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  • How teachers can use AI to listen, reflect and build math classroom community

    How teachers can use AI to listen, reflect and build math classroom community


    I wasn’t expecting a math journal entry to shift my perspective. But as I scanned through my students’ reflections that morning, one response stopped me in my tracks:

    “It’s more important to me that my teacher sees me as a person than if I get all the answers right.”

    A student, who I’ll call Jason, had been in my class for months — quiet, polite, barely noticeable. Not failing, not thriving. Just…there.

    Jason’s words reflected what many students feel but rarely say. As I reviewed other journal entries, I discovered an echo of voices expressing uncertainty, quiet resilience and a desire to be heard. I highlighted themes and let their words settle in, but as responses piled up, I needed help seeing the bigger picture.

    That’s when I turned to artificial intelligence (AI), using it to help summarize journal entries — not replacing my judgment but sharpening it. ChatGPT surfaced patterns I might have missed: anxiety about speaking up, appreciation for kindness, the importance of being seen. AI didn’t give me a summary of responses — it gave me perspective, revealing what my students were telling me between the lines.

    Too many students walk into math class carrying untold stories — about race, failure, shame, invisibility. And math, with its perceived rigid right-or-wrong structure, often leaves little room for the messiness of being human. Reflective journals and AI made that space. They reminded us that learning is emotional before it’s cognitive.

    Some view AI in education as a threat to authenticity — something that might replace meaningful learning, weaken rigor, and erode the relationships. Much of the conversation focuses on fears of cheating and weakened critical thinking. But in my experience, the opposite is possible. When used thoughtfully, AI doesn’t dehumanize the classroom — it rehumanizes it, helping us tune in to students’ emotional landscapes and respond with greater clarity and compassion.

    For educators exploring how to move from algorithms to empathy, here’s what I’ve learned:

    Use AI as a reflection partner to surface trends in student voice. I introduced reflective journals with prompts like “How do you see yourself in math?” and “Where might math be important in your life?” When responses accumulated, AI helped me identify emotional throughlines—what students feared, valued, and needed to feel seen. It didn’t analyze feelings for me; it spotlighted patterns across dozens of responses, allowing me to respond not just as a content expert, but as a listener who could address the class’s collective needs.

    Let AI handle the grunt work so you can do the heart work. After AI helped me identify themes like “I don’t feel smart, but I try harder than people know” and “I’m not the only one scared to ask for help,” I shared these anonymous insights with my class. Heads nodded. The room shifted. These reflections weren’t about fixing students — they were about making space where vulnerability felt safe and mathematical identity could evolve.

    Design with AI — not for it. I didn’t start by asking what AI could do, but rather “What do my students need to feel seen, challenged and supported?” Only then did I explore how technology could help me meet those needs more thoughtfully and efficiently. The tools followed the vision, not the other way around.

    Treat AI like a co-teacher, not a substitute. AI will never replace the personal connections at the heart of teaching, but it can help me see what I might miss in the everyday chaos of the classroom. This partnership allows me to combine technological insights with the relational knowledge that only comes from knowing my students.

    The day after reading Jason’s journal entry, I greeted him more intentionally and shared that I had once felt the same way about being seen as a person first. It was a tiny signal: I see you. This breakthrough emerged from recognizing that community building in math class doesn’t require elaborate group projects or icebreakers. Sometimes it starts with something quieter: giving students space to examine their relationship with mathematics itself, then using AI to help us listen more deeply to what they’re telling us.

    A week later, Jason lingered after class. “Thanks,” he said. “For, like, sharing with me.”

    That two-second moment cracked something open — for both of us. Because behind every silence is a student waiting to be seen. And sometimes, the most powerful data we can use isn’t a test score or a benchmark — it’s a journal entry, a nod of recognition, or a quiet “thank you” made visible with the help of AI, reminding us why we teach.

    •••

    Al Rabanera teaches math at La Vista High School in Fullerton, California. He is a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Leading Edge Educator Fellow.

    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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  • Sharp divisions over how California’s aspiring teachers will be taught to teach reading

    Sharp divisions over how California’s aspiring teachers will be taught to teach reading


    CLARIFICATION: The article was revised on April 24 to clarify that the Committee on Accreditation, by law, has the power to accredit programs. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing responds to complaints about the committee’s decisions but does not hear appeals. As a new program, Mills College of Northeastern received a provisional accreditation; it can seek full accreditation in 2026.

    Supporters of bolstering how teacher candidates in California are taught to teach reading cheered in 2021 when the Legislature agreed and mandated change. They remained enthusiastic a year later when the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing adopted new standards that emphasize explicit instruction of fundamental skills, including phonics.

    Now, advocates are charging that the Commission on Teacher Credentialing and its oversight body, the Committee on Accreditation, have failed their first test to stand behind those new standards. Instead, after a one-hour hearing Friday, the commission backed the accreditation of Mills College at Northeastern, which critics argue is ignoring critical new standards. 

    More on the issue

    The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing agenda item on the accreditation complaint can be found here.

    It includes a summary of the issue, the complaint, and the response from Mills College at Northeastern University. The nine written comments for and against the complaint can be found here.

    The Literacy Standard and Teaching Performance Expectations for Preliminary Multiple Subject and Single Subject Credentials, adopted in October 2022, can be found here

    This approval, say critics, will set a bad example for other programs facing a fall deadline to overhaul their literacy instruction and begin teaching the revised standards. 

    “Clearly, the commission is unwilling to uphold the state’s own curriculum framework and its guidance for new teacher prep programs, as outlined” in state law, said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of parents. “Given that, what chance is there that literacy instruction will ever change, and what chance is there that our children will be successful in learning to read?”

    The answer may become clearer as other programs come up for review. But the credential commission’s unanimous vote to reaffirm Mills College at Northeastern’s accreditation found support not only among the peer reviewers for the Committee on Accreditation but also from leaders of other teacher prep programs who submitted comments and testimony. 

    The hearing and the commission’s decision revealed ongoing disagreements over how California’s new literacy standards should be interpreted and implemented and raises the question of whether the Legislature’s intent in ordering a different approach to literacy instruction will be followed with fidelity.

    The credentialing commission’s decision was in response to a complaint that Families in Schools and the nonprofits Decoding Dyslexia and California Reading Coalition filed. The organizations hoped that the commission would investigate the accreditation approval for Mills College at Northeastern or order that the program get technical help to bring it into compliance with the new standards. 

    “Commissioners, it is up to you to make sure the letter and intent of the law is followed. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done, and these terrible results won’t change,” testified Todd Collins of the California Reading Coalition, referring to the low reading proficiency rate of California third graders: 43% overall, and less than a third for Black and Latino children.  

    Credentialing commissioners instead took the third option — referring the complaint to the Committee on Accreditation without comment. 

    Under state law, the Committee on Accreditation authorizes program accreditation. The credentialing commission, which appoints the committee’s members, handles complaints about accreditation decisions but not appeals from the public.  Because Mills at Northeastern was technically a new institution, created by the merger of Mills College, a former women’s college in Oakland that closed in 2022, with Northeastern University in Boston, it sought and received provisional accreditation. It can pursue full accreditation in 2026.

    Commissioners made clear they trusted the accreditation committee’s judgment and peer-review process, which relies on an evaluation by professors of teacher prep programs. Credentialing Commission Chair Marquita Grenot-Scheyer and others said they found no basis for further inquiry or technical help.

    Commissioner Ira Lit, a professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, agreed, adding that he sees “no indication that attention to those frameworks, guidelines and standards of review were amiss in this particular case.”

    The Legislature’s mandate in Senate Bill 488 directed the commission to incorporate evidence-based methods of teaching foundational reading skills in its programs for multiple-subject credentials and reading specialists. The literacy skills that teacher candidates would learn to teach include not only phonics, which correlates sounds with letters in the alphabet, but also vocabulary, oral language, fluency, reading comprehension and writing. The commission appointed two dozen reading experts to recommend research-based literacy practices aligned to the state’s existing curriculum frameworks that all teacher preparation programs would adopt.

    Collins, Flores and others praised the final package of teacher performance expectations, known as Standard 7 in the program requirements. They said it would meet the needs of all students, including English learners and students with dyslexia. 

    So did two members of the work group of experts who were skeptical of Mills College at Northeastern’s literacy instruction: Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist who directs the UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, and Sue Sears, a professor of special education at CSU Northridge.

    They called Standard 7 “a rigorous and comprehensive set of requirements which reflect current reading research and practice.” After examining Mills College at Northeastern’s course syllabi, reading lists, and materials for literacy instruction, they said the program fell far short of the requirements. 

    In testimony and written comments, they said the school paid “lip service” to foundational skills and failed to document how prospective teachers would teach phonics explicitly and effectively. Among other flaws, the program didn’t mention the importance of screening for dyslexia and how to provide additional help for struggling and multilingual students, Wolf and Sears wrote.

    Mills at Northeastern, formed from the merger of Mills College, a 170-year-old former women’s college in Oakland that closed in 2022, with Northeastern University in Boston. 

    Structured versus balanced literacy

    In expressing confidence in a thorough accreditation review process, while not commenting on the substance of the complaint, the credentialing commission dodged the underlying  issue. The state had taken a stand in the debate over “structured literacy” versus  “balanced literacy.” Standard 7 incorporates structured literacy. Taught under the banner of “science of reading,” it stresses evidence-proven reading strategies using, in the early grades, direct and sequential instruction of phonics and decodable texts.

    Balanced literacy, an outgrowth of the once-popular “whole language” approach, downplays phonics, which it views as just one of several strategies in teaching reading. Other methods include “three-cueing,” the technique in which readers use pictures in a book, the first letter of a word and other contextual clues to determine words. It’s grounded in the belief that reading more books tied to the skill level of a child’s fluency and comprehension will make them better, more engaged readers.

    Mills College at Northeastern stresses balanced literacy and three-cueing. Its reading assignments include multiple chapters by Fountas and Pinnell, the publisher most identified with balanced literacy. 

    Approving credential programs like Mills “to provide contradictory instructional practices, some of which are supported by research and others that have been debunked by cognitive scientists years ago, will only serve to create confusion for teaching credential candidates,” Decoding Dyslexia CA co-directors Lori DePole and Megan Potente wrote.

    Matthew Burns, a University of Florida reading researcher who said he had studied the effectiveness of Fountas and Pinnell instructional programs and intervention strategies, was blunt. “The three-cueing system should have no place in public education, and should not be part of any preservice training,” he wrote.

    In defense of Mills College

    Other leaders of teacher preparation programs and advocacy groups in California urged the credentialing commission to uphold the approval.

    Stating that a comprehensive literacy curriculum includes background knowledge, multilingualism motivation and diverse text and assessments — not just phonics, Nancy Walker, a professor of literacy education at the University of La Verne, said, “By limiting our focus to the claims made by the popular press and media, we have underrepresented other pieces of reading pedagogy. The Mills College program represents the broad range of literacy as represented in the California literacy frameworks and standards.”

    Karen Escalante, an assistant professor of teacher education and foundations at CSU San Bernardino and  president of the California Council on Teacher Education, warned that “efforts to pick and choose select elements of teacher preparation syllabi undermine the teaching profession and aim to deprofessionalize a professional workforce.”

    Mimi Miller, a professor and literacy teacher educator at CSU Chico, said, “The complaint against Mills privileges one line of research over another. It has inaccurately cited research in order to confirm a set of beliefs about reading instruction.”

    “The science of reading is not settled and will never be settled,” she added.  

    Both the California Teachers Association and Californians Together, which advocates for English and expanding multilingual education, also urged commissioners to uphold the accreditation approval.

    “I call on the commission to not make any decisions that would restrict reading instruction in California,” said Manuel Buenrostro, director of policy at Californians Together.  

    Wolf used her two-minute comment to refute what opponents said regarding the state of research. “Of course, there is the unsettled, but there is far more of the settled neuroscience of reading,” she said.

    Mills College at Northeastern “fails to meet the standards that you asked us to bring to every teacher so that every teacher could be prepared to teach every child,” she said. 

    “I am worrisomely seeing in California that there is becoming more loyalty to past methods that have been shown to be ineffective for our most struggling readers. We can never put loyalty to past methods over loyalty to our children.”

    SB 488 under attack

    Several commissioners indicated they too support a “balanced” approach to reading instruction, tied to research. Others said the key to improved instruction is understanding socioeconomic and cultural differences among children.

    “Culturally responsive teaching practices are what’s going to work to teach those children how to read,” said Commissioner Christopher Davis, pointing to his own experience as a Black child in Los Angeles who did not read an entire book until he was a high school junior. Davis, a middle school language arts teacher in the Berryessa Union School District in San Jose, said, “I want to encourage the public to stop using Black and brown children to prop up their misguided views of what’s happening in schools, because I am one of those people.”

    SB 488 requires that all teacher candidates, starting in the spring of 2025, take a performance assessment demonstrating they can effectively teach the new literacy instruction standards. The law also requires the Committee on Accreditation to visit all teacher prep programs in 2024-25 to verify they are employing the new literacy strategies.

    But a bill that would remove those provisions before they take effect is moving forward in the Legislature. Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, would eliminate the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA. And that would include the performance assessment in teaching reading now being developed. The bill, authored by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would also drop the on-site visits to verify that teacher prep programs are adhering to the literacy standards. The periodic general accreditation and re-accreditation process, like the one that Mills College passed, would be the one accountability check that California’s new teachers know how to teach structured literacy and the science of reading.

    Another bill, which would have extended the same training in structured literacy for new teachers to all elementary school teachers, also would have strengthened the credentialing commission’s literacy expertise. Assembly Bill 2222 would have required that at least one member of the Committee on Accreditation be an expert in the science of reading. And it would have funded several literacy experts for the commission staff. 

    The same adversaries that fought over Mills College at Northeastern battled over AB 2222. Decoding Dyslexia CA, Families in Schools and California Reading Coalition sponsored the bill. Opposition by CTA, Californians Together and the California Association of Bilingual Educators led Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas to pull the bill without a hearing. 

    Collins of the California Reading Coalition said he wasn’t surprised by the credentialing commission’s decision. The view of those involved in teacher preparation programs, which is not unique to California, is, ” ‘Let us professionals do our job. We are the ones who can arbitrate whether we’re doing a good job or not. No one else can do that,’ ” he said.

    “To the extent that the credentialing commission defers to the process and defers to the people in the higher ed institutions, then change is going to come very, very slowly, if at all,” he said.





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  • How to evaluate California’s groundbreaking community schools investment

    How to evaluate California’s groundbreaking community schools investment


    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    California’s $4.1 billion investment in community schools is the largest in the nation. An investment of this size raises important questions about whether community schools are working and what difference they are making for students.

    Community schools are intended to provide the multitude of opportunities and supports that students need to thrive and succeed. They include a rich array of integrated services, expanded learning opportunities, deep community partnerships, and importantly, offer a more democratic way of engaging with students, families and the school community to shape school priorities and vision.

    Community schools are a complex endeavor that, when done well, substantially expand what schools do to support students — and who is included in this work. Assessing the implementation and impact of community schools is similarly complex. 

    The California Department of Education (CDE) recently requested proposals for an evaluator of the  California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) initiative and will make a selection this spring. We wish to share lessons for future evaluators of program, the department of education, and the county offices of education, districts, schools and communities implementing these community school models throughout the state and country. Ideally, whatever data is required for the state evaluation and grant compliance should also be usable to help schools and districts in guiding strategic, high-quality community schools implementation.

    The suggestions below come out of our work as evaluators for Oakland Unified School District’s community schools initiative for many years while working at Stanford University’s Gardner Center, and as authors of a book about the effort to transform all the district’s schools into community schools.

    1. Community schools are not a program that a school either has or does not have, but rather an approach to education with many gradations along a spectrum.

    While many California schools have recently or will soon receive funding to become community schools, fully implementing the model can take years. Further, many of these schools already operated some elements of community schools prior to funding (such as expanded learning, school-based health services, positive discipline practices, coordination of services, or family engagement strategies), without the “community school” label. The community school grant, which includes funding for an on-site community school coordinator, is meant to expand and strengthen whole-child work and bring increased collaboration and coherence across many people, organizations and initiatives. Thus, identifying the community school “start date” as the receipt of CCSPP funds is not as clean as it may seem. 

    Lesson for evaluators: The multifaceted and fluid nature of community schools make traditional causal research designs challenging. Evaluators ideally should adopt a mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach that examines change over time at community schools and illuminates connections between quality implementation and desired outcomes. Evaluators should thoughtfully consider the extent to which it is possible to isolate the impact of community schools and be precise about which elements or stages of community schools are captured in any assessment of impact.

    1. A multilevel strategy map can provide a framework to guide implementation and evaluation.

    Community schools provide a range of additional services, engage families and community organizations, and align all of these toward school goals; increasing students’ well-being and, ultimately, educational success. Successful community schools are more than a site-level intervention and require intentional district support. Given the multifaceted nature of community schools, we recommend a theory of change or “system strategy map” at three levels.  Assessing key activities and outcomes at the 1) System (school district), 2) Site (school and community), and 3) Individual (student and family) levels can help ensure a comprehensive evaluation and improve understanding of differences in implementation and outcomes across the state. 

    Lessons for evaluators: Consider grounding your evaluation in a theory of change, and incorporating strategies and outcomes at individual, setting, and system levels.

    1. Impact on traditional measures of student success can take time, and is predicated on quality implementation. But there is a lot you can measure along the way.  

    Community schools are a whole child, whole school improvement strategy. It takes time to adopt new practices, integrate resources, cultivate meaningful collaboration, develop supportive structures, and shift culture. We are unlikely to see immediate effects on traditional measures of student achievement — e.g., test scores, graduation rates, attendance, and suspensions — for at least 3-5 years. We may start to see bumps in achievement for specific student subgroups as community schools are designed to precipitate more equitable access across opportunity gaps.

    To impact long-term student wellbeing and success, quality implementation matters. Proximal indicators can show if schools are on the right track: for example, participation, knowledge, and use indicators (e.g., to what extent are students and families accessing services and opportunities; to what extent is staff aware of and utilizing community school resources); culture/climate indicators (e.g., levels of trust, collaboration, and participation); and if other enabling conditions are being met. Additionally, qualitative data is crucial for answering critical questions about how community schools are working, what is going well, what is not, and why.

    These findings can directly inform program improvement at the LEA and state level. For example, some of our early research with Oakland Unified showed that many principals were struggling to understand their role in community schools development. In response to these findings, the district increased investment in professional development for site leaders.

    Lessons for evaluators: Before assessing whether community schools are yielding desired results for students, it’s imperative to examine the extent to which implementation is happening as hoped and planned, such as, school-level coherence and collaboration and family-school partnerships. Further, an evaluation should include more nuanced indicators of student experiences beyond what is included in the California Data Dashboard and existing statewide culture/climate surveys to capture youth voice, cultural relevance and community connection.

    The California Community Schools Partnership Program evaluator will set the tone for “what matters” in community school implementation across the state. Additionally, the evaluation activities should include support for schools, districts and county offices to help them use data in collaborative, participatory ways with their teams and community.

    A strong evaluation of the California community schools initiative will provide lessons that inform ongoing school and district-level implementation, and give us an understanding of the difference community schools make for students and families.

    •••

    Kendra Fehrer is founder and principal of Heartwise Learning, which helps schools and organizations create practical, research-informed solutions to improve student learning and well-being.
    Jake Leos-Urbel is senior director of learning and evaluation at Oakland Thrives. They are authors of the book “The Way We Do School: The Making of Oakland’s Full-Service Community School District”

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • How California’s juvenile justice system changed since shutdown of state facilities

    How California’s juvenile justice system changed since shutdown of state facilities


    Santa Clara County has maintained near-zero rates of incarceration for girls and young women for several years. Soon, four new counties will follow suit.

    Photo: Santa Clara Probation Department

    In the months since California closed the last of its juvenile facilities, some of the counties now managing the new system have funded new higher education programming for incarcerated students, while others have spent much of that time addressing basic safety concerns inside their facilities.

    It is impossible to declare the juvenile justice system’s transition an outright success or failure. What is evident is that some counties are struggling much more than others to move toward the promises that came with closing the state facilities.

    The system’s transition from the state’s Division of Juvenile Justice, known as DJJ, to counties on June 30 last year was met by some with hope that the state’s long-troubled juvenile justice system might finally be on its way toward reform. Others, however, still remain doubtful that issues that were persistent under the state’s management, including a well-documented history of violence and low educational outcomes, would disappear immediately, if ever, with the transition.

    The promise of county control — and its limitations

    For years, advocates in support of the DJJ closures decried the state facilities as subjecting generations of California youth to “inhumane conditions and lasting trauma,” according to a 2019 report by the Center on California Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit organization that pushes to reform the system.

    “By placing youth in prison-like conditions at large institutions, DJJ exposes them to the trauma of incarceration, risking their immediate safety and limiting the possibility of rehabilitation,” wrote the report’s authors, Maureen Washburn and Renee Menart.

    In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 823 into law, requiring the state’s youth prisons to shut down by June 30, 2023, and disallowed counties from sending youth to DJJ as of July 1, 2021.

    SB 823 called for counties to provide the “least restrictive appropriate environment.” Such an environment would be as minimally punitive as possible while remaining appropriate and safe for the youth, the staff and the surrounding community. The bill also sought to “reduce the use of confinement by utilizing community-based responses and interventions.”

    Today, all youth remain in their home county or nearby, if their county does not have a juvenile facility, which is often the case in smaller counties with few, if any, incarcerated youth.

    Youth who were formerly sent to DJJ facilities — those adjudicated for serious crimes, such as burglary, assault, homicide and other crimes — are instead housed in secure youth treatment facilities, or SYTF, in their local counties. These facilities are separate units with a more restrictive environment than youth who are considered less risky. As of March 2023, 36 of the state’s 58 counties had facilities for SYTF youth.

    The average daily population of all juvenile halls statewide was 2,793 in 2023, according to state data. This includes both SYTF and non-SYTF youth. During the fourth quarter of the same year, Los Angeles County had the highest average daily population at 508. The next highest was Kern County, with 182 youth.

    At the helm now is the Office of Youth and Community Restoration, or OYCR, the state office leading the juvenile justice system in place of DJJ.

    The office is clear about the limitations of its role: “OYCR is not a regulatory agency and does not have the authority to require local probation departments to make changes,” Katherine Lucero, director of the rate office, wrote in a recent email to EdSource. “Instead, our role is to provide guidance, share best practices and connect probation departments with resources, including grants.”

    In that capacity, OYCR seems to be pushing forward on some of the changes promised in this system transition: a forthcoming database to improve transparency on incarcerated students’ academic outcomes, the development of a “literacy intervention curriculum for older learners” that would be “based on their length of time in custody and special education needs,” and funding toward programming in environments that are less restrictive than juvenile detention centers.

    The office also coordinates an educational advisory committee that meets monthly and includes probation officers, county offices of education, the State Board of Education, Rising Scholars, Project Rebound, the Department of Rehabilitation, and the nonprofit Youth Law Center.

    Additionally, OYCR has pursued collaborations in support of incarcerated students’ access to higher education. Rising Scholars, for example, provides access to college courses for incarcerated youth, sometimes in person on a local community college campus. The program can currently be found in least 10 counties, including Kern, Humboldt and Santa Clara.

    A recent report compiled by Forward Change, a consulting firm for OYCR, sums up the shifting perspective: “Youth who were once seen as incarcerated people can now be seen as college students with bright futures.”

    Still, it is also clear that the Office of Youth and Community Restoration understands the paradox in the current state of California’s juvenile justice system because, in the same report, they noted the difficulty of overcoming the poor educational outcomes that students are up against.

    “Per some interviewees, a significant hurdle is the academic readiness of the incarcerated youth. Many students in confinement facilities who are still pursuing a high school education may not be academically prepared to handle college level coursework,” the report said.

    Student preparation, particularly for those who remain incarcerated for lengthy periods of time, largely comes down to the counties. That is, most often, where plans for academic achievement are either advanced or start to unravel before they can be implemented.

    “What’s available to young people in detention facilities in L.A. for the most part has sort of stayed the same,” said Megan Stanton-Trehan, a senior attorney at Disability Rights California. Most recently, she was the director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at Loyola Law School, which provides special education advocacy and legal representation for many in the foster system or detained in L.A. County juvenile facilities.

    How Los Angeles and Alameda have handled the shift

    Los Angeles and Alameda offer real-time case studies of how two counties are changing the way they manage incarcerated youth.

    Los Angeles County is often cited negatively by advocates who have concerns about the safety of youth committed to their juvenile facilities — a worry that has only strengthened since the state transition. This is due to the county Probation Department continuing to face disciplinary actions for offenses ranging from a lack of documentation showing how and when youth are confined to their rooms, to inconsistent recreational programming, to high rates of student tardiness.

    Because of these infractions, four units across three juvenile facilities in L.A. County have been deemed “unsuitable for the confinement of minors” in the last year alone by California’s Board of State and Community Corrections. The first two units were at the Barry J. Nidorf facility in Sylmar and Central Juvenile Hall in Boyle Heights. Nidorf’s SYTF unit remained open because the state board did not have oversight power at the time.

    Youth detained at those facilities were transferred last year to the county-run Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, which had been shut down in 2019 after allegations of abuse by staff.

    But many of the same issues with noncompliance, including those related to educational programming that had caused the other closures, quickly surfaced, adding to reports of high levels of violence, drug abuse and an escape attempt.

    In February, Los Padrinos was similarly found “unsuitable for the confinement of juveniles,” but the state oversight board allowed it to remain open, citing that “outstanding items of non-compliance” had been sufficiently remedied less than two months later.

    “Would I be like, ‘Let’s reopen DJJ?’ No,” said Stanton-Trehan. “But I think there needs to be some real changes made here to improve what’s happening because it’s really almost worst-case scenario at this point.”

    Additionally, cases of violence and drug use have spiked inside the county’s facilities, leading to several overdoses, including one fatality. The result is an environment in which public conversation is centered on staffing issues and violence, rather than youth education and rehabilitation. Eight probation officers were placed on leave in December for standing by while a group of young people assaulted a peer. Last month, four more officers were placed on leave.

    The department’s chief, Guillermo Viera Rosa, said in a statement that the decision is “part of a comprehensive push to root out departmental staff responsible for perpetuating a culture of violence, drugs, or abuse in County juvenile institutions.”

    Staffing issues have persisted in other ways. The county Probation Department has been out of compliance with staffing requirements, with many officers assigned to juvenile hall not showing up for work. Most recently, several officers were reassigned to juvenile halls in order to meet staffing requirements, but advocates and families of incarcerated youth fear the reassignments will be temporary.

    Staffing is pertinent to students’ access to education. “All programming in juvenile halls and longer-term detention facilities is dependent on the availability of probation staff to escort students around the facility,” according to the recent OYCR report.

    “Due to staff shortages, classes are frequently canceled, student attendance is inconsistent, and probation staff in facilities are often unfamiliar with the youth in the facility due to temporary and rotating assignments,” the report stated.

    More broadly, an ongoing challenge in meeting the education needs of youth detained statewide is an apparent disconnect between the various agencies involved in the daily operations of juvenile facilities, particularly probation departments and the county offices of education.

    That disconnect is not unique to Los Angeles County.

    Last year, for example, library staff working inside an Alameda County juvenile detention facility emphasized the difficulty of teaching students how to read when the staff aren’t privy to details regarding students’ court cases. Interruptions are common in students’ educational programming, staff stated. A court date might be scheduled during a time slotted for a visit to the library, for example, which might be a student’s only opportunity during the week to check out a book. And if there is a lockdown at the facility, a student might be unable to visit the library for an extended period.

    Atasi Uppal, an attorney and the director of the Education Justice Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center, said she has begun to see a small but positive change in bridging the disconnect since the shift to county control of the juvenile justice system.

    For example, the county has hired additional staff to provide new post-secondary options for incarcerated high school graduates.

    “We have seen a renewed interest from Probation, the DA’s office and community providers in understanding education rights and options for students who are incarcerated,” said Uppal, who recently co-authored a report that states that the five largest county offices of education in California lacked the transparency required to evaluate the quality of education being offered because of a lack of “clear public-facing information about curriculum or student support systems.”

    That disconnect has often resulted in the disruption of “students’ participation in instruction during incarceration due to perceived safety or disciplinary concerns,” Uppal said in a recent email. “As an outsider to the system, this disruption seems arbitrary and without coordination with the Alameda County Office of Education.”

    Down in Los Angeles County, Stanton-Trehan shared a similar concern.

    She said she works with people at the county’s Office of Eucation who “try to advocate and do the best they can for our clients.” But when there are delays in implementing a student’s individualized education plan, or IEP, student progress is further delayed.

    It’s a cycle Stanton-Trehan often finds herself pushing against when legally representing incarcerated students, even now after the shift to county control.

    “A client who isn’t getting their accommodations and they try to request those accommodations and then they’re told, ‘No, you don’t have those’ — they get agitated and upset. And then that’s a behavior problem, so they’re removed from school when they were just trying to advocate for themselves,” Stanton-Trehan said.

    Labeling a student as having behavioral problems that require specific support creates an entirely new academic issue to confront.

    Stanton-Trehan provided the example of a client with a 17-page-long discipline log. That student, whom she did not name for privacy reasons, had an IEP that did not include a behavioral plan, despite well-documented behavioral challenges.

    Complicating the local efforts to improve educational access and outcomes is the limited access to academic data that young people attending court schools have. At times, this is due to a lack of documentation by probation staff. Other times, it comes down to censoring data to protect privacy, such as when there are fewer than 10 students at any given data point, which is often the case in many court school classrooms.

    “Of course, I believe in confidentiality for young people, but how are we supposed to look at whether these systems are improving or able to improve?” said Stanton-Trehan, echoing what many advocates say regarding data transparency for this student population.

    Hope for the future?
    For its part, OYCR said it will soon make available an interactive map that includes school data for court schools in every county. It is being “designed for easy access for parents, families and community members,” Director Lucero wrote n a recent email.

    According to Lucero, the map will include Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation status, dashboard performance, local control and accountability plans, local control funding formula budget overviews, school accountability report cards, and Rising Scholars support resources.

    It remains to be seen whether these measures will provide the transparency that advocates of incarcerated students have called for. The state’s juvenile justice system is historically tied to reforms that have fallen short of significant change. Even so, OYCR seems steadfast in its messaging.

    As OYCR’s recent report states, “California is presented with an unprecedented opportunity to vault to the forefront of national juvenile justice practice by transforming its youth incarceration system from one focused overwhelmingly on punishment to one that can offer youth in confinement genuine opportunities to dramatically improve their lives.”

    This story has been updated to reflect Megan Stanton-Trehan’s employment at the time of publication.





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

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


    California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

    Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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  • How earning a college degree put four California men on a path from prison to new lives | Documentary 

    How earning a college degree put four California men on a path from prison to new lives | Documentary 


    Jennifer Molina
    May 9, 2024

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypfojKZMnGQ

    Samual N. Brown, Allen Burnett, Charlie Praphatananda and Dara Yin have stories to tell.

    Their time in prison was shrouded by their reality. Three of the four were charged with murder and sentenced to life without parole. It’s what one of them, who entered prison at 20, describes as death by incarceration.

    Taking college courses had been going on for decades in California prisons, but in 2016, California State University Los Angeles became the first college to offer bachelor’s degrees to people in prison.

    Now, eight of the state’s 34 adult prisons have started or are soon to begin partnerships that award four-year degrees, making California a leader in expanding college degree programs into the state’s prisons.

    The trend touches only a sliver of incarcerated people, however. While California incarcerates about 95,600 people in its prison system, about 230 enrolled in the fall in a bachelor’s degree program. For the four men whose stories are told in this documentary, just the chance to earn the degree made it possible for them to see themselves living a different life outside of prison. Three ultimately got their sentences commuted. The fourth was paroled.

    Read more:

    Match your donation today

    EdSource has been on it when big shifts happen – like the Department of Education shutting down many areas of their work. But we also remain committed to following the long-term stories in our communities and having an impact through our reporting.

    Help us have an impact through data-driven, factual reporting. Your donation will be matched through June 11.





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  • How school districts can better manage disagreement about difficult topics

    How school districts can better manage disagreement about difficult topics


    Credit: Alison Yin/EdSource

    School districts nationwide are grappling with whether, how and when to teach about LGBTQ and race-related issues. Deep-seated divisions are playing out in school board meetings, local social media, and directly between parents and educators.

    We have been surveying American adults’ beliefs about the potentially contested topics elementary and high school children should be learning in school since 2022. Based on our results, here are eight suggestions for those struggling to thread the needle between students learning to respectfully engage with diverse opinions, honoring parental authority and avoiding indoctrination.

    Start with common ground.

    Among the most surprising and hopeful results was strong bipartisan support for public schools. Adults are overwhelmingly supportive of public education, while wanting to see it improve. This bipartisan support for public schools provides a critical foundation necessary for communities to thread the needle.

    Seek to understand others’ underlying beliefs.

    Key to compromise is understanding others’ perspectives. We found large gaps related to core values; for example, three-quarters of Democrats think teaching children to embrace differences is a very important purpose of education, compared with just one-third of Republicans. More Republicans (81%) are worried about children feeling guilty if they learn about historical racism compared with Democrats (33%). More Republicans are worried than Democrats that learning about transgender or gay people might make children think about whether they are or want to be trans or gay. In both groups, people are somewhat more concerned about their children learning about trans people (66% of Republicans versus 23% of Democrats) than they are about lessons about gay people (55% versus 20%). We are better at listening to others’ perspectives when we feel heard ourselves.

    Come up with processes for reconciling disagreement.

    Adults disagree about processes for reconciling disagreement regarding the content children are learning in school. This means communities need to develop mutually agreeable consensus-building processes like public panel deliberation, advisory groups and provisions for dissent. Involving children and teens could develop their current and future civic capabilities.

    Educate adults about the challenges and consequences of opting children out of classroom content.

    We learned that a brief message specifying potential benefits of children learning diverse perspectives, and the logistical drawbacks of opting individual children out of lessons, substantially reduces the opt-out preference, by 15 percentage points (25%), from 57% to 42%. This approach was equally effective for Democrats and Republicans and when considering younger and older students. Educators and school boards could use this model to craft messages sharing potential challenges and benefits relevant to their own communities.

    Double down on approaches with broad support, like assigning diverse texts.

    Three-quarters of adults (64% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats) agree children should read books written by people from racial minority groups because they provide different experiences and perspectives. Teachers may find assigning and discussing age-appropriate books written by diverse authors to address topics of race, gender and sexuality to be an approach their communities will accept.

    Support teachers in facilitating discussion of potentially contested topics.

    Rand’s nationally representative survey of teachers shows many are afraid to facilitate potentially contentious discussions and lack guidance from their leadership. Curriculum and aligned professional learning should be designed to equip teachers with the skills and confidence they need to facilitate their students’ discussions of potentially contested topics. School and district leaders can also make clear their support for such discussions.

    Inform and involve parents.

    Transparency about how district curriculum content addresses state learning standards provides this insight. Parents will also benefit their children and themselves by learning about the diversity of perspectives within their community, and of the necessity of collaboratively resolving competing perspectives. Once processes are defined, parents, school board members and educators will need to build safeguards and respect for the system they collectively design.

    Remind everyone that children will live, study, work and be citizens of diverse local, national and international communities.

    Students need to learn about and how to communicate effectively with others, including those with different beliefs and backgrounds. Schools need to provide open forums allowing for sharing and evaluating both dominant and nondominant perspectives without fear of reprisal. A difficult tension for schools and teachers to manage is avoiding “indoctrination,” while maintaining norms of respect and care for others. Schools must intervene if/when students’ values negatively affect how they treat each other, indeed upholding the Golden Rule (i.e., “do unto others as you’d have done to you”)—a fundamental tenet of most religions and belief systems worldwide — requires they do.

    Educating children in our pluralistic democracy is challenging. We suggest a path forward for educators, parents, and school boards, ultimately to children’s benefit.

    •••

    Anna Saavedra is a research scientist in the Center for Applied Research in Education within the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. USC is a private research university located in Los Angeles.

    Morgan Polikoff is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • To improve how California students read, we must get past confusion and misinformation

    To improve how California students read, we must get past confusion and misinformation


    A student holds a flash card with the sight word ‘friend’ during a class at Nystrom Elementary in the West Contra Costa Unified School District in 2022.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    The “science of reading” confuses and confounds many of us. It’s understandable. There is much misleading and outright false information floating around.

    On one hand, too many science of reading advocates claim an unwarranted degree of certainty, for example, that we know from the science how to get 95% of all students on grade level. Vague and unhelpful definitions make matters worse. I’ve even heard advocates say we should treat all children as if they were dyslexic, a claim for which there is zero evidence.

    On the other hand, science of reading skeptics spread mischaracterizations and outright fictions. An egregious example was a recent California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) webinar intended to “debunk” the brain science behind the science of reading by claiming that a key tool used to study the brain (functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI) could not detect brain activity that involved meaning or comprehension. The world’s foremost reading neuroscientist debunked the would-be debunker by pointing out that 20 years of research have shown that writing and speaking “activate extremely similar brain circuits for meaning.“

    How can we ever make progress when we’re locked in an eternal game of whack-a-false-mole?

    We can all agree learning to read is complicated, and so is the teaching. But there are also a few straightforward and irrefutable findings from research that should constitute the foundations for reading policies. This is particularly important for the students who are most harmed when we fail to use the best knowledge available: low-income students and students who have difficulty learning to read.

    • Learning to speak and understand oral language is fundamentally different from learning to read and write. A first language is typically acquired effortlessly if we’re with people who speak it. Learning to read requires explicit teaching to one degree or another.
    • Oral language is foundational to reading, because reading requires visually accessing the oral language centers in our brains. Our brain is prepared from birth to make sense of what we hear when people talk, but to read we must learn how to see written language (print), connect it to oral language, and then make sense of it. Neuroscientists have identified the transformation of brain centers and the development of neural pathways that enable an individual to connect print to speech and speech to print.
    • Without those connections, literacy is difficult, if not impossible. Foundational literacy skills — usually called “phonics” or “decoding” — are essential for connecting spoken English to written English. Teaching these skills is “nonnegotiable,” and explicit, systematic instruction in how the sounds of the language (“phonemes”) are represented by letters is the approach most likely to lead to individuals’ learning to read.
    • In contrast, “balanced literacy” (sometimes called “3-cueing”) is far less effective and even counterproductive — particularly for students who benefit most from direct and clear instruction — because it does not clearly and systematically teach the necessary reading skills described above. (“Balanced literacy” is a misappropriation of the National Reading Panel’s use of “balanced” to mean phonics instruction balanced with language and comprehension-oriented instruction.)
    • After acquiring decoding skills, word recognition must become automatic. Decoding a word each time it’s encountered is an obstacle to comprehension. Individuals must know and apply spelling (orthographic) rules, including the exceptions, then practice and apply the rules to words they know orally as they encounter words in print. This creates a growing bank of words that are instantly recognizable once readers have connected each word’s sounds, spelling and meaning several times. This is very different from memorizing whole words. Connecting (“binding”) individual sounds to corresponding letters, then to the word’s meaning is critical. Once readers can read words they didn’t already know, reading becomes a way to learn new words.
    • The importance of language development, comprehension, knowledge and other skills is widely acknowledged by those who actually understand the research into how people learn to read. These skills and attributes must be a focus of attention even before reading instruction commences and should continue as children develop foundational literacy skills and throughout their school careers.  (See Scarborough’s iconic “Reading Rope” depicting much more than phonics and decoding, and including background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge.)
    • Language, vocabulary, knowledge and other skills must merge with automatic word recognition skills to produce fluent reading and comprehension, which then must be continuously supported and improved as students progress through school. Continued practice and development of skilled fluent reading is particularly critical for students most dependent on schools for successful literacy development. Neither word recognition nor language comprehension alone is sufficient for successful reading development. Both are essential.
    • All of the above is true for students in general, and especially true for vulnerable populations. Some students require additional consideration. For example, English learners in all-English instruction must receive additional instruction in English language development, such as vocabulary, since they are learning to read in English as they simultaneously learn to speak and understand it. 
    • English learners fortunate enough to be in long-term bilingual programs can become bilingual and biliterate. The processes involved in becoming biliterate are essentially the same in each language: Building on spoken language skills, foundational literacy skills link print to the sounds of the language, then to the oral language centers in the brain. Ongoing development of language, vocabulary, knowledge, and other skills and dispositions is essential for continued biliteracy development, as it is for literacy development in a single language or in any language.

    California has a long way to go if we are to develop useful policies around reading education for every student. All relevant parties, including teachers and parents, must have a voice in formulating such policies.

    But those voices must be well-informed. Misinformation and falsehoods must be eliminated from the conversation, replaced by clear understandings of the best knowledge we have.

    With fewer than half of California’s students — and even fewer English-learners, low-income students, and students with disabilities — able to read at grade level, can we afford to waste another day?

    •••

    Claude Goldenberg is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and a former first grade and junior high teacher.

    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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  • How California can achieve what the public actually wants from education

    How California can achieve what the public actually wants from education


    Three high school Linked Learning pathway students don lab coats as they collaborate on a hands-on science experiment, bringing classroom learning to life through real-world application.

    Courtesy: Linked Learning Alliance

    California’s Golden State Pathways Program is a historic commitment to career-connected learning.

    In January 2025, $470 million in grants began flowing to hundreds of school communities across the state. These are huge investments, based on a proven approach to education called Linked Learning, which carefully integrates rigorous, college-bound academics with hands-on career learning experiences and strong student supports — all connected by an industry theme that meets workforce needs within the local community.

    For example: In Porterville Unified School district, which serves California’s rural central valley, nearly every high school student is enrolled in a Linked Learning college and career preparatory pathway related to thriving local occupations, including those in energy, aviation, agricultural technology, and other fields. The district has an impressive 99% graduation rate, 94% of its alumni enroll in postsecondary education, and 25% percent of students earn industry-recognized certificates while still in high school. Similarly, by offering Linked Learning pathways focused on health sciences, information technology, child development and other high-growth careers, the more urban Oakland Unified School District has boosted its rates of high school graduation and completion of college-preparatory credits, and reduced absenteeism and discipline issues.

    Both the extraordinary new Golden State Pathways Program (GSPP) funding and the California Master Plan for Career Education, recently released to guide educators and labor market leaders across the state, empower school leaders to build such learning pathways for their students. We wholeheartedly affirm this work.

    But truly effective Linked Learning practice — the kind that extensive third-party research links to excellence and equity — requires more than working through a checklist of courses and activities. It takes intentional integration of each aspect of student experience, thoughtful measurement and supportive policy.

    To this end, we offer three key recommendations: 

    1. District leaders should push for true college and career integration. Rather than maintain the long-standing divide between college prep curricula and career-technical education, Golden State Pathways Program resources can be applied to make core academic subjects more engaging and useful by connecting them to themed pathways focused on the high-opportunity, high-wage careers that correspond to real workforce needs in each region. Classroom learning should sync with similarly themed sequential career-technical education courses and work-based learning, like internships and apprenticeships. Districts should engage students and families to ensure pathway options are well understood, aligned with student interests, and connected to workforce demands. As modeled in Porterville and Oakland, the right industry themes bring learning to life in very tangible ways, and they build skills and mindsets that translate to success in any field of future study or employment.

    2. Researchers should inform and strengthen program implementation. Rather than wait for parents and legislators to ask, “did this pathways investment work?” participating regions should develop a robust and proactive research agenda in coordination with local communities to begin generating evidence that improves outcomes along the way. Understanding student experiences, opportunities and outcomes in pathways is essential for strengthening the program over time. Research on the conditions that return the strongest results can help spread best practices across rural, suburban and urban communities.

    3. Policymakers should remove barriers to effective implementation. We cannot keep asking high schools to do everything they currently do and layer additional tasks on top of it all. State and local policies that enable waivers, flexibility, or alternatives to A–G requirements for UC/CSU admissions would increase time and space in students’ schedules to engage in work-based learning. Policymakers should also build in incentives for collaboration and coordination between K–12 and postsecondary institutions to enable purposeful dual-enrollment opportunities that accelerate all students toward a valuable credential. To further our recommendation in point two above, policymakers should also ensure data systems that tag students in pathways to lower the barriers and costs of high-quality research on program outcomes. 

    Washington DC and California are moving in dramatically different directions on education. Where the nation is pulling back, we are charging ahead. We must continue to see this progress through. By acting on these recommendations, we prove a point: that government can respond in good faith to the public it serves. And we do not fail to miss the point of it all: that our future depends on getting education right for young people.

    •••

    Ash Vasudeva is president and CEO of ConnectED: The National Center for College and Career, an organization that partners with school, district, and community leaders to transform education through Linked Learning pathways.

    Anne Stanton is president and CEO of the Linked Learning Alliance, an organization that leads the movement toward educational excellence and equity for every adolescent through high-quality college and career preparation.

    Editors’ note: Anne Stanton is a member of the EdSource board of directors. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage. 

    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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  • 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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