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  • Governor Gavin Newsom: Do Not Give In to a Lawless President

    Governor Gavin Newsom: Do Not Give In to a Lawless President


    Governor Gavin Newsom spoke to the situation in Los Angeles, which Trump is using as a target in his campaign to distract the public from his incompetence. In his hateful way, Trump always refers to Governor Newsom as “Newscum.”

    Governor Newsom said, as transcribed by The New York Times:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom of California delivered a speech on Tuesday, titled “Democracy at a Crossroads.” The following is a transcript of his remarks as broadcast online and on television channels:

    I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.

    This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles. Those raids continue as I speak.

    California is no stranger to immigration enforcement. But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders, a strategy both parties have long supported, this administration is pushing mass deportations, indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.

    What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before. On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people. A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb. A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.

    In other actions, a U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested; a 4-year-old girl, taken; families separated; friends, quite literally, disappearing.

    In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly, to protest their government’s actions. In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace and, with some exceptions, they were successful.

    Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of unrest. We manage it regularly, and with our own law enforcement. But this, again, was different.

    What then ensued was the use of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents detaining people and undermining their due process rights.

    Donald Trump, without consulting California law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets, illegally and for no reason.

    This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk.

    That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. As the news spread throughout L.A., anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.

    By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers. Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.

    If you incite violence — I want to be clear about this — if you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held to account. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.

    Already, more than 220 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

    Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.

    But that, that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation, he chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. He federalized another 2,000 Guard members.

    He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines. These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement. We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.

    We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.

    That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.

    California will keep fighting. We’ll keep fighting on behalf of our people, all of our people, including in the courts.

    Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city. Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.

    If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

    Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.

    And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th.

    I ask everyone: Take time, reflect on this perilous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.

    This is a president who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. He’s declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing.

    He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment. And the threat of defunding them. At threat, he’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to, in his own words, “for getting elected.”

    And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.

    Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

    This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.

    Democracy is next.

    Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

    There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.

    The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.

    The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office — with all due respect, Mr. President — is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.

    At this moment, at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully.

    I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.

    Do not give into him.



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  • How to give everyone a fair shot in college admissions

    How to give everyone a fair shot in college admissions


    Credit: Courtesy of CollegeSpring

    Much of the focus on systemic inequality in America — in education or other sectors — has rightly been through retrospective or historical accounts about present-day conditions, or through cries for social reform based on egregious incidents and related frustrations. It’s a rare occasion, however, when we have the opportunity to reflect upon a slow but potentially pernicious systemic change that’s taking place in real time, right before our eyes. 

    Within higher education, there’s a new inequitable system in the making — or worse, a re-entrenchment of an old one — that stands to sharply divide and negatively affect society, communities and the future workforce. 

    As we end one admissions cycle and reflect on the testing policy changes in college admissions in 2024 alone, Ivy League schools like Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, other highly selective universities like CalTech and UT-Austin, and now Stanford, reversed test-optional policies to begin requiring the SAT and ACT again. The flood of announcements made it easy to dismiss or tire of them, since most of these colleges are already viewed as out of reach for the majority of students, calculated on one basic fact: grades.

    All students know — or at least used to — that at minimum, you need stellar grades and a good test score to get in. Today, however, it seems that will only be true of some exceptional schools. With test optional-schools, it’s less clear-cut whether test scores matter and/or how good your grades and scores need to be.

    Wealthier, more privileged students combat the complexity by continuing to prepare for and take the SAT or ACT — no matter the school — while lower-income students with less access to quality counseling and information are told the tests are less important in college admissions overall. This effectively takes any of the above-mentioned schools off the table for them, and also lowers their chances even at the other test-optional schools. More and more, students will pursue only the colleges they think they’ve been prepared for — while taking themselves out of the running for schools that could admit them.

    I fear we are on the precipice of recreating systemic divisions that are reminiscent of those of the not-so-distant past — the mid-20th century — when people went to schools with others who were assigned to the same station in life. The Harvards of the country selected students from local or known elite circles. There were different standards for women, who went to colleges that prepared them for support roles, not leadership. Black students predominantly went to Black colleges — mostly for Black men. People of certain classes, genders, religions, and races were grouped together —all according to their expected roles and objectives in life. 

    So what can we do now to stem this growing inequity?

    Some might say the antidote would be that all colleges should have the same rules — either every college requires the test or they don’t. To be clear, I believe that would be the most fair thing to do. Test required or test blind, and nothing in between.

    I also believe that would be impossible, impractical and unrealistic to enforce.

    In the United States, we have a problem with standardization — and not just the testing kind. On the one hand, this nation was founded on the principle of equality, on sameness for all. That, however, stands in fierce tension with our desire for individualism and uniqueness. So, while I think the same rules and opportunities would undoubtedly lead to a fairer system and better outcomes for all people, I’ve realized that uniformity is not a rallying cry people will get behind.

    What we must get behind, then, is for every college to be as transparent as possible about how test scores are used. I commend schools like Dartmouth, which did the research to be able to say: To attend this school, you must submit a score, and if you are from an underrepresented background, we will factor your score in this way.

    Test-optional schools should develop a clear-cut rubric to give students a sense of how much weight they give to scores, or what minimum score they will need if their GPA does not meet a certain threshold. Even if this increased transparency from schools was made available to students, what all students need — and in particular students from low-income underrepresented backgrounds — is the same message that their more privileged peers are getting: “Take the test. It will likely help you. You might not need it for some schools, but at least you will have more options if you are prepared.”

    For students who do want to take the SAT or ACT and receive a score, testing companies and educators must ensure that they give them opportunities to do so. It’s troubling to read about lack of testing sites or canceled administrations, like the one that affected 1,400 students in Oakland on June 1.

    Those of us who educate and guide students should encourage and help them to set and reach high standards, not prepare them for the bare minimum. The way we do that is by ensuring all students are positioned at the starting line with the same information, not different interpretations of the admissions landscape.

    If we want as many Americans to have the highest quality education possible, this system-in-the-remaking is not sustainable. We now have a moment to pause and reflect upon the direction we’re headed and ask how we can use everything we know and see today to make our schools more inclusive, ensuring that they are engines of mobility for all students from all backgrounds, not just a select few.

    •••

    Yoon Choi is CEO of CollegeSpring, a national nonprofit that trains schools and teachers to provide SAT prep to students from low-income backgrounds.

    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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  • For preschool educator, kids’ paintings give them a deep brush with themselves

    For preschool educator, kids’ paintings give them a deep brush with themselves


    Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza

    Daniel Mendoza makes his own paintbrushes. It may have started out as a way to save money, but it also reflects his aesthetic as a veteran preschool teacher who uses painting to engage pint-sized students.

    “The brushes happened out of a necessity of wanting to make things big,” said the child development specialist who is also a painter. “If you’re familiar with preschool teachers, we make super low salaries starting out. I had to stay on a budget.”

    Daniel Mendoza uses art as a way to spark engagement in preschool.
    Credit: Daniel Mendoza

    Instead of downsizing his plans to teach small children how to create epic murals or Jackson Pollock-style canvases, Mendoza got creative. The brushes became a symbol of his DIY vibe.

    “I came up with this mop-style brush,” said the 44-year-old, with customary modesty. “It really allowed me to feel even more connected to this work and a part of who I am and what I’m trying to convey, down to the materials themselves.” 

    While he started out as a musician and now works primarily in visual arts, he says the leap to education was a no-brainer for him. 

    “It wasn’t really a stretch for me to move worlds,” said Mendoza, the program administrator for the Placer County Office of Education early childhood education department. “Music and visual arts are so interconnected. Even education is the same in ways.  It takes thinking in that creative mindset.”

    Much like the preschoolers he spent 10 years teaching, Mendoza embraces big messes. One of the first things students saw when they came into his classroom was a drippy, paint-splattered canvas.

    Now, he teaches other educators how to unleash the power of creativity in the classroom. Some teachers are afraid of making a big mess, but he relishes it.

    “Art is intrinsic to who we are as humans,” he said. “It’s tied to our identity and our outlook on how we view the world.  Think about the aesthetics of art, and how that is tied to everyday life. What we like to wear, eat, listen to … We want to create, it’s deep in who we are.”

    Mendoza, who grew up on a pistachio farm, seeing nature as his playground, believes that children are naturally artists. They love to get down-and-dirty, and they often focus more on the process than the product. Sometimes a child will concentrate so hard on a piece they seem to lose themselves in the work, only to run off as soon as it’s finished.

    “They love making the art,” he quips, “not putting their name on it.”

    Little children think outside the box by default, experts say. The challenge is how to let them grow that impulse even as they grow up. 

    “Preschoolers live in their creative mindset, all the time. It’s the perfect space for me,” he said. “Art gives children a voice. It opens the door for them to share their feelings, their thoughts, their ideas.”

    Having grown up in a low-income immigrant family, Mendoza is passionate about making sure all children have the same exposure to the arts that high-income families often take for granted.

    “I was a Head Start kid, I know what it’s like to struggle,” said Mendoza. “It’s sad because when we think about the circle, generational poverty or generational addiction as opposed to generational wealth and prosperity. Some of these children will stay in this lower socioeconomic status as they grow into adults. That’s how they exist. Giving them tools like art, dancing, painting, gives them an understanding of freedom, of expression, of identity.”

    Mendoza views teaching as an art form of its own, cultivating his pedagogy with the same depth of dedication as his mixed-medium artworks.

    “He approaches his work like an artist — with creativity,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents Statewide Arts Initiative, “but also with an educator’s understanding of how to remove enough limitations to engage in play and art-making both individually and collectively.”

    Preschool teacher Daniel Mendoza with some of his students.
    credit: Daniel Mendoza

    Sometimes Mendoza worries that no matter how much headway he makes in the early years, encouraging children to think for themselves and embrace their creativity, that it all gets lost by middle school, when the intense pressure on achieving high test scores can diminish the love of learning.

    “I feel that so many don’t see that connection, the connection art has to culture, individuality and community,” he says ruefully. “It might be a lack of education or awareness, but this conversation is missing. Helping connect what is seen as a ‘luxury’ to those learning goals and foundations that are important to families, gives us an opportunity to show the massive impact the arts have on children’s learning and ability to reach their maximum potential in school and throughout life.  We all need the arts, not just children.”

    He partly blames the laser focus on numeracy and literacy for creating a more stressful environment for children that also hasn’t moved the needle academically.

    “Math scores are down,” he notes. “We have done math all day, and then we did this after-school math program, and now we’re sending math homework home, and that’s still not working. So now we’re going to double down and kids are going to do math on the weekends. I’ve watched a lot of baseball. That’s three strikes right there.”

    By contrast, art teaches focus, he says. It demands that you slow your roll, pay attention and then reflect on the nuance. That depth of concentration and perception pays off in all the other subject areas, experts say. 

    “He has the seamless ability to integrate the arts with other content areas,” said Jennifer Hicks, assistant superintendent of educational services at the Placer County Office of Education. “When children experience art with Daniel, they are experiencing math, they are experiencing literacy, they are experiencing science.”

    Mendoza says he almost got arrested once at the old Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas for spending too much time looking at a painting. The lights turned off, and when security guards appeared, they assumed he was up to no good.

    “Art is an invitation to have an inner dialogue,” he said. “To examine yourself, what you think, what you feel.”

    Credit: Courtesy of Daniel Mendoza

    One of the most noticeable things about Mendoza is his exuberance for art and learning for their own sake. That’s partly why small children often gravitate to him, even when he and his wife are just out shopping at Target, because he radiates warmth.

    “Daniel is joyful,” said Hicks. “ His passion for early education is apparent in everything he does.  He’s always ready to take on a new project or implement an innovative idea. He has a magical way of communicating with children, teaching them language, expression and how to be good humans.”

    While his time is jam-packed with training preschool teachers, painting and teaching about the creative process in children at Sierra College, when he needs to recharge creatively, he always heads back into the classroom to the little ones who are his muses. 

    “If my tank is low, I go hang out at one of our classrooms,” he said. “The children are always so awesome at refilling that creative tank for me.”





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  • Give fire victim families emergency school choice

    Give fire victim families emergency school choice


    A burned sign at Oak Knoll Montessori School (Loma Alta School) from the Eaton fire on Jan. 9 in the Altadena neighborhood of Pasadena.

    Credit: Kirby Lee via AP

    As Gov. Gavin Newsom stood near a burned-down school, Pacific Palisades mom Rachel Darvish pleaded with Newsom: “That was my daughter’s school, what are you going to do?” Newsom offered no real answer for the distraught parent at the time. 

    Well, here’s the answer he should have given: All families affected by the Los Angeles fires should be eligible for emergency education savings accounts that parents can use to pay for education alternatives for their children.

    The Los Angeles fires have not only destroyed people’s homes and businesses, they have also razed neighborhood schools. Initial reports indicate at least a dozen schools in the Los Angeles area have burned, affecting more than 5,700 students. 

    In the Altadena area, which was devastated by the Eaton fire, nearly 2,000 students are school-less.

    “I’m just really sad,” one 7-year-old Altadena girl told a CBS-TV reporter, “because I love that school.”

    Describing the impact of losing her children’s neighborhood school, an Altadena mom said: “School is a big part of it because it’s the foundation of a family’s daily life. Now we don’t have that anymore.”

    The sad reality for affected families is that rebuilding schools, like rebuilding homes, will take a lot of time and money, and only $1 million of Newsom’s $2.5 billion wildfire relief bill was designated for rebuilding schools.

    Even in normal times, it takes two years or more to build a school, and school construction costs range from $70 million to $100 million per school. 

    What are families to do in the meantime?

    Many affected families have been dispersed to various parts of Southern California and beyond. Since their homes will not be rebuilt soon, government leaders can address the individual needs of children in this diaspora by giving every child affected by the fires a publicly funded education savings account.

    According to the school-choice organization EdChoice, education savings accounts “establish for parents publicly funded government-authorized savings accounts with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes,” to be used in-state.

    Parents can use these funds to cover “school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, and sometimes save for college,” whatever policymakers determine. Some programs cover home school costs. 

    California leaders can model on Arizona, where education savings accounts are funded at 90% of the state’s per-pupil funding, with special needs students receiving higher amounts. 

    In Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget, $83 billion from the state’s general fund would go to K-12 education. Using Arizona as a guide, $12,800 could be made available for these accounts for each affected child.

    With thousands of affected students, the total cost for an emergency education savings account program would be around $73 million — a drop in the bucket compared with the billions of dollars in aid being discussed for other aspects of the affected areas.

    Education savings accounts are popular with parents. In Arizona, a large majority of parents support such accounts.

    For example, after talking with Arizona State Board of Education member Jenny Clark about the state’s education savings account program, one family said, “We continue to utilize the … program to tailor our son’s education to meet both his great strengths and real challenges.”

    Today, 18 states from Wyoming to West Virginia have similar programs.  

    Public schools could be held financially harmless during the existence of these accounts. As EdChoice noted, in states with school choice programs, “many have funding protection policies.” In California’s case, districts could continue to receive their current average daily attendance funding.

    Education savings accounts could be funded through the billions of dollars in aid the state will surely receive from the federal government. President Donald Trump would likely look favorably on this program since he proposed a similar program at the federal level in his first administration.

    The education savings account program should be reevaluated after a few years to ensure it’s working as designed and improved as needed.

    While the catastrophe of the Los Angeles fires has created great uncertainty, one thing is certain: Parents affected by the fires will need the flexibility to pivot and choose educational alternatives that best suit the individual needs of their children.

    Parents cannot wait for bureaucratic processes to rebuild the schools that had been. These families need tools right now to pay for and provide for educational services to meet their immediate needs. 

    “We are so thankful for the educational freedom,” said another Arizona family that used their account funds for a home school hybrid program. 

    With National School Choice Week upon us, it is a perfect time to give fire-affected Los Angeles parents the freedom and flexibility they so desperately need.

    •••

    Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute, a Pasadena-based think tank advocating for free-market policy solutions, and author of  “The Great Classroom Collapse.”

    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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