteeism and its effects. Implementing user-friendly attendance management systems can automate positive intervention letters and free up staff for more personalized outreach. Training teachers to analyze attendance data enables early, tailored interventions.
Mobilize stakeholders: Thirty-seven percent of K-12 families want actionable steps to improve their children’s attendance. Schools must provide specific, consistent messaging about attendance importance to all stakeholders — students, families, educators, board members and policymakers. Offer concrete ways for everyone to contribute to the solution.
Advocate for prevention: Positive messaging encourages attendance; punitive actions deter it. A multilevel approach works best:
District level: Superintendents should regularly communicate about the importance of attendance.
Building level: Principals should celebrate good attendance and offer incentives.
Classroom level: Teachers should reach out personally to families, highlighting successes and addressing issues promptly.
Foster two-Way, equitable communication: A Harvard study found that students with the best outcomes for remote learning during the pandemic were in communities with high levels of trust. Schools must establish open dialogues with families in their preferred languages and communication channels. This approach helps identify root causes of absenteeism and builds the trust essential for consistent attendance.
The responsibility for addressing chronic absenteeism extends beyond individual schools or districts — it requires a unified national effort. However, we needn’t wait for a grand solution. By prioritizing consistent, positive communication in our classrooms, schools and communities, we can make significant strides in reducing absenteeism.
Treating chronic absenteeism as a public health emergency isn’t just a metaphor — it’s a call to action. It demands we recognize the severity of the issue and respond with the urgency, coordination and comprehensive strategies that have proven effective in addressing other public health crises.
By reframing our approach, we can foster healthier educational environments and brighter futures for our students, one attendance record at a time.
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Kara Stern, Ph.D., is the director of education and engagement at SchoolStatus, a provider of K-12 data-driven communication, attendance and professional development solutions.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Nearly a quarter of California’s K-12 students missed several weeks’ worth of school during the 2022-23 school year — a decrease of 5 percentage points in chronic absenteeism from the previous school year, but a sign of the lingering effects of the pandemic.
Even as schools re-opened for in-person instruction, chronic absences shot up from 12.1% pre-pandemic to 30% during the 2021-22 school year.
Such a sharp rise has increased discussion about why the absences are occurring. But having a certain number of absences in one school year can lead to various different outcomes for students, and potentially for their parents, depending on how they are recorded.
If recorded as unexcused, the student can be considered chronically truant. If recorded as excused, or as a mix of excused and unexcused, the student can then be considered chronically absent.
But what is the difference between the two, and why does it matter?
This guide aims to clarify those questions and inform both students and parents on the importance of how absences are recorded.
Truancy, habitual truancy, chronic truancy — what is the difference? California law states that a student is considered truant after three unexcused absences of more than 30 minutes each during a school year.
If a student is reported as truant three or more times during the same school year and a school staff member has made a concerted effort to meet with the student and their parents to discuss the absences, they are then considered habitually truant.
Once a student is habitually truant, they can be referred to a local student attendance review board, or SARB. The SARB will open a case during which the family must sign an attendance contract stipulating their child will attend school regularly.
A student who is labeled as chronically truant has unexcused absences for 10% or more days during the school year. Given that a typical school year totals about 180 days, a student missing 10% of the school year would equal about a month’s worth of instructional time.
It is at this point, once the student is chronically truant, that a school district can refer the case to a district attorney’s office. Once there, the district attorney has the discretion to charge the parent or guardian with an infraction or misdemeanor that could potentially result in fines or jail time for the parent.
How is that different from chronic absenteeism?
The difference is in the way that a student’s absences are reported.
Chronic absenteeism is defined as a student missing 10% or more of the school year — regardless of whether the absences are excused or unexcused.
If a student’s absences are mostly excused, they are more likely to be labeled as chronically absent. If they go unexcused, a student could quickly end up being labeled as truant.
Why does it matter to understand the difference between chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy?
Both chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy include various levels of intervention from schools. Schools ar supposed to check in with students who are missing classes and be offered support to address their basic needs, including meetings with parents to discuss solutions, and more.
But if those interventions do not solve the problem and a student continues missing class, only one of the two — truancy — involves potential fines and jail time for parents.
The involvement of the court system in truancy, but not in absenteeism, is why it is important to understand the difference between the two.
Additionally, information from families regarding student absences can provide school staff with insight into what a student might be experiencing and, in turn, help them better support the family. If the school knows a student is dealing with housing insecurity or transportation issues, for example, it could connect the family with the local homeless liaison, who would then refer them to available resources.
What is considered an excused absence?
California law has a list of over a dozen reasons for excusing an absence. That list includes, but is not limited to:
Illness, which includes mental and behavioral health
Quarantine
Appointments with medical professionals such as optometrists, dentists or physicians
Funeral services
Jury duty
Illness of a student’s child
Participation in cultural events
The full list of excusable reasons can be found at this link.
Included in the list is the option to excuse an absence at the discretion of a school administrator. For example, a school might know that a child has unstable access to transportation, which results in being late to school or absent. In such cases, a school administrator could excuse the absence without requiring a note.
Is one label worse/better than the other?
Both chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy involve a significant number of student absences, and education experts agree that loss of instructional time negatively impacts students in their academic and personal development. With that in mind, both chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy are considered detrimental to students.
Certain demographics, however, are more likely to have unexcused absences: Black, Native American, Latino, and Pacific Islander students, regardless of socioeconomic status, according to a 2023 PACE report.
In an example provided by the report’s co-author, Hedy Chang, she explained: Two students can be absent from school due to illness but only one of them has health insurance. The student without insurance is less likely to see a doctor and, as a result, less likely to return to school with a doctor’s note. In this example, the student who is socioeconomically disadvantaged has a higher likelihood of reporting an unexcused absence.
Third graders read along as teacher Patty Lopez reads a text about plastic straws aloud.
Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
A few years ago, I met a first-grade English learner in a bilingual program who was learning to read in Spanish. The student, who I’ll call Elena, and her mother were from Guatemala. Elena’s mother only had a second-grade education, but she knew that one facet of Elena’s education was the gateway to all future opportunities: learning to read.
Elena had started school late, and her mother was taking no chances. She worked with Elena to teach her some basics — how letters formed syllables and syllables formed words. Elena was able to read by the end of first grade, but the outcome could have been very different without her mother’s efforts. Whether she knew it or not, what Elena’s mother taught Elena aligns with decades of reading research on how the brain learns to read — regardless of native language.
Unfortunately, most children from low-income communities like Elena’s do not share her story. Millions of California students fail to make adequate progress in reading. Today, only one-third of economically disadvantaged Latino students and one-fourth of economically disadvantaged African American students meet or exceed grade-level standards in English language arts. This is not because they are incapable of learning, but largely because they are not taught using effective practices supported by a broad consensus of reading researchers and experts.
These practices include a strong emphasis on foundational literacy skills, typically known as phonics and decoding, and an emphasis on developing language, comprehension and knowledge.
But foundational literacy skills are not given enough attention in California, leaving too many students with a weak or nonexistent foundation for literacy development and academic success.
Literacy achievement in California is alarming. Fewer than half of California students meet or exceed grade-level standards in English language arts. For decades, California students have been either smack in the middle or, more often, trailing national reading achievement. In the most recent national assessments, California’s fourth-grade students’ scores were below 36 other states in reading proficiency. And, according to research from the Stanford Education Data Archive, California has one of the largest gaps in fourth-grade reading proficiency between low-income and non-low-income students in the nation.
The real-world consequences of poor literacy skills are devastating for both individuals and society as a whole:
Our state has invested millions of dollars in literacy over the past decade, but we are still not seeing an adequate return. This is, in part, because much of the policy to date has consisted of mixed and confusing recommendations from the state. We have failed to put into practice the best knowledge we have about promoting literacy development.
Meanwhile, states like Mississippi have gone from significantly below average in reading proficiency and among the worst in the nation to significantly above the national average and one of the most improved, after passing comprehensive early literacy policies that align with reading research. The average low-income California fourth grader is a full year behind their counterpart in Mississippi.
California now has the potential to make similar progress and take a positive step forward if elected leaders in Sacramento choose to vote for Assembly Bill 1121. The bill could help align decades of interdisciplinary reading research with reading instruction by providing paid professional development for elementary school educators in more effective literacy practices and requiring school districts and charter schools to adopt English language instructional materials from a new State Board of Education list aligned with evidence-based means of teaching literacy (identified in current law).
Even with advanced language skills and vast knowledge, you can’t be a successful reader if you can’t pull words off a page quickly, effortlessly and accurately. Similarly, you can’t be a successful reader if you lack the language and knowledge to make sense of words.
AB 1121 will help move us toward a more comprehensive approach to reading instruction, emphasizing the importance of developing the neural pathways between sounds, letters, and meaning that are necessary for the brain to learn to read.
Building these pathways is essential for those learning in any language. Research around the world demonstrates there are many commonalities in learning and teaching to read in any language, whether it’s a language one already knows or is simultaneously learning. English learners have much to gain from implementing known effective approaches to teaching reading, which include what Elena’s mother did instinctively to help her build a strong foundation of literacy.
In the Information Age, reading is the gateway to all future opportunities. Our students don’t have time to waste while we, the adults they’ve entrusted with their education, continue to fight fruitless “reading wars.” If we care about our children’s futures, and our state’s, we must push for effective reading instruction in all classrooms by passing AB 1121.
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Claude Goldenberg, a former first grade and junior high teacher, is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, at Stanford University. His areas of expertise are literacy education and English language learners.
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.
The Covid-19 pandemic amplified long-standing inequalities; there are no quick fixes to high chronic absentee rates and other challenges.
A return to “normal” won’t address post-Covid students feeling disengaged – nor should it.
Unlike other states, California districts have a $6 billion Covid block grant to replace federal relief that expired.
In March 2020, the Covid pandemic shut down schools, creating havoc, particularly among California’s most vulnerable children. Five years later, despite unprecedented funding from the state and federal governments, most districts continue to struggle to recover the ground they lost amid multiple challenges: more disgruntled parents and emotionally fragile students, a decline in enrollment, and uncertain finances.
According to calculations by researchers at Stanford and Harvard universities, most California school districts remain below pre-pandemic levels in standardized test scores — 31% of a grade equivalent below in math and 40% of a grade equivalent in reading. These averages understate the widening gaps in living conditions as well as test scores between the lowest-income and least-impoverished districts and schools.
The drop in the average scores in California and the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2024 “masks a pernicious inequality,” said Sean Reardon, faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford.
Scores are a shorthand measurement of learning, and they do not address the deeper, latent impact of the pandemic.
“We tend to overlook the longer-term effects of the delay in socialization and self-discipline — things that schools nurtured in young people,” said Vito Chiala, principal of William C. Overfelt High, whose 1,400 primarily low-income Hispanic and Vietnamese American students live in East San Jose. “Young people becoming adults at the high school level seem to be maybe two or three years behind where it used to be.”
In the first year of returning from remote learning, the focus was on school-related behaviors and self-management, Chiala said. “Students who had spent over a year saying whatever they wanted on social media had to face people in person, and that was super-uncomfortable sometimes. Now it’s much more about endurance, being willing and able to do hard academic work for longer periods of time.”
Overfelt High is far from unique. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that in 2021-22, 87% of public schools said the pandemic harmed student socioemotional development, and 56% reported increased incidents of classroom disruptions from student misconduct.
Educators, in turn, have taken a more holistic approach to building students’ mindsets and meeting families’ basic needs, said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California Berkeley, who is studying nine California districts’ post-Covid responses.
Recognizing that Covid amplified the harsh conditions of living in poverty, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators put $4 billion into creating community schools in low-income neighborhoods to strengthen ties to parents and open health clinics at schools. The state began to fund free universal school breakfasts and lunches.
With state grants, Rocketship Public Schools hired care coordinators in all of its charter schools, most in East San Jose, to cope with the aftermath of Covid.
Fabiola Zamora, a mother of four children from ages 2 to 10, described the support from the care corps coordinator for her school when she became homeless. “We received blankets, diapers, warm clothes. Mrs. Martinez guided me to a shelter and helped get my daughter to school,” she said. “It was hard. I was scared; it made me feel I wasn’t alone.”
Mental health responses
The proportion of students experiencing mental health issues had been rising before Covid. It accelerated during remote learning and coincided with an explosion of social media and cell phone use. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the incidence and prevalence of depression among 1.7 million 5- to 22-year-olds served by Kaiser Permanente in Southern California rose by about 60%, and the incidence of anxiety increased 31% from 2017 to 2021.
School districts in turn hired more counselors and psychologists using mental health funding and $13.4 billion the state received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the last and biggest installment of the $23.4 billion in Covid aid from Congress. Savvy districts have tapped Medi-Cal, the California version of Medicaid, to reimburse school mental health services, although Republican plans for massive cuts to Medicaid could jeopardize the funding.
Addressing the whole child makes sense. Disengaged and depressed students can’t focus; chronically absent students fall behind, complicating efforts to catch them up while moving others ahead.
But have these added responsibilities overburdened and preoccupied districts? In a fifth-year Covid reassessment, Robin Lake, director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, and Paul Hill, the center’s founder, raised that issue. “By easing up on graduation requirements” (which the California Legislature did), “making it easier for students to earn good grades, excusing frequent absences, and prioritizing social-emotional learning curricula over core academics,” they wrote, “the pendulum has swung too far away from the core business of schooling.”
Stubbornly high chronic absenteeism
The persistently high rates of chronic absences in California since Covid underscore complex challenges. In the first full year back from remote learning, chronic absenteeism nearly tripled statewide from 12% in 2018-19 to 30%, mirroring that of other states.
Just as with test scores, the averages masked yawning differences between ethnic and racial groups and levels of poverty: 35% for Hispanics, 42.5% for Black students, and 46% for homeless and foster youths, compared with 11% for Asian and 23% for white students. Students are chronically absent when they miss 10% or more days of school.
By 2023-24, the statewide rate declined, first to 25% in 2022-23 and then to 20% — still two-thirds higher than pre-Covid. An analysis by researchers Heather Hough of Policy Analysis for California Education and Hedy Chang of Attendance Works helps explain why learning recovery has been slow in impoverished schools. Only 2% of schools with the fewest low-income students had high or extreme levels of chronic absences, compared with 72% of schools in which three-quarters or more of students were low-income. The disparity isn’t new; the dimensions of the divide are.
“If you want to reduce chronic absence, you need to solve the root causes that result in kids not showing up to school in the first place,” said Attendance Works founder Chang. “The barriers — poor transportation, homelessness and food insecurity — are huge, and these issues are hard to solve.”
Schools also had a messaging problem. “During the pandemic, we said, ‘You should stay home for any reason for illness, any symptom.’ I don’t think we had counter-messaging when we wanted kids to come back.”
“The imperception was maybe missing school doesn’t matter so much if I think my kid might be sick,” Chang said.
Some high school students reached the same conclusion, added Overfelt principal Chiala. “We always said school is mandatory, school is important. And then we said for a year and a half (during remote learning) it wasn’t,” he said. “I think psychologically, a lot of young people are like, ‘”If it was really important, you would’ve made me keep coming.’”
Computers for all students
There is an unmistakable positive legacy of Covid: the equitable spread of technology after initial chaos.
Covid caught the state flat-footed, without a plan or the capacity to switch on a dime to remote learning; in many districts, this did not go well, as kids with home computers but spotty internet drove to fast-food parking lots to download the week’s homework assignments and to upload their answers.
In June 2020, the California Department of Education estimated that 700,000 students lacked a home computer — which soon rose to 1 million, or about 17% of students — and that there were 322,000 hot spots for internet service.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond created the Bridge the Divide Fund. With $18.4 million in donations, it distributed 45,000 Chromebooks, plus 100,725 hot spots.
The difference-maker arrived in 2021 with $7 billion as California’s share of the Biden administration’s Emergency Connectivity Fund. Federal funds have enabled more than 75% of schools nationwide to provide a computer for every student, and more than 80% of schools have high-speed broadband service, said Evan Marwell, the founder of the San Francisco-based nonprofit EducationSuperhighway.
Soon, it will be time to recycle personal computers. The good news, Marwell said, is a Chromebook can now be bought for $200.
Low return on federal investment?
On the 2021-22 Smarter Balanced tests, low-income students fell back after years of slow improvement. The overall 35% proficiency in English language arts was 4 percentage points lower than in pre-pandemic 2018-19. The 21% proficiency in math was a drop of 6 percentage points. Two years later, low-income students had regained half of what they had lost on both tests.
During these three years, per-student spending in California mushroomed by about 50% per student because of federal Covid relief and one-time state funding due to record-setting revenues, according to data assembled by Edunomics Lab, an education finance organization. The combination of high spending and lower test scores earned California one of the nation’s worst “returns on investments.”
However, a newly released deeper analysis of district-by-district Smarter Balanced results by researchers at UC San Diego, American Institutes of Research, UC Berkeley and Public Policy Institute of California showed that two years of federal Covid spending had a statistically significant effect in 2021-22. It was equivalent to a gain in math and English language arts of about 10 days of learning, said economics professor Julian Betts of UC San Diego.
Schools that reopened a year earlier from remote learning than most schools in California showed a bigger gain: about 20 days of learning.
However, those positive factors were not big enough to offset the effects of poverty — a loss of a quarter year of learning for schools with a high percentage of low-income students.
Researchers also looked at the results of the California Healthy Kids Survey that students fill out annually to see if there was a correlation between widespread bullying and student harassment with test scores. The effect was large: the equivalent of a half-year of lost learning in math and a third of a year in English language arts in 2021-22. The data document what socio-emotional learning advocates have preached for years: School climate matters in recovering academically from Covid declines.
One last source of funding
Starting with the 2021-22 state budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature invested more than $10 billion in TK-12 in the post-Covid years. The bulk of it went to transitional kindergarten (TK) and extended learning programs. What Newsom didn’t direct funding to were comprehensive, statewide, early reading and numeracy programs and high-intensive tutoring — two strategies that other states like Louisiana funded to respond Covid-era declines in test scores. Newsom had proposed $2.6 billion for “high-dosage” in-school tutoring; it vanished in the final budget.
What did survive was a $6 billion Learning Loss Emergency Block Grant program. Apparently unique among states in providing substantial money beyond the expiration of the $23.4 billion federal Covid funding, it directs most money to heavily low-income districts through 2026-27. In settling the Cayla J. lawsuit filed by Oakland and Los Angeles families over the state’s failure to meet their children’s education needs during remote learning, the state agreed to require that districts use the block grant for evidence-based strategies, like high-dosage tutoring. Districts must also conduct a needs assessment study, create a plan for the money, and present it to the public.
The learning recovery block grant provides an opportunity to ask questions raised by the Center for Reinventing Public Education in its five-year reassessment:
What worked and didn’t work over the last five years?
How are the students most in need going to get extra time and attention?
What skills and new work habits are required of teachers?
Authors Robin Lake and Paul Hill concluded that the needed systemic changes would be “a heavy lift.” The necessary changes “probably can’t be done unless state officials seriously consider major waivers of regulation and teacher unions allow experimentation with new teacher roles and school staffing rules.”
Vito Chiala
Bruce Fuller, the UC Berkeley professor who is analyzing the learning recovery plans of 700 California districts, agrees. “It’s hard to sustain anything that’s seriously innovative,” he said.
Vito Chiala at Overfelt High in San Jose, however, said Overfelt is becoming a different place. “When we came back (from remote learning), we really spent a lot of time radically dreaming about how will we treat our kids? How will we grade work? How, what will we be teaching them? How will we embrace our students’ humanity?”
The result: “We don’t grade the same way we used to. Classes aren’t rushing through curriculum like they used to. Teachers aren’t feeling they have to move on, even though half the class hasn’t learned. We’re really trying to motivate students to feel the intrinsic need to learn and get better.”
“We’re still finding our footing in sort of this post-pandemic world,” he said.
