As enrollments drop, city after city is facing pressure to close half-empty schools. Fewer kids means fewer dollars. Consolidating two schools saves money because it means paying for one less principal, librarian, nurse, PE teacher, counselor, reading coach, clerk, custodian … you get the idea. Low-enrollment schools end up on the chopping block because they’re the ones that typically cost more per pupil.
But there is another way to cut costs without closing underenrolled schools.
First, it’s worth noting that small schoolsneedn’t cost more per pupil. Our school spending and outcomes data include examples of small schools all across the country that operate on per-pupil costs comparable to their larger peers — some even delivering solid student outcomes.
But here’s the catch: These financially viable small schools are staffed very differently than larger schools.
There’s a 55-student school near Yosemite that spends about $13,000 a student—well under the state average. How do they make it work? One teacher teaches grades two, three, and four. There’s no designated nurse, counselor, or PE teacher, and rather than offer traditional athletics, students learn to ski and hike.
A quick glance at the many different financially viable small schools across different states reveals that staff often wear multiple hats. The principal is also the Spanish teacher, or the counselor also teaches math.
Also common are multi-level classrooms. When my kids attended a small rural high school, physics was combined with AP Physics, which meant both my 10th and 12th graders were in the same class, but with different homework.
Sometimes schools give kids electives via online options, send students to other schools for sports, or forgo some of these services altogether. Some have no subs (merging classes in the case of an absence). Sometimes the schools partner with a community group or lean on parents to help in the library or coach sports.
Done well, smallness can be an asset, even with the more limited services and staff. Whereas a counselor might be critical in a larger school to ensure that a student has someone to talk to, with fewer students in a small school, relationships come easier. Teachers may have more bandwidth to assist a struggling student.
What isn’t financially viable? A school with the full complement of typical school staff but fewer kids. These aren’t purposely designed small schools, rather they’re underenrolled large schools (sometimes called “zombie schools”). Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, has a slew of tiny schools spending over $30,000 per pupil. Such schools vary in performance, but all sustain their higher per-pupil price tag by drawing down funds meant for students in the rest of the district. In the end, no one wins.
With so much aversion from parents to closing schools (witness, for example, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Pittsburgh or Denver) we might expect more districts to adopt these nontraditional staffing models as a way to save costs and keep families happy.
In some cities, it’s the charter schools that are offering just that: smaller nontraditional programs that make it work without extra subsidies.
Some will argue that nontraditional schools (including charters) won’t work for every student. Districts must take all comers, including English learners, families needing extra supports, those wanting a full athletics program, specialty autism services, and so on. That said, the idea here is that larger districts needn’t offer those services in every school, provided they’re available elsewhere in the district.
But it’s these larger districts that are the most wedded to the uniform staffing structure. It’s so deeply embedded in job titles and union rules, as well as program specifications and more.
Tolerating small nontraditional schools would mean letting go of some of that rigidity and accepting the idea that schools can be successful without all those fixed inputs. And it might mean reducing some staff who believe their roles are protected when enshrined in a staffing formula. On the flip side, if the school in question has higher outcomes, and the choice is to close it or redesign its staffing structure to transform it into a more intentionally small school, parents and students may accept that trade if it means preserving the school community.
It would also mean changing budgeting practices so that what gets allocated is a fair share of the dollars per pupil—in contrast with allocations based on standardized staffing prescriptions.
The last decade saw a big push for inputs-based models, including “every school needs a counselor” or “every school needs a nurse.” As enrollments continue to fall, these inflexible one-size-fits-all allocations stand in the way of keeping small schools open.
None of this is to say that every school should remain open. Many will inevitably close. But for some of those that deliver solid outcomes for their students, perhaps now is the right time to rethink the typical schooling model.
Marguerite Roza is Ddrector of the Edunomics Lab and research professor at Georgetown University, where she leads the McCourt School of Public Policy’s Certificate in Education Finance.
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.
Many colleges and universities in California are currently expanding the ways students can receive credit for prior learning, an increasingly popular practice of awarding college credit to students for knowledge they acquired outside a college setting.
Proponents of granting credit for prior learning, often referred to by its acronym CPL, point out that Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests are very common ways that students receive credit for college classes before they attend college. But there is an effort to broaden the ways that students may be able to receive credit for what they’ve learned outside a college classroom, whether on the job, through volunteering or even a hobby, such as photography or playing an instrument.
In the past few weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the notion of giving credit for prior learning as an important way to recognize the skills that adults pick up in the military or even volunteering through the California Service Corps.
Many educators say this is an important step toward promoting equity in their institutions. It’s a way to recognize the academic value of work, particularly for students who may have left college to work or started college later in life. Proponents say it can save students time and money, making graduation more likely.
Does my college or university offer credit for prior learning?
Because this is an arena of education that is rapidly evolving, it can be difficult for students to figure out whether they may qualify for credit. Right now, that depends on the policies at any given institution or academic department.
College advisers or faculty members are a good starting point. Veterans may also want to speak to the department that supports veterans. Many institutions are currently refreshing their policies for giving credit for prior learning and outlining them in their course catalogs.
How can credit for prior learning help students?
Students can fulfill general education or major requirements before even showing up to school. This means that they’re able to graduate with a degree or credential more quickly — which also means that they’re more likely to graduate. This can save students time and money.
A study by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning found that students who started school with 12 credits could save between $1,500 to $10,500 and nine to 14 months, depending on the institution.
The study found that 48% of students over 25 years old who had obtained credit for prior learning completed their degree or certificate within 7.5 years, compared with 27% of students who had no credit. The completion rate was even higher, at 73%, for credit received outside the military.
There are also important psychological benefits to students who start college with credit under their belts. These students begin their college careers with a sense of momentum and accomplishment, according to Tina Barlolong, career center co-coordinaor at Palomar College in San Marcos.
Are there any drawbacks?
Taking a college course just for the sake of taking a course has risks, and the same is true for pursuing credit for prior learning. It takes a lot less time and money than a full course, but students on financial aid or veterans on the GI Bill, for instance, could run out of funding before they’ve attained a degree if they pursue unnecessary credit.
Proponents of credit for prior learning encourage students to discuss their best options with a counselor, adviser or a faculty member in a student’s field of study. They can ensure that the credit in question will serve a purpose, such as fulfilling a general education or major requirement.
What are some common methods of receiving credit for prior learning?
It may be as simple as passing a challenge test required by a department. The College Board offers a way to test out of college-level material through its College-Level Examination Program, usually referred to as CLEP in the field.
Portfolio reviews are common in the arts. That means a professor or committee may review paintings, photography or graphic design before deciding to award a student credit. A portfolio could also be used to assess a student’s business skills.
Playing music or acting out a scene may be a way to earn credit in the performing arts. Beginning piano is a popular course.
Some students may have obtained a certificate or license in their job that is the equivalent of what they would learn in a college course. Certifications offered by Microsoft or Google that allow students to receive credit for basic computing are common.
The American Council on Education offers many colleges and universities guidance on how to award credit. That can include deciding whether military or corporate training meets academic standards.
Are veterans eligible for credit for what they have learned while in the military?
Yes. In fact, the study by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning found that 68% of students who received credit for prior learning earned it through the military.
Credit for prior learning has a long history among veterans. The military offers service members extensive training that tends to be highly standardized. When they are discharged, veterans receive a Joint Services Transcript, which translates military experiences into civilian language. This can be used for a resume or for receiving college credit. Veterans can also receive credit for college through free examinations called DSST tests.
Every public university or college in California accepts the Joint Services Transcript — though whether any given course is eligible for credit may depend on the institution or department.
Veterans may be able to get credit for physical education requirements, for instance. Depending on their training in the service, veterans may also receive credit for courses in engineering, law enforcement, computer science or health care.
One branch of the military bypasses this whole process: the Air Force has its own community college, so most of its members simply receive a college transcript upon being discharged.
Can I get credit for work experience?
Not exactly. The idea behind getting credit for prior learning is that it is awarded for learning and skills acquired, not just for work experience.
Someone working as an auto mechanic might have picked up a lot of knowledge and skills, but that experience may not correspond to everything covered in an automotive repair course, such as safety procedures, ethics and professionalism. Credit is granted for that knowledge and training — not just the years working in a given field.
How do California’s colleges and universities view credit for prior learning?
Thanks to legislation, community colleges and the campuses of California State University and the University of California all have policies on the books for credit for prior learning. But how those policies are implemented varies from system to system, school to school and even department to department.
All three systems will consider the veterans’ Joint Services Transcript and offer credit for any equivalent courses that are offered on their campus.
California’s community colleges have perhaps the most generous guidelines for awarding these credits. Colleges may award credit for skills learned through work experience, employer-training programs, military service, government training, independent study or volunteer work.
The community colleges have set an ambitious goal of ensuring that at least 250,000 Californians receive credit for prior learning by 2030. The Mapping Articulated Pathways Initiative supports community colleges in these efforts through training, technology and policy.
California State University overhauled its policies for granting credit for prior learning in 2023, and it has required each campus to have its own policies. The system does accept exams such as the CLEP and DSST for credit. It will also accept any training or instruction that corresponds to American Council on Education guidelines.
The University of California has the strictest guidelines on credit for prior learning. Its guidance states that credit will only be offered for courses that meet the same high standards of the UC system — this stance is typical of selective universities. It does not award credit for vocational or technical training or for results on CLEP or DSST tests. It will accept credit for courses on veterans’ Joint Services Transcript for any equivalent courses UC offers.
“The more traditional, the more selective an institution is, the more they tend to not have generous policies,” said Su Jin Jez, CEO of the nonprofit California Competes, a nonpartisan policy and research organization.
How much does getting this credit cost?
This is another factor that varies by institution. It might be free for students who have already matriculated. Many institutions charge a fee for tests or other assessments. Some might charge for each credit unit. Generally, it will be considerably cheaper than tuition. However, funding can become a barrier when financial aid does not cover these fees, according to a recent survey by the American Council on Education.
Will this credit transfer from one institution to another?
Theoretically, it should, just like any other course. When a student receives credit for prior learning through an institution, their transcript will show that they received credit for a specific course number.
But no matter how a student earns credit, transferring credits can be potentially tricky. It largely depends on the institution or major a student is transferring into.
Does giving credit to students for prior learning end up hurting college enrollment?
It may sound counterintuitive, but giving credit to a student for prior learning actually means it is more likely that the student will take more courses. The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning study found that students awarded credit for prior learning actually tended to earn 17.6 traditional course credits more than students without those credits.
Donna J. Nicol, author of a book about Claudia Hampton, the first Black woman to serve on the Cal State board of trustees.
Credit: Courtesy of Donna J. Nicol
It was the photo of a Black woman dressed in university regalia that caught Donna J. Nicol’s eye.
“Trustee Claudia Hampton,” the caption read, “appointed by Reagan.”
Nicol, an associate dean at Cal State Long Beach who studies the history of racism and sexism in higher education, was stunned. Ronald Reagan, as governor, opposed mandatory busing as a tool of school desegregation and, as president, attempted to undo affirmative action policies in the workplace. How could it be, Nicol wondered, that he appointed the first Black woman to sit on the California State University board of trustees?And what did Hampton do once she got there?
“Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action”, Nicol’s recent book, answers those questions and others about Hampton’s two-decade stint on the board of trustees that governs the 23-campus public university system. Prior to her appointment at CSU, Hampton worked to enforce desegregation orders in the Los Angeles Unified School District and earned a doctoral degree from the University of Southern California. She rose to the CSU board when an opportunity to meet then-Gov. Reagan’s education secretary turned into an informal vetting process for a board seat. (She met Reagan only once, as far as Nicol can tell, an encounter Hampton described as pleasant.)
The book tracks Hampton’s emergence as a master tactician and a skillful diplomat on the Cal State board of trustees. Initially excluded from the informal telephone calls and meetings in which fellow board members discussed CSU business outside of regular meeting times, Nicol writes, Hampton traded votes with trustees to earn influence. Eventually, she began hosting board members for dinner to ensure she had a voice in important decisions, a practice she continued as board chair. Hampton also withstood subtle (and not so subtle) racism to win support for policies benefiting low-income students of color.
Though at first skeptical of Hampton’s approach to board politics, Nicol came to understand her as a pragmatist who worked within the period’s racial and gender norms to wield power on a board dominated by white, wealthy and conservative men.
“I realized how genius she was,” Nicol said. “When she became board chair, she had a strategy of letting her supporters talk first, and then her opponents had to play defense later. Everything was strategic.”
Nicol also details Hampton’s work to implement, monitor and ensure funding for affirmative action programs. Soon after Hampton’s death, California voters passed Proposition 209, a 1996 ballot measure that bans state entities from using race, ethnicity or sex as criteria in such areas as public education and employment.
But Hampton’s legacy is still felt in CSU and beyond, Nicol writes. CSU created the State University Grant program after Hampton argued that increases to student fees should be offset by more need-based aid. A student scholarship named in her honor is aimed at underserved Los Angeles-area students. The California Academy of Mathematics and Sciences, a prestigious public high school that was her brainchild, continues to operate on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Nicol counts herself among the many students to have benefited from Claudia Hampton’s advocacy. She attended an enrichment program for African American high school students at Cal State Dominguez Hills and received a State University Grant to pursue her master’s degree at Cal State Long Beach. Today, Nicol is the associate dean of personnel and curriculum at Long Beach’s College of Liberal Arts. She spoke to EdSource about the book and Hampton’s legacy.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You write about a couple of incidents in which Hampton used some savvy diplomatic skills while on the Cal State board of trustees. Would you mind walking us through an example or two of those strategies?
She was silent (at board meetings) for her first year. She didn’t talk, because she used that time to assess who were the power players, who were the people who had the capital. And so when she identified them, she said, “I have to trade votes with them.”
One of her first appointments was to be on the Organization and Rules Committee. People treated it as a throwaway committee, but she was the chair, and so she decided, “I’m going to learn all of the board policies inside and out.”
Before she passed away in (1994), she asked for a very specific rule, which is to hold presidents accountable for the implementation of affirmative action. What she wanted to ensure was that someone besides the middle manager, who would be the affirmative action officer, would be held accountable to make sure that they didn’t fall short on their affirmative action goals.
Claudia Hampton faced both subtle and overt racism that challenged the legitimacy of her role on the board. What are some examples of the discrimination that she experienced and how she was able to overcome that opposition?
She was kind of presumed incompetent, because she was a Black woman coming into the board — even though she actually had a doctorate degree coming in.
You had a trustee by the name of Wendell Witter. This is a few years in. They’re discussing affirmative action. And he yells out, “Oh my God, there’s a n— in the woodpile.” So she is taken aback by all of this, and all the men on the board, she says, are upset, too. And Wendell Witter is looking around like, “Well, what did I do? It’s just an expression.”
Hampton had a lot of experience in administration in (Los Angeles Unified), and she worked explicitly on race relations within the K-12 setting. When she got to the board, instead of yelling at Witter for what he had said, she told the board chair at the time, “I’ll talk to him individually. You keep going with that meeting.” And so the men on the board started to rally around her, because they viewed her as a political moderate, because she had every right at that moment to tell him off for the statements.
Help me to understand the victories that Hampton ultimately won with regard to affirmative action and related policies.
California Gov. Jerry Brown was actually kind of an opponent of affirmative action. He would say he supported it, but then when it came to funding, he would support (Educational Opportunity Programs, or EOPs, which help low-income and other underrepresented students attending a CSU campus), but he would not (fund) student affirmative action (in admissions) or faculty and staff affirmative action (in hiring). Hampton put a lot of pressure on Jerry Brown. She would call him out in meetings and say, “What about your commitment to these principles?’” (Hampton ultimately used her board position to ensure funding for student affirmative action pilot programs during a period of budget cuts in the late 1970s.)
There was an update in the admission standards for students (in the 1980s). And she told people, ‘Yes, we’re going to increase the admission standards, but what we’re going to do is make sure that there’s enough EOP money that would prepare students in low-income areas in order to make sure they could meet those standards.’ She was particularly focused on the fact that L.A. Unified and San Francisco Unified had these large numbers of students of color and low-income students, but they weren’t getting access to things beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. They didn’t have access to a drama club or all those sorts of things. So she made sure that the CSU put funding aside to help support (that programming).
Hampton and other affirmative action advocates’ success was short-lived because of the passage of Proposition 209, which prohibited state and local governments from considering race and other factors in public education. What were the forces that brought about Proposition 209?
You have the recession that happened in the 1990s. Wherever there’s a recession and an economic downturn, you see an uptick in either racial violence or racial animus. So that’s one big part of it. The other part is the L.A. riots of 1992 because folks are like, ‘Well, they don’t deserve affirmative action, because look at how they’re behaving in the streets.’ That’s the idea. And then you also have, in 1994, Proposition 187, which has to deal with undocumented students.
So you take all of those things – the recession, the LA riots, Proposition 187. Then, on top of that, you have (University of California regent member Ward Connerly, who championed Proposition 209) as this Black man who becomes a public face of the anti-affirmative action movement. (Connerly has said he has Native American, Black and white ancestry.) He’s kind of supercharging the debate over whether affirmative action is a good thing or not. So that’s really what led to its falling apart.
We find ourselves now in a moment when a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has effectively ended the practice of race-conscious college admissions. Are there lessons from Hampton’s life that you feel are even more relevant today in that context?
I think that having diversity in our boards is really important because diversity leads to better policy. Too often we think of diversity as a feel-good thing — to make people feel included and inclusive. We talk about representation, but representation is more than just having two or three people from this group here; It’s really about having different perspectives so that you can write better policy.
If you look at the CSU board, it is more diverse than it was, but is it reflective of what’s happening on the ground with students? I’m at CSU Long Beach, and we have a much larger Latinx population than what is represented on the board.
I always say that the American project has been built on racism, and we don’t reconcile that. And Hampton just approaches the problem in a different way than others. I was raised in the Black radical tradition. So I had to come to terms with this pragmatic side — that we need the pragmatic and we need the radical at the same time. You need the radical to raise the consciousness of people, but you need the pragmatic in order to turn it into policy and something that has a legacy.
I also think that Hampton — her story, her life, what she did for the board— really demonstrates, in a lot of ways, people’s ignorance about how the trustees work. They’re super powerful, but they are super unnoticed. They are appointed by governors, and they are not held to account by the public.
Children line up to drink water from a fountain inside Cuyama Elementary School in Santa Barbara County.
Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo
It’s that time again when I line up my predictions for the year only to see events conspire to knock them down like bowling pins.
As you recall, I lay down my wager in fensters. You can, too, on a scale of 1 fenster — no way it’ll happen — to 5 – it’s bird-brain obvious (at least to you). Fensters are a cryptocurrency redeemable only in Russian rubles; currently trading at about 110 per U.S. dollar. Predict right, and you’ll be rich in no time!
2025 will be rife with conflict; you know that. It will start Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump will announce that POTUS 47 v. California will be the main attraction on his UFC fight card. Trump’s tag team of both a Republican Congress, though barely a majority, and a conservative Supreme Court will be formidable.
Since it’s often difficult to know from day to day whether Trump’s acts are grounded in personal vendettas or conservative principles, that will complicate predictions. Insiders also say his decisions change based on the last person he speaks with. Safe to say it won’t be me.
With that caution, grab your spreadsheet.
Trump’s agenda
Mass deportations could turn hundreds of thousands of kids’ lives upside down, and massive shifts in education policies could jeopardize billions of dollars in federal funding for low-income kids.
Public reaction will determine whether Trump deports tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants with criminal records or indiscriminately sends back millions of people, as he implied. Most Americans found Trump’s policy early in his first term of separating children from parent border crossers abhorrent. Scenes on social media of ICE agents’ midnight raids, leaving kids without a working parent and potentially homeless, could have the same effect. And Central Valley farmers dependent on immigrants to harvest crops will warn Trump of financial disaster; other factories dependent on immigrants to do jobs other Americans don’t want will, too.
Trump will rely on shock and awe instead: swift raids of meat-packing plants and of visible sites targeting immigrant neighborhoods in California’s sanctuary cities — to send a message: You’re not welcome here.
And it will work, as measured by fear among children, violations of habeas corpus (laws pertaining to detention and imprisonment), and, in the end, declines in illegal crossings at the border, a trend that already started, under widespread pressure, in the final year of the Biden presidency.
The likelihood that Trump’s deportations will number closer to 100,000 than a million
The likelihood that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will open immigrant detention centers, one each in Northern California and Southern California
The likelihood that chronic absence rates in California school districts with large undocumented immigrant populations will soar to higher than 40%
The likelihood that the number of California high school seniors in those same districts who will not fill out the federal application for college financial aid known as FAFSA because of worry about outing an undocumented parent will increase significantly
The likelihood that the Trump administration will challenge the 1981 Supreme Court decision that children present in the United States have a right to attend public school, regardless of their immigration status and that of their parents
Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education
One of the late President Jimmy Carter’s accomplishments was the creation of the Department of Education. Forty-five years later, Trump wants to dissolve it and divide responsibilities among other federal bureaucracies: Title I funding for children in poverty to the Department of Health and Human Services; federal student loans and Pell grants to the Department of Treasury. That would take congressional approval, and past efforts over the years to eliminate it — a popular Republican idea — never came close to passing.
The likelihood that Trump could get majorities in Congress to eliminate the department
With or without a department, Trump could make radical changes that could impact billions of federal education dollars for California. He could turn Title I’s $18.8 billion funding for low-income children into a block grant and let states decide how to spend it. California, which had spats with the Obama administration over how to mesh state and federal funding, might welcome that. But poor kids in other states will be at the whim of governors and legislators who won’t be held accountable.
The likelihood Trump will cut 10% to 20% from Title I funding but leave funding for special education, the Individual Disabilities Education Act, traditionally an area of bipartisan agreement, intact
The likelihood Trump will call cuts in money for Title I and the Department of Education bureaucracy a down payment for a federal K-12 voucher program
Mini-fight over state budget
Later this week, Gov. Newsom will release his 2025-26 budget. If the Legislative Aalyst’s Office was right in its revenue projections, there will be a small cost-of-living adjustment for education programs and at least $3 billion for new spending — petty change compared with Newsom’s big initiatives for community schools and after-school programs when money flowed.
A piece of it could go toward improving math. It’s been ignored for too long.
California students perform abysmally in math: Only 31% were proficient on state tests in 2024, compared with 47% in English language arts — nothing to brag about either. In the last National Assessment of Educational Progress results, California fourth graders’ scores were behind 30 other states.
The State Board of Education approved new, ambitious math standards, amid much controversy, two years ago. The state has not jump-started statewide training for them since. But the board will adopt a new list of approved curriculum materials this summer, signaling it’s time to get rolling.
The likelihood that Newsom will include hundreds of millions of dollars for buying textbooks, training math coaches and encouraging collaboration time among teachers.
Ethnic studies tensions
Conflicts over ethnic studies, which have been simmering since the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 101 in 2021 requiring high schools to teach it will come to a head this year.
At the center of the controversy is the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and affiliated groups pushing an alternative version of the ethnic studies framework that the State Board of Education approved in 2021. The state framework, a guide, not a mandated curriculum, places ethnic studies in the context of an evolving American story, with a focus on struggles, progress and cultural influences of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans.
The liberated version stresses the ongoing repression of those groups through a critique of white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, plus, for good measure, instruction in anti-Zionism and Palestinian liberation. UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty members have led efforts to promote it, with substantial consulting contracts with several dozen districts.
AB 101’s mandate for teaching ethnic studies, starting in the fall of 2025 and requiring it for a high school diploma in 2029-30, is contingent on state funding. And that hasn’t happened, according to the Department of Finance. Meanwhile, the Legislative Jewish Caucus will reintroduce legislation to require more public disclosure before districts adopt an ethnic studies curriculum. In his Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism, Newsom promised to work with the caucus to strengthen AB 101 to “ensure all ethnic studies courses are free from bias, bigotry, and discriminatory content.”
Some scenarios:
The likelihood Newsom will press for amendments to AB 101 as a requirement for funding the AB 101 mandate
The likelihood that Newsom and the Legislature fund the AB 101 mandate, at least to keep it on schedule, for now
The likelihood the Jewish Caucus-led bill to strengthen transparency and AB 101’s anti-bias protections will pass with Newsom’s support
Amending the funding formula
Revising the Local Control Funding Formula, which parcels out 80% of state funding for TK-12, may get some juice this year — if not to actually amend the 12-year-old law, then at least to formally study the idea.
At an Assembly hearing last fall, the state’s leading education researchers and education advocates agreed that the landmark finance reform remains fundamentally sound, and the heart of the formula — steering more money to low-income, foster, and homeless students, as well as English learners — should be kept. However, with performance gaps stubbornly high between low-income and non-low-income students and among racial and ethnic groups, researchers also suggested significant changes to the law. The challenge is that some ideas are in conflict, and some could be expensive.
In his budgets, Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed more money to the most impoverished, low-performing schools. However, some school groups want to focus more money on raising the formula’s base funding for all students. Others want to focus attention on districts in the middle, with 35% to 55% low-income and English learners, who get less aid per student than in districts like Oakland, with higher concentrations of eligible students.
The outcome will affect how much money your school district gets, so keep an eye on what’s happening.
The likelihood that the funding formula will be amended this year
The likelihood there will be a two-year study with intent to pass legislation next year
What about tutoring?
At his preview Monday on the 2025-26 state budget, Newsom barely mentioned education. But a one-word reference to “tutoring” woke me up.
In my 2023 predictions column, I wagered three fensters that Newsom would expand a promising effort for state-driven and funded early-grades tutoring in a big way. Last year, looking back, I wrote, “It was wise advice couched as a prediction, which Gov. Newsom ignored. (It’s still a good idea.)”
So it is. Newsom created the structure for tutoring at scale when he created California College Corps. It recruits 10,000 college students and pays them $10,000 toward their college expenses in exchange for 450 community public service hours. Newsom, in setting it up, made tutoring an option. What he didn’t do is make it a priority and ask school districts, which received $6.3 billion in learning recovery money over multiple years, to make intensive, small-group “high-dosage” tutoring their priority, too. Other states, like Tennessee, have, and Maryland this year became the latest.
The likelihood that Newsom will include high-dosage tutoring in math and reading for early grades, in partnership with tutoring nonprofits, school districts, and university teacher credentialing programs
TK for all (who choose)
Starting this fall, any child who turns 4 by Sept. 1 can attend publicly funded transitional kindergarten in California. The date will mark the successful end of a four-year transition period and a $2.4 billion state investment.
“Done,” said Newsom pointing to the word stamped on a slide during a preview of the budget on Monday.
Well, not quite.
The hope of TK, the year between preschool and kindergarten, is to prepare young children for school through play and learning, thus preventing an opportunity gap from developing in a year of peak brain growth. For school districts, adding this 14th year of school offers the only hope for a source of revenue when enrollment in all grades in many districts is declining.
But in its first and initial years of full operation, TK will likely be under-enrolled statewide. There are a number of reasons. By design, the Newsom administration and Legislature are offering multiple options for parents of 4-year-olds. There are transitional kindergarten, state-funded preschools, private preschools, and state-funded vouchers for several care options, plus federal Head Start.
The state has provided financial incentives for providers to shift to serving 2- and 3-year-olds, but it will take time. The state had assumed that transitional kindergarten would draw parents attracted to classes taught by credentialed teachers in a neighborhood elementary school. Some parents prefer their preschool with an adult-child ratio of 8-to-1, instead of 12-to-1 in transitional kindergarten (a credentialed teacher and an aide in a class of up to 24) and a preschool teacher who speaks Spanish or another native language, said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, who has been researching transitional kindergarten in California.
And many elementary schools don’t have the bigger classrooms to accommodate TK and kindergarten, or they can’t find enough credentialed teachers and aides to staff them.
In coming years, transitional kindergarten enrollment will reach closer to serving all 4-year-olds, an estimated 400,000 next year.
For now, the likelihood that transitional kindergarten will serve more than 60% of a target population
Keep on your radar
Equity in funding: Voters approved a $10 billion state construction bond, providing critical matching funding to districts that passed local bonds. But despite small fixes in Proposition 2, the first-come, first-served system favors school districts with the highest property values — whether commercial downtowns or expensive homes. The higher tax burden for low-wealth districts is why some schools are pristine and fancy, while those in neighboring districts are antiquated and decrepit. The nonprofit law firm Public Advocates threatened to file a lawsuit last fall, and hasn’t said whether it will follow through. But it would be a landmark case.
In the 1971 landmark decision in Serrano v. Priest, the California Supreme Court ruled that a school funding system tied to local property taxes violated students’ constitutional rights. Challenging the state’s reliance on districts’ disparate local property wealth to fund school facilities could be the equivalent.
Rethinking high school: Anaheim Union High School Districtis among the districts thinking about how the high school day could be more relevant to students’ personal and career aspirations. Anaheim Union is exploring how an expanded block schedule, team teaching, interdisciplinary courses, artificial intelligence, online learning, and job apprenticeships could transform learning.
The six-period day, education code rules in instructional minutes, and seat time may be obstacles to change and perpetuate mindsets. For now, discussions have been more conceptual than specific. The State Board of Education has a broad power to grant waivers from the state education code; State Board President Linda Darling-Hammond said the board is open to considering them. This may be the year a district or group of districts take up her offer.
Thanks for reading the column. One more toast to 2025!
California has had a racial imbalance between its teacher workforce and its student population for years, with a majority Hispanic student population being taught by teachers who are mostly white. That could be changing, as more people of Hispanic heritage enroll in college teacher preparation programs in the state.
Overall enrollment in teacher preparation programs in California has decreased in recent years, but the biggest declines have been among white teacher candidates. The result has been a higher percentage of people of color entering teacher preparation programs, according to the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
In the 2022-23 school year — the most recent year state data is available — more than half of the new teacher candidates identified themselves as a race other than white. Nearly 40% of the 17,337 newly enrolled teacher candidates that year were Hispanic, and just over 33% were white, according to CTC data.
That was a stark contrast to the racial makeup of the state’s teacher workforce that same year, when 55% of the state’s 312,124 teachers were white, and Hispanic teachers made up 25% of the workforce from transitional kindergarten (TK) through high school.
“Over half of our TK-12 student population identifies, and the majority of our English language learners also are Latino,” said José Magaña, executive director of Bay Area Latinos for Education. “The research is pretty clear that not just Latino students and English language learners, but all students, benefit from having a more diverse educator.”
Latinos for Education offers fellowships to support Latinos in the education system. The Bay Area branch of the organization also has a Latinx Teacher Fellowship program to support beginning teachers and paraprofessionals.
Research shows that when students are taught by educators who reflect their cultural backgrounds and understand their lived experiences, it results in stronger academic outcomes, greater social-emotional growth, and a profound sense of belonging, said Kai Mathews, executive director of the Urban Ed Academy in San Francisco, which recruits and supports Black male teachers.
“Increasing the number of Latinx educators is about more than representation — it’s about creating classrooms where every student feels seen, valued and is liberated to be their authentic self,” Mathews said.
Changing California demographics
The change in the racial makeup of teacher candidates coincides with the evolving population of the state, where 56% of the K-12 student population was Hispanic last school year, according to the California Department of Education. The number increases to over 60% for children younger than age 5, said Shireen Pavri, assistant vice chancellor of California State University’s educator and leadership programs.
In the years between 2018 and 2023, the percentage of Hispanic teacher candidates has slowly increased from 31.4% to 39.7%, while the number of white teacher candidates dropped by 10 percentage points, according to CTC data. The number of Hispanic teacher candidates also has been increasing, although it dropped from 7,154 in 2021-22 to 6,934 in 2022-23, when the overall number of teacher candidates declined for a second consecutive year.
California State University, which prepares the majority of the state’s teachers, had the largest percentage of Hispanic students in its teacher preparation programs in 2022-23 — nearly 50%, according to the CTC’s “Annual Report Card on California teacher preparation programs.” The number is currently 55%, Pavri said.
During that same time, the percentage of white candidates in CSU teacher preparation programs decreased, and the percentage of teacher candidates of other races remained flat.
CSU is leading the way
“Anecdotally, a lot of our Latinx population, who come into our teacher preparation programs, come in because they want to make a difference,” Pavri said. “They didn’t necessarily see people who looked like them when they were going through school. Many of them came in as English learners. They want to make an impact now on their communities and give back.”
Some of the recent success at diversifying the pool of teacher candidates at California State University can be attributed to the Center for Transformational Educator Preparation Programs, which has helped to recruit, prepare and retain teachers of color, according to the university.
Its Transformation Lab, a four-year program that recently ended, increased the retention rate of teacher candidates at some campuses and improved teacher placement numbers at others, Pavri said. At CSU Bakersfield and CSU Northridge, for example, the completion rates for Black candidates increased by 17% and 31% respectively between 2020 and 2023, and Stanislaus State doubled its student teaching placements for historically underserved teacher candidates at Modesto City Schools over a two-year period.
The center’s leadership is seeking additional funding to support similar programs in the future.
The university also operates CalStateTEACH, an online multiple-subject teaching credential program that focuses on recruiting male teachers of color from throughout California.
In University of California teacher preparation programs, 35% of the teacher candidates are Hispanic, 29% are white, 20% are Asian and 2.8% are Black. There are still slightly more white teacher candidates than Hispanic, 38% and 32.6% respectively, in teacher preparation programs at private universities and colleges.
State programs bearing fruit
The increase in the number of Hispanic teacher candidates in teacher preparation programs could be attributed, in part, to efforts by state lawmakers to ease the teacher shortage and diversify the teacher workforce by making earning a credential easier and more affordable. The state has offered degree and coursework alternatives to several tests, established residency and apprenticeship programs and paid for school staff to become teachers.
District grow-your-own programs and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program and apprenticeship programs are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.
“All of those state investments, particularly around affordability, have helped incredibly with bringing more Black and brown students into our teaching field,” Pavri said.
CSU teacher residency programs outpace even the traditional teacher preparation programs in terms of the number of teachers of color enrolled, she said.
Numbers for other ethnic groups flat
Despite the efforts, California State University continues to struggle to attract Black teacher candidates, hovering around 3% for years, despite several initiatives to improve their numbers, Pavri said.
“While we celebrate this progress, we must confront the persistent underrepresentation of Black, Asian and Pacific Islander educators,” Mathews said. “Our classrooms deserve to reflect the fullness of California’s diversity. Ensuring this kind of equity in the teaching workforce isn’t just good for students—it’s essential to building the inclusive, transformative and liberating system our communities deserve.”
Statewide, Black teacher candidates made up 4%, and Asian teacher candidates about 9.5% of total enrollment in California teacher preparation programs between 2018 and 2023, according to CTC data.
There are fewer Black teachers because of obstacles they encounter on the way to completing their education, including an unwelcoming school environment, disproportionate discipline and overrepresentation in special education, Pavri said.
Pursuing a teaching credential, where traditionally student teaching is unpaid, is not affordable for some. Teacher salaries, which are generally lower than the pay for other jobs with the same qualifications, and working conditions also are a deterrent for students from families with limited generational wealth, Pavri said.
More needs to be done to keep teachers
The increase in the percentage of Hispanic teacher candidates is positive, but not significant enough, Magaña said. In order to reflect student demographics, the state will need to make significant investments to recruit and retain educators.
“The numbers are staggering around the number of educators that are leaving the profession, especially our Latino educators,” he said.
Magaña, who was a classroom teacher for 15 years, said Latino educators often have to take on extra work on campus, whether it is supporting translations or family engagement.
“It can be a lonely role,” he said. “Sometimes there may be just one Latino educator on campus, and without mentorship and community, and network building, it makes it easier for folks to not feel supported.”
La entrada a un aula se ve en la Escuela Preparatoria Palisades después del incendio de Palisades en el vecindario Pacific Palisades de Los Ángeles el 14 de enero de 2025.
In the aftermath of L.A.’s most destructive wildfires, air quality experts warn that families should be prepared for the “disaster after the disaster” — toxic pollutants, smoke and ash that contaminate the air for months, or even years, to come.
“People at higher risk include children, older adults, pregnant individuals and those with heart or lung conditions or weakened immune systems,” said Dr. Muntu Davis, health officer for Los Angeles County, in a smoke advisory issued through last Sunday. “Predicting where ash or soot from a fire will travel, or how winds will impact air quality, is difficult.”
As local leaders focus on rehousing some of the more than 100,000 people forced to evacuate, public health leaders emphasize that families, including educators and students, must also protect themselves from the long-term health effects of wildfires, especially those living or working near burned areas.
What pollutants are in the air?
The Palisades and Eaton fires — classified as wildland-urban interface fires, and now the largest urban fires in the country’s history — have spread a host of particulate matter, toxic pollutants and carcinogenic materials from fire and smoke-damaged urban structures, according to experts.
Short- and long-term exposure to particulate matter, one of the main pollutants from wildfires, can cause respiratory problems such as coughing, wheezing, difficulty breathing, bronchitis and reduced lung function, as well as cardiovascular problems such as heart failure, heart attack and stroke, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Household items, electrical wires and building materials damaged by fire contain dangerous and toxic compounds such as benzene, toluene, formaldehyde and xylenes, along with heavy metals such as lead, chromium and arsenic, some of which can travel over 150 miles from the sites of the fires, according to data from previous wildfires. These toxic pollutants, which are commonly found in ash and debris from burned structures, can cause severe long-term illnesses such as cancer, liver problems, respiratory problems, heart disease and learning disabilities.
Even if you live or work near the fires, it is imperative to limit children’s exposure to areas still polluted with debris, experts say.
How can I know if the air quality is safe for my family?
The air quality index uses air monitoring devices to measure the amount of particulate matter (microscopic particles that can lodge in the lungs) in various populated areas. Families can see the level of exposure for their particular locations on the map — from good (green) air quality to hazardous (maroon) air quality — and when to limit outdoor exposure and wear a protective mask accordingly.
AirNow.gov measures real-time, reliable data for particulate matter present in smoke and dust.
Fire.airnow.gov measures the main type of particulate matter present in smoke and depicts areas of major concern around the fires.
Air quality index does not measure everything
“The AQI (air quality index) does not measure the contaminants and pollutants we care deeply about,” said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics.
In fact, pollutants such as dioxins — known to cause severe liver, endocrine, immune and developmental problems — can chemically bind to and travel in the air with smoke particles without being detected by monitoring devices.
“You can look at AQI and see that there’s only particulate matter in an area today,” Williams said. “Problem is, these toxic compounds have adsorbed (latched) onto the particulate matter there, which is how, for example, the health impacts from (9/11) spread so far.”
Experts caution that while the index accurately measures particulates, it does not depict the presence of larger toxic chemicals from fires — such as asbestos from old homes, plastic, lead and copper — which increase the risk of acute and chronic health problems. Families should take extra precaution if they see or smell smoke, ash or live in and around neighborhoods with dangerous air quality levels.
How are children affected by these pollutants?
Children are at a higher risk of negative health outcomes such as acute respiratory infections, asthma and decreased lung function due to air pollution and smoke inhalation. One study found particulate matter from wildfires to be 10 times more harmful to children than particulate matter from non-wildfire sources. Inhaling toxic pollutants has also been linked to severe chronic respiratory, cardiovascular, immune and endocrine illnesses in children.
Acute symptoms of smoke inhalation include coughing, wheezing, difficulty breathing and chest tightness, eye burning, chest pain, dizziness or lightheadedness and exacerbated symptoms for children with pre-existing conditions like asthma. Children from low-income neighborhoods are also at higher risk of experiencing these symptoms due to higher rates of air pollution near their homes.
How do I stay protected from wildfire smoke?
Children and adults should wear masks and limit outdoor activity near wildfires for at least two weeks after the fire is out, according to experts from the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
When outside, children and adolescents should wear a tight-fitting KN95 mask, N95 mask or P100 respirator. For young kids, only KN95 masks come in children’s sizes.
Make sure the mask is certified by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), has two straps and tightly fits over the nose and under the chin. Surgical masks, dust masks, bandannas and other makeshift masks do not protect from wildfire pollutants.
Free N95 masks are available for pickup at Los Angeles public libraries, Los Angeles recreation centers, Los Angeles senior centers and local nonprofits. And Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) students also have masks available at school, according to a district spokesperson.
Keep outdoor exposure to a minimum and, if possible, run an air conditioning system with a clean, high-efficiency air filter at home to prevent smoke and ash from entering indoors. If your child’s school has reopened, check that it has proper air filtration systems installed. If they do not have proper ventilation, contact your school district or a local clean air advocacy group, such as Coalition for Clean Air, to advocate for upgrades. In the meantime, schools can also pick up free air purifiers from donation sites across the county.
Schools in and around evacuation zones should also limit or cancel outdoor activities such as recess.
If your home has been affected by the fires, avoid bringing polluted ash and dust back to spaces shared with children. Remove shoes at the doorway, and wash and change out of clothing before you have contact with children.
If your child has problems breathing, refuses food and water or experiences other health problems potentially related to smoke inhalation, remove them from a smoke-contaminated place and seek medical help immediately.
LAUSD school board member Karla Griego reading with students.
Credit: Courtesy of Karla Griego
A lot has changed in the life of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new board member, representing District 5.
In the past few months, Karla Griego was elected to LAUSD’s school board, was sworn in and now is having to find her stride as a new presidential administration takes charge on Monday.
While many of her priorities remain unchanged — including providing more support for community schools, investing in special education and charter school accountability — Griego said she’s rethinking some of her priorities because of another four years of President Donald Trump.
Despite the potential hurdles ahead, Griego, an educator of more than 19 years and backed by the district’s teacher’s union, emphasized that she is grateful to work with LAUSD’s community as part of a larger movement.
“Change doesn’t happen with individuals, change happens with movements,” Griego, the first Latina to serve her board district in more than 30 years, said in an interview with EdSource.
“And if that’s what we want in our schools — we want schools to be student centered and holistic educational experiences and schools that are healthy, green, racially just, affirming, community schools — then it’s a movement that’s going to make that happen.”
Here’s what she said she hopes to accomplish in her tenure on the board.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the most critical issues that you most want to address during your term on the Los Angeles Unified board?
The immigration issue is very big here in L.A. because there’s a lot of anxiety among our families, our communities, our students, and so that is definitely one thing that was not on my campaign platform, but it has now risen as a priority. And with that, I’m hoping that we could lead in having “Know Your Rights” sessions for families and parents and students, and provide social-emotional support. It was the student board member who highlighted the need for social-emotional support for students who will be dealing with a lot if their families are in fear of deportation. We saw in 2017 how children were affected by that. I am hoping that we can, as a district, lead in spearheading some of these workshops and support systems for our students and their families.
And then, of course, the budget is always very important. Every year, we need to make decisions. I want to make sure that I involve stakeholders, and I want to host meetings throughout my district to hear from families and parents and teachers, classified staff, administrators about what their priorities are. I want to hear from the community. I made that commitment when I was running, and so one of the first tasks is going to be to host listening sessions throughout the district.
And of course to expand community schools to allow them to grow and thrive as they’re meant to, and to make sure that we keep our promise to our Black students by maintaining the Black Student Achievement Plan.
And, just overall, that as we are making decisions, I bring that voice to the table of seeing the decisions that we make through the lens of supporting our students and supporting our students holistically— so let that be the driving force for all of our decision-making.
You’ve already discussed supporting families who fear deportation. But beyond immigration, how has the outcome of the November election impacted your priorities, if at all?
I’m a special education teacher, and with the federal government threatening to disband the Department of Education, special education could be dispersed to another department, and so it won’t have as high a priority. I definitely want to make sure that we continue to center one of our most vulnerable (groups of) students in spite of all the hits that we get (and make) decisions about what’s best for them to be able to access the curriculum and schooling and to be in a safe environment that is equitable and meets their needs.
Special education is an area of concern for me in terms of the new presidency, but it just means that we need to work harder, and we need to bring together special ed parents, special ed students and teachers and administrators to organize and push back on any cuts to what’s already a very small budget. And even though they’re threatening to cut even more, we continue to ask for more.
There are so many stakeholders who sometimes have conflicting views on critical issues, ranging from policing to charter schools. How do you plan to balance all of that feedback and decide what to act on?
When I was a community school coordinator, I learned to do different types of assessments and surveys, but also to have focus groups and to determine to come to a consensus as to what the priorities will be. And so that’s what I’m hoping to do.
Few parents say we want police and, likewise, we don’t want police. The first thing that comes out generally, in my experience with talking to families throughout the campaign and even now, is we want safe schools. And so, what are you going to do to create safe schools? And that’s what they want to hear from the district. I’ve always told stakeholders that I know that there is funding in community-based safety programs. I know that there is funding for restorative practices and de-escalation techniques, and so I want to make sure that we spend that money to support our staff and support our students and to implement Safe Passages in our neighborhoods, especially those where families feel that their kids are not safe going to and from school. I want to make sure that we use that funding for those things as they were meant to be used.
In terms of charters, it’s accountability. That’s huge with charter schools — making sure that they are held accountable in the same way that public schools are held accountable. If they say that they accept special ed students and English language learners, then I want to see that is the case, that that is happening, that children, that families are welcomed, and families are engaged.
How do you plan to engage student voices?
The student voice is super important, and the way that I want to make sure that I engage them is by meeting with different student organizations that already exist in LAUSD. And, in particular, we have a lot of groups of students who are affinity groups: the LGBTQ, trans groups, Latino groups or Black student unions.
I also want to make sure that when I visit school sites, that I also engage with students at the school sites and, at these listening sessions that I’m hoping to have, there’s going to be a concerted effort to make sure that students also attend and (that I) get ideas from them.
What message would you like to send to LAUSD’s student body?
Our students go through so much. All students experience so much stress either just by the mere fact that they are in the developmental stage that they’re in, or social factors. And so, what I want to tell them is to try to find joy in the things that you like and enjoy yourself as much (as you can), because you deserve it. And, yeah, it’s hard. I have an 18-year-old daughter, so I try to stress that to her, to just try to find joy.
There’s so much stress on our students about performance. Even if we don’t tell them, they feel it. They feel the stress of testing, performing graduation, doing better. It’s just the messages that we send to our kids sometimes are always about doing better, and how does that make us feel? That we’re never enough, that we’re just not quite there. And, I don’t want our students to feel that way. They are where they are, and they are strong and resilient.
And also, to lean on the support system that they may have: a sibling, cousin, a friend, an educator, a parent. Whatever that support system may be, lean on that because when you’re in community, you also feel a lot stronger.
A special education class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School in Richmond.
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
TOP TAKEAWAYS
Federal cuts are directly impacting programs designed to support students with disabilities in their transition to adulthood and programs that train special education teachers.
These cuts have caused significant concern from advocates and educators for disabled students.
Regional special education administrators in California are calling on Congress to rescind the cuts and for the state to fill the gap in the meantime.
Jake, a 17-year-old junior, is beginning to think about life after he graduates from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego County.
This is a daunting task for any teen, but his mother, Angela, says it’s been especially thorny for Jake, who is on the autism spectrum, has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and struggles with anxiety.
The prospect of getting a job one day soon has made him “suicidal,” said Angela, who asked not to share her family’s last name to protect her son’s privacy about his diagnoses. She said her son has told her, “I’m going to be homeless; I won’t get a job.”
So Angela was thrilled when Jake was accepted into a new program at his school, Charting My Path for Future Success, which helps students with disabilities navigate into adulthood. In late January, Jake began to meet with a caseworker who seemed to understand his needs. At the time, Angela thought, “My prayers have been answered,” she said.
“We don’t have a clear understanding of why this decision was made or why this particular grant program was cut so suddenly,” said Stacey McCrath-Smith, director of special education at Poway Unified. “It was very upsetting to our staff. It was hard to explain to families and parents.”
An email from the U.S. Department of Education said the grant was “deemed to be inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” Representatives from the department did not respond to questions from EdSource.
Educators and disability advocates in California are raising the alarm about federal cuts that are already affecting programs that support students with disabilities. That includes research like Charting My Path for Future Success, but also cuts to special education teacher training.
The disability advocacy community is in defense mode, said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy for The Arc, a national advocacy group for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“There are many, many pieces that we’re concerned about,” Linscott said.
Linscott and other advocates for disabled students worry that other Trump administration proposals, such as dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and cutting Medicaid, could further harm disabled students. But some cuts have already taken effect.
The morning after the district was told its grant funding was cut off, Poway Unified notified four teachers being trained to help disabled teens transition to adulthood that they would immediately be reassigned to other positions in the district. This is despite early signs of success, such as one nonverbal student who had become highly engaged in sessions about career planning in a way he had never been in academic classes, McCrath-Smith said.
Jake will no longer receive training to help prepare him for college and employment. Now he will not receive mentoring or lessons on goal-setting, finding an apartment and other skills. His mother said he struggles with real-world topics like banking or how a resume works. She’s been looking for alternatives, but is unsure how her son will find help for his unique needs.
“It was like a gut punch,” Angela said.
Educators’ worries extend beyond the 420 students in California, including students at Sweetwater Union High and Mt. Diablo Unified school districts, who were a part of the national study.
“The recent and abrupt elimination of critical funding and research developments will significantly impact important ongoing special education research and services to students, not only in our member [local education agencies], but in others who would ultimately benefit from the results of their research,” according to a letter written on behalf of the SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area) Administrators of California, California County Superintendents, the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education and the three districts hit by the cuts.
The March 21 letter calls on Congress to compel the U.S. Department of Education to reverse its decision, and for the California Legislature to bridge the immediate funding gap of $2.8 million for this “vital” special education research.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of researchers against the U.S. Department of Education this month challenged whether the executive branch has the constitutional power to cut nearly $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. The suit called the department’s actions “dramatic, unreasoned and unlawful,” noting that the canceled grants left students with disabilities “in the lurch, with no time or help to even transition out of the Charting My Path Program.”
Cuts to special education teacher training
The Trump administration also abruptly terminated $600 million in federal teacher training grants, including programs to address the acute shortage of special education teachers who work with California’s nearly 840,000 students with disabilities.
Three SELPAs in the state reported losing funding to create a pipeline of special education teachers, according to a March 25 letter sent to California state and federal legislators on behalf of the affected districts, SELPA Administrators of California and California County Superintendents.
Under these cuts, the Tulare County SELPA reported that it will lose about $10 million, San Diego’s South County SELPA will lose $4.1 million and the West San Gabriel SELPA will lose up to $650,000. Those cuts are in limbo now as they’re also being challenged in court.
Teacher shortages can impede the education of students with disabilities, said Tamara Schiern, executive director of the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA. When districts are unable to fill openings for these positions, they either hire teachers who are not fully credentialed or long-term substitutes.
According to a federal survey, there’s both a state and nationwide shortage of teachers with the appropriate special education credentials, with 40% of districts reporting in 2020-21 that they struggled to staff special education roles.
The West San Gabriel Valley SELPA typically has 30 vacancies to fill each year in its 14 districts, and it would struggle to find credentialed teachers for eight to 12 of them, Schiern said.
In one example, Schiern said a string of long-term substitute teachers was covering a class of elementary school students with autism. Parents complained, and then the district, which she declined to disclose, asked the SELPA for help. The agency was able to help set the classroom up and model instructional strategies, but when a new substitute teacher came in, the agency had to start from scratch again.
“That’s what a teacher shortage looks like on the ground,” Schiern said.
This is why the West San Gabriel Valley SELPA began a program to train teacher residents specifically in special education. Funding came from state and district sources, but districts with high-need students received federal reimbursement for their share. This year, the program supported 27 teacher residents; ultimately, the goal was to cover 40 residents.
But federal cuts to the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant mean that the annual stipend for the residents will be slashed from $37,000 to $27,000; the coordinator for the program was cut, and only half the number of teacher residents can be supported, Schiern said.
In the meantime, the letter from special education administrators and superintendents asks California’s congressional delegation to pressure the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate the funding and the state legislators to cover the $14.9 million shortfall.
“The sudden loss of federal funding for teacher residency grant programs will have a significant and profound impact on an already fragile system,” reads the letter.
The San Gabriel Valley is a community that is ethnically and racially diverse, with a large population of immigrants and English learners. The region’s SELPA looks to parents and paraprofessionals to recruit special education teachers who can reflect that demographic diversity, Schiern said, adding that representation matters in education for both students and parents — a point backed by research.
This made the program attractive for California to fund, but it also may have made the program a target for the Trump administration, which has canceled contracts for programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.
“I can’t help but feel that that could be part of the issue,” Schiern said. “A lot of what California does is at odds with the federal government right now.”
We want to hear from you
A new administration always brings change, and education is once again at the center of the national conversation. As we track these developments, we want to hear from you. What policies are you interested in reading about? What questions do you have about how federal decisions might shape education in California? How will this change affect disabled students in California?
In her home country of Guatemala, Maribel attended a one-room schoolhouse for two years, but the teacher was often absent, causing class to be canceled. She never learned how to read. The school closed during Covid, and she never returned to class until last year, when she moved to Oakland.
Now 11 and enrolled in middle school, she is learning English and at the same time filling gaps in her education — how to read, interpret graphs and acquire other skills she never learned before.
Maribel’s school, Urban Promise Academy, is one of four middle and high schools in Oakland trying out a new curriculum developed just for students who did not attend school for years in their home countries. School staff asked EdSource to only use middle names to identify students because they are recent immigrants. There is heightened fear among immigrant students and families because of the Trump administration’s promises to ramp up immigration enforcement.
In Maribel’s classroom, though, no fear was palpable. Instead, there was joy.
On one recent morning in her English class, Maribel and her peers were analyzing graphs showing favorite colors, favorite foods, favorite sports and home languages among students in a class. They were practicing marking the x-axis and y-axis, pronouncing numbers in English and talking about what the graphs meant.
“How many students like pizza?” asked teacher Shannon Darcey.
“Eight students like pizza,” responded a student.
Teacher Shannon Darcey teaches new immigrant students skills like interpreting graphs at the same time as they learn English.Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
About 3,300 students in Oakland Unified this school year — close to 10% of the total student population — immigrated from other countries in the last three years. Of those, at least 600 had more than two years in which they did not attend school in their home countries. These students are often referred to as students with interrupted formal education, or SIFE.
The reasons students missed school vary. Some lived in rural communities far from schools, for example. For others, it was dangerous to attend school because of gang violence or war in their communities. Other students simply had to work.
When students haven’t yet mastered academic reading, writing, or math in their home language, they have a lot more to learn in order to grasp middle or high-school level material, even as they are learning English. But if the materials or curriculum are designed for younger students, it can be boring or seem too childish for teenagers.
Before this school year, Darcey taught English to recent immigrant students with a huge range of academic knowledge. Some students were reading at seventh or eighth grade level in Spanish, for example, while others could not read at all. She remembers some students being frustrated.
“I had one kid … Every single day for six months, he was like, ‘I can’t read. Why are you giving me this?’” Darcey said. “He felt like, ‘Everyone else in here knows what is happening, and I have no idea what this is. Why are you telling me to have a book in my hands?’”
For years, Darcey tried to access curriculum designed especially for students who have had big gaps in schooling. She had heard about a curriculum called Bridges, developed by researchers at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. But when she tried to get materials from them, she was told they were only available for teachers in New York.
Julie Kessler, director of newcomer and English language learner programs in Oakland Unified, said many teachers she has worked with in Oakland Unified and San Francisco Unified were frustrated at not being able to access the Bridges curriculum.
“And so it’s like, who’s got a bootleg copy of it?” Kessler said. “And it’s just been inaccessible to the field.”
She said she has often seen students with big gaps in schooling disengaged in class.
“They are experiencing sometimes an alternate assignment, sometimes sitting with like a Disney book or a children’s book, when even the scaffolded newcomer curriculum is inaccessible to them,” Kessler said. “We were seeing a lot of that because teachers didn’t have a way to connect them to what was happening.”
Last year, though, Kessler was able to secure funding from the California Department of Social Services’ California Newcomer Education and Well-Being program, to develop a new curriculum considering the needs of Oakland’s newcomer population and aligned to the California English Language Development standards. She worked with some of the authors of the Bridges curriculum, who now have an organization called the SIFE Equity Project.
The resulting Curriculum for SIFE Equity is open source, available to all teachers anywhere on the internet. And Kessler said there are teachers in San Rafael, Elk Grove, San Diego and Vista using it, in addition to Oakland. Outside of California, the curriculum is also being used in New York City and Prince William County, Virginia.
“We’re hearing a lot of gratitude from teachers who are like, ‘Oh my God, finally something that I can use with this group of students that feels worthy of their time, that feels respectful of them and feels like it’s doing the skill building that we know that they need,’” Kessler said.
The curriculum currently includes about 50 days of instruction — less than a third of a school year. Kessler said the district is now trying to get more funding from the Department of Social Services to develop a full 180 days, so it can be used for a full school year.
Darcey said the curriculum has made a huge difference. She now has separate English classes just for students who have gaps in their education.
A student’s “identity map,” used to organize information that will later be used in a slideshow.Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
The class began the school year with a unit on identity. Studens learned how to say their names, how old they are, where they are from, what language they speak. They later put together “identity maps” with their name in the middle, and information about their hometowns, their ages, their responsibilities, families and what they like to eat and do for fun written in spokes all around. Then they created slideshows with the information and added photos.
Fourteen-year-old Anallely’s map shows that she likes salad, fish and marimba music, that she speaks the indigenous language Mam in addition to Spanish, and her hometown is in the mountains and forest of Guatemala, where it is hot and rainy.
Anallely only attended school in her hometown until third grade. After that, she stopped going so she could work with her father, planting and harvesting coffee on a farm.
She said she had never learned about graphs or maps to organize information before coming to school in Oakland.
“It’s very useful, because you can use them to define how many people like something or which is their favorite, or where they are from,” she said in Spanish.
She hopes to someday become a doctor to help babies and people who are sick. She’d also like to travel the world.
Most of Darcey’s students are new to reading in any language, so Darcey also works with them in small groups to teach them letter sounds, and how to sound out syllables and one-syllable words like tap, nap and sat, using a curriculum called UFLI Foundations, adapted for recent immigrant students by teachers at Oakland International High School.
Teacher Shannon Darcey works with new immigrant students on sounding out syllables.Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
Another student, Arturo, never attended school in his life until he enrolled at Urban Promise Academy at 14 years old.
“In previous years, a kid like that in my class, I would’ve felt like, ‘Oh my God, they’re like totally lost, and it feels like they’re just sitting there 80% of the time,’” Darcey said. But she doesn’t feel that way about Arturo. “He is engaged, he’s trying. Can he read the words on the page yet? No. But he’s still able to follow what’s happening.”
Darcey is grateful to work with these students.
“They bring such an eagerness and excitement, a willingness to try new things that maybe other kids their age are not as enthusiastic about,” Darcey said. “They often bring a work ethic that I think can really help a lot of them be successful in school.”
Giving these students skills to navigate the world is important, Darcey said, because they are already part of our society.
“We’re going to prepare them to be successful in their lives,” she said.
Maribel, the student who only attended two years of school in Guatemala, said she was afraid to come to school in the U.S. at first, but now she looks forward to it.
“The teacher speaks some Spanish and she always helps us if we need anything,” Maribel said. “I can write some words in English now, and I’m writing more in Spanish, too. And I’m learning to read.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly named the literacy curriculum Darcey uses as SIPPS. She uses UFLI Foundations.
The LGBTQ+ community rallies in solidarity, opposing the Social Studies Alive! ban in Temecula Valley Unified in June 2023.
Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource
This week’s executive order by President Donald Trump disingenuously titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” is a brazen assault on our educational freedoms and civil rights. The order directs the secretary of education and other department heads to develop a plan to terminate federal funds that directly or indirectly support classroom instruction on systemic racism or provide supportive school services and protections to transgender youth.
The order’s sweeping definition of what it calls “discriminatory equity ideology” could lead to a ban on teaching about slavery, segregation, redlining, voter suppression and other historical realities that continue to shape life and opportunity in America today. The order could also result in a ban on ethnic studies, gender studies, queer studies and other rigorous academic disciplines that prepare students to think critically and to live in a multicultural, multiracial society.
Equally troubling is the order’s attack on transgender students and the educators who support them. By directing the attorney general and federal prosecutors to coordinate investigations and prosecutions against educators who provide basic support to transgender students, like psychological counseling, or who use the student’s preferred pronouns, the order puts already vulnerable students at grave risk.
Put this all together and what results is a stunning proposal for a federal takeover of local education, where the president of the United States dictates what local schools can teach and which type of student belongs in our classrooms. It is also another attempt by President Trump and many of his right-wing supporters to purge our nation’s history of uncomfortable truths and erase the lived experience of people of color, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
While the potential consequences of this order are staggering to imagine, the most effective way to resist it is clear: Schools, educators and communities should not cave in to threats and intimidation and rush to voluntarily comply with this likely unconstitutional and unlawful order. Stay the course, partner with students, families and community organizations, and resist unless and until the courts have authorized any aspect of these outlandish proposals.
Trump tried something similar and failed in his last days of his first presidential term by issuing Executive Order 13950, which prohibited federal agencies and grant recipients from conducting trainings that included “divisive concepts” such as systemic racism, white privilege and unconscious bias. The order was blocked by a court in Northern California on First Amendment and Fifth Amendment grounds and later rescinded by the Biden administration.
Similar attempts to censor classroom discussion and discriminate against transgender students have also faced legal challenges in states across the country, and most challenges have prevailed. Courts have generally protected local control and academic freedom as essential to democracy and have struck down restrictions on federal funding that essentially coerce states to the point of compulsion. Multiple federal statutes dating back to the founding of the U.S. Department of Education, including the bipartisan-supported Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, also prohibit federal officials from controlling specific instructional content or curriculum, and expressly leave such decisions to state and local officials.
Even if there are legal setbacks, it will take time, perhaps years, for the courts to resolve these issues. In the meantime, schools have a legal and moral obligation to protect all students and provide an inclusive and honest education. They should stand firm while legal challenges proceed.
But the fight for educational justice belongs to all of us, not just to lawyers — and it requires a broader movement. Students, parents, educators and community leaders must speak out and stand firm against this dangerous attack on our values. Together, we must continue to make the public case for inclusive education. This includes sharing stories of how discussions of history and identity have transformed our classrooms and our life journeys. Documenting the positive and life-saving impact of supporting LGBTQ+ students. Helping parents understand why preparing diverse teachers to work with students of all backgrounds makes education better for everyone. And importantly, we must document the harm this order would cause to students’ educational experiences. These stories and voices — not just legal arguments in court — will ultimately determine whether we can build schools that truly serve all students.
In the meantime, stand firm, keep supporting all students and continue teaching truth.
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Guillermo Mayer is president and CEO of Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity and climate justice.
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