The California community colleges will soon implement changes to STEM math placement in which more students will be enrolled directly in calculus without first taking a longer sequence of lower-level courses such as precalculus and trigonometry.
Defenders of the law have argued that its intent is to ensure students can progress more quickly toward transferring to four-year colleges by avoiding long sequences of pre-requisite courses, but some math educators have said they fear more students might fail calculus if they do not first enroll in the preparatory courses.
Tina Akers-Porter is one such math professor at Modesto Junior College. During Tuesday’s roundtable, she shared concerns she has heard from other math professors statewide. The concerns have centered less on the law as intended and more on the implementation guidance from the Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, which she said “don’t exactly match up well with the law” and are “very strict.”
Akers-Porter pointed out that in order for a precalculus course to continue being offered at a community college, at least 50% of students enrolled in such preparatory classes must be successful in the class. By contrast, just 15% of students directly enrolled in calculus without first taking preparatory courses must successfully pass the class.
Such guidance leads to “one size fits all,” an approach she said “is definitely not in the name of equity.”
John Hetts, executive vice chancellor for the Office of Innovation, Data, Evidence and Analytics Office at the Chancellor’s Office, discussed some of the research he said the implementation guidance is based on.
“At heart, what [the guidelines] are is based on a really substantial set of research across not just California, but across the country, that suggests that the way that we place students into our courses in community colleges vastly underestimated their capacity,” Hetts said.
The implementation guidance includes the offering of support courses, called corequisites, which students will be able to take concurrently with calculus. The additional courses of at most two units are designed to integrate topics from areas like algebra and trigonometry into calculus.
Hetts referred to research that showed corequisites being more effective than prerequisites and that having students repeat courses previously taken does not help them “and, in many cases, makes them less likely to complete the subsequent course.”
Some students, such as panelist Alicia Szutowicz-Fitzpatrick, expressed concerns about the amount of additional time that corequisites might require. As student senate president and a disabled student programs and services peer mentor, Szutowicz-Fitzpatrick said she is worried about how the changes made to STEM math placement will impact financial aid, students’ time and unit loads.
“We’re also worried about the education itself; a lot of support classes are not as supportive as they could be, and it’s just more work,” she said, highlighting a particular concern about how the changes would impact students with disabilities and nontraditional students.
Prior to 2018, community colleges regularly placed students in remedial classes if they were deemed underprepared. Evidence showed an overrepresentation of Black, Latino and Pell Grant students in such courses, most of which could not be transferred to a four-year university.
Assembly Bill 705 was signed into law in 2017 — with a confusingly similar number as the 2022 AB 1705 legislation — with the intention of reducing inequities by placing more students in transfer-level courses.
But racial inequities persisted, leading to the passage of Assembly Bill 1705. This bill, intended to build on AB 705, in part requires colleges to place more STEM students directly into calculus rather than lower-level courses like precalculus or trigonometry.
Tammi Marshall, dean of math, science and engineering at Cuyamaca College, highlighted that since the fall of 2023, her campus has offered calculus plus support for students who have not taken preparatory classes such as precalculus.
“We have seen extreme success,” Marshall said, noting that the previous model of enrolling students in preparatory courses resulted in less than 30% of their students passing calculus in one year.
“The intention was always thinking about students and their success, but we were not supporting students,” said Marshall. “The number of students that would have started in pre-algebra class and ever completed calculus was single digits.”
Since enrolling them directly in calculus, she said, 70% of their students pass calculus in one year.
Panelist Doug Yegge has similarly worked to implement the guidance on AB 1705 at Chaffey College, where he is a math professor.
“I’m not saying that there aren’t drawbacks to the way that the law is being implemented. But my view, and the view of Chaffey, is, until the law is modified, here we are,” said Yegge. “How are we going to implement this at our own schools to try to give our students the best chance at success?”
Yegge’s approach to the changes on STEM math placement has been to build a cohort model among students so that educators are “not only encouraging, but requiring collaboration and active learning.”
At Chaffey, all math professors assigned to teach calculus-support courses are also required to meet every other Friday for two to three hours to collectively develop content and activities.
Panelist Rena Weiss has also worked to implement support courses at Moorpark College but found that the classes didn’t quickly fill when they were not mandated for students. In response, her department removed the support courses and opted instead to focus on tutoring, a decision that seems to be proving successful for their students.
They also opted to develop an “innovative pre-calculus course replacement” which is allowed by AB 1705 and will be implemented by the Fall of 2025. They intend for the replacement classes to be smaller in size, allow sufficient time for active learning, provide videos that students can watch at home, and to continue working in small groups alongside their peers. The course will be evaluated after an experimental two years.
“We are really worried that if the same methodology for validating a prerequisite to calculus 1 is applied to this experimental course, that all of this great work that we’re doing might be for nothing because we are only given two years to produce results and then that will be evaluated,” Weiss said.
Although she noted that many of the resources used in the experimental course will be applied toward a calculus corequisite course, she echoed the concern expressed by most of the panelists about the strict AB 1705 implementation guidance set by the Chancellor’s Office.
This story was updated to note that Moorpark’s future replacement course, not their current structure, will be up for evaluation two years after it is implemented in Fall of 2025.
Ariane Tuomy, a social studies teacher at Palo Alto Unified’s Gunn High School, responds to school board members’ questions at a special board meeting on Jan. 23.
Credit: Palo Alto Unified / YouTube
In hour two of a meeting that stretched to nearly five, Josh Salcman, barely two months on the Palo Alto Unified School Board, said aloud what other school board members no doubt realize at some point in their first term: “I’m acutely aware that no matter how I vote, I’m going to deeply disappoint a large part of our community, including people whose friendship is important to me and whose opinions I hold in the highest regard.”
He was undoubtedly right. Whether to require ninth graders to take an ethnic studies course starting next fall was and likely will remain contentious this year, not only in Palo Alto but throughout California.
Palo Alto had become the latest skirmish in California’s ethnic studies war. Salcman, who founded two education-related tech startups, was in the middle, ultimately facing the awkward decision of choosing between the views of enthusiastic students and teachers and apprehensive parents.
Two decisions in 2021 all but guaranteed that. First, a battle-weary State Board of Education, after multiple rewrites, approved an ambiguously worded curriculum framework that challenged districts to determine what should be included in an ethnic studies course. Then, the Legislature mandated that schools offer an ethnic studies course in high school starting in 2025-26.
Or maybe not. This month, Gov. Gavin Newsom decided not to fund the implementation of ethnic studies in next year’s state budget without explaining why. This not only calls the mandate into question, at least for next year, but also gives an out to districts that are dreading arguing over the course.
But not Palo Alto. Last week, board President Shana Segal, a Palo Alto native and former high school teacher, called for a special board meeting to approve the course that Palo Alto high school teachers had developed. The district would offer it in the fall and mandate it for graduation, starting in 2028-29. Regardless of state funding, that would be one year ahead of the state mandate. She set the hearing for later in the week, Jan. 23.
To pause or not to pause?
For two years, at the board’s direction, a half-dozen veteran Palo Alto teachers persevered to create a first-year ethnic studies course. Last fall, they offered a pilot version to 20 students in each of the district’s two high schools in Palo Alto. The students’ survey results, all positive, were in.
At the center of the conflict is Liberated Ethnic Studies, a strain of ethnic studies that made the liberation of Palestine a prominent element of instruction. Critics characterize it as a left-wing ideology focused on the ongoing domination and oppression of white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism.
Ethnic studies faculty at California State University and University of California and activists created Liberated Ethnic Studies after the state board rejected the first draft of the curriculum that they had primarily authored in 2019. They have made spreading Liberated Ethnic Studies a lucrative side hustle and have contracted with at least several dozen districts to train teachers and guide instruction.
In a May 2024 FAQ it published, the Palo Alto parent group cited language tying Liberated Ethnic Studies to the proposed course.
Superintendent Don Austin has reiterated that Palo Alto’s course is not Liberated Ethnic Studies and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict won’t be part of a course on California racial and ethnic groups.
But in October, Linor Levav, an attorney and co-founder of the parent group, filed a Public Records Act request for curriculum materials that the district had largely ignored. Eventually, the district provided a PDF that contained links that couldn’t be opened.
The rejection has fueled suspicions. “And so the question is, why are they teaching materials that they’re not willing to even tell us about?” she told EdSource.
The parent group called for a “pause” from proceeding with a mandated course.
While running campaigns for their first term on the five-member board, Salcman, Rowena Chiu and Alison Kamhi supported a delay. Now, the new majority’s campaign position would be put to a test.
The audience in the boardroom was not particularly friendly to the three dissenters. The room seated about 80, with some standing room. By board rules, students get to speak first, and they filled most of the room. The adults lined up outside to address the board for one minute via Zoom or enter to do so individually. Forty-five were set aside for one-minute comments. Students, all supporting ethnic studies now, clapped enthusiastically at comments they liked.
During the hearing, the three board skeptics said they shared some of the public’s concerns about the course’s content. They questioned its timing and sharply criticized the district for not being forthright about what would be taught in the course.
“I believe we have to be very transparent about what we are teaching, provide an opportunity for meaningful feedback, and not push through classes that make people and communities, including communities of color, feel unsafe, targeted, or disrespected,” said Kamhi, who is the legal program director for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Watch Palo Alto Unified board member Josh Salcman discuss his concerns regarding ethnic studies.
Two hours into the hearing, when he was still advocating a delay, Salcman explained his dilemma, mixing high praise for the teachers’ work with well articulated reservations about some of the content.
He congratulated the teachers who developed the pilot course and the initial students who took it. Their presentation “underscored what I’ve heard from many community members who have emphatically urged me to vote yes.”
“I find myself agreeing with most of what they say,” he said. “About how one-sided our current history classes are, about how little our students are currently learning about the experiences of historically underrepresented communities. How our students from those communities can feel so marginalized as they question why their family histories are nowhere to be found in our classrooms.”
And “how they wish we could have more challenging conversations about topics like power and privilege and structural inequity.”
Then he switched and laid out his concerns and those he had heard in the community:
“insufficient communication, which I share”
“ideologies that could increase a sense of division among students, which could lead to fixed mindsets or scapegoating”
“a lack of guardrails”
“widespread confusion about why, if there’s nothing to worry about, almost no details were shared about the course until yesterday.”
One thing he knows for certain, he said, is: “We do not have a shared understanding of what the phrase ‘ethnic studies course’ means.”
“Is an ethnic studies course primarily about the histories, cultures, and contributions” of the main ethnic and racial groups in California?” he asked, or “Is it primarily about concepts like ethnicity, identity, intersectionality, power, privilege, oppression and resistance? Is it a mix of both?”
Striking a balance
At least on paper and in student testimonies, Palo Alto’s course would appear to strike a balance. The teachers’ eight-page course description — the form that board members have used to approve all previous courses — states that the course “examines social systems, social movements, and civic participation and responsibility through a local lens. … By fostering empathy and belonging, the course prepares students to engage meaningfully in our communities.”
The four units in the course would be Identity; Power, Privilege and Systems of Oppression; Resilience and Resistance; and Action and Civic Engagement, in which students would create their own projects aligned to the course.
Each of the four units in the course would contain sample essential questions, learning objectives, and examples of assignments and assessments. Students would keep a journal of reflection throughout. Each unit calls for reading, analyzing and evaluating multiple and diverse sources.
Palo Alto High history teacher Ben Bolanos acknowledged that privilege and systems of oppression “are triggering for certain people” but said it “is important to look at the shadow side of the human experience in order to understand what needs to be changed and how to look at and change the world for a better place.”
The word “oppression” appeared more than 100 times in the state framework, observed Ander Lucia, a Teacher on Special Assignment.
Watch student testimonies regarding ethnic studies at Palo Alto Unified.
All the student evaluations of the course — 27 of the 40 who completed one — were positive. A half-dozen ninth graders elaborated at the hearing.
“I’ll admit I had some reservations going into this course,” said Gunn High student Quinn Boughton. “I wasn’t sure how much it would apply to me as a white student or whether the topics might make people feel divided or uncomfortable, but those fears turned out to be completely unfounded. This course didn’t just teach history; it built empathy.”
Gunn student Gabriel Lopez’s takeaway from the course was: “When one group of people takes power from another, I think it is the responsibility of school to teach us about the injustices people face. So, in the future and in our lives, we can strive for more equality.”
For his final project, Palo Alto High student Amaan Ali organized Palo Alto students to volunteer at tutoring programs for less well-off students in East Palo Alto. “These projects go beyond academic exercises. They empower us to turn knowledge into action,” he said.
Boughton examined homelessness in the Bay Area “in a new light” to dissect the problem and “discuss the causes and impacts of the unhoused with my peers.”
The presentation impressed board President Segal, a Palo Alto native who taught high school for more than a decade. “So teachers, I just, I want to say these words,” she said. “You did it right. I just want to make sure you know it. You did it right.”
Transparency questioned
Chiu and Kamhi repeatedly stressed that they strongly support ethnic studies.
“Ethnic studies is critical to me personally, but it is also something that I very much believe we need as a society,” said new board member Chiu, a consultant to the World Bank and an ethnic studies instructor who, she said, is scheduled to lecture on “Asian American Women and Difficult Conversations” at UC Berkeley.
But they remained unpersuaded, not because of what the teachers presented, but because of what the district had not provided. The district waited until two days before the meeting to send out an agenda with information, and it didn’t contain detailed information about the curriculum and the materials that teachers had used in the pilot.
“I also have very specific questions about the curriculum that was sent to us,” said Chiu. “I’m sorry to say, while I’m sure you have an excellent course and the students all say so, I did find your materials difficult to navigate around. I couldn’t open some of the links.”
As it turned out, Austin had included an outdated, detailed curriculum outline called a “scope and sequence” that included the broken links and sites requiring permission to open. Austin blamed the Public Records Act request that required providing outdated material. But Chiu found that explanation wanting. She had spent 48 hours poring over a document under the assumption it would be taught in the pilot. That, she said, “causes more confusion and more calls for lack of transparency.”
Neither Austen nor other district officials explained why the document did not include more information than the presentation.
“I will say it’s quite possible that your course is not going to incite any of these incidents that we’ve seen in other school districts,” Chiu said. “However, it’s connected to the issue of transparency. So if the community has not had, in their view, sufficiently transparent instructional materials, that fear is only going to grow.”
Kamhi put it differently. “What I feel really uncomfortable doing is saying every single student should take a course that we know is controversial, that based on the materials we’ve seen, some of which are problematic. Maybe they’re being taught in the classroom; maybe they’re not — without more information about what the course actually is.”
Dissenters’ dilemma
The three board members found themselves in a Catch-22. Pressed to say what in the course needed to be changed, they couldn’t provide answers without more information.
After hours debating unsuccessful amendments to Segal’s motion, and amendments to those amendments, the original motion was back on the table.
To the teachers, Segal and the fifth member, Shounap Dharap, the issue came down to trust. The founding teachers had held listening sessions for the public when the course was being developed, and had made changes in response.
“I want to reiterate my thanks, gratitude and trust in our teachers. These teachers are choosing to do extra work in addition to their daily teaching, lesson planning and grading. I know from firsthand experience the amount of time and dedication it takes to create curriculum,” Segal said.
“When we are sitting here hearing that there are concerns about the course and the way the course is being presented to students, I, we can’t help but take that personally, right?” said Jeff Patrick, social science instructional leader at Gunn, “because that, that is our job and that’s the job we thought we had the trust of the board to do, right? We think we’ve done our job, and we don’t know what a pause is going to do.”
Dharap, a personal injury attorney and law professor, encouraged board members to base their decision on what they heard from teachers and students, not the unsubstantiated fears of the public. “We really need to sit down and consider whether a decision that we’re going to make now is valuing adult inputs over student outcomes.”
The final vote
Salcman sought a solution in the minutes before the vote. He pointed to San Dieguito Union High School District as a model for involving the public. It posted each ethnic studies unit on a website as it was developed with a form inviting comments.
“I’m not saying now that we need to go back and do that. We are where we are” but is there a way to move the course forward and involve people in the process? he asked.
Dharap said the board already has liaisons with schools to convey concerns and frustrations and serve as a “conduit” for community feedback. He said the board can set course goals, measurements and expectations for public input.
“How do I know that I have a commitment from folks in this room to try to address the concerns that I raised?” were Salcman’s last words before the vote.
Segal and Dharap said yes quickly. Chiu and Kamhi hesitated before voting no.
The silence surrounding Salcman was unsettling. Twice during that time, Segal said, “There’s time; we can all take a breath. We have time.”
Three and a half minutes seemed like hours passed before Salcman said his next word, “Yes.”
Segal immediately announced the motion passed 3-to-2 and ended the meeting and the webcast.
One can only speculate what went through his mind during the long pause that followed — wondering perhaps which friend or close adviser he would please or disappoint or whether he made the right vote? Salcman didn’t respond to EdSource’s repeated invitations to share his thinking.
