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  • Eliminating programs that improve higher education access is a huge mistake

    Eliminating programs that improve higher education access is a huge mistake


    Mayra Puente speaks at a legislative briefing on Capitol Hill on the TRIO programs in May 2025.

    Courtesy: Mayra Puente

    President Donald Trump’s “skinny budget” proposal aims to eliminate a group of eight federally funded programs known as TRIO that support higher education access and success for individuals from “disadvantaged backgrounds.” 

    Eliminating these programs would be a huge mistake. 

    How was I, a daughter of migrant farmworkers whose parents have limited formal education and live in poverty, able to beat the odds and land a faculty position at a selective university in the U.S.? TRIO.

    A recent study investigated whether becoming a professor was driven by socioeconomic status. The researchers surveyed 7,218 tenure-track faculty members at research-intensive institutions in the U.S. across eight academic disciplines between 2017 and 2020. They found that nearly one-quarter of the faculty had a parent with a Ph.D., and over half had a parent with a graduate degree. They also found that white professors were more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. compared to Black and Latino faculty. Only 1% of Latina women have a Ph.D. 

    As an undergraduate student at UCLA, I participated in the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, one of the federal TRIO programs the Trump administration seeks to cut. Research demonstrates that the McNair Scholars Program is highly effective. Students who participated in the program were 78% more likely to enroll in graduate school than other low-income students. 

    Could I have applied to graduate school, obtained a Ph.D., and landed a faculty role without the McNair Scholars Program? Maybe. But the reality is that the majority of low-income, first-generation Latino college students like myself are unaware of the hidden curriculum of academia. Many of us are unable to rely on our parents for academic and career guidance, and we often lack access to mentors who can help us navigate the graduate school process.

    The McNair Scholars Program introduced me to graduate school and the pursuit of a Ph.D. and a career in educational research as a possibility, and provided mentoring on creating and conducting empirical research studies, research, writing and conference presenting experiences, tutoring for graduate school tests, fee waivers for graduate school applications, feedback on graduate school applications, understanding graduate school and funding offers, a network of professional support at the university and beyond.

    Additionally, as a researcher of higher education access and equity for first-generation rural Latino students from migrant farmworkers and low-income backgrounds, I have examined the effectiveness of other TRIO programs, like Upward Bound and Talent Search, in exposing and preparing students for college. In one qualitative research study on California’s Central Coast, a student shared, “Sometimes, I couldn’t imagine being a student from a different tiny, small town where I just didn’t have a college and career center, EAOP (Early Academic Outreach Program), and Upward Bound to help me.”

    Other research finds that Upward Bound students are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than other groups. The Council for Opportunity in Education also reports high success rates for students participating in other TRIO programs, including Student Support Services, Talent Search, Veterans Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC), and the McNair Scholars Program.

    How can something that is empirically proven to be effective be deemed “wasteful”?

    The elimination of TRIO programs threatens knowledge production, innovation, and the education of current and future generations of students, who are becoming increasingly diverse and would greatly benefit from the continued existence of TRIO programs.

    TRIO programs also provide services to low-income students, first-generation college students, students with disabilities, and military veterans. Higher education access, made possible through TRIO, is a means of achieving economic and social mobility, which benefits local communities, regions, and the nation as a whole. More importantly, the creation and continued support of TRIO programs is a testament to this country’s commitment to equal educational opportunity and justice for all. 

    Congress must reject the elimination of TRIO programs if it hopes to see a highly educated and diverse professional workforce in this country. TRIO alumni, estimated to be over 6 million by the Council for Opportunity in Education, should sign the collective TRIO alumni letter and call or write to their respective House of Representatives and Senate offices to urge them to protect and fully fund TRIO programs in the 2026 budget. TRIO alumni and others can share their TRIO success stories on social media using the hashtags #ProtectTRIO and #TRIOWorks.

    The narratives and empirical evidence of the effectiveness of TRIO programs are overwhelming. My path to the professoriate is mainly due to federally funded TRIO programs.

    •••

    Mayra Puente is a rural Latina, assistant professor of higher education at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project.

    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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  • California moves a step closer to eliminating one of the state’s last teacher assessments

    California moves a step closer to eliminating one of the state’s last teacher assessments


    Legislation that would remove one of the last tests teachers are required to take to earn a credential in California passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously Wednesday with little opposition.

    Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, will now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If ultimately approved by the Legislature, it will do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA. 

    The assessment requires that teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice. 

    Eliminating the assessment would encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, author of the bill and chairman of the Senate Education Committee at Wednesday’s hearing.

    “Despite its well-intentioned purpose, the demands associated with preparing for the TPA have actually had the perverse impact of reducing the overall quality of teacher preparation by undermining the capacity of teacher candidates to focus on what’s most important, which is their clinical practice,” Newman said.

    He said the performance assessments duplicate other requirements teachers must fulfill to earn a credential, including proving subject-matter competency, taking teacher preparation courses, being assessed for reading instruction proficiency and completing 600 hours of clinical experience.

    Brian Rivas, senior director at The Education Trust‒West, a nonprofit education research and advocacy organization, spoke in opposition to the legislation.

    “We concluded when we reviewed the research that teaching performance assessments are the best available measure of teacher preparedness and whether or not a candidate is prepared to enter a classroom,” Rivas said. 

    The test offers a common standard to measure how well credentialing programs are preparing teacher candidates and could mean fewer prepared teachers in schools serving low-income students, which are already disproportionately taught by novice teachers, he said.

    California moved away from standardized testing for teacher candidates in recent years as the teacher shortage worsened.

    In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.

    Around the same time, the state also has joined a national effort to change how reading is taught in schools, focusing on a method that teaches students to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics. 

    Last summer, Senate Bill 488 passed the state Legislature. The bill replaced the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, also known as RICA, with a literacy performance assessment based on a new set of literacy standards and Teaching Performance Expectations centered on phonics and other foundational reading skills.  The assessment was scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. The CTA supported the bill.

    Union leaders later said that a survey of its membership persuaded them to change course and to sponsor SB 1263, which would repeal the performance assessment.

    Senate Bill 1263 doesn’t remove the requirement that candidates for a preliminary, multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a test that evaluates their ability to teach reading, meaning the passage of SB 1263 could result in the RICA remaining beyond the 2025 date when it was scheduled to be abandoned.

    The RICA has been a major hurdle for teacher candidates for years. About a third of all the teacher candidates who take the test fail the first time, according to state data collected between 2012 and 2017. Critics also have said that the test is outdated, racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.

     The California Teachers Association also opposed Assembly Bill 2222, which would have required California teachers to use “science of reading” instruction in their classrooms. Last week the bill died without a hearing.

    CTA representative Mandy Redfern spoke in support of Senate Bill 1263 Wednesday, calling the performance assessment a barrier to a diverse teacher workforce.

    “Over the past 20 years, the TPA, or the teacher performance assessment, has evolved into a high-stakes, time-consuming costly barrier for aspiring teachers,” Redfern said. 

    “The current iteration of the TPA has been proven to be ineffective at preparing educators for the realities of the classroom,” she said. “The CTC’s data shows that TPAs disproportionately harm aspiring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) educators.”

    The most recent passing rates on the assessment for people of color are not significantly different from others who took the test, said Mary Vixie Sandy, Commission on Teacher Credentialing executive director, at the hearing. For example, Black teacher candidates had a 75% first-time pass rate and a 95% ultimate pass rate, which is right within the norm, on average with the whole population of teachers who took the assessment, Sandy said.

    The bill would also do away with oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.





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