Did he point his finger at the President who encouraged an insurrection on January 6, 2021?
No.
Did he blame the loser of the 2020 election who spent four years claiming that the election was rigged and that he didn’t lose?
No.
Did he blame the political party that spent four years asserting not only that the election of 2020 was rigged but that the rightful winner was “crooked” and every member of his family was part of a “crime family”?
No.
Did he blame the President who has openly ignored federal court orders?
No.
Did he blame the President who proposes to abolish due process of law even though it is written into the Constitution?
No.
Did he blame the President who said publicly that he didn’t know whether he is required to support the Constitution?
No.
Chief Justice Roberts is right to be concerned about the shrinkage of civics education, but he is wrong to ignore the reason for that shrinkage: No Child Left Behind made test scores the central goal of education, which diminished everything in the curriculum other than reading and math.
Because so many young people have not received civics education, they are likely to be misled by a charlatan whose actions model contempt for the rule of law and the Constitutuon.
And, worse, it was the Roberts Court that proclaimed that the President while carrying out his duties has absolute immunity and is above the law.
The Supreme Court, in short, overturned the deep-seated principle taught in civics classes that “no man is above the law.”
Mr. Chief Justice, if you want to know who encouraged disrespect for the rule of law, look in the mirror.
The National Education Association analyzed Trump ‘s proposed budget and finds that it contains deep cuts and massive support for privatization by promoting vouchers and charter schools. The proposal mirrors Project 2025 by turning Titl 1 for low-income students and IDEA funding into block grants that can be converted to vouchers. The overall goal is to undermine public schools and cut funding.
FY2026 Budget Request Slashes Education Funding, Shortchanges Students
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President Trump’s FY2026 “skinny” budget request to Congress, released on May 2, cuts non-defense domestic spending by 22.6%. The Department of Education sustains a $12 billion reduction, a cut of approximately 15.3%.
! Since the President’s budget does not list specific funding requests for every federal program, the 46-page document is a “skinny” budget. Congress ultimately has the power of the purse, but the proposal is a clear signal of the White House’s priorities: a massive 24 percent cut to U.S. domestic spending, and, privitazing our nation’s public education system.
The narrative says the budget “maintains full funding for Title I,” but the numbers tell a different story. Title I and 18 unidentified programs are combined to create a single block grant, dubbed the “K-12 Simplified Funding Program,” then that block fund is cut by $4.535 billion cut.
All seven Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs are combined to create a single block grant called the “Special Education Simplified Funding Program.” The approach perpetuates the current shortfall—the federal government now covers 13% of special education costs, far short of the 40% Congress promised when the law was passed.
Programs slated for elimination include English Language Acquisition (Title III) and the Teacher Quality Partnership, which addresses the teacher shortage through deep clinical practice.
The budget shifts costs to states and institutions of higher education to reduce the federal investment in today’s students—our nation’s future leaders and workforce—as much as possible.
Regrouping specific, separate programs into block grants, in theory gives states more flexibility on how the money is spent. In reality, block grants usually lead to less funding and less accountability for our most vulnerable students. As the strings attached to the funding are cut, many states could maneuver block grant funds over to private school voucher programs.
Amidst these cuts, the proposal calls for investing $500 million, an increase of $60 million, to expand the number of charter schools across the country. Charter schools, along with private school vouchers, drain scarce resources for traditional public schools.
Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).
The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.
The National Education Association explains here:
Block Grant Overview
Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.
Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.
Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently.
Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.
Singing the ABC song. Learning the days of the week from a nursery rhyme. Making a finger-painted collage of little handprints.
Arts education has always been center stage in early education because little children are naturally creative, filled with wonder and the burning desire to express themselves. Arts and crafts not only help nurture a child’s natural imagination, they also boost small motor skills, sharpen hand-eye coordination and feed the insatiable need to play.
“Children don’t just play, they learn fundamental skills through play,” said Daniel Mendoza, a Placer County-based visual artist and specialist in early childhood education art practices. “Children are in a creative mindset all the time.”
While this may well be as true for teenagers as it is for toddlers, there is far more time and space allotted for playfulness in the early grades, when the crucial role of play in particular and creativity in general has long been a matter of common sense.
“Really, I’m just a common-sense professor, and somehow it became rogue,” said Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and an expert in the key role of play in learning. “What if we taught children the way we know the brain learns?”
Bringing joy back into the classroom is also what motivates Cindy Hoisington, an early childhood expert who specializes in reaching out to children from historically marginalized communities at the Education Development Center (EDC), a national education nonprofit.
“This is not anything new, knowing that play is so critical to children, whether it’s dramatic play, building play, creative arts play or physical play,” said Hoisington, a STEM expert who taught preschool for decades. “But as soon as they hit kindergarten and first grade, there’s this dichotomy that sets in. Play is something you get to do after you do the learning when, in fact, we know that play is an incredible vehicle for learning.”
Play, some experts suggest, may be the superpower of the young. A growing body of research suggests that play may even be a way to help close achievement gaps. One report, analyzing 26 studies from 18 countries, found that in communities from Rwanda to Ethiopia, children got higher learning boosts in literacy, motor skills and social-emotional development when attending child care centers that use a mix of instruction and free play as opposed to those focused solely on academics.
“Children are so naturally, intuitively ready with their curiosity, their motivation to explore the world and everything in it, to the point where that’s why the twos are so terrible, because you’re constantly chasing after them,” said Hoisington, who helps evaluate digital media for PBS. “Science, for instance, tends to have a bad rap as this dry body of knowledge that we have to learn, but really it’s a process of exploration that is very much integral with play.”
Tapping into that spirit of discovery with hands-on experiences is often best, experts say. Curiosity burns brightest in the early years, so letting kids loose to investigate the world is part of building a rich, play-based learning environment.
“Where young children are free to investigate by observing, touching and acting on the objects in their world,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert in early childhood at Stanford University. “This is how they learn about the world — for example, that some objects float and some sink. Through their own experimentation and observation, they may even arrive at hypotheses about the qualities that differentiate the two.”
From “The Wheels on the Bus” to “Baby Shark,” kiddos love to sing and love to learn, so why not teach through music? Singing the “Old MacDonald had a Farm” song can be educational, experts say, as well as a ritual for community building. Children can take turns deciding on which animal to pick, which builds vocabulary as well as sharing skills.
“Young children learn best by doing,” said Stipek. “Counting objects is better than counting dots on a worksheet because they can move the objects to help them keep track of how many they have counted. Worksheets are not all bad. They can provide opportunities to practice and consolidate skills. But children don’t develop new skills doing worksheets, and they are typically not nearly as engaging and fun.”
Tracing the alphabet in shaving cream or making tin-foil sculptures may seem like basic exercises, but they often teach sophisticated concepts. Playing make-believe games can teach numerous skills at once. Pretend restaurants need someone to write a menu, calculate a bill and greet diners, fostering literacy, numeracy and special-emotional learning all in one game, Hoisington notes.
Songs are a clever way to remember stuff because they make memorization easy and fun for little ones. Melodies and rhymes make the most of our limited working memory to help children embed basic facts into their long-term memory, bolstering depth of cognition.
“I still sing the ABC song in my head sometimes, if I want to know which letter comes before which letter,” admits Hoisington.
What’s often missed in the discussion of the role of play is that older children also need time for creativity and free play, as well as the arts. While there is much talk about the need to engage students, there is little focus on low-hanging fruit like increasing time for arts, sports and recess. Putting too much emphasis on academic skills in isolation undercuts the love of learning, some warn.
“Kids try to buck it, but certainly by first grade we’ve started to ruin them,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “We pound the curiosity right out of kids.”
Mendoza firmly believes teachers should be guides to adventure instead of taskmasters.
“You don’t have to be a dictator,” as he puts it, “you can be a Sherpa.”
So, why doesn’t the role of play get more respect in education? Why do we emphasize test scores over deep learning?
“We got to this place because people are scared,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “They’re feeling like they’re losing control, and they want to make sure their kid is ahead. We push it younger and younger and younger, and as we do that, we’re creating a situation where our kids are anxious wrecks and the parents are anxious wrecks.”
Some experts suggest that children need more time for play and creativity in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Credit: Lillian Mongeau / EdSource
Too few teachers and parents are aware that play helps build the architecture of the growing brain, experts say.
“Play is not frivolous; it enhances brain structure and function and promotes executive function (i.e., the process of learning, rather than the content), which allow us to pursue goals and ignore distractions,” as an American Academy of Pediatrics report put it. “When play and safe, stable, nurturing relationships are missing in a child’s life, toxic stress can disrupt the development of executive function and the learning of prosocial behavior; in the presence of childhood adversity, play becomes even more important.”
Some experts fear that the laser focus on falling test scores in recent years has led to a decrease in playful learning. They suggest that children need more time for play in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Amid the crisis of chronic absenteeism, engaging students on a compelling level may be more vital than ever.
Creativity is the secret formula, experts say, in a world where machines will always compute faster than humans. Drill and kill won’t help children master high-level intellectual inquiry and conceptual analysis.
“You have to ask yourself, what’s it going to take to outsmart the robots?” as Hirsh-Pasek put it. “We need kids who don’t just memorize and take tests well, which AI will do better than our kids ever will. We need kids to be explorers and problem solvers.”
For 30 years, California has experimented with a school choice program that let parents enroll their children in nearby districts that opened up seats for outsiders.Now the little-known District of Choice program, which the Legislature has renewed seven times, will become permanent through the passage of Senate Bill 897, authored by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, if the governor signs the bill.
Only about 10,000 — about 0.2% — of the state’s students annually have taken advantage of the program. Most attend a half-dozen, primarily small districts in Southern California.
Districts of choice must be open to all who apply, including students with disabilities, who may be more expensive to serve. To prevent wealthier, primarily white families from exiting their home districts, SB 897 adds some stipulations to existing restrictions to prevent racial disparities and financial impacts. After accommodating siblings of transferees, the next priorities will be foster, homeless and low-income children. Up to 1% of students in districts with more than 50,000 students and a maximum 10% of students in districts with fewer than 50,000 will be able to transfer annually. Districts with a negative or qualified financial status can limit the number of students who can leave under the program.
Walnut Valley Unified, a 14,000-student district in the San Gabriel Valley, has been the most active proponent, with 2,774 students –30% of the total –transferring there in 2023-24, likely drawn to its Chinese immersion schools and emphasis on the arts. Pomona Unified, in opposing the bill, argued it lost wealthier families in Diamond Bar, which borders both districts, to the program.
The California Department of Education has not promoted the program, and many neighboring districts appear to have taken a don’t-poach-on-me, I-won’t-tread-on-you approach to interdistrict transfers.
But in an era of declining enrollment, the district of choice program is an option to shore up finances and fill up seats. It’s an open question whether districts will seize the opportunity.
Courtesy of California State University, Bakersfield
Vernon B. Harper Jr. is scratching the word “interim” from his nameplate at California State University, Bakersfield.
Harper, who has served as the university’s interim president since the end of 2023, was named CSUB’s permanent president on Wednesday, the second day of a Cal State board of trustees meeting dominated by discussions about the financial pressures facing the university system. The system is projecting a $400 million to $800 million budget gap in 2025-26 as state leaders signal their intention to reduce funding for CSU.
CSU Bakersfield has been able to prevent students from feeling the effects of a reduced budget, Harper said, buoyed by growing enrollment this school year. His focus is on making what he calls a “pivot towards the community” — expanding programs to boost the number of Kern County high school graduates and community college transfer students who enroll at CSUB. The Central Valley is growing rapidly but has lower college attainment than the rest of the state.
Harper envisions the university taking a more active role alongside local K-12 schools to increase the number of students who meet A-G requirements, the coursework that makes students eligible to start college at a Cal State or University of California campus. Only 36% of Kern County high school graduates completed such coursework in the 2022-23 school year, according tostate education data, compared with 52% of high school graduates statewide.
“That’s the real transition that the institution is making. It is to accept those problems as our own,” Harper said. “We’re partnering with our K-12 providers and making sure that we’re doing absolutely everything we can to raise that statistic. We’re not just going to sit back passively and watch our community go in a direction that we don’t want it to go.”
One example of the work Harper hopes to get done: CSUB’s teacher education program is forming a task force with the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office and the Kern High School Districtin a bid to increase the number of students who are A-G qualified, he said.
The campus is also experimenting with ways to get local students thinking about college even before they leave middle school. It recently started a pilot program with four middle schools and four high schools in which students as young as 12 will receive notices that they are guaranteed admission to CSUB so long as they meet A-Grequirements.
“We’ve seen that with young people, especially in under-resourced populations, their vision is truncated by their circumstance,” Harper said. “Whatever we can do, we have a responsibility to do, to extend that vision as far as it can go.”
The past decade has seen rising graduation rates at CSUB. Among first-time, full-time freshmen who entered Cal State Bakersfield in 2017, 49% graduated in six years, an almost 10 percentage-point increase from 2007. But the school has not caught up to some of its Cal State peers. Systemwide, the six-year graduation rate for the same group of students in the fall 2017 cohort was roughly 62%.
Harper said that the intervention that seems to have the most impact on improving graduation rates is pairing students with an academic adviser who works with them throughout their time at CSUB, guiding them through unforeseen challenges, like switching into a course that fits the student’s work schedule.
“As much as we can invest in that activity, the more positive outcomes that we (see),” he said.
The university is also experiencing some of the same longstanding graduation equity gaps that exist across California higher education. The six-year graduation rate among Black students who entered CSUB as freshmen in the fall 2017 cohort was 40%, lagging Asian, Latino and white students.
Harper has backed several CSUB initiatives to attract and retain Black students. Harper said that community college students at Bakersfield College who participate in the Umoja program, which includes courses on African American culture as well as mentorship and academic counseling, will find they can continue receiving similar support now that CSUB has its own Umoja program for transfers. The campus plans to open a Black Students Success Center in the spring and has already hired a group of faculty members whose work is focused on minoritized communities, Harper said.
Harper’s tenure as CSUB’s permanent president begins at a moment when the California State University system is raising financial alarm bells.
Cal State leaders are anticipating that a $164 million increase in revenue from tuition hikes will not be enough to alleviate other stresses on its budget. The system expects that state general fund revenue will drop nearly $400 million, according to a September budget presentation, and that $250 million in compact funding will be delayed. The university system also faces rising projected costs, including for basics it can’t avoid like increased health care premiums and utilities expenses.
Speaking at a Sep. 24 meeting, trustee DiegoArambula said the university system has “almost been too effective at making these cuts year over year over year” without explaining to legislators the impact those budget reductions are already having on students.
“We are doing everything we can to make them as far away from students, but a hiring freeze is a hiring freeze, and that does impact students if we’re not bringing someone into a role that we know is important,” Arambula said. “It’s impacting our staff, who are taking on more to try and still meet the needs of the students who are here.”
CSUB officials last spring said they planned to cut the school’s 2024-25 net operating budget by about 7%, citing a decline in enrollment and increased salary and benefits costs. The school had less than a month of funding in its rainy day fund in 2022-23, slightly less than the net operating budget across the CSU system at that point.
But Harper said enrollment this year is up between 4% and 5%, driving tuition growth that is alleviating some budget pressure. The campus also has made temporary cuts to areas that aren’t student-facing, he said, such as professional development.
“We’ve been able to really, really shield any negative effects on students,” Harper said.
Harper succeeds Lynnette Zelezny as president. He was previously Cal State Bakersfield’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. He will receive a salary of $429,981 and a $50,000 housing allowance.
Harper was first hired at CSUB in 2016. Prior to his arrival at Cal State Bakersfield, he worked at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Wilkes University of Pennsylvania and the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Pennsylvania State University, a master’s degree in rhetoric from West Chester University and a doctorate in human communication from Howard University. He served eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Dr. Betty Rosa has a long career in education as a teacher, principal, District Supervisor, Chair of the New State Regents and now the New York Commissioner of Education, selected by the Regents. She believes strongly that all schools should meet state standards, including the politically powerful yeshivas run by ultra-Orthodox Jews. They are politically powerful because they vote as a bloc. Presently they are loyal to Trump because of his commitment to giving taxpayer dollars to religious schools. At the state level, the yeshivas want to be free of the state requirement that they teach their students in English.
The Hasidic community was eager to persuade legislators to lower the standards for their schools. The State Education Department demanded that they comply with state law and provide a “substantially equivalent” education to their students. They prefer to teach in Hebrew or Yiddish or both. Yesterday the New York Times reported that Hochul was going along with the Hasidim. Terrible! She wants to run again, and she wants their support in 2026.
State Commissioner of Education Dr. Betty Rosa wrote the following letter to Governor Hochul:
Governor Hochul – you and legislative leaders have sold out children attending private schools in a most cynical manner- to curry favor with religious sects for purely political reasons.
The deficiencies in these schools are well documented by the State Education Department and in the media – most notably the New York Times. I know you are well aware of those findings.
As a former superintendent of schools and college president I encountered the deficiencies in yeshiva education first hand as we sought to help orthodox students achieve college degrees following “education” at a variety of yeshivas and seminaries. The yeshiva graduates were often illiterate, and could not demonstrate basic knowledge and skills let alone do college level studies. How could you allow this to continue?
Your failure to protect these children demonstrates lack of leadership and unwillingness to defend the basic rights of children to standards based educational opportunities that prepare them for life.
And then you have the audacity to pretend what you’ve done is just another option when it is a sham that will allow educational neglect to continue.
I have a long history of public service and educational leadership that put the interests of students first.
As a lifelong activist Democrat I am disgusted that you would not demonstrate principled leadership to stop this travesty.
Your attempt to appease the religious leaders who threaten your electoral success will almost certainly fail – and in the process you have alienated a significant number of us who would otherwise have voted for you once again.
In California and across the country, English learners are too frequently an afterthought.
Though they are one of the largest student groups — California has more than 1 million students who are learning English as a second language, and that number is growing — their academic performance has barely budged over the last two decades. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 4% of English learners are proficient in eighth grade math, compared with 29% of non-English learners. Furthermore, NAEP reading scores revealed that only 10% of fourth grade English learners are proficient in reading, compared to 37% of non-English learners in the same grade.
There are many reasons for this. But one of the most important is also one of the most fundamental: The textbooks and other instructional materials used in classrooms every day are typically not written with English learners in mind. While these textbooks may be rigorous and aligned with state standards, they lack the cultural relevance and language support necessary for students who are learning English. Teachers know this to be true. A survey found that 82% of teachers believe their current materials either somewhat or not at all reflect the needed academic rigor for English learners.
Fortunately, California has an opportunity to start making this right. Next year, our State Board of Education will release its first math adoption list of state-approved curricula since 2014 — recommending math instructional materials that state education leaders believe align with California’s revised math framework. While some California districts have already started or completed their selection process, many districts in the state will soon choose a new math curriculum from that list.
There is a common misconception that mathematical concepts transcend linguistic differences, so the needs of English learners shouldn’t be a concern. However, the reality is that language is critical for math instruction — and so math instruction materials that incorporate language support can help all learners. If the state recommends materials that center on the needs of English learners — and districts ultimately purchase and adopt them — we can make significant progress toward making our math curriculum more accessible for all students.
Curriculum adoption may feel technical and esoteric, but it is essential to promote equity — especially for English learners. High-quality instructional materials serve as a “floor” for instruction, providing teachers with the materials they need to connect with every student in their classroom.
Unfortunately, our classrooms — especially those serving English learners — too often fail to reach that floor. A recent report from the Center for Education Market Dynamics revealed that California districts with greater percentages of English learners are the least likely to have adopted a new math curriculum. Many of those districts are waiting for the state adoption list before moving forward. This means that the adoption — and the curricula ultimately selected by districts — will have a dramatic effect on the academic experience of English learners, in particular.
How can we get this process right? While California provides a list of state-approved curricula, it does not review instructional materials for specific populations, including English learners. This means districts and counties must figure out which math curriculum is most supportive of English learners. State leaders should provide guidance and resources to county offices of education so that districts are well positioned to run their own adoption processes. To support these efforts, California created math criteria that feature guides for how curriculum should support language and English learners. Districts should then base their curriculum selection on clear, research-based criteria focused on meeting the needs of all learners.
Many districts in California and across the country are facing fiscal challenges due to the expiration of federal Covid-relief (ESSER) funding, declining student enrollment and other factors. This is likely to reduce the resources districts can target to the needs of English learners and other marginalized groups.
But selection and adoption of instructional materials is likely already in district budgets — and so, by picking an inclusive curriculum, district leaders can make significant headway on equity without significant additional investment. After all, it will always be more resource-intensive and less effective to supplement or modify curriculum after the fact.
Additionally, teachers currently spend their own money on supplemental materials to fill gaps in existing curricula, a trend that is both unsustainable and inequitable. By adopting inclusive materials and ensuring teachers are supported in implementing those materials, districts will reduce these additional costs and provide a more cohesive and effective learning experience for all students.
We are proud to say that California’s math vision is strong and there are many possibilities in terms of changing the way instruction happens in the classroom. It’s time to ensure that districts act wisely in their curriculum adoption.
School districts with high English learner populations need to come together and demand better options for our students. We have a chance to set the tone for the rest of the nation in developing and adopting instructional materials that truly support all students.
It is time to invest in adopting educational resources that reflect our state’s — and our country’s — wonderfully diverse student population.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
A sign in support of public school is seen outside a home next to Sutro Elementary School in San Francisco on Oct. 9, 2024. The school is among the 11 schools previously proposed for closure within San Francisco Unified School District amid decline in enrollment and budgetary woes.
Credit: Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP
San Francisco must do everything it can to avert a state takeover of its schools.
That’s the stark message brought by Carl A. Cohn, the only outside educator to be brought in to help the team of city administrators set up by Mayor London Breed to help the school district overcome multiple crises, including a looming budget shortage, declining enrollment, and the departure of its superintendent, the second in two years.
“I remain a huge fan of local control,” said Cohn, a revered figure in education circles in California and nationally. “I fundamentally believe that if historically underserved students are going to be rescued, it is going to be by locals, not by state government or higher levels of authority.”
Carl A. Cohn
The challenges facing the 48,000-student district are being experienced to some degree by many others around the state. Just across the San Francisco Bay, Oakland Unified and West Contra Costa Unified, which includes Richmond, are grappling with comparable challenges.
San Francisco’s, however, seem especially acute.
“I think the loss of federal pandemic relief funds, coupled with declining enrollments will make things difficult for most districts, but San Francisco is probably ahead of the curve on this,” he said.
There’s little that Cohn, who projects calm and reassurance but can also be disarmingly direct, has not seen in his 50 years in an array of roles in public education.
He was superintendent of the San Diego and Long Beach school districts, the second- and third-largest in California after Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD). His 10-year tenure at Long Beach was especially noteworthy for fostering academic excellence and accountability, resulting in the district winning the prestigious Broad Prize For Urban Education.
He was appointed to the State Board of Education by then Gov. Jerry Brown, who later recruited him to lead a new state agency, the California Collaborative for Education Excellence.
He has been brought in to deal with various trouble spots over the years. He co-chaired a commission of the National Academy of Sciences to look into whether District of Columbia schools had exaggerated their academic results under the leadership of Michelle Rhee, then arguably the best-known, and most controversial, school superintendent in the nation.
He was the court-appointed monitor overseeing a consent decree to improve special education in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Currently, he is co-leading an initiative with Harvard professor Jennifer Cheatham to prepare school superintendents to cope with the political polarization roiling school districts across the country.
He has also been a mentor to generations of school superintendents, and trained many of them as a professor at Claremont Graduate University, and at the University of Southern California before that.
Cohn has never had to close schools himself and says that San Francisco must do everything it can to find alternatives to doing so. That is similar to a mindset Breed appears also to have embraced, and was a major reason behind the resignation of Superintendent Matt Wayne last week.
For now, at least, school closure plans are on hold. “The challenge with closing schools from a symbolic point of view is that it can be seen as the beginning of the death of a community,” Cohn says.
“There are multiple ways to cut a school district budget,” he says. “And if you have to, there are ways to do it so it is not a huge negative.”
He recalls being sent to Inglewood Unified a dozen years ago by then-State Board President Michael Kirst to take stock of the deep financial hole the Southern California district was in.
He found a lackadaisical attitude among school officials about the prospect of a state administrator with the power to overrule local decisionmaking. “They seemed to think the takeover wasn’t such a big deal, that after the bailout they would get their authority back,” he says. “And here we are, 12 years later, with the district nowhere near having an elected school board with any authority.”
The district is still overseen by an administrator appointed by the county.
Cohn has yet to meet Breed, but two weeks ago he came from Palm Springs, where he is based, to meet with the mayor’s School Stabilization Team made up of top San Francisco officials, co-led by Maria Su, the longtime head of the city’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. In an unexpected move last week, the school board appointed Su to be the new superintendent, at least until June 2026.
He points out that, unlike other large urban districts in California, the city of San Francisco commendably contributes funding to its schools, which means it has a more direct stake in their functioning.
What is essential is strict oversight over how the district spends its money, he says. He recalls the first day he was given a tour of the administration offices at Long Beach Unified as a 31-year-old educator in the district.
On the second floor was a tiny office with a sign on the door reading “Position Control” right next to the budget office. He was told it was the most powerful office in the district — one that determined what staff could be hired at a school. “Even if you were the superintendent you could not get a position filled unless Position Control said it was in the current budget.”
In addition, each year the district’s research office issued what was called a “quota bulletin,” which decreed how many employees a school qualified for based on its enrollment. Its edicts, he says, were “treated as a sacred document that had been handed down from Mt. Sinai.”
A similar parsimonious ethos is in place in parochial schools. “What is notable about these schools is that they are not over resourced,” said Cohn, who advises the California Catholic Conference on its schools. “You won’t find an assistant principal, a counselor, a reading specialist unless the school has the enrollment to support it.”
“My impression is that these types of controls were not present in the San Francisco school system,” he says. “It’s important for spending to be based on actual enrollment and not on wishful spending.”
He says it would be important to bring all key parties together — the mayor’s stabilization team, incoming Superintendent Su and her deputy, board representatives, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a state-sponsored oversight agency — and put them all in the same room to have a “candid conversation.”
“Getting a handle on what exactly they need to do to retain local control seems like a real important value,” he said.
One thing schools can have no impact on is declining birthrates, Cohn points out. So other strategies to attract and retain students will be needed.
He notes that San Francisco has many private, parochial and charter groups — more than most communities. He suggests conducting focus groups with people who are opting out of more traditional public schools to find out more precisely “what it is that those schools are offering that San Francisco isn’t.”
That could suggest strategies that San Francisco could offer — from more child care to innovative magnet schools — to support families and to encourage them to enroll their children in district schools.
San Francisco schools are especially vulnerable to being taken over by the state. In recent years, when the state bails out a district financially, authority to appoint an administrator has been delegated to the county offices of education. But because San Francisco is both a city and a county, it would be subject to, in Cohn’s words,”an old-fashioned state administrator.”
With Mayor Breed up for reelection in two weeks, and with four of seven school board seats also on the ballot, the district faces many unknowns.
Regardless of what happens on Election Day, Cohn says a fundamental issue the district has to address is “what kinds of resources a school gets based on its enrollment so that future spending doesn’t spiral out of control because someone thinks ‘I need this’ or “I need that.’”
School officials said they are currently working on dealing with the wave of new students coming from the Villages of Patterson development under construction. School officials and community members and school officials worry that the schools will not be able to handle another large-scale wave of development without a mitigation agreement.
Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource
Education and housing are often inextricably linked, but policy decisions made in the two sectors are generally siloed, at times shaped and passed without considering how a housing policy might impact education and vice versa.
Megan Gallagher’s research bridges the two, focusing on housing and educational collaborations that support students’ academic outcomes. Some of her latest work as a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization focused on public policy, provides school officials and housing developers with ideas on how to partner together to desegregate schools by desegregating neighborhoods.
Gallagher has also co-authored a report that compiled a list of key housing characteristics that impact children’s educational outcomes:
Housing quality
Housing affordability
Housing stability
Neighborhood quality
Housing that builds wealth
In this Q&A, Gallagher details why those housing characteristics matter in a child’s education and the collaborations that can help children have a fair chance at achieving academic success. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
How does housing policy impact children’s educational outcomes? It’s really important when we try to understand the influence that housing has on kids’ educational outcomes, that (we look at) its unique contribution.
You could have families with the same income levels, (but) one is in a high-quality house and one is in a low-quality house. A low-quality house can influence a child’s health, ability to sleep, and feeling safe. And so, you could have a very different outcome for that child if they are in a lower-quality home.
You have outlined five characteristics of housing that have an impact on children’s educational outcomes. Why are those five characteristics so important? Those five characteristics have been studied a decent amount in housing policy literature. I didn’t conduct all the original research that went into these findings, I just sort of pulled it all together into one place. It is possible that there are aspects of housing that have not been measured historically that could also have an influence on education.
We know that low-quality housing — housing that has mold or electrical issues — is associated with lower kindergarten readiness scores. That causal relationship has been established. The relationship between spending too much on rent is connected to increased behavioral problems. Housing instability, and I would really put homelessness and housing insecurity into the housing instability bucket, really affects school stability and then has an effect on math and reading scores. We know that successful homeownership, so homeownership that allows families to build equity, increases the likelihood of attending college. We also know that neighborhood context, like violence, can disrupt academic progress and prevent children from succeeding in school.
So there is evidence that connects each one of these housing conditions to a variety of aspects of kids’ well-being and educational outcomes.
One of the things that we have not really done a very good job on is which of these aspects of housing matter the most or have the most influence. If we have a million dollars, what would we want to put that million dollars on to improve educational outcomes? I don’t think we have enough evidence right now to know exactly what would be the right pathway for that.
Do all five characteristics need to be in place for children to have the best possible educational outcomes? There’s not enough data right now for us to understand which of the five need to be in place or what the likelihood of succeeding is if you have one or two or three or four of them in place.
This is an area where we continue to need more understanding, more evidence, but I don’t think that we can wait to make policy decisions until we have all of that evidence.
Is the lack of sufficient research one of the outcomes of the disconnect between housing and education policy? Absolutely. I think the sectors are so siloed, many of the giant data collection investments that have happened at HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) or at the U.S. Department of Education have not had data elements that capture aspects of the other sector.
When we are looking at housing data in housing policy, there hasn’t been really detailed data collected about the children in the family — which schools they attend and how they’re doing — which could potentially allow data to be connected, likewise in the education world.
We run into lots of challenges in research with privacy where just because you can connect data, should you? Is that what program participants have agreed to when they’ve decided to enroll their children in public school or when they’ve decided to enroll in a housing subsidy program? In a lot of cases, the answer is no.
Some of the best data is really connected at the local level, where you have local policymakers that are working with local agencies that have asked permission and are connecting data to kind of fine-tune programs on the ground.
How do we reach a point where we have the information necessary to ensure academic success for all children? It has to happen at multiple levels. The federal government needs to encourage the Department of Ed and HUD to collaborate and to really support or incentivize collaboration in their discretionary grant programs. I really see it as the feds have an opportunity to lead and really support this kind of work.
But I also think that there are so many local organizations that are leading. I think a lot of the case study work that I have done can help to illustrate how flexibility and collaboration can really translate into a set of programs or practices that support kids’ education and stable, high-quality housing.
I know that philanthropy is really supporting a lot of exploration around sector alignment.
I feel really hopeful about this sort of broader vision for how we create policy that thinks about the way that multiple systems can influence how well a child is doing. But I also think that it’s not like there’s just all of this housing sitting there and kids are not living in it. A big part of this work is making sure that there continues to be a housing production pipeline that is developing housing to ensure that there’s enough housing at various price points so that everybody has the opportunity to live where they’d like to live.
