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برچسب: Education

  • Migrant education helps farmworkers’ children catch up; Trump wants to end it

    Migrant education helps farmworkers’ children catch up; Trump wants to end it


    High school students in Monterey County’s Migrant Education Student Academy learn bioengineering from Stanford University students.

    Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • In Monterey County, students brush up on English, math and science to fill gaps caused by moving schools.
    • California is suing the Trump administration for withholding funds from the nearly 60-year-old program.
    • Many current and former students call the program life-changing.

    A group of high school students in Monterey County is spending their summer extracting DNA from sprigs of clover, making jewelry out of algae and shaping ceramic bowls, while also beefing up their math, reading and writing skills.

    This Migrant Education Student Academy is one of dozens of federally funded migrant education programs in California that help the children of agricultural workers fill gaps in academic instruction as they move with their parents from job to job.

    Fourteen-year-old Omar Flores said the program offers classes that he has never had access to, like ceramics and BioJam, a bioengineering class taught by Stanford University students.

    “I like how we get to build with clay, and we get to express our feelings with clay. I like BioJam too because we further our knowledge and look in microscopes. I’ve learned a lot about genes and how we can modify genes,” Flores said.

    Educators say Migrant Education Programs help boost students’ academic skills and put them on track for college and careers, which is backed up by some research studies.

    But this program and others like it throughout the state may soon disappear. Migrant education is one of five programs for which President Donald Trump withheld federal funds that are usually distributed to states on July 1. California is now suing the Trump administration over the frozen funds, which total about $121 million for migrant education in the state, according to an estimate by the Learning Policy Institute. 

    The president has proposed eliminating the program in the next fiscal year’s budget, which is yet to be voted on in Congress. In his budget proposal, he implied that it was not in the nation’s interest to prepare migrant education students for college. “These programs have not been proven effective, are extremely costly, and encourage ineligible non-citizens to access U.S. IHEs [institutions of higher education], stripping resources from American students.”

    Yet many migrant education students are U.S. citizens. The Migrant Education Program, established almost 60 years ago, serves students whose parents work in agriculture, fishing, dairy or logging, and have moved in the last three years for work, regardless of their immigration status.

    Loss of funds would be ‘devastating’

    In California, 47,225 students were enrolled in Migrant Education Programs statewide in 2024-25. Monterey County’s program is one of the largest, with 4,328 students in 2024-25, for which it received about $14 million in federal funds. In addition to academic instruction and counseling, many counties also offer health services. San Diego County, for example, brings a mobile dental clinic from USC each year to provide dental cleanings, fillings and other treatment to migrant students.

    Monterey County and many others are keeping their programs through the end of the summer, but after that, their future is uncertain. The elimination of the funds would be devastating, said Constantino Silva, senior director of migrant education in Monterey County.

    “The support system for the migratory students will not be there,” Silva said. “Hopefully, there’s enough caring people who will still keep these students on their radar, right? But I’m afraid the students will fall through the cracks. I’m worried that only a few will continue to thrive as opposed to many.” 

    Silva credits the Migrant Education Program with preparing him for college. He was a migrant student himself, after he moved with his family from Mexico to Monterey County when he was 6 so they could be with his father, who moved back and forth for work. 

    “It made a huge difference for me. By the time I got to high school, I was taking college prep courses, right? I could speak and write in English on a very high level. And my math was great too. So I was propelled into college prep, and then I went to college, and I really credit that to the additional support that I received through the migrant program,” Silva said.

    ‘I learned a little bit more words here’

    Silva’s first school in the U.S. was Santa Lucia Elementary in King City, where on a recent Wednesday, first and second grade migrant education students were learning the sound O makes when it’s before an A. In unison, they read sentences aloud: “They load the boat,” “Goats like to roam,” and ‘The soap will float.”

    In another classroom, third and fourth graders practiced the moves for a dance they learned from a visiting teacher from Mexico. Piñatas the students made by hand hung from the ceiling.

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

    Fifth graders discussed a book they were reading, “Radio Man,” about a child in a migrant farm-working family. Teacher Keyla Robles asked them to talk with their classmates about what happened at the beginning of the book, and then what happened in the middle.

    Daleysa, 10, said she was excited to read a book about migrant workers like her own family, who travel each year from Yuma, Arizona, to King City. Both of her parents work in the fields, she said.

    “I like it a lot because it’s about a boy who moves to different places to get different fruits and vegetables. And it’s kind of like how we do it, but we only go to two different places,” Daleysa said. 

    Oliver, 10, whose parents work in the lettuce fields, said he learned multiplication and more English during the summer program.

    “I learned a little bit more words here,” he said, adding that it has also helped his friends who do not speak fluent English. “It helps them a little bit more than the normal school, because the normal school doesn’t really tell you to repeat those words.”

    Their teacher, Robles, is passionate about teaching the children of migratory farmworkers because she was one herself. As a child, her dad worked in Arizona for six months out of the year and in Monterey County the other half. Her family’s constant moves made it hard for her to do well in school or learn English, she said.

    “I experienced that big gap,” she said. “It took me years to pass the ELPAC, for example, because I wasn’t having that support that I know that Migrant Ed gives our students.” The ELPAC is the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California, a test that all students who speak a language other than English must take until they are considered proficient in English.

    Keyla Robles is passionate about teaching migratory students.
    Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource

    Now, Robles is trying to help fill the gaps she sees in her own migrant education students. “It’s basic phonics, phonemic awareness that as they’re progressing from grade level to grade level, they just go over their head. They never actually get that understanding of basic letter sounds, basic addition, subtraction,” she said.

    Robles applied for a job as a full-time migrant resource teacher with the Monterey County Office of Education, but the job was put on hold after federal funding was frozen.

    “It’s really disappointing for me,” Robles said. “Because I feel like I have such a big impact on the students.”

    Setting students up for success

    A few blocks away at Chalone Peaks Middle School, students gushed about how much they learned in the summer migrant education program’s STEM class, putting together hand-cranked light bulbs and building palm-sized radios. 

    “The Migrant Education Program is different from regular school because it teaches you a lot more,” said 12-year-old Evelyn, who travels back and forth between Yuma, Arizona, and King City every year. “In school, you mostly review stuff. Here in the STEM class, they teach you real science, and you actually do stuff for yourself.”

    Clicking through different stations from banda music to talk shows on her new radio, Evelyn said she will “definitely” use it.

    High school migrant education students from Monterey County spent a few days at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this summer. Others attended a summer program at California State University, Fresno. Migrant Education Program coordinator Karla Caliz said the program makes it more likely for these students to attend college.

    “Many of our students will narrate how it’s life-changing for them,” she said. “We do believe that without programs like these, we would have students who would not be able to access the information or the process to enter [college].”

    Jose Perez, the migrant resource teacher for the King City Union School District, said the summer Migrant Education Program helps set students up to succeed during the school year.

    “Sometimes we have students who haven’t had any formal education, so they don’t know about social expectations, and this is a good way to teach them norms in the United States, because in the regular setting, during the regular year, these students may be seen as troublemakers or just being defiant, and they just need to learn our system,” Perez said.

    It hurts, Perez said, to know the program could end.

    “In my experience in this community, even the district itself, they rely on me a lot,” he said. “I don’t see these students having the chances without the migrant education support.”





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  • Merryl Goldberg, a music professor on a mission to spread arts education

    Merryl Goldberg, a music professor on a mission to spread arts education


    credit: the Staff at CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency)

    Merryl Goldberg knows nothing if not how to improvise. The 64-year-old could make music before she could walk. She started beating out rhythms on the bongos as a toddler and never stopped, eventually becoming a saxophonist who toured for 13 years with Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band. 

    During her time on the road, she also moonlighted as a spy of sorts. At 26, she traveled to Russia in 1985 to meet with dissident musicians and hoodwinked the KGB by encrypting secrets in music. Along with her saxophone and sheet music, she packed stacks of spiral-bound notebooks crammed with handwritten notations embedded with hidden information.

    “I came up with a code where different notes equal different letters and when it came to numbers, I would just correlate the numbers to notes in the scale and memorize the tune,” said Goldberg, an arts advocate and veteran music and arts professor at Cal State San Marcos. “When we got into the Soviet Union, they searched everything. With my music, they opened it up and there were some real tunes in there. If you’re not a musician, you wouldn’t know what’s what. They went page by page through everything — and then they handed it back.”

    This kind of audacious inventiveness has become her calling card, colleagues say. She is the sort of woman who makes things happen, in and out of the classroom. 

    She “brings the best of creativity and artistic excellence into her approach to training future educators. Her enthusiasm for teaching and being a lifelong learner is contagious,” said Tom DeCaigny, former executive director of Create CA, an arts advocacy group. “She infuses humor and a knack for storytelling with intellectual rigor resulting in a dynamic classroom.” 

    credit: Albert Rascon

    Merryl Goldberg’s class at CSU San Marcos

    Her cloak-and-dagger drama further reinforced her profound belief in the transformative power of the arts. She has long been a fierce champion for the arts as part of a comprehensive education. 

    “What happened in the big No Child Left Behind push (2001) is that they began only testing for math and reading to the detriment of all the other subjects, which is just horrible,” Goldberg said. “Before that, the disciplines were not so separate, and education was far more comprehensive. In fact, music education was brought on board because the Founding Fathers wanted people to be able to sing hymns. Visual art started because of the Industrial Revolution, they needed people who could draw.”

    Teaching the whole individual, integrating arts and social-emotional learning with academic rigor, is her mission. Indeed, in one of her signature courses, Learning Through the Arts, aspiring teachers learn how to teach reading, math, science and social studies through music, dance, theater, visual and media arts.

    “There’s been such a big myth about the arts as fluff. They’re not. Art changes lives,” Goldberg said. “There is more to learning than facts. You can look up facts. You can’t look up how to be creative, how to improvise, how to innovate. You have to cultivate those skills over time, and the arts teach you that.”

    Raised in Boston in a music-obsessed family, Goldberg is known for her chutzpah and her willingness to get creative to solve problems, such as the lack of arts educators in the state just as Proposition 28, the state’s groundbreaking 2022 arts initiative, ramps up. That’s why she created a new undergraduate pathway for arts teachers at Cal State San Marcos.

    “Merryl Goldberg has a grand vision,” said Alison Yoshimoto-Towery, executive director of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning. “Joy is an integral part to learning, and Merryl embodies this exuberance in her work with teachers, educators, and artists. Her work demonstrates the power of using arts to accelerate acquisition of other content areas such as literacy and language for all students.”

    Goldberg is that rare academic who can build bridges between departments and disciplines at a time when many scholars exist in a silo of their own scholarship.

    “She’s been a mainstay in the arts education field in California for many years,” said Jessica Mele, former program officer specializing in arts education at the Hewlett Foundation, a charitable foundation. “Merryl’s track record and relationships with both the undergraduate programs and the teacher preparation programs were key in making the case. Rarely do these two departments at any given university talk to each other, let alone collaborate in this kind of way. These sets of relationships are rare and valuable, and make her work very impactful, drawing together education decision-makers, teacher trainers, and prospective teachers.”

    While some may associate the arts with an air of elitism, Goldberg is down-to-earth, quick to smile and unassuming, describing herself as a “big goofball.” Oh, and did we mention she’s a big Red Sox fan and also a boxer with a wicked left hook? As you might expect, when she gets in the ring, she finds the tempo in the pugilism. 

    “Merryl has so much going for her,” said Eric Engdahl, professor emeritus at CSU East Bay and past president of the California Council on Teacher Education. “I am impressed by the artful way in which she combines her high-level professional music skills and creativity so unassumingly with her passion for teaching. … I am also impressed with how humbly she is willing to learn from partners and collaborators. She asks questions from a genuine sense of curiosity and wonder.”

    As it happens, her espionage was also rooted in her musical acumen. Goldberg developed a code that looked like musical notation, like melodies, to the untrained eye, when in reality it contained the names and addresses of the dissident musicians known as the Phantom Orchestra. The plan was to meet with, and jam with, these musicians and then smuggle out information about defectors to supporters in the West.

    This proved to be more of an ordeal than Goldberg had anticipated. The KGB (today known as the FSB) remains notorious for the brutality of its intelligence gathering. She remembers being searched exhaustively, with agents going so far as to unwrap her Tampax. She and the other musicians were tailed, interrogated and often terrified, but the ruse seemed to work until one fateful day when the band found itself arrested, surrounded by soldiers toting machine guns.

    “It was scary,” she said. “They locked us up and interrogated us, and they kept us hidden. They took away our passports. They didn’t let us call an embassy or family members or anything. In hindsight, they were probably debating whether they should lock us up for a long time. It was a close call.” 

    The band ended up being summarily deported. They later learned that some of the musicians they met with had been arrested and beaten.

    “That was unimaginable to me,” she said. “It was very hard for me to cope with. The people we met were so heroic. They risked so much to fight for human rights.”

    Goldberg later went back to graduate school at Harvard and majored in education, homing in specifically on the role of arts in learning and cultural exchange. She explores the topic in her book, “Arts Integration: Teaching Subject Matter Through the Arts in Multicultural Settings.”

    The Soviet skullduggery also opened her eyes to the connection between musical notation and all other forms of code, including high-tech coding. To create her code, Goldberg assigned the notes in the chromatic scale, a 12-tone scale that includes semi-tones (sharps and flats), to the letters of the alphabet.

    One takeaway for her is that while the relationship between musical education and math achievement has been fairly well established, far too few music students recognize the connection between the complex patterns inherent to both music composition and computer programming and the employment opportunities it may afford, particularly in the booming cybersecurity sector. 

    Goldberg is also a staunch champion of arts equity, seeing the arts as a vital connection to our shared humanity and not just an extra enjoyed by the privileged. 

    Most of her students at CSU San Marcos are the first in their families to go to college. Many have grown up lacking basics like food. They often juggle long hours at work with school just to make ends meet, all to pursue the enlightenment promised by the arts. She sees this enrichment as a basic right, part of the bedrock of education, alongside literacy and numeracy.

    “The arts are an essential aspect of human development, that is, of knowing and being in the world,” as she puts it, “the arts are fundamental to education.”





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  • When we fail education, we fail democracy

    When we fail education, we fail democracy


    Credit: Thomas Galvez/Flickr

    There comes a time in every profession when it becomes imperative to address the big ideas and to leave aside, at least for a moment, the trivial pursuits that engage us. One big idea that we educators have ignored for too long is the relationship between education and our democracy. Sadly, we have succumbed to the pathology of focusing almost exclusively on reading and math to achieve proficiency cut scores on state tests rather than growing civically competent students. Only 22% of eighth graders tested on the 2022 NAEP assessment were proficient or advanced in civics.

    Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choices are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of our democracy, therefore, is education.”

    My colleagues, I suggest to you that we as educators have failed dramatically in our responsibility to help build a strong democratic society. We cannot be solely responsible for this debacle, as our democratic demise has accelerated through the decay of our institutions, money in politics, social media and voter suppression. Nonetheless, we played a significant role in this demise.

    Our first failure is the inability to ensure that all our students, especially those from the most marginalized communities, are literate in reading, mathematics and science. Without strong literacy skills, no amount of civics education will make a difference. Over half the children in California cannot read at grade level. Only one-quarter of Black students are at grade level in math. We rank 19th in countries taking the 2018 PISA science test.

    We are just too good now at blaming the children, the parents, society, the tests or the pandemic. We redirected our focus from academics to a plethora of distractions like the use of all manner of educational technologies. We moved away from our primary mission of fostering student academic achievement.

    We know that the teacher is the key when it comes to student academic achievement, but it would be unfair to lay all the blame for the failure of K-12 education on teachers. We have failed our teachers in their preparation and support throughout their careers. Probably the biggest failure is our inability to recruit the finest teaching candidates and to train them well in content, professional practices and assessment skills. A second failure is the lack of career ladders where teachers advance from novice to master with plenty of guidance, support, monitoring and accountability.

    We also have big problems in figuring out what is the right stuff to teach. Over 20 years ago, esteemed researchers on the National Reading Panel handed educators the recipe for effectively teaching reading. What did educators do? They turned away from the science of reading toward the alchemy of the Balanced Reading Approach that even its founder Lucy Calkins recently admitted failed.

    Even with the ascendancy of evidence-based approaches to teaching reading, we see a regression toward accommodating the failed Balanced Reading Approach. We are not too keen on paradigm shifts. We like to go along to get along. Keep the adults happy rather than take a hard line on effective ways to teach reading. Who is watching out for the children and families?

    Even if by some extraordinary effort, school districts were able to plan, implement and monitor student achievement goals aligned with reading, there is still the problem of teaching reading in ways that intertwine with students’ everyday lives and the democratic needs of the community.

    The great Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paulo Freire, understood the relationship between the fundamentals of learning to read and how reading can be used to effectively transform society when he said, “Reading does not consist merely of decoding the written word or language; rather, it is preceded by and intertwined with knowledge of the world.” Freire does not diminish the importance of learning to read but emphasizes the need to make sure that reading with the purpose of improving community is what drives our democracy.

    Similar systemic issues exist in the teaching of mathematics and science. Unwillingness to take vaccinations to protect individuals and the community against the ravages of Covid is emblematic of a citizenry that is fundamentally uneducated about the power of vaccinations and the role that vaccinations play in the protection not only of individuals but communities as well. This lack of fundamental scientific knowledge is a real drag on our democracy. Time should have been spent on explicit science instruction rather than project-based learning.

    There is no doubt that we educators played a significant role in the demise of our democracy. While there are many outstanding educators, there are not enough highly qualified professionals to turn teaching and administration into a real profession yet. We overemphasize the need for student compliance with ersatz rules like seating assignments at lunch rather than engaging students in their own decision-making and critical thinking — fundamental democratic skills.

    The solution is available but still invisible. Many adults in the system are not committed to approaching teaching and learning systematically and scientifically. An educational system that is in crisis should consider adopting a few high-quality research-based teaching and aligned administrative practices like explicit instruction or formative assessment with descriptive feedback. When all teachers within the system can effectively assess, evaluate, intervene and monitor student understanding, especially for struggling students, academic achievement will soar.

    Our democracy and its K-12 education system are in the emergency room with a life-threatening disease. Sadly, we educators are more interested in the feng shui of the ER rather than taking the necessary key steps to save the patient.

    For me? I will enter the twilight of my career tutoring students in reading, math and science. Best to deploy my formidable teaching skills in saving one starfish at a time.

    •••

    Bill Conrad has been an educator for over 45 years and he has worked extensively within school districts throughout the country in a wide variety of capacities including as an Honors Middle School Science Teacher and administrator. His memoir about his educational experiences is The Fog of Education.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Service programs could be key to addressing our education crisis

    Service programs could be key to addressing our education crisis


    Credit: AmeriCorps Photos

    In the spring of 2020, teachers and administrators managed to re-create school in a home setting in days. It was a Herculean accomplishment that received little praise or recognition. Now, with millions of California students back in school, we are confronting another set of challenges. Many students are struggling academically, psychologically and emotionally, and many teachers and administrators are overwhelmed by the new challenges they face.  

    Thanks to substantial federal and state funding, our schools are operational again, but the needs persist. We now know that even as we continue rebuilding our education system, we must find ways to address the significant academic and mental health needs of our young people while simultaneously providing educators with the support they need to perform their jobs.

    To respond effectively to current challenges, schools in California are in dire need of two valuable resources working in tandem: highly qualified teachers and additional support staff in classrooms. The California Service Corps programs consist of #CaliforniaForAll College Corps, #CaliforniaForAll Youth Jobs Corps, California Climate Action Corps, and AmeriCorps California, including California’s Student Success Coach Learning Network. All together, these programs may be part of the solution to both needs. Together, the programs have recruited thousands of talented and committed individuals who are actively working to provide support to teachers, administrators, and most importantly, our students.

    California Service Corps members, including the Student Success Coach Learning Network, provide much-needed resources to vulnerable school communities throughout California. The network was created through funding provided by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature in 2022.

    Service programs are just one of many solutions needed to address the challenges to our education system, and they have been proven to be effective. These programs improve conditions in schools by providing trained, near-peer coaches (often just a few years older than the students) to California’s school communities to mentor some of our hardest-to-reach students.

    Working collaboratively with teachers and administrators, service members are embedded within schools and serve thousands of students across the state.  Working closely with teachers and counselors, they help improve academic outcomes, provide critically needed social support to kids, and increase teacher retention by reducing burnout.

    Our school communities urgently need this support to continue. California has already established dedicated support for and investment in education-focused service programs. As we move through our third academic year of the “new normal,” we must recommit ourselves to supporting programs that uplift our students and drive teacher success and retention.

    In the past three years, we have learned invaluable lessons about the role of service programs in addressing the pandemic’s impact on learning loss and student wellness.

    Service members are trusted mentors, tutors and role models for students. They welcome students when they arrive at school, make calls home to check on their well-being, provide one-on-one and small-group interventions to those who need extra support, and facilitate afterschool programs.

    In rural communities, these additional coaches are critical, as teachers and administrators are often asked to do more with less. By partnering with school staff to provide vital academic, social, and emotional support, service members improve the conditions in school communities so that teachers can focus on teaching.

    Additionally, these service programs offer young adults a valuable introduction to careers in education and are creating a much-needed pipeline into the teaching profession and educational careers.  These educators are more diverse than the national teaching force overall and tend to stay in the profession longer than the national average. Equally important, they come into schools prepared for the joys and challenges of the profession, trained in holistic student-centered support, and committed to expanding educational equity.

    Like California, we need state and federal leaders to continue investing in education-focused service programs as a permanent part of our education and workforce development infrastructure so we can continue recovering from the catastrophic effects of the March 2020 school closures.

    Three years later, we have learned so much. We cannot afford to go back.

    •••

    Josh Fryday is the Chief Service Officer of California, serving in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet, and Pedro Noguera is the Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. 

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





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  • Parents have a powerful role in improving literacy education

    Parents have a powerful role in improving literacy education


    Two students in a combined second- and third-grade class read together.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    After Emily Hanford’s “Sold a Story” podcast sent shockwaves through American public education by revealing how countless schools had been duped into teaching reading in a way that doesn’t actually work, Gov. Gavin Newsom was among those who stepped in.

    With the encouragement of State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, he proposed a new $1 million “literacy road map” for school districts.

    But despite its good intentions, the voluntary road map lacks teeth, since the state “imposes no requirements on districts regarding how to teach reading.” In other words, we have yet to see whether this much-talked-about national “reckoning” on reading will translate into meaningful changes in local policies and classroom practices in California.

    Meanwhile, the most recent statewide test scores show that our literacy crisis persists: Less than half of fourth and eighth graders are proficient in reading. These results have not moved much in the past decade. The Los Angeles Times editorial board recently posed a powerful question for state education leaders: “We know how to turn students into better readers. Why doesn’t California do it?”

    This month Families in Schools launched “Read LA! Literacy and Justice for All,” a campaign calling on California’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, to fully implement what’s known as the “science of reading” — a vast body of evidence-based research that shows us how kids actually learn to read and what effective literacy instruction requires. But education leaders and teachers are not the only ones responsible for ensuring every child learns to read.

    Parents have a critical and multifaceted role to play.

    Unfortunately, many parents are unclear about their children’s literacy development. One poll found that 92% of parents wrongly think their children are academically on track in reading (as well as math). For a forthcoming report on the California literacy crisis, we commissioned a poll (full results will be published soon) that found most parents have no idea what curriculum their child’s school uses. That poll also revealed that 1 in 3 parents are completely unfamiliar with the science of reading.

    In our research, we also spoke at length with dozens of parents. We encountered a wide range of perspectives and experiences concerning their role in helping their children become literate.

    Some parents don’t realize that literacy starts even before their children are old enough to hold a book. They aren’t aware of the abundance of research showing that by speaking to their infants, parents help them learn words and develop the neural patterns necessary for language comprehension. As their children grow, the research says, parents should engage in nurturing talk and interaction to help build their babies’ brains, which sets the foundation for all learning.

    Of course, many parents we spoke with knew they had a crucial role to play in their children’s literacy and relished it. “Her face always lit up with excitement every time we read together, and she always had the book picked out for us, so I know she loved it as much as I did,” Sylvia Lopez told us, describing the countless hours she spent reading with her daughter.

    However, economic and time constraints make it difficult for some parents to be as involved as they would like. “As a full-time working single mom, finding time to read with my son was sometimes a challenge,” Mary Lee said. When she was busy juggling work, dinner and other responsibilities, she got creative: “We often turned to rhyming stories that involved singing to make reading more enjoyable. This not only made reading fun but also boosted his recall abilities over time.”

    Some confessed they didn’t know how best to help their children with literacy development — an issue that is perhaps more acute among parents for whom English is a second language.

    “I have worked a lot on self-healing and personal development so I could provide better support to my son’s development, particularly in the context of literacy, which was a difficult process,” Hilda Avila told us. She sought help from a program in Los Angeles that supports bilingual parents and says it helped her “learn many techniques for supporting my son’s reading proficiency.”

    While parents should do all they can to support their children at home, they also can’t ignore what’s happening at school or what their children’s reading scores tell them. When a child is floundering, parents often need to advocate.

    Watching her child struggle with reading comprehension, Sonia Gonzalez was frustrated. “I thought that schools were experts at knowing how all students learn to read!” she told us. But Gonzales persisted, seeking out different programs at the school and monitoring the results. “Unfortunately, it took many years and attempts to figure out which reading programs were helpful to my child,” she said. 

    In the fight to ensure literacy for all kids, which many of us consider among the greatest civil rights efforts of our time, perhaps parents’ greatest asset is their collective strength. By coming together to demand that policymakers and educators make literacy instruction a top priority and adopt bold policy and practice changes that align to the science of reading, parents can help end California’s literacy crisis once and for all.

    ●●●

    Yolie Flores is the CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit organization that works with low-income, immigrant, and communities of color to ensure families/caregivers can effectively advocate for their children’s education.

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





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  • Immigrant parents report faulty, slow translation of special education documents

    Immigrant parents report faulty, slow translation of special education documents


    Carmen Rodriguez, seated right, and other parents meet with state Sen. Anthony Portantino in the State Capitol.

    Credit: Courtesy of Innovate Public Schools

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    When Los Angeles mother Tania Rivera signed a crucial document for her son Luis’ special education program in 2022, she was hoping he would be able to return to in-person classes after two years of distance learning. 

    But the individualized education program, or IEP, required for all children who need special education, was available only in English. Rivera’s first language is Spanish.

    Later she was told Luis, who has autism, would have to continue with online learning because the document did not specify that he needed in-person classes. In addition, she says, the document removed his occupational therapy for handwriting because a language interpreter erroneously said she objected.

    “It is a big disadvantage that we have, because I have some English, but it is very basic,” Rivera said in Spanish. “If we’re talking about educational terms or legal terms, the meaning can be lost with just one word” mistranslated.

    Monthslong waits and faulty or incomplete translations of special education documents are widespread across California for parents who speak languages other than English, according to special education advocates. They say these problems violate parents’ rights to participate in their children’s education plans under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that regulates special education. 

    A proposal in the state Legislature, Senate Bill 445, aims to solve some of these problems, but its fate remains uncertain because of concerns over potential cost.

    “I’ve never seen a timely translation and I’ve never seen all documents being fully translated,” said Lisa Mosko Barros, founder of SpEducational, an organization that works to educate parents to be advocates for their children with special needs and improve their access to high-quality education. Mosko Barros has worked with dozens of families in Southern California, including Rivera, and trained hundreds of others on navigating the IEP process.

    She said she has heard the same complaints over and over.

    “I literally spoke to one parent this morning in the Inland Empire who a couple of years ago signed an IEP and didn’t realize she was signing consent to eliminating speech services for her child who is non-verbal with autism,” Mosko Barros said. “It really can make or break a child’s access to a free and appropriate public education.”

    Rivera’s son Luis, now in eighth grade, remained in online classes since fifth grade until this fall and regressed as a result, his mother said.

    In total, he lost three years of in-person classes, first in 2020-21 when all students had distance learning, again in 2021-22 because he has chronic asthma and his pediatrician recommended he stay home since vaccinations against Covid-19 were not yet available for children. Then, in 2022, the translation problems kept him out of in-person schooling for another year.

    “He has had academic setbacks, and socially, he regressed a lot because it was three years without interaction,” Rivera said.

    When asked how long the district takes to translate special education assessments and IEP documents, the Los Angeles Unified School District communications team wrote that “the District works to parallel the IEP timeline for consistency and return the translated document within the same 30-day timeframe.” They declined to comment on Rivera’s case.

    Rivera and almost 200 other people attended an online meeting in September with state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, at which parents shared how long wait times and poor-quality translations have hurt their children with special needs. They expressed their support for Portantino’s bill, which would require IEPs to be translated into a parent or guardian’s native language by a “qualified translator” within 30 calendar days of an IEP meeting or a later request.

    Current federal and state laws require that school districts “take any action necessary” to ensure parents understand IEP meetings, and state law requires they translate a student’s IEP at a parent’s request, but no time frame is specified.

    “I believe strongly that parents can best advocate for their children when they have the knowledge to do so. Not being able to read an IEP because of language barriers is unacceptable,” Portantino said. “We must find a way to translate IEPs more quickly.”

    Portantino said the issue is personal for him because he struggled with dyslexia and ADHD as a student and received limited help from the schools he attended.

    “I largely depended on developing my own learning methods, which included lots of repetition and good listening skills,” Portantino said. But he wants to make sure other children can get the help they need.

    The bill passed the Senate, the Assembly Education Committee and the Assembly Appropriations Committee with no opposition. But an analysis by the Assembly Appropriations Committee found that the bill could cost the California Department of Education $409,000 annually and could cost school districts between $6 million and $16 million, which might also have to be reimbursed by the state. Believing there was a risk the bill could be vetoed this year because of those costs, Portantino said he chose to make it a “two-year bill,” giving it more time to be discussed in the Legislature and with Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    San Francisco Unified School District passed a policy in 2022 to ensure “every effort shall be made” to translate special education documents before meetings so that parents have time to read and understand them. It also requires meeting times to be extended to allow for interpretation.

    Carmen Rodríguez is one of dozens of parents who pushed for that policy. Rodríguez has two children with disabilities. Before the San Francisco Unified policy passed, she said, she waited eight months for a written translation of the first assessment of her older son, who has anxiety and a learning disability, and a year for the IEP for her younger child, who has dyslexia. 

    “If it’s not in my language, how am I going to understand the document? How do I know that it really says here what my child needs?” Rodríguez said in Spanish.

    In addition, she said IEP meetings were often cut short because the district limited them to one hour, with no extra time allowed for interpretation.

    Belén Pulido Martínez, senior community organizer for Innovate Public Schools, an organization that worked to get the San Francisco policy passed, said the policy empowers parents.

    “Now in San Francisco, the district is training their special ed teachers on the policy, and we’re super happy about that because it’s not just a piece of paper that’s going to die in an office. It’s being implemented,” Martínez said.

    Matt Alexander, the San Francisco Unified Board of Education commissioner who worked with parents to write the policy, said school districts have to prioritize translation and interpretation if they want parents to be engaged.

    “In our district, over half of our families don’t speak English at home. So if we care about communicating with our families, we have to provide interpretation,” Alexander said. “Step one is, have a clear policy. Step two is, make sure you’re being accountable to families who are directly impacted. Is it working? How do we make it better?”

    Rodríguez said since the San Francisco policy passed, several other mothers have thanked her. She said she would love for SB 445 to pass so parents in other districts can also benefit.

    “So many children in many different places, many different schools, are not receiving the support they deserve, and their parents have to battle to get an evaluation and to get documents translated, and they find it really hard,” Rodríguez said. “It’s a really, really long document, and it’s a long process. And if it’s in our language, then it will be much easier for us parents to process and understand the document and the evaluation given to our children.”





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  • California lags behind other states in bilingual education for English learners

    California lags behind other states in bilingual education for English learners


    Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

    California enrolls a far lower percentage of English learners in bilingual education programs than other states, according to a report released in October from The Century Foundation.

    The authors also found that California is investing less than other states in bilingual education. They recommend the state significantly expand investment in multilingual instruction, particularly dual-language immersion programs; prioritize enrollment in those programs for English learners; and invest more in recruiting and preparing bilingual teachers. 

    Prioritizing enrollment for English learners in bilingual and dual-language immersion programs is important, the authors stated, because research has shown these programs help English learners.

    “New studies show every year that English learners, and especially young English learners, do best when they’re in some form of bilingual setting,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report.  “They do best at everything, they do best at maintaining their home language, of course, they do best at learning English over time, and they do best in academic subjects.”

    The Century Foundation is a progressive public policy think tank based in New York City and Washington, D.C.

    California has more English learners than any other state. About 40% of students in California schools are now or were once English learners; about half of them are learning English currently while the other half have now mastered the language. 

    Yet, only 16.4% of English learners in the state were enrolled in bilingual or dual-language immersion programs in 2019-20. That percentage is more than three times lower than the percentage of English learners enrolled in those programs in Wisconsin (55.9%) and more than two times lower than in Texas (36.7%), Illinois (35.9%) and New Jersey (33.4%). 

    Williams recognized that California is still rebuilding its efforts to expand bilingual instruction, after a voter-approved measure, Proposition 227, significantly limited it from 1997 to 2016. Still, he said, “The efforts to rebuild have not been significant.”

    “California is not committing very significant resources for a state of its size,” Williams said. “The investment in new or expanded bilingual education programs is pretty modest. It’s $10 million in a one-time grants competition. Delaware puts in a couple million a year and has been doing it for the past 10 years. Utah spends $7 million a year on dual language.”

    The report finds that the funding invested in expanding bilingual education lags far behind the state’s stated goals. “Global California 2030,” written in 2018, for example, recommended expanding the number of dual-language immersion programs to 1,600 and enrolling half of California’s K–12 students by 2030, making at least 75% of graduating students proficient in two or more languages by 2040. There are currently about 750 dual-immersion programs in California, according to the California Basic Educational Data System.

    The report’s authors stated it is also crucial for California to expand bilingual education in transitional kindergarten classrooms, where English learners could benefit from it at a younger age. Transitional kindergarten is an extra year of school before kindergarten. The state is gradually expanding access to the grade each year until 2025, when all 4-year-olds will be eligible.

    The new report recommended changing credential requirements for transitional kindergarten in order to recruit more preschool teachers, since many more preschool teachers speak Spanish and other languages, compared with K-12 teachers.

    Anna Powell, senior research and policy associate at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, said she and many other early education advocates agree that current preschool teachers face an “uphill battle” to become TK teachers.

    According to CSCCE, an estimated 17,000 workers in preschool and child care programs have a bachelor’s degree, a teacher’s child development permit and at least six years of teaching experience in early childhood settings. However, Powell said the new credential proposed for pre-K to third grade would only allow work as a preschool teacher to be counted toward part of the required hours.

    “Experienced educators would be required to go back to school and/or obtain additional qualifications first — likely while juggling a full-time teaching job,” Powell said. “Meanwhile, a public school teacher in a middle school could potentially teach TK without any new clinical hours or other time-consuming requirements, so long as they have taken 24 units of ECE or child development (or equivalent).” 

    “There is still time for California to right this wrong,” she added.

    Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, an organization that advocates for English learners statewide, praised the report.

    “Our state currently possesses an exemplary policy framework, but what’s lacking is a concrete, systemic plan, adequate, targeted funding for effective implementation and accountability for better educational opportunities and outcomes for English learners,” Hernandez said.

    Hernandez said the California Department of Education should lead a coordinated, statewide effort to implement the English Learner Roadmap, a guide approved by the State Board of Education in 2017 for school districts to support English learners better.

    One way to recruit more bilingual teachers both for TK and other grades would be to encourage high school graduates who were awarded the State Seal of Biliteracy to join teacher preparation programs, Hernandez said. To receive the State Seal of Biliteracy, graduates must show proficiency in both English and another language.

    “A modest target of 5% from the over 400,000 candidates could significantly reduce the shortage,” Hernandez said. “The time for translating vision into action is now.”

    Note: The research discussed in this article was supported by a grant from Sobrato Philanthropies. EdSource receives funding from many foundations, including Sobrato Philanthropies. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.





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  • Ask Me Anything: Join EdSource live on Reddit to discuss arts education

    Ask Me Anything: Join EdSource live on Reddit to discuss arts education


    EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza

    There’s a strong body of research that suggests arts education can boost everything from test scores to social-emotional learning, but when budgets get tight, the arts are often the first thing on the chopping block.

    In California though, that’s about to change following the passage of Proposition 28, which guarantees a new annual funding stream for arts education equal to 1% of the state’s general fund. In 2023, that’s about $1 billion for schools to hire teachers in the arts and fund arts education initiatives.

    Join EdSource reporter Karen D’Souza on Thursday, Dec. 14, at 12:30 p.m. for a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session. D’Souza will answer your questions about the rollout of Proposition 28 and how California’s groundbreaking arts education initiative compares with how states across the country fund and implement arts education programs. Click here to ask a question.

    EdSource readers are encouraged to submit their questions during the online event.

    • Not a Reddit user? Create an account here.

    What is a Reddit AMA?

    An AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything” is a crowdsourced interview. The interviewee begins the process by starting a post describing who they are and what they do. Then commenters from across the internet leave questions and can vote on other questions according to which they would like to see answered.

    The interviewee can go through and reply to the questions they find interesting and easily see those questions the internet is dying to have the answer to. Because the internet is asking the questions, they’re going to be a mix of serious and lighthearted, and interviewees will end up sharing all sorts of things you won’t find in a normal interview.





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  • It’s time to fix the fatal flaw in California education funding formula

    It’s time to fix the fatal flaw in California education funding formula


    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    California’s way of funding schools, the Local Control Funding Formula, was not designed to be perfect. That’s because most legislation requires a series of compromises necessary to minimize opposition, maximize support and win the necessary votes for passage. 

    In LCFF’s case, one of those compromises, the creation of the Local Control Accountability Plan, or LCAP, could eventually doom the reform.

    To understand why, it’s important to revisit the initial rationale for LCFF — replacing a complex, inequitable funding model with a simpler model that targeted grants based on student need and concentrated poverty.

    The old funding model was managed from Sacramento and included popular grants for the arts and music, English learners, career and technical education and more. Large and/or politically connected districts, nonprofits and statewide groups would lobby sympathetic lawmakers for their own grants. Over time, this model grew increasingly complex, limiting local discretion over spending and stifling innovation. Despite these problems, it had remarkable political resiliency. Lawmakers were incentivized to protect existing grants and got political credit for creating new ones. Very few stakeholders were interested in changing this dynamic and risk losing their favorite grants and programs.

    So, it wasn’t enough for the Brown administration to argue that LCFF was better because it was simpler, more equitable and gave districts more control over their money. They had to prove that it would fund many of the same programs as the existing model.

    Most education advocacy groups believed that this could be achieved by requiring districts to use the grants generated by high-need students to fund services that addressed their needs. But education groups representing labor and management wanted complete financial flexibility. To avoid this requirement, the education establishment collaborated with a few legal advocacy groups to create the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), arguing that it would accurately document how they were spending money on programs and services.

    The last decade has provided strong evidence that this decision was based on flawed assumptions, beginning with the presumption that school districts are the best recipients of funding for high-need students. While district bureaucracies are certainly closer to students than Sacramento policymakers, they aren’t as close as principals and teachers. Unlike schools, district leaders face powerful interest groups that lobby them for spending like higher salaries and districtwide programs. That’s why most targeted grants like federal Title I funding are sent to districts but then quickly distributed to high-poverty schools. Without similar requirements, it’s likely that billons in LCFF dollars that could have funded school-based services were spent on district-level costs such as salaries, benefits, pension obligations and more.   

    Second, policymakers assumed that districts would accurately document spending on services in the LCAP. But LCAPs were never formally connected to school district budgets, which include ongoing costs like salaries and benefits. In fact, the processes for developing LCAPs and budgets occur separately on different timelines. Almost every analysis of LCAPs has found that their financial and programmatic information cannot be verified and the documents themselves are largely incomprehensible.

    Third, they believed that districts would focus on improving student outcomes without clear state-level goals and metrics to guide their decision-making. Instead of big, important goals — like grade-level math achievement — policymakers created a mishmash of state priority areas (many of which can’t be measured) and told districts to include them in their LCAPs. Predictably, most districts paid lip service to these priorities in their LCAPs and then wrote separate strategic plans. At this point, most district leaders probably can’t remember what the state priorities are. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

    Finally, and most importantly, they assumed that all of this would improve outcomes for the most vulnerable students. Here, the evidence is limited, especially given the size of the funding increases. Given the persistently low academic performance of most high-poverty districts and the state’s sizable achievement gaps, today’s elected officials can fairly ask whether our state has seen a commensurate return on these massive education investments.

    It’s no wonder that over the last several years, elements of the previous school finance regime have roared back. Elected officials who didn’t create LCFF and are suspicious of “local control” have created a whole new set of targeted grants like the governor’s community schools grant. Districts are now subject to far more onerous legalistic requirements for their LCAPs, which are intended to show that they’re using their funding for high-need students.

    District leaders have bitterly complained about these shifts. On one level, they are right that the advocates and policymakers focused on the LCAP are just doubling down on a failed strategy. But they haven’t offered any alternative, other than “leave us alone.”

    The danger for them is threefold. Increasing levels of scrutiny and regulation; ever more targeted grants that limit their discretion; and, as the years pass, the belief that local control has failed high-need students, requiring more aggressive state and county oversight. A few years from now, they could end up with the worst aspects of the old finance model and the new one.

    There is another way.

    A decade later, we have a lot of evidence on how to make the formula better. Perhaps a substantial portion of LCFF funding, such as concentration grants (for schools with more than 55% high-needs students) should flow directly to schools based on their poverty level, like Title I funds do. State leaders could establish a few measurable academic and social-emotional priorities that districts would address in strategic plans rather than LCAPs. Instead of a potpourri of grants that limit local discretion or new LCAP compliance requirements, lawmakers could create incentives, such as additional weighted funding for districts willing to create new programs such as language immersion schools. They could even establish financial rewards for districts based on student outcomes.

    There are many possibilities, but for the Local Control Funding Formula to survive over the long term, it must always be able to answer a very basic question: What is it doing to improve the education of California’s highest-need students?    

    •••

    Arun Ramanathan is the former CEO of Pivot Learning and the Education Trust—West. 

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • We must change how we think about career education

    We must change how we think about career education


    Credit: Pexels

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order to develop a Master Plan on Career Education represents a critical step forward in helping Californians adapt to the projected radical transformations in the workforce. This could not have come at a more critical time. According to the World Economic Forum’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2023,” “almost a quarter of jobs (23%) are expected to change in the next five years.”

    I applaud the governor’s goals, which include expanding career education pathways in K-12, ramping up dual-enrollment and work-based learning opportunities, and enhancing connections between secondary/post-secondary education and the business community.

    But, while critical, these goals are insufficient to ensure that every K-12 student, regardless of ZIP code or life circumstance, will be afforded full career and life success opportunities.

    To maximize success, the master plan must also incorporate strategies to dislodge the entrenched, bifurcated mindset that positions K-12 career education as isolated from and inferior to the prevailing K-12 academic curriculum. This can be achieved by implementing policies that mandate the inclusion of curriculum that uses the real-world application of knowledge and concepts found in careers as a context for academic learning in all K-12 grades and subject areas. In educational literature, this is referred to as contextualized teaching and learning.

    Here’s what a career-contextualized learning component could look like:

    An elementary grade math lesson would be enriched by connecting lessons on ratios and percentages to applications in diverse careers. For example:

    • Digital media (image size and resolution; video/animation frame speed; file transfer speed).
    • Architecture/construction technology (material weight to strength ratio, linear and cubic measurements, roof pitch, stair rise to run ratios, construction cost price per square foot)
    • Data analytics (e-commerce: ratio of web page visits to link clicks; pro sports team performance: shots taken to field goals made; climate change: fossil fuel vs. alternative energy usage).

    The master plan’s primary policy goal should be to expand educational equity, thereby promoting more equitable career opportunities. 

    Key strategies to achieve this goal include:

    • Expanding differentiated instruction — tailoring teaching to meet individual needs — to better support students with diverse learning modalities, including English learners and students from low socioeconomic circumstances.
    • Transcending geographic barriers by utilizing virtual technologies to connect classrooms with career professionals from diverse geographic regions.
    • Amplifying student engagement and self-efficacy by expanding student opportunities to envision a “future self” by meeting diverse career professionals through participation in activities such as internships, mentorships and virtual meetings.         
    • Increasing participation in career pathways and dual enrollment programs by fostering an early interest in careers through the integration of curriculum in all K-12 grades and subject areas that utilize real-world career-based application of knowledge and concepts as a context for academic learning.
    • Increasing exposure to opportunities for college and career through strategic engagement with the higher education and business sectors in developing and deploying K-12 contextualized teaching and learning curriculum. 
    • Cultivating skills identified by employers as a high priority through contextualized learning experiences that promote creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking.

    The master plan must include strategies for planning and implementing a pilot study that involves creating, implementing and evaluating K-12 curriculum that utilizes real-world career-based application of knowledge and concepts as a context for academic learning. Collaborative teams with K-12, post-secondary and business community participants must lead this work. The pilot study must involve school test sites from geographically and economically diverse state regions. Insights derived from the pilot study will guide full statewide implementation. 

    For decades, our K-12 education system has been disconnected from the constantly evolving world of work. We are at a critical crossroads when we must advocate for transformational change to empower students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed for future life and career success.

    •••

    Brian F. Donnelly is the executive director of Learning Curved, a California nonprofit focused on creating opportunities for students to discover and explore emerging career paths.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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