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  • California educators protest Trump’s proposed cuts for English learners

    California educators protest Trump’s proposed cuts for English learners


    Students at Rudsdale Continuation High School in Oakland, California.

    Credit: Anne Wernikoff for Edsource

    Magaly Lavadenz was excited about what she felt could be a game-changer for students who are learning English as a second language.

    The Center for Equity for English Learners (CEEL) at Loyola Marymount University, which Lavadenz directs, had just won a grant in October 2024 for $5.7 million from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Comprehensive Center on English Learners and Multilingualism.

    The center would provide resources, training and materials to state education agencies and tribal education agencies so they could, in turn, help districts provide the best support to English learners.

    “There was so much excitement about this work,” Lavadenz said. 

    Then, four months later, in February, Lavadenz received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education terminating the grant and claiming that it violated President Donald Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. 

    It was a chilling foreshadowing of what would come.

    The Trump administration later cut the vast majority of the staff of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), which is charged with administering federal funding for English learners, providing resources and training to schools, and making sure states provide the instruction and services they are required to provide to English learners.

    Then, in Trump’s budget request released May 2, he proposed eliminating the federal funding earmarked for English learners and immigrant students under Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law.

    “To end overreach from Washington and restore the rightful role of State oversight in education, the Budget proposes to eliminate the misnamed English Language Acquisition program which actually deemphasizes English primacy by funding NGOs and States to encourage bilingualism,” reads the budget proposal. “The historically low reading scores for all students mean States and communities need to unite—not divide—classrooms using evidence-based literacy instruction materials to improve outcomes for all students.”

    Researchers, advocates, and school district administrators say the termination of grants and proposed cuts to funding for schools are misinformed and violate federal law.

    “There are civil rights laws that protect English learners,” Lavadenz said. “We believe that the U.S. Department of Education is in violation of those.”

    Both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 require public schools to ensure that English learners can participate fully in school at the same level as their English-speaking peers. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Lau v. Nichols case in 1974 that schools must provide additional instruction to students who do not speak English fluently to make sure they can understand the content of their classes. 

    Education leaders in California said the cuts to Title III would be devastating. Title III funds are sent to state education agencies, like the California Department of Education, to distribute to schools based on the number of immigrant and English learner students they have. They are to be used to help students understand academic content in their classes and to help them learn English.

    Debra Duardo, the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools, said she was “deeply concerned” by the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate Title III. In the 2023-24 school year, schools in L.A. County received approximately $30 million in Title III funding for English learners, she said, which was used for tutoring, support staff, instructional coaching, and high-quality supplemental materials. In addition, they received $2.5 million for immigrant students, which were used to help support family literacy and outreach, school personnel, tutorials, mentoring, and academic and career counseling.

    “This decision would have devastating impacts on Los Angeles County schools, where we serve one of the nation’s largest populations of English learners and children from migrant families,” Duardo said. 

    Lavadenz said if the funds are cut, districts may stop providing services to English learners, or they may remove funding from other areas to keep providing services.

    “There’s going to be potential not just for the elimination of services, but we’re going to be pitting student groups against each other,” Lavadenz said.

    Nicole Knight, executive director of English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement at Oakland Unified School District, agreed.

    “Ultimately, cutting support for English learners jeopardizes the quality of education for all students, as districts would be forced to divert resources from other critical priorities in order to meet their legal obligations to provide language services,” Knight said.

    In addition, a loss of funds would likely mean no federal monitoring, collection of data on English learners, or oversight to make sure states or school districts are actually providing the services they are required to under the law.

    “I am devastated to see that work dismantled at the federal level,” said Knight. “It feels like years of progress and good work are being erased.”

    Efraín Tovar, who teaches recent immigrant students at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma Unified School District in the Central Valley and is also the founder of the California Newcomer Network, said his district has used Title III funds to buy supplemental curriculum and computer software for newcomer students. He said some districts have used the funds to create innovative Saturday programs for recent immigrant students to help them learn.

    “Here in Selma, those funds have helped me directly impact my students’ educational journey,” Tovar said. Every single dollar in public education helps. If those funds are not given by the federal government, the question we have at the local level is, will the state then make it a priority to fund those special programs?”

    Many California leaders disagreed with the administration’s arguments that bilingual education or encouraging bilingualism makes students less likely to speak English. 

    “Decades of research clearly support dual-language and multilingual programs as the most effective models for helping students acquire English and achieve long-term academic success,” Knight said. “I can only hold on to hope that our lawmakers will attend to the evidence, the research, and their conscience to make the right decision for our young people.”

    Lavadenz is not convinced, however, that Congress will end up cutting all that funding, especially given that some Republican states like Texas have a long history of encouraging, or even requiring, bilingual education for English learners.

    “This is an evolving story,” she said. “The states that have a lot more to lose are not necessarily progressive states like California.”





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  • Legislative Analyst’s Office criticizes Newsom’s education budget for risky funding practices

    Legislative Analyst’s Office criticizes Newsom’s education budget for risky funding practices


    Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, right, listens as Ken Kapphahn of the Legislative Analyst’s Office critiques Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed education budget at a hearing on May 22.

    Credit: State Senate Media Archive

    Top Takeaways
    • A drop in project state revenue projections from January to May, while avoiding cuts, would compound a dilemma.
    • Newsom also would increase funding for early literacy and after-school programs.
    • Key legislators share concern about draining the rainy day fund and deferring payments.

    The Legislative Analyst’s Office is criticizing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spending plan for next year for schools and community colleges. It says the May revision of the 2025-26 state budget would create new debt, rely on one-time funding to pay for ongoing operations, and drain the education rainy day fund to pay for new programs and enlarge existing ones.

    The Legislature should reject the financially unsound practices, which would “put the state and districts behind the eight ball” if state revenues fall short of projections, Ken Kapphahn, senior fiscal and policy analyst for the LAO, told the Legislature’s budget committees on May 22. 

    The LAO provides the Legislature with nonpartisan analysis and advice on fiscal and policy issues.

    In his budget for 2025-26, Newsom would protect TK-12 and community colleges from a $4.4 billion drop in projected state revenue between his January and revised May budgets and add $2 billion in spending to the administration’s priorities, which include:

    • Qualifying more students for coverage of summer and after-school learning through the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program ($526 million).
    • Hiring more math and literacy coaches and training teachers in literacy instruction ($745 million). The money would reflect legislation that the Legislature is expected to pass requiring textbooks and instruction practices to incorporate phonics and foundational skills.
    • Reducing the student-to-staff ratio in transitional kindergarten from 12 to 1 to 10 to 1 ($517 million).
    • Paying stipends for student teachers ($100 million).

    The biggest budget challenge is that the projected Proposition 98 guarantee for 2025-26 — the minimum portion of the state’s General Fund that must be spent on TK-12 and community colleges — fell $4.4 billion — from $118.9 billion in the initial budget in January to $114.5 billion in May — because of revised revenue forecasts for California that project a drop in stock market earnings and uncertain impacts from President Donald Trump’s economic policies.

    Newsom’s May budget would include some cuts and savings from, for example, lower projected enrollment in transitional kindergarten. It would also withdraw or reduce nearly $400 million in community college funding for updating data systems and investing in Newsom’s Master Plan for Career Education (see Page 28 of his budget summary).

    But he’d primarily rely on financial tactics that the LAO cited as fiscally risky and unwise:

    • Committing $1.6 billion in one-time funding for ongoing funding, a strategy that could leave the state short of funding starting a year from now;
    • Depleting the Prop. 98 rainy day fund by $1.5 billion;
    • Issuing a $2.3 billion IOU by pushing back paying $1.8 billion for TK-12 and $532 million for community colleges from June 2026 to the next fiscal year in 2026-27. This deferral, though only for several weeks, creates a debt that must be repaid. Paying it off will eat into state revenue for districts and community colleges in the subsequent year. 

    Issuing deferrals and digging into the state’s reserves have been done before during recessions and financial emergencies, but should be viewed as “a tool of last resort,” not as solutions to difficult spending choices, Kapphahn said. 

    “The state historically has tried to contain spending during tight times to protect funding for core programs,” its critique said. “May Revision would task districts with hiring staff and expanding local programs based on funding levels that the state might be unable to sustain.”

    Neither LAO nor Newsom is predicting a financial recession, but both project weakened state revenues over the next two years.

    The LAO’s option

    The LAO put forward an alternative budget that it claims would meet the revised, lower Prop. 98 minimum funding guarantee for 2025-26, including a required 2.3% cost-of-living adjustment for community colleges and schools. It would avoid deferrals, reduce $1.6 billion in ongoing spending, and reject many of Newsom’s one-time spending proposals, including literacy training and materials. 

    Instead, consistent with local control, it would increase an existing discretionary block grant to let districts choose how to spend much less new money.

    Negotiations in the coming weeks between Newsom and legislative leaders will determine what’s in the final budget. However, two Democratic leaders who chair budget committees overseeing education in the Assembly and Senate said they shared the LAO’s skepticism. 

    Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said he felt uncomfortable recommending increased funding for individual programs that “set us on for being in trouble next year.”

    “If we do all this, and the projections are accurate,” he said at the May 22 hearing, “there will not be enough money to pay off deferrals and make the COLA. The decision to put us in that position we are making now, potentially creating a bad situation for next year.”

    Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, who chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance, said he too is concerned that the proposed budget would deplete the last $1.5 billion of the rainy day fund, which was $8.4 billion only two years ago.

    At the same time, he agrees with Newsom’s new spending on literacy instruction and funding for stipends for student teachers. And he would add in money for ethnic studies that Newsom didn’t include. Without the funding, the mandate for a semester-long ethnic studies course that the Legislature required, starting in 2025-26, cannot take effect.

    Alvarez didn’t suggest budget cuts to make room for ethnic studies.





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  • Time to eliminate high-stakes tests for prospective California teachers

    Time to eliminate high-stakes tests for prospective California teachers


    A sixth grade math teacher helps two students during a lesson about math and music.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Becoming a public school teacher is a calling. It’s incredible to see students learn and grow and achieve their dreams. Many see this as a rewarding career and want to pursue it, which raises the question — why would anyone be in favor of unnecessary hurdles for these aspiring educators?

    In my work as an educator, with more than 30 years in the classroom and as vice president of the California Teachers Association (CTA), I’ve seen firsthand and heard from educators up and down the state about the deeply problematic Teaching Performance Assessments (TPAs). These assessments were enacted to measure the teaching performance of prospective teachers.  

    There is no shortage of horror stories about the TPAs. We hear from talented teachers constantly that they are long and time-consuming. They are full of low-value tasks, and they come at a very busy time for new educators. They do not prepare teachers for the classroom and detract from programs with proven success.

    Aspiring teachers can better learn the teaching craft in the real world. Vital preparation for new educators includes working with mentors to improve their instruction, having time to concentrate on developing quality lesson plans, and learning how to apply knowledge gained from a credential program in real classrooms. These programs consistently assess student teachers. They ensure we meet California’s high teaching standards.

    The TPAs also keep talented educators out of the profession of public education. This is especially true for Black, Indigenous and people of color working to become teachers. Educators of color have raised concerns about biases undermining their success at passing the TPAs. Moreover, aspiring teachers must pay $300 out-of-pocket to take these assessments. After spending thousands of dollars on a degree, one can see how this costly assessment becomes an impossible hurdle for too many. 

    This is why CTA is sponsoring Senate Bill 1263 to eliminate the TPAs, alongside Sen. Josh Newman.

    Two years ago, I began leading a CTA work group with educators from across the state. We met to study the teacher shortage. We aimed to find ways to ease the problem and increase teacher diversity. Our group determined that these assessments hurt teacher training. They harm our new teacher pipeline and hinder efforts to diversify public education careers.

    We compiled this data and analysis from educators and practitioners, including a survey of educators. We took this information to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) and noted the disproportionate impact on educator candidates (see page 33). This issue was first raised three years ago by the California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education when the group asked the commission to end high-stakes testing in teacher education, citing concerns with “validity, reliability, fairness and bias.”

    At the meeting, Commissioner Christopher Davis underscored the TPA’s “disproportionate harm” to teaching candidates from diverse backgrounds: “We continue to struggle with the reality that our state, through these examinations, is systematically discriminating against the very diversity it alleges it wants to track into our workforce.”

    In December, the commission heard our call, adopting a secondary passing standard in the event an educator did not complete the TPA requirement. This allows teacher candidates who met all other credential requirements a path to a credential if they demonstrate Teacher Performance Expectations (TPE) through classroom observations, course projects and similar avenues.

    This is a step in the right direction. More than 1,500 aspiring California educators who did not pass the TPA would have met the secondary standard in 2022-23, meaning they would be spared the cost and extreme stress of retaking the TPA.

    Our work continues. As Sen. Newman said, the issue is simple: “One key to improving the educator pipeline is removing barriers that may be dissuading otherwise talented and qualified prospective people from pursuing a career as an educator.”

    We must end the unnecessary TPA and evolve our state system of educator preparation to better equip teachers to bridge California’s diverse students to bright futures. This is becoming a national standard. Other states including New York, New Jersey, Georgia and even Texas have already eliminated the TPA requirement. It’s time for California to take this step forward and improve the path for aspiring educators on their way to the classroom.

    ●●●

    Leslie Littman is vice president of the California Teachers Association. She previously taught AP U.S. history, economics and government at Hart High School in the William S. Hart Union School District in Santa Clarita.

    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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  • Why knowledge matters for literacy: A Q&A with Natalie Wexler

    Why knowledge matters for literacy: A Q&A with Natalie Wexler


    Credit: Andrew Ebrahim / Unsplash

    Amid a deepening literacy crisis, there’s been a focus on how to close the achievement gap, but Natalie Wexler sees the key problem undermining the American educational system a little differently.

    The education author maintains that we can’t truly reach equity in achievement unless we first close “The Knowledge Gap.” 

    Natalie Wexler, literacy expert and author of “The Knowledge Gap.”
    Courtesy photo

    She also argues that, in the rush to embrace the science of reading, some have focused so intently on the need for phonics in the early years that they have overlooked the need for systematic knowledge-building, which is also a core part of structured literacy, as is vocabulary. There’s more to the science of reading than phonics, experts have long suggested.

    Wexler is best known for her book “The Knowledge Gap,” but she also has a podcast and newsletter on the subject. The frequent Forbes contributor recently made time to discuss with EdSource why background knowledge is so fundamental to reading, why it’s crucial to teach kids about the world, from science to history, if you want them to become deep readers.

    A rich sense of context is key to fueling both vocabulary growth and reading comprehension, the ability to make inferences and connections while reading, paving the way for critical thinking and analysis, cornerstones of higher education. 

    Why do you think there are so many misunderstandings about the science of reading, and why is it often getting boiled down to just phonics? 

    A large part of it is that the phonics issue is more familiar. We’ve been hearing about it for decades. Since the 1950s, if not before, and it’s less complicated than the whole comprehension message. Not to say it’s simple, but it’s easy to grasp. You want kids to be able to read, you have to help them sound out words, and you have to teach that explicitly, and you can see results pretty quickly when you do. Right? Whereas building knowledge is this very gradual process. The way we measure progress is mostly through the standardized reading comprehension test. And it takes a long time, years sometimes, to see the fruits of your labors reflected in standardized test scores. 

    Has the phonics debate overshadowed other aspects of how the brain learns how to read?

    I do think that the focus on just the problems with phonics instruction or decoding instruction has given rise to the assumption that the other aspects of reading instruction are lined up with science, that they accord with what scientific evidence tells us will work. And with comprehension, that’s actually not the case. 

    Why is there so little understanding of cognitive science in the classroom? What do we need to know about working memory, for example?

    I certainly didn’t know about working memory being only able to hold maybe four or five items of new information for about 20 seconds before it starts to become overwhelmed. And that’s the scientific explanation, but I also think once you give people concrete examples, it starts to make sense at a gut level. The goal is for kids to acquire enough general academic vocabulary and familiarity with the complex syntax of written language to enable them to read and understand texts on topics they don’t already know about. 

    At some point you have built up enough understanding of the world to learn through reading, is that right? 

    If you’re a proficient reader, that’s a very efficient way of learning, through reading. That’s the goal. But how do we enable students to acquire that kind of general knowledge? Really the only way is through teaching them about a lot of specific topics, because the vocabulary, the syntax, doesn’t stick in the abstract, it needs a meaningful context. But there are different ways for kids to acquire that general knowledge. 

    Why is background knowledge so important to reading comprehension?

    Vocabulary and background knowledge are inextricably linked. So, if you’ve got baseball vocabulary, you’re going to have a better chance of understanding a text on baseball. If you’re practicing finding the main idea and you’re reading a text about the solar system and you have no idea what the solar system is, your ability to decode the words is probably not going to be enough. You need to have some background knowledge in place in order to acquire more knowledge from that text. To understand a word like “dynasty,” you need to have some idea of monarchies. You can’t just memorize the definition and really understand it, right? But you could acquire that understanding by learning about African dynasties, Asian dynasties, European dynasties, indigenous dynasties. There are lots of different paths to that goal.

    Why is this an equity issue? Is it because we’re not really spending as much time on history and science in the classroom these days but you don’t notice that as much with higher income children because those families are better able to fill in the gaps outside of school?

    That’s right. But I’ve heard from educators and administrators these days that even higher-income kids are coming in with poor oral language skills because people are on their phones so much, and even more-affluent, more highly educated parents are not engaging in that kind of dialogue with kids that leads to rich oral language abilities. This has long been a problem with kids from less highly educated families. I think it really has to do with the level of parental education more than with socioeconomic status or race. If you have a poor kid whose parents both have Ph.D.s, but they’re struggling because they’re adjunct professors, that kid’s probably going to be exposed to a lot of academic language and vocabulary at home. But other kids rely on school for that. I’m not saying that education can completely level the playing field, but it could be doing way more than it is currently doing to give all kids the kind of exposure to academic knowledge and vocabulary that kids from highly educated families acquire more or less naturally.  

    So it’s more related to education than income. Is part of the issue also that schools prefer inquiry-based learning to direct instruction? We let the kids try to figure things out on their own instead of explaining it to them.

    Where this belief in discovery and inquiry has really taken hold is at the elementary level. I do think that this focus on comprehension skills and strategies, whether consciously or not, it’s connected to that idea that we shouldn’t be the ‘sages on the stages’ just pouring information into kids’ brains. If you teach them a skill, like finding the main idea or making inferences, then they can use that skill to discover knowledge on their own, acquire knowledge on their own. That’s the theory. But it often doesn’t work in practice. It’s hard to make an inference if you don’t really understand the subject matter. Some of these skills do need to be taught, but others really are just sort of natural outgrowths of knowledge. I want to make it clear, it’s not like you have to choose between building knowledge and teaching skills and strategies. It’s a question of what you put in the foreground. 

    Why are deep dives into a topic, say dinosaurs or mummies, more compelling for children than randomly chosen abstract passages, to drive comprehension?

    If you get deeply into a topic, it’s much more interesting than if you just skim the surface. … The power of narrative is really important. It doesn’t have to be fiction, it could be a story from history. I’ve seen second graders fascinated by the war of 1812. Teachers are like, how are second graders going to be able to deal with that? Well, if they’ve learned about the American Revolution and they have the background knowledge, they get fascinated by it because they understand what’s going on. They understand the issues, but they don’t know who won. They’re like, oh, no, America’s going to lose!

    Everybody loves a cliffhanger.





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  • California must not punish districts for being proactive on early learning

    California must not punish districts for being proactive on early learning


    Transitional Kindergarten students in Garden Grove Unified School District benefit from a full day of high quality instruction.

    Courtesy: Garden Grove Unified School District

    According to a recent survey on education, overwhelming majorities of Californians think that preschool is important for student success in K–12 schools, and a strong majority supports state-funded programs such as transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds.

    We agree. This strong preference is echoed by families in our districts clamoring for their children to participate in transitional kindergarten (TK).

    California is on course to make TK a universal option for California families. Universal TK in our districts provides a full-day program with credentialed teachers and full-time aides. In 2021, the state laid out a five-year timeline to expand TK, gradually phasing in younger students each year, until 2025-26 — when all 4-year-old children will have the ability to enroll. 

    The intent of this foundational program is to meet a critical need for quality early learning and care for children at no cost to families. This allows parents to work full time to support their families, knowing that their children are receiving educational services that lay a foundation for academic success and support children’s development. Our districts serve distinct communities that have in common a high proportion of low-income students and significant numbers of English learners. As we shared information about the TK expansion with families, unsurprisingly, we heard from many who wanted to enroll their 4-year-old children, including young learners whose fourth birthdays fall outside the annually expanding eligibility window. 

    Our families urged us to accelerate the implementation of the early TK timeline and provide universal TK as soon as possible. 

    Recognizing our families’ significant need and the benefits of early learning, our districts decided to get ahead of the curve. We planned ahead for an accelerated two-year rollout of transitional kindergarten for students born through June 30. We knew we would not receive average daily attendance (ADA) funding for students whose birthdates fell outside the state’s rollout plan, but as we were planning well in advance of the 2023-24 school year, we were unaware of any penalties for early rollout as they did not exist at that time. We budgeted accordingly for the expansion of our enrollment and made plans to staff our TK classrooms months in advance of school starting.

    Our districts are now facing penalties in the millions of dollars for taking these proactive steps. And we are not alone. Based on a voluntary informal survey, seven of 28 districts in Orange County likely face penalties for accelerated implementation. We believe many districts across the state are similarly impacted, with some yet unaware of the fiscal hit for early expansion.

    Last July — months after districts started planning for the 2023-24 school year — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed education budget trailer bill SB 114, which created new statutory requirements for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years for school districts offering early transitional kindergarten. These changes included a maximum class size of 20 students and a 1:10 adult-to-student ratio, which is smaller than regular TK ratios. No additional funding was provided to meet these new requirements. The trailer bill imposed significant fiscal penalties for districts if they did not comply with the new provisions.  

    Districts like ours were not able to meet the lower class size requirements because the school year was weeks away from starting when this bill was signed. We had no time to change course. Many families in large urban districts like ours are most in need of TK due to families’ inability to afford private preschool and lack of free preschool options. Turning away families who had enrolled their child in TK and who desperately needed this care was unthinkable. 

    School districts plan and budget — inclusive of staffing, facilities and bargaining — at least nine months in advance of the next school year, which typically begins in early or mid-August. This includes communicating with families so they can make plans for their children, and enrolling students in January and February for the following school year. This is necessary so that schools will be appropriately staffed and classrooms are ready before the first day of school.

    The steep fiscal penalties we face for early enrollment in TK threaten our fiscal outlook in a budget year that is already anticipated to be lean.   

    There is an opportunity to make this right.

    The Legislature and Newsom administration can waive the current year, 2023-24 fiscal penalties and allow districts appropriate time to plan and implement requirements for 2024-25. Actions can be taken via legislation — Assembly Bill 2548, authored by Assemblymember Tri Ta, would waive the current school year penalties on districts offering early TK; another option is to enact the waiver for 2023-24 through budget trailer bill language. We, and more than 40 leaders of districts and county offices of education, are urging lawmakers to take action now.

    The districts that are impacted by penalties for early enrollment in TK serve high-poverty communities where free or low-cost full-day preschools are not available and parents cannot afford paid preschools.

    Making early TK available to as many families as possible is the right thing to do. Approving the waiver of the fiscal penalties for 2023-24 will save our districts from millions of dollars in penalties and protect our fiscal stability while we continue to make great strides in serving early learners. 

    •••

    Gabriela Mafi is superintendent of the Garden Grove Unified School District.
    John Garcia is superintendent of the Downey Unified School District

    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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  • Dual admission programs a tool for addressing state’s transfer challenges, panel says

    Dual admission programs a tool for addressing state’s transfer challenges, panel says


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a7FKovXyWQ

    A group of education leaders and experts representing both community colleges and four-year universities agreed during EdSource’s Wednesday roundtable discussion that dual admission might be one of the most promising solutions to California’s broken transfer systems.

    About 2 million students are enrolled in the state’s 116 community colleges, yet just 10% of them transfer to a four-year university within two years, according to research from the Public Policy Institute of California, or PPIC.

    “At the end of the day, it’s really important for us to ensure that transfer is as seamless as possible, that students have the information they need upfront, that it’s actionable, that they’re able to take the courses they need and get through to transfer,” said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center.

    Panelists at the roundtable — “Is dual admission a solution to California’s broken transfer system?” — agreed that dual admission should be available statewide for all interested students in order to ensure more seamless transfers.

    The roundtable included discussion of a state law passed in 2021 that sought to improve transfer rates in California. The postsecondary education trailer bill, or Assembly Bill 132, asked the University of California and required the California State University systems to create such programs for students who didn’t “meet freshman admissions eligibility criteria due to limitations in the high school curriculum offered or personal or financial hardship.”

    going deeper

    Visit the virtual event page for EdSource’s dual admission roundtable for more information about the speakers and a list of resources.

    Dual admission programs offer students guaranteed admission into certain four-year universities after completing a specific list of lower division courses at a community college. This is different from dual enrollment, a process in which students earn college credit while in high school.

    This law could potentially transform the state’s higher education pathways, given that California ranks 41st when it comes to high school graduates who enroll in a four-year university but third in its share who enroll in community college, according to Johnson.

    “What that means is that transfer students are critical to ensuring that California really provides a meaningful ladder of educational and economic mobility for our population,” Johnson said.

    While the state law calls for a pilot program, CSU’s dual admission program is permanent. It’s called the Transfer Success Pathway Program and launched in fall 2023 with an initial cohort of 2,000 students, said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management.

    “We purposely are creating a statewide system,” Grommo said. “We also know that students transfer or take courses at multiple community colleges, and we wanted all of that credit to be reflected in the system and for students to be able to accurately track how many units they’ve completed, what their transferable GPA is, and how they fulfill general education and major prerequisites so that they truly understand the courses that they need to transfer.”

    CSU’s program includes all campuses, though some of the most impacted majors are excluded, while UC’s program is limited to six of the nine campuses. CSU also goes beyond what’s required by law by offering dual admission to just about any student who was rejected or simply chose not to attend CSU.

    “Just for scale, there’s 162 community college students in the dual admission program for UC, and there’s 2,008 students in the dual admission program for CSU currently in the community colleges,” said panelist John Stanskas, vice chancellor for educational services and support at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

    Roundtable panelists also discussed existing programs that could be used as a model for more statewide access to dual admission.

    One such example is in the state of Virginia, where Northern Virginia Community College has a dual admission partnership with George Mason University, which sits just 5 miles away. One of the roundtable panelists, Jaden Todd, is a current student at the community college and shared his experience.

    A significant benefit of his dual admission program, called ADVANCE, has been the clarity of knowing exactly which classes he’d need to take at his current campus and at George Mason University after transferring. A clear understanding of the courses he’d be required to take was important, he said, as he decided whether to pursue computer science versus computer engineering.

    “The fact that I’m able to see not only what classes I need to take here at NOVA (Northern Virginia Community College) but also what it transfers to and what it transfers as, I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of the program,” said Todd, who is on track to transfer to George Mason University in one year.

    “I don’t have to worry I’m wasting my money, I don’t have to worry I’m wasting my time. … I don’t have to be a junior taking freshman classes because I didn’t know that this history class was a prereq for this other class.”

    Todd said he’s also benefited from having access to a second campus.

    “That’s something that I wouldn’t have if this ADVANCE program doesn’t exist because I have access to everything a GMU student has access to because I’m considered a GMU student, even though I’m at NOVA,” Todd said, referring to George Mason University.

    Some GMU resources available to Todd are their libraries, a lab with 3D printers, and access to their student clubs.

    One of the longstanding challenges that California community college students face when transferring to a CSU or UC is the need to align the courses on their transcripts with the courses they must take after transferring. It’s a challenge that NOVA and GMU avoided by clearly outlining required courses for students enrolled in ADVANCE, but one that students in Long Beach City College’s initial dual admission program often came up against.

    In its initial iteration of the program in 2008, Long Beach City College partnered with Long Beach Unified and CSU Long Beach to create the Long Beach College Promise. Understanding which courses students were required to take at each level of their higher education journey, however, “was almost like a maze that they were trying to demystify,” said panelist Nohel C. Corral, executive vice president of student services at Long Beach City College.

    In 2019, the college relaunched a revised version called Long Beach College Promise 2.0, Corral said.

    “We mapped the courses students would need to take in their first two years here at Long Beach City College and what it would look like in their last two years at California State University Long Beach,” Corral said. “And that required a lot of coordination between the instructional faculty at both Long Beach City College and at Long Beach State, in addition to counselors and advisers in both institutions.”

    The relaunched program included 38 students enrolled at Long Beach City College who were also given CSU Long Beach student identification cards with access to the CSU library, sporting events and career services, among other resources. The following year, the cohort included 162 students, which grew to 774 by the fall of 2021.

    “We’re still tracking them and collecting data to assess the transfer rates for those cohorts, but for that fall 2019 cohort, we saw significant transfer rates compared to other populations,” he said.

    The panelists agreed that geography may become a potential challenge in the development of dual admission programs statewide, given California’s size. They also agreed, however, that regional partnerships become crucial in those areas.

    Just last week, for example, Chico State announced a dual admission partnership with seven community colleges. Fresno State and Fresno City College also have a partnership; likewise, CSU Bakersfield has one with Bakersfield College.

    Corral suggested “starting off with the data and seeing where the students are transferring to, if you don’t have a local CSU in your direct vicinity, so that you can start those dialogues and start those engagements with those CSUs that your students are going to.”

    Stanskas, of the community colleges’ chancellor’s office, said that dual admission can be “especially important for our place-bound students who can’t go a hundred miles or 500 miles to a program. They have family; they have commitments; they have lives that they are unable to move that way.”

    Grommo said, “We would love to see every student that’s transitioning from high school and decides that the community college pathway is their pathway that they need to take, really enroll in the Transfer Success Pathway program so we can support them early in their process and help them through this transfer journey.”

    This story was updated to accurately reflect Jaden Todd’s name.





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  • Dissent, no funding yet for statewide teacher training in math and reading

    Dissent, no funding yet for statewide teacher training in math and reading


    Credit: RDNE stock project

    Legislation that calls for providing all state teachers and aides with math and reading training passed its first legislative hurdle despite the uncertainty of funding and the skepticism of advocates for English learners who dislike the bill’s nod to instruction in the “science of reading,” including phonics.

    Senate Bill 1115 has no secure source of money heading into a tight fiscal year, with Gov. Gavin Newsom all but ruling out money for new programs. His January budget includes $20 million for a designated county office to train coaches who would then train their own teachers in what they learned.

    Neither the bill’s author, Sen. Monique Limon, D-Santa Barbara, nor its sponsor, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, offered a cost estimate at a hearing of the Senate Education Committee last Wednesday, though it would cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars to train 300,000 teachers. They said they were willing to phase in and focus funding, such as concentrating on early literacy and numeracy skills, and to look for federal and dedicated sources of money.

    Thurmond said training teachers to enable all students to read effectively “is an issue of moral clarity.” Neither he nor Limon offered a cost estimate that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

    “In an age when we have access to substantial brain science about how students learn, it should be unacceptable to train only some educators in the best strategies to teach essential skills,” he said.

    School districts have received billions of dollars between federal and state Covid relief funding, including money to address learning loss — money that could be used for teacher training — but none of that has been earmarked for that purpose.

    State budgets have set aside $50 million to hire and train reading teachers in the most impoverished 5% of schools. But Thurmond said training of trainers, however, does not substitute for providing sufficient funding to ensure training for all teachers and support staff in “high-quality” programs in math and literacy.

    The bill calls for the Department of Education to identify and recommend those high-quality programs by Jan. 1, 2026.  For transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, those should align with “the science of reading” by focusing on results-driven methods of teaching, which may include, but is not limited to, offerings such as Lexia LETRS and CORE Learning.”

    Singling out those specific trainings in the bill were red flags for two nonprofits that advocate for English learners: Californians Together and California Association of Bilingual Educators (CABE). The science of reading refers to research from multiple fields of science that confirm or discount theories on how children learn to read. LETRS and CORE Learning are intensive programs that explain a systematic approach to teaching phonics and other elements of reading consistent with the science of reading.

    Californians Together and CABE, however, complain that those programs overemphasize phonics and “structured literacy” at the expense of English learners’ need for more attention to oral language and vocabulary development.

    Calling Californians Together’s position on the bill a “tweener,”  legislative advocate Cristina Salazar testified at a hearing last week, “We agree that we need more professional learning for educators, but we do have concerns with the bill.  Specifically, it mentioned the science of reading, and it also names commercial programs.”

    CABE legislative advocate Jennifer Bakers said her organization shares the same concerns and “hopes to have a collaborative conversation about a path to move forward.”

    Last year, at the Legislature’s direction, the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing adopted new standards for teaching reading that emphasize explicit instruction of fundamental skills, including phonics. Starting next year, candidates in teacher preparation programs are required to be trained in those strategies.

    Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Boch, R-Yucaipa, asked Thurmond whether the intent is to train existing teachers in the new standards that new teachers will be trained on.

    “Yes, that is correct,” Thurmond said.

    Opposition from Californians Together and CABE this month factored into the quashing of a bill that would have required school districts and charter schools to train all TK to fifth-grade teachers and literacy coaches in instruction based on the science of reading and to buy textbooks from a list endorsed by the State Board of Education. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, ordered Assembly Bill 2222 shelved without a hearing to give time for negotiations with opponents, including the California Teachers Association.

    At the hearing, Thurmond acknowledged similarities between the two bills, although AB 2222 would have been a mandate, while AB 1115 would recommend the selection of trainings.    

    Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education. 

    Thurmond said the language of AB 1115 is well balanced in that it refers to both the science of reading and the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, which includes multiple strategies necessary for all students, including English learners, to learn how to read. 

    New math framework

    July will mark a year since the State Board of Education adopted a revised California Mathematics Framework, which took four years and three revisions to pass. The drafters and supporters agree that the framework, with emphasis on tangible applications of math, as well as a deeper conceptual understanding of it, will require a shift in teaching and extensive training. But no significant money has been allocated yet, and the process of reviewing textbooks and materials has yet to begin.

    In an interview, Limon said it is important to raise the issue of teacher training now, even if legislation is tied to a future appropriation.

    Part of the public debate in committing public dollars should be, What would the program look like, and how will it serve diverse students? she said. “There is value to that discussion,” she said. Before her election to the Legislature, Limon served for six years on the Santa Barbara Unified school board.

    In 2022-23, only 46.7% of California students met grade standards on the state’s English language arts test; the percentages were 36.6% for Hispanic, 29.9% for Black, and 35.3% for economically disadvantaged students. The scores were worse in math:  34.5% of students overall, with 22.7% of Latino, 16.9% of Black, and 22.9% of economically disadvantaged students meeting standards.





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  • California Subject Matter Projects are rare gift for teachers seeking inspiration

    California Subject Matter Projects are rare gift for teachers seeking inspiration


    Credit: Courtesy of Tom Courtney

    As a guide teacher and induction mentor, I am worried about the future of our profession.

    Nearly half of all California teachers quit before their fifth year. Teachers like me know that it isn’t just about throwing in more troops alongside our new recruits. Teacher morale, teacher self-efficacy, and teacher autonomy have never been more worrisome.

    The more you listen to new teachers, like I often do, the more you realize: It’s not about what these teachers think of teaching. It’s about the way they feel.

    I believe that what teachers need, but seldom get, are opportunities to celebrate victories for ourselves, to feel empowered. As an induction candidate recently told me, “I want to watch my kids leave at the end of the day and think, ‘Wow, I really taught something special today.’”

    This is what every teacher I know, the veteran and the new, needs to feel.

    So, whenever a new teacher candidate calls me looking for that feeling, I send them to the same place that I go for a recharge: The California Subject Matter Project. The response is always the same: “What’s that, Tom?”

    And that worries me a little because at times it seems this amazing resource on teaching is the best-kept secret in education.

    I think it’s the perfect time to make it the worst-kept secret.

    The California Subject Matter Project is a collection nine initiatives operating out of UC and Cal State campuses up and down the state. Essentially, picture in your mind an organization of experts in all content areas you can think of: art, history, science, math, reading, writing, all housed on a UC or Cal State campus. And the best part is, these offices are found on campuses throughout California.

    The purpose of the projects is to create seeds of strong teaching around many disciplines. The reason why it’s such an essential organization is that its impartial, filled with very smart academics, and has no other agenda but to connect with willing participating districts, schools and teachers. 

    Each location, led by a regional director, creates and connects empowering research-based, content-focused outreach programs that teachers, frankly, don’t see enough of at their school sites. If ever.

    Removed from the politics surrounding so many education issues, the California Subject Matter Project is focused on the actual learning and teaching. Under its umbrella, smaller content-specific projects (like art, math, global education) offer rich and engaging programs directed to exactly the teachers who need them most. And they do it in a way that is pro-equity and pro-access for marginalized student populations, like many of my students. They also have a lot of fun.

    For example, I am a proud teacher leader with one of the Subject Matter’s projects, the California Reading and Literacy Project. I now join my colleagues to learn, grow, reflect, and share research-driven approaches to reading. Our project hosts virtual book studies, conferences and invitationals, and runs professional development that always exceeds my expectations.

    When I attend any of these events, I feel empowered, and I know I am in the company of teachers who feel the same way. Through just this initiative, I have learned things I feel I should have gotten a long time ago — like how to incorporate phonics in small dynamic groups at middle school, collect a lifetime supply of great literature for small groups, and the value of having my students write authentically.

    But the California Reading and Literacy Project is just one of many projects you can connect with. For instance, I am also a member of California Science Project, California History Project, and the California Global Education Project. Each one of these spaces is, as my induction candidate Kelly Gonzales calls them, “a breath of fresh air,” and each is a place where I can be exposed to dozens of things that I wouldn’t be privy to at my school site.

    I also have gained many friends from many different work environments. I can now see, on those tough days, that I am not alone, and know where to go to get real, authentic help as a teacher and a person of conscience. These friendships have helped me better understand what I need to advocate for in regard to my own students, and that empowers me too. It gives me a sense of autonomy. It gives me a sense of authentic purpose. 

    In the California Subject Matter Project spaces, I know I am around academics and professionals seeking to better education, not better their results on a math or reading test alone. And in many ways, it’s what I had always been needing, but didn’t have, until I found them.

    How to join and tell them Tom sent you

    If you can use a little recharge in your teaching, or if you need a massive one, I’d like to strongly encourage you to reach out to one of the subject matter projects too. Choose an area in which you teach and are passionate about. To find contact information for the region nearest you, look here.

    Teach in a rural area? Not to worry. Many subject matter programs are also available virtually, so you may be surprised how much amazing professional development, sometimes with a stipend, is available over Zoom.

    And you may just be surprised at how much you, like I still do, love teaching again.

    •••

    Thomas Courtney is a sixth-grade humanities and English language arts teacher at Millennial Tech Middle School in southeast San Diego.

    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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  • Oliver Darcy: Don’t Fall for the Rightwing Attacks on Biden

    Oliver Darcy: Don’t Fall for the Rightwing Attacks on Biden


    Oliver Darcy is a media expert who reports on the media at his blog called Status. He here writes about the unwarranted jubilation of rightwing pundits who believe that their relentless attacks on Biden’s cognition were correct after all. This turns out to be a useful topic for them right now as Trump is hoovering up all the cash he can handle from his profitable dealings in real estate, bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and other lucrative deals.

    When you compare the two, it’s clear that Biden’s presidency was unblemished by corruption or scandal. The unemployment rate was low, inflation was dropping, and relationships with our allies in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Asia were strong. The Economist said that the American economy was “the envy of the world.”

    Now we are locked, as Rahm Emanuel wrote in The Washington Post, in a state of chaos, corruption, and cruelty. Every government agency has been ripped apart by Elon Musk’s DOGS, and our democracy is turning into an imperial presidency. Trump has assembled a Cabinet of billionaires and FOX News personalities. From day to day, we wonder which government responsibility will be cast aside.

    I don’t know what Biden’s mental state was. But I liked his government far more than Trump’s cruel autocracy.

    Darcy writes:

    For years, right-wing media pushed a warped narrative of Joe Biden as a brain-dead puppet controlled by sinister, shadowy forces. Now they’re demanding vindication—but they do not deserve it.

    Over the last week, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin,” has landed with a flurry of attention-grabbing headlines—not just for the reporting, but for what Tapper has said during the press tour. In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Tuesday, Tapper declared that “conservative media was right and conservative media was correct” about Joe Biden’s mental state. 

    But that’s not quite true. Or rather, it simplifies a much more nuanced media and political reality. While it’s fair to argue that the press should have covered Biden’s age with greater urgency—and to acknowledge that Biden clearly lost a step during his presidency—that’s a far cry from validating the deeply irresponsible narrative right-wing media spun for years: that the president of theUnited Stateswas a mentally incapacitated puppet with dementia, unaware of his own surroundings, and propped up by a “shadow government” running the country in his name. 

    That was never journalism. It was propaganda. Full stop.

    Since the early days of the 2020 campaign, MAGA Media figures—particularly on Fox News—lobbed increasingly absurd claims about Biden’s mental faculties. They painted him as a senile old man who didn’t know what day it was, who couldn’t walk unaided, and who spent his presidency dozing off while Barack Obama or Ron Klain or some other shadowy liberal elite force secretly ran the country behind closed doors.

    This wasn’t grounded in evidence. It wasn’t the result of deep reporting or careful observation. It was pure narrative warfare—an attempt to delegitimize Biden not just as a candidate but as a commander-in-chief. And the coverage became so cartoonish at times that no amount of fact-based reporting about Biden could pierce the right-wing media bubble.

    None of this is to deny that Biden was aging. He was. By the end of his term, it was obvious to those around him—and to many voters—that he lacked the energy he once had. Even Democratic operatives privately acknowledged that he didn’t have his fastball anymore. But there’s a world of a difference between an 80-something president, who has always been prone to gaffes, showing his age and a man secretly suffering from debilitating dementia or worse. And conflating the two, as Fox News and its allies routinely did, wasn’t just misleading—it was malicious.

    Yes, Biden’s debate performance on CNN was troubling. Yes, the press should have been more aggressive in scrutinizing his capacity to serve a second term. But reporters who refrained from joining the right-wing media hysteria were not negligent or part of a cover-up—they were simply cautious. They understood the weight of diagnosing a president with a serious neurodegenerative disorder without hard evidence. And they understood the cost of being wrong, particularly asDonald Trump ran on an authoritarian-like platform that he is now implementing in office.

    MAGA Media’s goal was never honest diagnosis. It was political demolition. They weaponized Biden’s verbal gaffes, his slower gait, and his lower-energy demeanor to manufacture the idea that he was mentally vacant. Never mind that Biden managed the job without the chaos and confusion that has markedTrump’s second term. No matter what Biden did—whether it was biking, traveling, or delivering speeches—the same echo chamber smeared him with the same predictable attacks.

    That wasn’t journalism. It was performance. And it came from people like Kelly and Sean Hannity, who weren’t doing reporting at all. They weren’t gathering facts. They were throwing mud, hoping some of it would stick. And in many corners of the country, it did.

    That’s what makes the current revisionism so maddening. Now, with Tapper and Thompson’s book pointing to Biden’s visible decline, MAGA Media figures are claiming vindication. They’re demanding apologies from journalists who didn’t amplify their dementia narrative—insisting, once again, that they were “right all along.” 

    It’s reminiscent of how right-wing media rewrote history around Robert Mueller’s Russia probe or the COVID-19 pandemic: flattening complexity, cherry-picking facts, and pretending their worst-faith speculation was truth from the start.

    But they weren’t right. They were irresponsible. They didn’t try to understand what was happening behind the scenes—they invented a version of it that was politically convenient. And just because Biden aged, and struggled in the final days of his presidency, doesn’t make their years of bad-faith character assassination suddenly noble. Notably, while they maligned Biden, they let Trump—a man prone to deranged rants and wild conspiracy theories—off the hook entirely.

    Biden didn’t have a perfect presidency, and his age became an unavoidable liability. But he was not an empty shell of a man, either. He governed. He made decisions. He passed legislation. And he did it while under constant attack from a media machine that acted not as a watchdog—but as an attack dog.

    No one owes that dishonest machine an apology.



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  • California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students

    California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students


    California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

    Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    More than 20 years ago, California passed a law allowing some undocumented immigrant students to attend college with in-state tuition, if they meet certain requirements.

    But immigrant rights advocates say many students who should have been eligible have been wrongfully denied in-state tuition because of confusion over requirements, misinformation and different interpretations of the law at different college campuses.

    “We lose that incredible brain power and colleges are losing enrollment,” said Nancy Jodaitis, director of higher education for Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit organization that advocates for undocumented people to achieve educational and career goals.

    Immigrants Rising brought together officials from all three public college systems — California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California — to discuss and agree on answers to frequently-asked questions about the law.

    The result is a document called the Systemwide AB 540 FAQ, which all three systems have now signed. The document includes answers to 59 questions, such as:

    • What if a student graduated from a California high school (completing three years’ worth of high school credits), but did not attend three years at a California high school?
    • Does a student have to take classes full time for their attendance to count?
    • Does all their coursework have to be taken at the same school?

    Spokespeople from UC, CSU and California Community Colleges all celebrated the document.

    Paul Feist, vice chancellor of communications and marketing for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said the document is particularly important because there are several different laws regarding the nonresident tuition exemption.

    The first bill exempting some undocumented immigrants from out-of-state tuition, Assembly Bill 540, was signed into law in 2001. Since then, three other bills have been passed to expand the law, in 2014, 2017 and 2022.

    “While the intent was to expand access to AB 540 financial assistance, they had the unintended effect of making it more difficult to navigate,” Feist said. “This FAQ is designed to provide clearer explanations and provide additional resources in advising students.”

    Under current California law, students who are undocumented or have temporary protection from deportation such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are eligible for in-state tuition and state financial aid, if they attended at least three years of high school, adult school or community college in California and obtained a high school diploma or equivalent, an associate degree or fulfilled the minimum requirements to transfer to a UC or CSU. 

    Access to state financial aid and in-state tuition can be a critical factor for undocumented students, who are barred from receiving federal financial aid. Without the law in place, some of them would be charged tuition rates for international students, often much higher than in-state tuition.

    “This is huge,” said Maria Gutierrez, a college counselor at Chabot College in Hayward and a doctoral student at San Francisco State University. “It helps us be aligned and have something in writing.”  Before the FAQ document, Gutierrez says college staff in charge of approving exemptions from out-of-state tuition were sometimes afraid to make decisions without written proof of how to interpret the law.

    Gutierrez herself has benefited from AB 540. She came to the U.S. when she was 5 years old on a visa, which later expired. She attended elementary, middle and most of high school in California. She also graduated from high school in California. But when she applied to attend community college in California, different campuses disagreed on whether she was eligible for in-state tuition because she had spent two years of high school in Utah. At the time, a second law had recently been passed to allow colleges to consider years of attendance in elementary and middle school for AB 540 eligibility.

    “One college that I went to in So Cal, I was approved for AB 540. When I had to go back to the Bay Area, I was not approved for AB 540. So then I was confused that there was this inconsistency,” Gutierrez said.

    A few years later, when she applied to transfer to a four-year college, both UC and CSU campuses told her she was not eligible for in-state tuition, even though by then, a law had passed that clarified that attendance at community college could be counted toward the requirements. She spent a semester paying out-of-state tuition at San Jose State University, before the university finally acknowledged she was legally eligible for in-state tuition. 

    As a college counselor, Gutierrez continues to meet students who have been incorrectly told they are not eligible for in-state tuition.

    “It’s crazy because in reality it hasn’t changed much,” she said. However, she said, the financial burden is harder now, because most students graduating from high school cannot apply for work permits under DACA, because the government has not accepted new applications since 2017. 

    “I see my students now and I see the struggles they’re going through. If I didn’t have DACA, I honestly don’t think I would be where I am now,” Gutierrez said. “There’s no way that I would’ve been able to pay nonresident fees or wait for whoever it is that is determining that to learn what they need to do for me to be able to go to college.”

    Advocates say they hope the document will help colleges give correct information and avoid students having to research on their own for information.

    California also recently streamlined the process for undocumented students to apply for financial aid and exemption from in-state tuition on the same application when they fill out the California Dream Act application. In the past, students had to both fill out a California Dream Act application and an AB 540 affidavit form for each college. Now, the AB 540 form will be part of the same application.

    Diana Aguilar-Cruz said that change is significant. Aguilar-Cruz is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public health at Cal State Fullerton. When she first began her undergraduate education at Cal Poly Pomona, she was charged nonresident tuition, which was almost double the in-state tuition. She had immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico City in 2015, when she was 14 years old, and lived with her grandmother in Baldwin Park while attending high school. 

    She had completed a California Dream Act application, but no one told her she also had to complete a separate form. After researching it herself online, she found the form and completed it, at which point the university finally changed her tuition to in-state.

    “If I didn’t find it in my Google search, would I be paying in-state tuition for my four years of college?” Aguilar-Cruz said. “I always think to myself, what would have happened if I was a more fearful student or a student who did not have a strong support system at home?”

    This article was corrected to clarify how Maria Gutierrez immigrated to the U.S. and that Chabot College is in Hayward.





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