California needs to mandate bilingual education in districts with significant numbers of English learners and invest much more to support districts to offer it, according to a new report released Thursday.
The authors said California is far behind other states in enrolling students in bilingual programs, despite having published documents like the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030, that lay out a vision for significantly expanding bilingual education in the state.
“It’s particularly significant because of the loud promises the state has made on behalf of bilingual education,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes down to actual resources devoted, they’ve come so far short.”
The authors of the report recommend three main actions for California state leaders to take: Expand bilingual education programs with more funding and requirements for districts to offer them; prioritize enrollment of English learners in bilingual programs; and invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs.
In order to expand bilingual education programs, the authors said California should follow the lead of Texas and pass legislation that requires districts to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in any grade level that speak the same home language. In addition, they recommend the state provide districts more funding for every student enrolled in a bilingual program.
The authors said this “carrot and stick” approach in Texas has helped the state enroll a much higher percentage (36.7%) of English learners in bilingual programs. In contrast, California has enrolled only 16.4 % of English learners in bilingual programs.
The report cites research that shows bilingual education improves academic achievement, progress in learning English, retention of home language, high school graduation and college attendance, in addition to other benefits.
“Bilingual education should not be a partisan issue, because of the vast and wide-reaching benefits of it,” said Ilana Umansky, associate professor of education at the University of Oregon and one of the authors of the report. “It’s very telling that a state like Texas mandates bilingual education in a lot of circumstances and incentivizes bilingual education and has twice the enrollment of English learners in bilingual education as California.”
In addition to expanding the number of bilingual programs, the authors also called on state and district leaders to make sure there are spaces set aside in bilingual programs for English learners, that they are located in neighborhoods where English learners live or that they can easily reach by transportation.
“It’s critical to prioritize English learners, because it’s English-learner-classified students that most need and benefit from bilingual programs,” Umansky said.
Umansky said many dual-language immersion programs are often located in neighborhoods where most families speak English, because English-speaking parents are often the loudest advocates pushing for them. And she said some districts outright bar recent immigrant students from enrolling in bilingual programs, incorrectly assuming they are not beneficial for them.
Finally, the report’s authors are recommending the state also invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs and in making such programs more affordable for students. They pointed out that after voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting bilingual education in California, many bilingual teacher preparation programs were closed.
“Prop 227 had such a devastating effect on traditional bilingual teacher programs, we have got to invest in them. They have to be bigger, they have to be stronger, and we have to have support for the programs and support for the students,” Umansky said.
Proposition 227 was overturned in 2016, when voters passed a separate measure, Proposition 58.
“California has put its foot down about saying, ‘We believe in multilingualism, we’re going to get students to be multilingual,’” Umansky said. “Now is the moment to really start putting money and efforts behind those intentions.”
Samuel Abrams has deep experience in the study of education privatization; for many years, he directed an institute on that subject at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is now working with the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization.
He is also affiliated with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he published a new report on the problems with education savings accounts (aka, vouchers).
Read the report.
Here is his executive summary:
Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) were first enacted in Arizona in 2011 as a particularly deregulated way to offer vouchers for specific students, particularly those with disabilities. As opposed to conventional private school tuition vouchers, ESAs could be used to cover tuition plus a range of other educational services. Soon thereafter, four additional states substantially replicated this new form of funding. But in 2022, Arizona and West Virginia took ESAs to another level, constructing them as universal vouchers, with all students eligible to participate, without regard to family income, prior public school attendance, or student disability. ESAs in these states could be used to cover either tuition at minimally regulated private schools or pods (mini schools with children of likeminded parents); or costs associated with homeschooling, from books and online curricula to field trips and ancillary goods and services deemed essential. Nine states have since followed suit and more appear poised to do the same. These ESAs constitute a dramatic elevation of educational outsourcing, at once fulfilling Milton Friedman’s long-argued libertarian vision for vouchers and comport-ing with the Trump administration’s commitment to downsize government and let the market fill the void.
Because of the unregulated nature of ESAs, accountability issues quickly emerged regarding both spending and pedagogy. Proper monitoring of spending by parents dispersed throughout a given state, for so many different types of goods and services, has swamped the capacity of state offices. The same holds regarding accountability for the quality of instruction in private schools, pods, and homeschools now supported with taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, because ESAs and other voucher programs tend to serve families who have already opted for private schools or homeschooling, two fiscal outcomes have become apparent. First, the programs create a new entitlement burden for taxpayers; rather than merely shifting an existing subsidy from public to private schools, the programs obligate taxpayers to support new groups of students. Second, the new subsidies have incentivized private schools to bump up tuition, on the grounds that families now have extra money to pay the higher tuition.
In addition, ESAs impact public schools. These schools suffer when substantial funding follows students who use ESAs for homeschooling or attendance at private schools or pods. The stubbornness of fixed costs for core operations for public schools often necessitates cuts to staff, from teachers to nurses, and resources, from microscopes to musical instruments. The impact on rural public schools and thus rural civic life may be greatest. Charter schools and conventional vouchers have played little role in rural America, as filling seats in charter or private schools in sparsely populated parts of the country represents a steep challenge. But with ESAs, students may leave public schools for pods or homeschooling. If enough students leave some small rural schools, those schools will have to consolidate with schools in neighboring towns, meaning significant travel for students and the forfeiture of much community life.
As with conventional vouchers, ESAs can lead to inequities and discrimination in student admissions and retention. Few protections exist in private schools, particularly religious schools, against discrimination based on disabilities, religion, or sexual orientation. Participating schools have also been documented to push out low-achieving students, thus adding to the problem of concentrating these students in default neighborhood public schools. For faculty and most staff, participating religious schools also generally afford no protection from dismissal on the grounds of religious affiliation or sexual orientation.
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RECOMMENDATIONS:
Given the damage Education Savings Accounts can do, the following measures are recommended:
State Departments of Education
• Implement stricter oversight of what goods and services may be purchased with ESA funds.
• Strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.
• Require publication of all participating schools, their graduation rates, and their availability to students with disabilities.
State Lawmakers
• Most importantly, legislators should repeal existing programs.
• If ESAs cannot be repealed in states where they have already taken hold:
o Oppose any expansion of these programs to include new groups or cohorts.
o Pass legislation that imposes clear budget and spending limits on ESA programs to rein in cost overruns that have become common with these programs.o Require stricter oversight of what goods and services can be purchased with ESA funds and strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.
o Mandate periodic audits of curriculum and instructional practices in ESA-receiving schools.
o Require ESA-receiving schools to hire certified teachers.
o Require ESA-receiving schools to conduct the same annual academic assessments that public schools are required to administer.
o Require ESA-receiving schools to abide by existing federal and state civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, especially related to students with disabilities and LGBTQ+ students and faculty.
o Require that any effort to create a new ESA program be subject to open public hearings and, if feasible, public referenda.
Local Government Officials
• In states where ESAs exist, document the effects these programs have on students, families, and local public schools.
• In these same states, seek legislation to alleviate negative effects.
• Engage in awareness-raising efforts, such as informing local constituents of the po-
tential harms of ESAs, especially in rural communities, and adopting resolutions opposing ESAs.
EdSource’s “Education Beat” podcast gets to the heart of California schools by highlighting stories from our reporters with voices of teachers, parents and students.
Here are 10 of our favorite podcast episodes from 2024. Take a listen:
50 years later: How Lau v. Nichols changed education for English learners
In the 1974case Lau v. Nichols, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that schools must take steps to make sure students who do not speak fluent English can understand what is being taught in their classrooms, whether through additional instruction in English as a second language or bilingual education. Here’s the story of how this case began and how it changed education, from the perspective of a teacher:
How can we get more Black teachers in the classroom?
A growing body of research shows that having a Black teacher increases students’ scores on math and reading tests and increases the chance that they will graduate from college. California has been trying to recruit and retain Black teachers for years, but they’re still under-represented. Hear from a Black teacher about what’s keeping her peers from getting to and staying in the classroom:
How can California teach more adults to read in English?
Almost one-third of adults in California can do little more than fill out a basic form or read a very simple piece of writing in English. Many of them are immigrants. Experts say programs aimed at addressing poor literacy reach only a fraction of adults who need help. One way to reach them is to bring classes directly to the workplace. This episode highlights the story of one janitor:
Student journalists on the front lines of protest coverage
As a wave of protests on university campuses called for a ceasefire in Gaza and for universities to divest from companies with military ties to Israel, student journalists emerged as crucial sources of information. Increasingly, student journalists are doing this work under the threat of arrest and violence.
How puppets can help kids learn to make believe
When teachers noticed that children in Oakland preschool and kindergarten classrooms were not engaging in imaginative play or interacting with each other as much after the pandemic, staff at Children’s Fairyland, a local theme park, turned to an old favorite — puppets.
School district is sued over broken windows, mold, overheating classrooms and missing teachers
The West Contra Costa Unified School District promised back in 2019 that Stege Elementary School would get a complete redesign and remodel, to attract more students and more experienced teachers and turn around low test scores, high suspension rates and chronic absenteeism. But now, a group of teachers, staff and parents are suing the district, alleging that it failed to address severely poor building conditions and teacher vacancies. What happened?
Should cellphones be banned from all California schools?
This year, state lawmakers passed a bill to require public schools to restrict student cellphone use. A parent shares how she’s seen cellphones affect student interaction and increase bullying, and what she thinks about the efforts to restrict them:
Music education sets up low-income youth for success
Rigoberto Sánchez-Mejía has been taking music lessons with Harmony Project, a nonprofit music education organization in Los Angeles, for 12 years, since he was 5 years old. He credits them with putting him on a path to college and giving him a tool to calm down when life is too stressful.
What is California doing — or not doing — about lead in school drinking water?
Oakland Unified School District began this school year with some unsettling news: The drinking water in the district’s schools had dangerously high levels of lead. But lead testing hasn’t been required in California schools for the last five years. That means Oakland Unified is unusual among California school districts in that it knows that there’s a lead problem at all.
16- and 17-year-olds make history by voting in school board elections in two California cities
This November, 16- and 17-year-olds in two California cities, Berkeley and Oakland, were able to vote in school board elections. A high school junior reflects on the significance of this moment and the importance of civic engagement for teenagers:
New California state laws will protect the privacy of LGBTQ+ students, ensure that the history of Native Americans is accurately taught and make it more difficult to discriminate against people of color based on their hairstyles.
These and other new pieces of legislation will be in effect when students return to campuses after winter break.
Schools can’t require parental notification
Assembly Bill 1955, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July, forbids California school boards from passing resolutions that require school staff, including teachers, to notify parents if they believe a child is transgender.
The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, also protects school staff from retaliation if they refuse to notify parents of a child’s gender preference. The legislation, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, also provides additional resources and support for LGBTQ+ students at junior high and high schools.
The legislation was created in response to the more than a dozen California school boards that proposed or passed parental notification policies in just over a year. The policies require school staff to inform parents if a child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth, or if they engage in activities and use facilities designed for the opposite sex.
“Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety and dignity of transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California,” said Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, author of the bill, in a media release. “While some school districts have adopted policies to forcibly out students, the SAFETY Act ensures that discussions about gender identity remain a private matter within the family.”
Opponents of the bill, including Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Riverside,indicated that the issue will be settled in court.
Accurate Native American history
Building a Spanish mission — out of Popsicle sticks or sugar cubes — was once a common assignment for fourth-grade students in California. The state curriculum framework adopted in 2016 says this “offensive” assignment doesn’t help students understand this era, particularly the experiences of Indigenous Californians subject to forced labor and deadly diseases from Spanish colonizers.
But supporters of a new law that goes into effect on Jan. 1 say that there are still grave concerns that the history of California Native Americans — including enslavement, starvation, illness and violence — is still misleading or completely absent from the curriculum.
AB 1821, authored by Assemblymember James Ramos, D-San Bernardino, aims to address this. When California next updates its history-social science curriculum — on or after Jan. 1 — it asks that the Instruction Quality Commission consult with California tribes to develop a curriculum including the treatment and perspectives of Native Americans during the Spanish colonization and the Gold Rush eras.
“The mission era of Spanish occupation was one of the most devastating and sensitive periods in the history of California’s native peoples and the lasting impact of that period is lost in the current curriculum,” according to a statement from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, one of the supporters of the legislation.
Teaching about desegregation in California
Another law that also goes into effect this year also requires the state to update its history-social science curriculum. AB 1805 requires that the landmark case Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County be incorporated into the history social-science curriculum updated on or after Jan. 1.
The case, brought in 1945, challenged four districts in Orange County that segregated students. The plaintiffs in the case were Mexican-American parents whose children were refused admission to local public schools. The case led to California becoming the first state to ban public school segregation — and it set a precedent for Brown v. Board of Education, which banned racial segregation in public schools.
The Mendez case is referenced in the history-social science curriculum that was last adopted in 2016 for fourth- and 11th-grade students, as well as the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, as an example of inter-ethnic bridge-building.
The Westminster School District wrote a statement in support of the law to ensure that the case is “properly recognized and rightfully incorporated into the state’s education curriculum.”
Protecting against hair discrimination
Assembly Bill 1815 makes it more difficult to discriminate against people of color, including students, based on their hairstyle. Although this type of discrimination is already prohibited by the CROWN Act, it has not extended to amateur and club sports.
The new legislation also clarifies language in the California Code, eliminating the requirement that a trait be “historically” associated with a race, as opposed to culturally, in order to be protected.
“(This bill) addresses an often-overlooked form of racial discrimination that affects our youth — bias based on hair texture and protective hairstyles, such as braids, locks, and twists,” stated a letter of support from the ACLU. “By extending anti-discrimination protections within amateur sports organizations, this bill acknowledges and seeks to dismantle the deep-rooted prejudices that impact children and adolescents of color in their sports activities and beyond.”
Protection for child content creators
Newsom signed two pieces of legislation in September that offer additional protection to children who star in or create online content.
The new laws expand state laws that were meant to protect child performers. Senate Bill 764 and Assembly Bill 1880 require that at least 15% of the money earned by children who create, post or share online content, including vloggers, podcasters, social media influencers and streamers, be put in a trust they can access when they reach adulthood.
“A lot has changed since Hollywood’s early days, but here in California, our laser focus on protecting kids from exploitation remains the same,” Newsom said in a statement. “In old Hollywood, child actors were exploited. In 2024, it’s now child influencers. Today, that modern exploitation ends through two new laws to protect young influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms.”
Children line up to drink water from a fountain inside Cuyama Elementary School in Santa Barbara County.
Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo
It’s that time again when I line up my predictions for the year only to see events conspire to knock them down like bowling pins.
As you recall, I lay down my wager in fensters. You can, too, on a scale of 1 fenster — no way it’ll happen — to 5 – it’s bird-brain obvious (at least to you). Fensters are a cryptocurrency redeemable only in Russian rubles; currently trading at about 110 per U.S. dollar. Predict right, and you’ll be rich in no time!
2025 will be rife with conflict; you know that. It will start Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump will announce that POTUS 47 v. California will be the main attraction on his UFC fight card. Trump’s tag team of both a Republican Congress, though barely a majority, and a conservative Supreme Court will be formidable.
Since it’s often difficult to know from day to day whether Trump’s acts are grounded in personal vendettas or conservative principles, that will complicate predictions. Insiders also say his decisions change based on the last person he speaks with. Safe to say it won’t be me.
With that caution, grab your spreadsheet.
Trump’s agenda
Mass deportations could turn hundreds of thousands of kids’ lives upside down, and massive shifts in education policies could jeopardize billions of dollars in federal funding for low-income kids.
Public reaction will determine whether Trump deports tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants with criminal records or indiscriminately sends back millions of people, as he implied. Most Americans found Trump’s policy early in his first term of separating children from parent border crossers abhorrent. Scenes on social media of ICE agents’ midnight raids, leaving kids without a working parent and potentially homeless, could have the same effect. And Central Valley farmers dependent on immigrants to harvest crops will warn Trump of financial disaster; other factories dependent on immigrants to do jobs other Americans don’t want will, too.
Trump will rely on shock and awe instead: swift raids of meat-packing plants and of visible sites targeting immigrant neighborhoods in California’s sanctuary cities — to send a message: You’re not welcome here.
And it will work, as measured by fear among children, violations of habeas corpus (laws pertaining to detention and imprisonment), and, in the end, declines in illegal crossings at the border, a trend that already started, under widespread pressure, in the final year of the Biden presidency.
The likelihood that Trump’s deportations will number closer to 100,000 than a million
The likelihood that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will open immigrant detention centers, one each in Northern California and Southern California
The likelihood that chronic absence rates in California school districts with large undocumented immigrant populations will soar to higher than 40%
The likelihood that the number of California high school seniors in those same districts who will not fill out the federal application for college financial aid known as FAFSA because of worry about outing an undocumented parent will increase significantly
The likelihood that the Trump administration will challenge the 1981 Supreme Court decision that children present in the United States have a right to attend public school, regardless of their immigration status and that of their parents
Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education
One of the late President Jimmy Carter’s accomplishments was the creation of the Department of Education. Forty-five years later, Trump wants to dissolve it and divide responsibilities among other federal bureaucracies: Title I funding for children in poverty to the Department of Health and Human Services; federal student loans and Pell grants to the Department of Treasury. That would take congressional approval, and past efforts over the years to eliminate it — a popular Republican idea — never came close to passing.
The likelihood that Trump could get majorities in Congress to eliminate the department
With or without a department, Trump could make radical changes that could impact billions of federal education dollars for California. He could turn Title I’s $18.8 billion funding for low-income children into a block grant and let states decide how to spend it. California, which had spats with the Obama administration over how to mesh state and federal funding, might welcome that. But poor kids in other states will be at the whim of governors and legislators who won’t be held accountable.
The likelihood Trump will cut 10% to 20% from Title I funding but leave funding for special education, the Individual Disabilities Education Act, traditionally an area of bipartisan agreement, intact
The likelihood Trump will call cuts in money for Title I and the Department of Education bureaucracy a down payment for a federal K-12 voucher program
Mini-fight over state budget
Later this week, Gov. Newsom will release his 2025-26 budget. If the Legislative Aalyst’s Office was right in its revenue projections, there will be a small cost-of-living adjustment for education programs and at least $3 billion for new spending — petty change compared with Newsom’s big initiatives for community schools and after-school programs when money flowed.
A piece of it could go toward improving math. It’s been ignored for too long.
California students perform abysmally in math: Only 31% were proficient on state tests in 2024, compared with 47% in English language arts — nothing to brag about either. In the last National Assessment of Educational Progress results, California fourth graders’ scores were behind 30 other states.
The State Board of Education approved new, ambitious math standards, amid much controversy, two years ago. The state has not jump-started statewide training for them since. But the board will adopt a new list of approved curriculum materials this summer, signaling it’s time to get rolling.
The likelihood that Newsom will include hundreds of millions of dollars for buying textbooks, training math coaches and encouraging collaboration time among teachers.
Ethnic studies tensions
Conflicts over ethnic studies, which have been simmering since the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 101 in 2021 requiring high schools to teach it will come to a head this year.
At the center of the controversy is the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and affiliated groups pushing an alternative version of the ethnic studies framework that the State Board of Education approved in 2021. The state framework, a guide, not a mandated curriculum, places ethnic studies in the context of an evolving American story, with a focus on struggles, progress and cultural influences of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans.
The liberated version stresses the ongoing repression of those groups through a critique of white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, plus, for good measure, instruction in anti-Zionism and Palestinian liberation. UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty members have led efforts to promote it, with substantial consulting contracts with several dozen districts.
AB 101’s mandate for teaching ethnic studies, starting in the fall of 2025 and requiring it for a high school diploma in 2029-30, is contingent on state funding. And that hasn’t happened, according to the Department of Finance. Meanwhile, the Legislative Jewish Caucus will reintroduce legislation to require more public disclosure before districts adopt an ethnic studies curriculum. In his Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism, Newsom promised to work with the caucus to strengthen AB 101 to “ensure all ethnic studies courses are free from bias, bigotry, and discriminatory content.”
Some scenarios:
The likelihood Newsom will press for amendments to AB 101 as a requirement for funding the AB 101 mandate
The likelihood that Newsom and the Legislature fund the AB 101 mandate, at least to keep it on schedule, for now
The likelihood the Jewish Caucus-led bill to strengthen transparency and AB 101’s anti-bias protections will pass with Newsom’s support
Amending the funding formula
Revising the Local Control Funding Formula, which parcels out 80% of state funding for TK-12, may get some juice this year — if not to actually amend the 12-year-old law, then at least to formally study the idea.
At an Assembly hearing last fall, the state’s leading education researchers and education advocates agreed that the landmark finance reform remains fundamentally sound, and the heart of the formula — steering more money to low-income, foster, and homeless students, as well as English learners — should be kept. However, with performance gaps stubbornly high between low-income and non-low-income students and among racial and ethnic groups, researchers also suggested significant changes to the law. The challenge is that some ideas are in conflict, and some could be expensive.
In his budgets, Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed more money to the most impoverished, low-performing schools. However, some school groups want to focus more money on raising the formula’s base funding for all students. Others want to focus attention on districts in the middle, with 35% to 55% low-income and English learners, who get less aid per student than in districts like Oakland, with higher concentrations of eligible students.
The outcome will affect how much money your school district gets, so keep an eye on what’s happening.
The likelihood that the funding formula will be amended this year
The likelihood there will be a two-year study with intent to pass legislation next year
What about tutoring?
At his preview Monday on the 2025-26 state budget, Newsom barely mentioned education. But a one-word reference to “tutoring” woke me up.
In my 2023 predictions column, I wagered three fensters that Newsom would expand a promising effort for state-driven and funded early-grades tutoring in a big way. Last year, looking back, I wrote, “It was wise advice couched as a prediction, which Gov. Newsom ignored. (It’s still a good idea.)”
So it is. Newsom created the structure for tutoring at scale when he created California College Corps. It recruits 10,000 college students and pays them $10,000 toward their college expenses in exchange for 450 community public service hours. Newsom, in setting it up, made tutoring an option. What he didn’t do is make it a priority and ask school districts, which received $6.3 billion in learning recovery money over multiple years, to make intensive, small-group “high-dosage” tutoring their priority, too. Other states, like Tennessee, have, and Maryland this year became the latest.
The likelihood that Newsom will include high-dosage tutoring in math and reading for early grades, in partnership with tutoring nonprofits, school districts, and university teacher credentialing programs
TK for all (who choose)
Starting this fall, any child who turns 4 by Sept. 1 can attend publicly funded transitional kindergarten in California. The date will mark the successful end of a four-year transition period and a $2.4 billion state investment.
“Done,” said Newsom pointing to the word stamped on a slide during a preview of the budget on Monday.
Well, not quite.
The hope of TK, the year between preschool and kindergarten, is to prepare young children for school through play and learning, thus preventing an opportunity gap from developing in a year of peak brain growth. For school districts, adding this 14th year of school offers the only hope for a source of revenue when enrollment in all grades in many districts is declining.
But in its first and initial years of full operation, TK will likely be under-enrolled statewide. There are a number of reasons. By design, the Newsom administration and Legislature are offering multiple options for parents of 4-year-olds. There are transitional kindergarten, state-funded preschools, private preschools, and state-funded vouchers for several care options, plus federal Head Start.
The state has provided financial incentives for providers to shift to serving 2- and 3-year-olds, but it will take time. The state had assumed that transitional kindergarten would draw parents attracted to classes taught by credentialed teachers in a neighborhood elementary school. Some parents prefer their preschool with an adult-child ratio of 8-to-1, instead of 12-to-1 in transitional kindergarten (a credentialed teacher and an aide in a class of up to 24) and a preschool teacher who speaks Spanish or another native language, said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, who has been researching transitional kindergarten in California.
And many elementary schools don’t have the bigger classrooms to accommodate TK and kindergarten, or they can’t find enough credentialed teachers and aides to staff them.
In coming years, transitional kindergarten enrollment will reach closer to serving all 4-year-olds, an estimated 400,000 next year.
For now, the likelihood that transitional kindergarten will serve more than 60% of a target population
Keep on your radar
Equity in funding: Voters approved a $10 billion state construction bond, providing critical matching funding to districts that passed local bonds. But despite small fixes in Proposition 2, the first-come, first-served system favors school districts with the highest property values — whether commercial downtowns or expensive homes. The higher tax burden for low-wealth districts is why some schools are pristine and fancy, while those in neighboring districts are antiquated and decrepit. The nonprofit law firm Public Advocates threatened to file a lawsuit last fall, and hasn’t said whether it will follow through. But it would be a landmark case.
In the 1971 landmark decision in Serrano v. Priest, the California Supreme Court ruled that a school funding system tied to local property taxes violated students’ constitutional rights. Challenging the state’s reliance on districts’ disparate local property wealth to fund school facilities could be the equivalent.
Rethinking high school: Anaheim Union High School Districtis among the districts thinking about how the high school day could be more relevant to students’ personal and career aspirations. Anaheim Union is exploring how an expanded block schedule, team teaching, interdisciplinary courses, artificial intelligence, online learning, and job apprenticeships could transform learning.
The six-period day, education code rules in instructional minutes, and seat time may be obstacles to change and perpetuate mindsets. For now, discussions have been more conceptual than specific. The State Board of Education has a broad power to grant waivers from the state education code; State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond said the board is open to considering them. This may be the year a district or group of districts take up her offer.
Thanks for reading the column. One more toast to 2025!
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.”
Wendell Norris Marquez teaches pre-AP Spanish to seventh graders at Lively Middle School in Austin, Texas.
Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource
On a recent Monday morning in Wendell Norris Marquez’s classroom in Austin, Texas, students were getting ready to read a story in Spanish by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But first, they discussed the differences between a story and a novel, and between a story and a legend.
“Los cuentos son ficción (Stories are fiction),” said one student. “But are legends real?” asked Norris Marquez.
No, the students decided. They may have started based on something real, but then they changed over time as they were told and retold.
This is a sophisticated literature class. But these students aren’t in high school. They’re in seventh grade. And they’ll be taking the AP Spanish exam before they graduate from middle school.
“When I describe this class, I tell people it’s not really what you think in the back of your head as a language course, because in elementary, the kids already learned Spanish, so by the time they get to us, they’re already fully bilingual,” Norris Marquez said. “So it is about taking them to the next level. We learn literary genres, we talk about metaphors, we analyze poems, and we write essays.”
This kind of advanced Spanish class is only possible at the middle school level because most of Norris Marquez’s students have been attending dual-language programs with instruction in both Spanish and English since preschool or kindergarten.
It turns out that bilingual education is much more common in Texas than in California.
“Anybody who studies bilingual education, English learners, dual-language students, eventually stumbles across this reality that Texas has this long and linguistically rich, multilingual, multicultural K-12 history, and California doesn’t,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and author of a report called “Making California Public Schools Better for English Learners: Lessons from Texas.”
According to the report, Texas enrolls 38% of English learners in bilingual education programs — more than double the 18% California enrolls.
Williams also found that Texas’ English learners have consistently done better than California’s on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in both reading and math.
“On every single administration of the test, Texas is better, over and over and over,” he said.
It’s not clear whether Texas’ English learners are doing better because of bilingual education. Multiple other factors could influence scores. Still, Williams points out that the findings are consistent with research that shows that bilingual education helps students achieve fluency in English and do better on academic tests over time.
“The research suggests that English learners in bilingual schools will score a little lower in English acquisition and in academics for a couple of years, but by roughly fourth grade, they should be outperforming English learners in English-only,” Williams said. “So you would expect to see that by about fourth grade, Texas, with its large number of bilingual programs, would start to really outperform California. You would expect that to be especially true by eighth grade. And that’s sort of what we see.”
Money and a mandate
Texas requires school districts to offer bilingual education if at least 20 children in the same grade speak the same language other than English at home, a mandate that dates back to 1973.
By contrast, California voters passed a law in 1998, Proposition 227, that required English learners to be taught in English-only classrooms unless their parents signed a waiver. That law remained in place for 18 years, until voters overturned it in 2016. The almost two decades of English-only instruction set the state back, officials say.
“The passage of Proposition 227 deeply impacted bilingual teacher education programs, resulting in fewer teachers earning bilingual certification over the past two and a half decades. Bilingual teacher education programs are still recovering,” wrote Alesha Moreno-Ramirez, director of multilingual support at the California Department of Education, in an email.
After Proposition 227 was overturned, California published two documents that set out a vision and goals for expanding bilingual education, the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030. But Williams says these documents have no teeth.
“There hasn’t been commensurate investment, accountability and oversight to make sure that these goals and vision documents matter,” Williams said. “Neither can make any school district do anything. It’s all voluntary.”
Texas passed a law in 2019 that sends additional funds to schools for all students enrolled in dual language immersion, and even more for English learners enrolled. By one calculation, Texas schools receive $924 more per year for every English learner in dual-language immersion. The state also has a long history of bipartisan support for bilingual education, and the top education official reportedly sends his own children to a bilingual school.
In Austin alone, there are 57 elementary schools offering dual-language programs, in Spanish, Mandarin and Vietnamese. More than half of the district’s English learners, referred to as “emergent bilingual” students, attend these programs.
At Perez Elementary, Spanish and English can be heard in classrooms, hallways, and out on the playground. One corner of the school library is dedicated entirely to books the students wrote themselves in both languages. Alongside a book that one child wrote about Roblox, a game creation platform, is a poignant story about a family’s journey to the U.S. from Honduras.
Yadi Landaverde teaches fourth grade at Perez Elementary School in Austin.Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource
In a fourth grade classroom, as students prepared for a math lesson in English, teacher Yadi Landaverde walked them through how to say some terms in English and Spanish — right angle, obtuse angle and protractor, for example.
Landaverde, who has been teaching for 10 years, said that explicitly teaching the differences and similarities between languages is especially important for students who recently immigrated to the U.S. and are not as familiar with English. This year, she said, she has eight recent immigrants in her class. Landaverde was born in Mexico and grew up in South Texas. Growing up, she only had English instruction in school. But she’s seen the benefits of dual-language immersion with her students.
“As long as the first language is strong, students do tend to score higher on state tests,” Landaverde said. “I’ve seen that.”
Her students were eager to share why they love bilingual education.
“Being in a dual-language program is just the best thing you could do in school because you are learning two languages, and that feels like a superpower for everybody,” said Emil, 10. Austin Independent School District officials asked EdSource not to publish students’ last names to protect their privacy.
His classmate Luis, also 10, emigrated from Venezuela two years ago, but first attended an English-only school in New York, where he didn’t feel like he could communicate with anyone.
A fourth grade dual-language classroom at Perez Elementary in Austin, Texas.Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource
“I couldn’t understand nobody and I couldn’t talk to nobody. One time I got home, and I was crying because nobody talked to me,” he said. When he moved to Texas and began attending Perez, he said, he was immediately welcomed.
“Now in class, I can speak Spanish normally without nobody saying that they don’t understand me,” he said. “And when I don’t know … something in English, I can just ask my friend that speaks more English than me and say, ‘What does this word mean?’”
Mathilda, who has been in the dual-language program at Perez since pre-kindergarten and speaks Spanish at home, said it has helped her keep both languages strong.
“My cousins in California cannot speak Spanish, so I need to teach them to learn Spanish ’cause they don’t go to a program for bilingual,” she said.
Middle and high school classes
In Austin, 13 middle schools and five high schools have bilingual programs in which students take at least two classes a semester in Spanish. One is a language or literature course, and the other is a content class, like science or math. Many schools also have electives available in Spanish, like film history or web design.
Down the hall from Norris Marquez’ class at Lively Middle School, Antonia Vincent teaches AP Spanish to eighth graders.
“At the beginning, they don’t even believe that they can do an AP class, and they don’t understand, most of them, what is an AP class,” Vincent said. “But at the end, we have good results, and they are very proud of themselves.”
Antonia Vincent teaches AP Spanish to eighth graders at Lively Middle School in Austin.Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource
The majority of students in the dual-language classes in middle and high school in Austin are students who have been enrolled in bilingual education since elementary school. But some are also recent immigrants.
Advanced classes in Spanish can be empowering for recent immigrant students, Vincent said.
“Some of them, in the beginning, they are very shy,” Vincent said. “And this class empowers them because they feel that we listen to them, so they are building their confidence.”
One immigrant student wrote Vincent a letter saying, “Thanks to your class, I know that I can express myself, and that is empowering me to continue and to take this opportunity in my other classes.”
The classes also have benefits for students who are not English learners. Caroline Sweet, the dual-language instructional coach at Perez Elementary School, sent both her children to dual immersion programs. Her oldest son, now in 10th grade, attended Perez and then continued in dual immersion at Lively Middle School and Travis High School.
“His advanced Spanish courses in high school are so hard that when I look at those texts, I’m like, I do not know what that medieval poem means,” Sweet said. “But I think it’s just kept him pretty astute and paying attention to language and then just kind of really flexible in his brain.”
Patchy progress in California
Dual-language immersion programs like the ones at Perez Elementary and Lively Middle School do exist in California. Los Angeles Unified, for example, has more than 230 dual-language programs that span transitional kindergarten through 12th grade. But advocates for English learners say the investment of resources by the state has been piecemeal.
“Access to bilingual programs varies wildly depending on the district, the community, and available resources,” said Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, a nonprofit organization that advocates for English learners statewide.
Advocates and state officials agree that the biggest challenge is a lack of teachers with bilingual credentials.
Moreno-Ramirez, from the California Department of Education, pointed to recent investments to show that the state is supporting school districts to expand bilingual education.
In 2021, California invested $10 million for grants to expand dual-language immersion programs. In 2022, the state put another $10 million toward grants for helping train teachers in “effective language acquisition programs” for English learners, including bilingual proficiency. Most recently, the state invested $20 million in a program to help more teachers get bilingual credentials.
These investments have been helpful, but insufficient, said Anya Hurwitz, executive director of SEAL (Sobrato Early Academic Language), a nonprofit organization that promotes bilingual education.
“If we want to see multilingual education scaled in California, it’s got to be invested in,” Hurwitz said. “Money alone is not the answer ever to almost anything in life, yet we can’t pretend that it’s not an important ingredient.”
Williams agreed.
“227 is a real thing, no question. But 227 ended almost a decade ago,” said Williams. “At some level, if you’re going to be a progressive leader on this, it’s been a decade, it’s time, you can’t blame that anymore.”
Fabian Debora uses art as a tool for gang prevention at Homeboy Art Academy in LA.
Credit: Courtesy of Fabian Debora
As a restless eighth grader at Dolores Mission Catholic School in Los Angeles, Fabian Debora often drew pictures at his desk. One day the teacher confiscated his artwork and ripped it up in front of the whole class. Debora, who cherishes his drawing, felt betrayed. He lost his temper, threw a desk at the teacher and got expelled.
The incident led to an epiphany. Debora was summoned before Father Greg Boyle, the beloved parish priest who runs Homeboy Industries, a renowned gang intervention program in East Los Angeles. Instead of chastising him, Boyle asked Debora to draw him something and later persuaded his probation officer to let him work as an apprentice to Wayne Healy, a pioneer in the city’s Chicano mural movement. Art became his lifeline.
“I realized that I’m an artist,” said the soft spoken Debora, 49. “I discovered it young enough to know that this is something that belonged to me, and no one’s gonna take that from me. And I held onto it.”
That drive led him to co-found Homeboy Art Academy, a group that uses arts education to empower formerly gang-involved and incarcerated youth.
“Man, as a formerly incarcerated, gang-involved individual, there aren’t many spaces for me,” he said. “I don’t have the means to go join an art school of some sort. So I’ll have to create a space where these kids can come and all services are free.”
A mural titled “The Power of the Woman,” by Fabian Debora.Credit: Courtesy of Fabian Debora
Part sanctuary, part vocational training center and part studio, the academy resists the notion that art is a precious and rarified pursuit for the elite. Here art is raw and real. You learn to paint your truth, to be unblinking about what you see, but also to feel the freedom of a blank canvas.
“They are the absolute best, completely authentic, devoted to helping people,” said Diane Luby Lane, founder of the poetry education group, Get Lit. “Fabian teaches people to be artists. He respects and utilizes real life experiences and perspectives.”
The recipient of the prestigious National Endowment of the Arts Heritage Fellowship, Debora believes art has the power to change lives. In addition to working as an artist, he is also a teacher and mentor to others seeking to find purpose through art.
“Let’s flip arts education on its head,” said Debora, as he walked around his studio at the art academy. “Let’s take the language and the vocabulary of the arts and tailor it to the lived experiences of this population while introducing relevant information such as in hip hop and street art.”
Born in El Paso, Texas, Debora first discovered art as a little boy weathering a tumultuous childhood in Boyle Heights, which he describes as “one of the roughest projects east of the Mississippi.” The tension bled into his family life, he said. He remembers hiding when his parents fought.
“I used to blame myself,” he recalled wistfully. “I would go and hide under a coffee table, and I would start to sketch, and I would just create my own world to escape my reality. That’s when I found art to be more than just a gift. It was almost like a big brother who held me.”
Violence was embedded in the ecosystem he grew up in, with eight gangs jostling for supremacy and few safe spaces from crime and addiction. By 12, he joined a gang, began to deal drugs and got addicted to them. He wrestled with substance abuse for years before trying to commit suicide at 30, by running across the freeway. That’s when he found his spiritual center and his salvation, his cause.
Now he tries to bring the succor of art to young people who feel hopeless to shape their own destiny.
Artist Fabian Debora teaches the art of painting, graffiti and street murals to students at LA’s Homeboy Academy.Credit: Courtesy of Homeboy Academy
“Art is a vehicle for healing, art is motivating,” says Debora. “It gives you a sense of breathing room, you’re escaping from your realities, as you’re creating. You feel inspired when you realize what beautiful work of art has come out of this. It opens up senses in the brain that haven’t been tapped into.”
While Debora specializes in visual art, the academy also offers classes in everything from creative writing and photography, to coding and poetry. He takes on those who believe they have nothing to lose. That’s who he used to be.
“I want the kids who are hanging out in the basketball court smoking weed all day, kids who are overlooked,” he says, lingering in front of the academy’s altar to indigenous gods. “If you’re gang related and struggling with a drug problem, if you’ve been incarcerated, that’s what qualifies you for this program.”
The impact of Debora’s work resonates throughout the Los Angeles arts community. It’s been a formidable example of how creativity can transform the arc of a person’s life.
“It’s astounding what they do at Homeboy,” says Austin Beutner, former LAUSD Superintendent and author of the arts education mandate, Prop. 28. “It’s hard work but they save lives, one by one. It shows you the power of art. You can be 8 or 28 and the arts can change your life.”
As a young man in ‘80s Los Angeles, Debora responded to the siren song of hip-hop music and graffiti art, the vibrancy of youth culture. The murals became portals to often forgotten Chicano history and culture.
A portrait of the Madonna by Fabian Debora. credit: Fabian Debora
The ancient meets the now in this audacious body of work, from graffiti to fine art. Debora delights in juxtaposing the eye of the masters with a modern urban vibe. Some of his most well-known paintings are fashioned after the manner of Italian master Caravaggio but rooted in the grit of Boyle Heights, such as a portrait of a girl from the barrio striking the pose of the Madonna. He’s now working on a project that deconstructs the Sistine Chapel.
“We are reclaiming the universal language of art,” he said.
Troubled souls often find solace in the universality of dark feelings, the way a painting from the Renaissance can capture how we feel today. That is the power of art as activism.
“Carravagio was also an outcast,” he said. “He was a thug, a killer, a murderer yet he found his spirituality through art.”
Debora uses art like a scalpel to cut away the layers of posturing and pretense that many of his students protect themselves with. He uses art to get at the truths they try to hide, even from themselves.
“The work of Homeboy Art Academy is transformational in providing youth a pathway, learning how to take ownership of their own stories, which are often negated by others who deem themselves more powerful,” says Merryl Goldberg, a veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “Lifting up voices at risk of being suppressed could not be more fundamental to a just and compassionate society.”
Art opens a window to another life, Deborah says. In addition to his work at the academy, he also teaches drawing to inmates at Tehachapi state prison. He cherishes his work with “the lifers,” because they need the solace of art the most.
“People need to be seen, they need to be heard,” he said. “It’s a sense of hope. When we come in, we paint windows on those ceiling walls so they can escape for the time being.”
In her home country of Guatemala, Maribel attended a one-room schoolhouse for two years, but the teacher was often absent, causing class to be canceled. She never learned how to read. The school closed during Covid, and she never returned to class until last year, when she moved to Oakland.
Now 11 and enrolled in middle school, she is learning English and at the same time filling gaps in her education — how to read, interpret graphs and acquire other skills she never learned before.
Maribel’s school, Urban Promise Academy, is one of four middle and high schools in Oakland trying out a new curriculum developed just for students who did not attend school for years in their home countries. School staff asked EdSource to only use middle names to identify students because they are recent immigrants. There is heightened fear among immigrant students and families because of the Trump administration’s promises to ramp up immigration enforcement.
In Maribel’s classroom, though, no fear was palpable. Instead, there was joy.
On one recent morning in her English class, Maribel and her peers were analyzing graphs showing favorite colors, favorite foods, favorite sports and home languages among students in a class. They were practicing marking the x-axis and y-axis, pronouncing numbers in English and talking about what the graphs meant.
“How many students like pizza?” asked teacher Shannon Darcey.
“Eight students like pizza,” responded a student.
Teacher Shannon Darcey teaches new immigrant students skills like interpreting graphs at the same time as they learn English.Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
About 3,300 students in Oakland Unified this school year — close to 10% of the total student population — immigrated from other countries in the last three years. Of those, at least 600 had more than two years in which they did not attend school in their home countries. These students are often referred to as students with interrupted formal education, or SIFE.
The reasons students missed school vary. Some lived in rural communities far from schools, for example. For others, it was dangerous to attend school because of gang violence or war in their communities. Other students simply had to work.
When students haven’t yet mastered academic reading, writing, or math in their home language, they have a lot more to learn in order to grasp middle or high-school level material, even as they are learning English. But if the materials or curriculum are designed for younger students, it can be boring or seem too childish for teenagers.
Before this school year, Darcey taught English to recent immigrant students with a huge range of academic knowledge. Some students were reading at seventh or eighth grade level in Spanish, for example, while others could not read at all. She remembers some students being frustrated.
“I had one kid … Every single day for six months, he was like, ‘I can’t read. Why are you giving me this?’” Darcey said. “He felt like, ‘Everyone else in here knows what is happening, and I have no idea what this is. Why are you telling me to have a book in my hands?’”
For years, Darcey tried to access curriculum designed especially for students who have had big gaps in schooling. She had heard about a curriculum called Bridges, developed by researchers at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. But when she tried to get materials from them, she was told they were only available for teachers in New York.
Julie Kessler, director of newcomer and English language learner programs in Oakland Unified, said many teachers she has worked with in Oakland Unified and San Francisco Unified were frustrated at not being able to access the Bridges curriculum.
“And so it’s like, who’s got a bootleg copy of it?” Kessler said. “And it’s just been inaccessible to the field.”
She said she has often seen students with big gaps in schooling disengaged in class.
“They are experiencing sometimes an alternate assignment, sometimes sitting with like a Disney book or a children’s book, when even the scaffolded newcomer curriculum is inaccessible to them,” Kessler said. “We were seeing a lot of that because teachers didn’t have a way to connect them to what was happening.”
Last year, though, Kessler was able to secure funding from the California Department of Social Services’ California Newcomer Education and Well-Being program, to develop a new curriculum considering the needs of Oakland’s newcomer population and aligned to the California English Language Development standards. She worked with some of the authors of the Bridges curriculum, who now have an organization called the SIFE Equity Project.
The resulting Curriculum for SIFE Equity is open source, available to all teachers anywhere on the internet. And Kessler said there are teachers in San Rafael, Elk Grove, San Diego and Vista using it, in addition to Oakland. Outside of California, the curriculum is also being used in New York City and Prince William County, Virginia.
“We’re hearing a lot of gratitude from teachers who are like, ‘Oh my God, finally something that I can use with this group of students that feels worthy of their time, that feels respectful of them and feels like it’s doing the skill building that we know that they need,’” Kessler said.
The curriculum currently includes about 50 days of instruction — less than a third of a school year. Kessler said the district is now trying to get more funding from the Department of Social Services to develop a full 180 days, so it can be used for a full school year.
Darcey said the curriculum has made a huge difference. She now has separate English classes just for students who have gaps in their education.
A student’s “identity map,” used to organize information that will later be used in a slideshow.Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
The class began the school year with a unit on identity. Studens learned how to say their names, how old they are, where they are from, what language they speak. They later put together “identity maps” with their name in the middle, and information about their hometowns, their ages, their responsibilities, families and what they like to eat and do for fun written in spokes all around. Then they created slideshows with the information and added photos.
Fourteen-year-old Anallely’s map shows that she likes salad, fish and marimba music, that she speaks the indigenous language Mam in addition to Spanish, and her hometown is in the mountains and forest of Guatemala, where it is hot and rainy.
Anallely only attended school in her hometown until third grade. After that, she stopped going so she could work with her father, planting and harvesting coffee on a farm.
She said she had never learned about graphs or maps to organize information before coming to school in Oakland.
“It’s very useful, because you can use them to define how many people like something or which is their favorite, or where they are from,” she said in Spanish.
She hopes to someday become a doctor to help babies and people who are sick. She’d also like to travel the world.
Most of Darcey’s students are new to reading in any language, so Darcey also works with them in small groups to teach them letter sounds, and how to sound out syllables and one-syllable words like tap, nap and sat, using a curriculum called UFLI Foundations, adapted for recent immigrant students by teachers at Oakland International High School.
Teacher Shannon Darcey works with new immigrant students on sounding out syllables.Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
Another student, Arturo, never attended school in his life until he enrolled at Urban Promise Academy at 14 years old.
“In previous years, a kid like that in my class, I would’ve felt like, ‘Oh my God, they’re like totally lost, and it feels like they’re just sitting there 80% of the time,’” Darcey said. But she doesn’t feel that way about Arturo. “He is engaged, he’s trying. Can he read the words on the page yet? No. But he’s still able to follow what’s happening.”
Darcey is grateful to work with these students.
“They bring such an eagerness and excitement, a willingness to try new things that maybe other kids their age are not as enthusiastic about,” Darcey said. “They often bring a work ethic that I think can really help a lot of them be successful in school.”
Giving these students skills to navigate the world is important, Darcey said, because they are already part of our society.
“We’re going to prepare them to be successful in their lives,” she said.
Maribel, the student who only attended two years of school in Guatemala, said she was afraid to come to school in the U.S. at first, but now she looks forward to it.
“The teacher speaks some Spanish and she always helps us if we need anything,” Maribel said. “I can write some words in English now, and I’m writing more in Spanish, too. And I’m learning to read.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly named the literacy curriculum Darcey uses as SIPPS. She uses UFLI Foundations.
Vicky Martinez feels cheated that her children haven’t had much exposure to the arts at their Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) schools despite state funding through Proposition 28, the state’s landmark arts education mandate. She believes access to the arts could help them cope with their anxiety and ADHD, conditions that have spiked post-pandemic.
“I had more arts than my kids do,” said Martinez, mother of three LAUSD students in the Highland Park area. “That’s not right. It makes me angry that our kids are being denied the arts when there’s been so much research about how it keeps kids engaged in school. We should be making progress, and instead we are lagging behind.”
Many parents share her outrage. The families of eight students, including Martinez’s three sons, 12, 15 and 17, and the author of the arts proposition have joined forces to file a lawsuit against Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district, and its superintendent, Alberto Carvalho. The lawsuit, filed Monday afternoon in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges misuse of funds as well as misleading the public in its rollout of Proposition 28 that sets aside roughly $1 billion a year statewide for arts education.
“LAUSD has willfully and knowingly violated the law,” said former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, who authored the proposition, “and as a consequence, is harming hundreds of thousands of students by depriving them of the arts education that they are entitled to under law.”
The suit also claims that LAUSD’s mismanagement of Proposition 28 funds, particularly at low-income schools , has disproportionately impacted Black and Latino students, deepening inequity. The thrust of the law, says Beutner, is that all students, not just privileged ones, deserve access to the arts.
“We have not received notice, nor have we been served with any lawsuit regarding Prop 28,” an LAUSD spokesperson said in a statement to EdSource. “That said, we have sought to clarify any misunderstandings regarding Prop 28, and we continue to follow implementation guidance as provided by the state of California to ensure that we are fully complying with the requirements of Prop 28.”
The suit is the latest push for accountability on arts education funding. Beutner and a group of major unions, including UTLA, the local teachers union, SEIU Local 99 and Teamsters 572, wrote a letter to education officials last year demanding the state hold districts responsible for their spending. LAUSD was allotted roughly $77 million for arts education in the 2023-24 school year.
The unions are helping pay for the lawsuit, which comes at a time when the district is already facing mounting scrutiny over its handling of three large cyberattacks exposing sensitive student information and the appropriateness of its response to recent catastrophic fires.
“LAUSD has done exactly what the law prohibits,” the suit argues; “it has eliminated existing funding sources for existing art teachers, and replaced those funds with Proposition 28 funds, thereby violating the requirement that the funds supplement rather than supplant existing sources. Moreover, LAUSD has made no meaningful effort to recruit or hire new art teachers as required by the law.”
Given extensive research that arts education has key academic and social benefits, the law was designed to hire new arts teachers, and most schools are required to spend at least 80% of funds on staff. The plaintiffs allege that the district has been willfully misinterpreting the law and misleading families and teachers.
“Bottom line, there’s been rampant misuse of the funds,” Beutner said, “and the guidance and oversight has been insufficient.”
In an Aug. 15, 2024, memo to the board, Carvalho acknowledged spending new Proposition 28 money to pay for existing staff, which is not allowed.
“Given historic staffing challenges in filling Arts educator roles and because 80% of Prop 28 must be spent on labor, the District prioritized the use of Prop 28 funds to cover existing staff as well as hire new staff.”
The district argues that the law only requires an increase in arts funding for the district as a whole.
“The law requires that non-Prop. 28 arts expenditures at the district level are higher than previous years and does not factor in differences in spending at a school site level,” according to an LAUSD fact sheet.
Beutner has long objected to this interpretation. The law requires that every school to increase its arts offerings, he maintains, so that all students have access.
Cecily Myart-Cruz, the president of UTLA, the union representing about 35,000 LAUSD educators, claims the district has not been honest about its use of Prop 28 funds.
“The superintendent pulling out a bulletin saying, ‘Oops, my bad,’ doesn’t work,” Myart-Cruz said. “If you have arts in school, you will change lives. … And so, I’m exasperated by the district’s lack of response and responsibility to providing arts educators for our babies and the communities in which we serve.”
To be sure, similar issues have arisen across the state. Facing budget woes, some schools have used creative bookkeeping maneuvers to pay existing staff with the new funds, instead of actually adding arts teachers, experts warn.
“The temptation to redirect these funds can arise when schools face financial pressures in other areas,” said Allison Gamlen, visual and performing arts coordinator for the San Mateo County Office of Education. “This is a clear violation of the intent of the proposition and, unfortunately, not an isolated incident.”
However, many other districts across the state, from Pacifica to Long Beach, have successfully used the proposition funds to build robust new arts ed programs, experts note.
That disparity explains why many parents and teachers have been calling for greater transparency in how schools use the arts money, which landed in schools in February 2024.
“We want real support for the hiring of folks who can provide arts instruction, and I think that this is the righteous thing. This is the legal thing,” said Nicolle Fefferman, a veteran LAUSD teacher, who also co-founded the Parents Supporting Teachers advocacy group. “Who does this money serve sitting in a district bank account?”
Families want a seat at the table.
“At many schools, there was no conversation about Prop. 28,” said Martinez. “Parents had no input.”
Make no mistake, the impact of any misspent funds on families can be severe. Martinez said that her 15-year-old son, going by the alias Julian in the suit, suffers from severe anxiety and feelings of despair, conditions she believes could be alleviated by the therapeutic influence of the arts. When her oldest son got his hands on a guitar, she says, he started to thrive.
“Arts improves learning, especially for low-income students,” said Martinez. “We are hurting them by not providing it.”
Another plaintiff’s mother, going by the alias April T., says her son, going by Lucas, 9, only gets one hour a week of art class, the same as before Proposition 28. She says she pays for private music classes because none are available through LAUSD.
Accountability is among the most critical issues facing the Proposition 28 rollout, according to a recent report by Arts for LA, a key arts advocacy organization.
“Teachers, parents and students should know whether, how, and when Prop 28 decisions are being made,” said Lindsey Kunisaki, who wrote the report. “They’ll be the ones to directly experience the impact of those Prop 28 decisions in practice, and moreover, they’re the experts in the realities of their own classrooms and communities.”
Carvalho’s August memo also acknowledges that the district did not “consult with school communities specifically about Prop 28 Arts funding,” but will encourage principals to solicit feedback going forward.
Many experts recommend an independent oversight committee of administrators, teachers, families and community partnersto make sure that arts education funds are properly spent. Some may assume that county offices of education provide oversight, but that is not within their purview, experts say.
Arts education advocates have long urged the California Department of Education (CDE), which is administering the new funding, to step up enforcement of the rules. Many have complained that the department has not provided enough guidance to schools already struggling with myriad post-pandemic issues.
“The structure of the proposition did not include any provision to ensure adequate CDE staffing to address questions and the overall confusion that has been a common thread,” said Allison Cagley, executive director of Friends of Sacramento Arts, an advocacy group. “There was no one or two people at CDE that could adequately address the questions.”
CDE officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Amid the controversy, many parents are anxious to see Proposition 28 funds put to good use to spark engagement at a time of chronic absenteeism and widespread disaffection at schools.
“This is an investment in our kids,” Martinez said. “Our kids deserve this. We all agreed on this. The state of California voted for this. So why aren’t we doing it?”
