Students work together during an after-school tutoring club.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
Last week, as one of Los Angeles’ major freeways was closed indefinitely and rainstorms hit the city, to top it all off, school was also out early in the Los Angeles Unified School District for parent-teacher conferences. These conferences provide valuable individualized feedback — but even with optimal weather and traffic conditions, shortened school days also mean that families scramble for child care and to ensure students continue learning.
Fortunately, we have a way to support families in weeks like this and in other weeks when school still gets out well before the work day ends — effective after-school programming. It’s high time that enrichment, social, and academic support during the hours after school get the attention and investments they deserve.
No matter what time that final bell rings, there is no doubt that after-school programming has become a vital supplement to a well-rounded public school education. By bridging the gap between school and home, after-school programs extend the academic support students receive during the day, ultimately leading to improved educational outcomes, social-emotional skills and more enriched lives. One national study showed that half of students regularly attending these programs made gains in their math and reading grades — and more than 60% improved their homework completion, classroom participation and behavior.
After-school programs also offer a safe and supportive environment for students, reducing crime and juvenile delinquency. When students have a constructive, nurturing place to spend their time after school, studies show they are less likely to engage in risky or harmful behaviors. According to a 2005 study from the Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College, every dollar invested in afterschool programs saves at least $3 by increasing youths’ earning potential, improving their performance at school and reducing crime and juvenile delinquency. This not only benefits individual students but also offers working parents and guardians peace of mind by providing a reliable, quality child care option.
The vast majority of parents believe that after-school opportunities are important to support their children’s safety and development—however, for every student enrolled in one of these programs, there are two students who would participate if given access. This disparity often falls predictably along socio-economic lines, widening the very achievement gap that it has the power to help close. And with a patchwork of funding and service models, we don’t always know which programs serve students best.
While the list of proven benefits is seemingly endless, the funding and resources needed to make high-quality programs equitably accessible to more families are not. The Expanded Learning Opportunities Program funding that Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced two years ago is a great start. At the same time, we need to ensure that this funding is ongoing, coherent with other funding streams, and remains flexible enough to make the most of these dollars and meet the needs of local students.
That is why I brought forth a resolution that my board colleagues passed unanimously this week, calling on LA Unified to do more to study, fund and advocate for after-school programming and expanded learning opportunities to be available to all our students. We must collectively imagine what we can do for children all day long, including during the hours from when the bell rings until dinner. This will require expanded and flexible state funding, research and data analysis from our school systems and institutions of higher education, and collaboration with nonprofits and local entities who have been doing this work in silos for decades. We also need to find ways to ensure that we can staff after-school positions, which historically have been part-time jobs, with the caring adults we know our students need to thrive.
As we continue to address the learning gaps and emotional hurdles facing students after the pandemic, we cannot afford to go back to business as before. If time is one of the most significant things that our students missed during the pandemic, then I’ve found a few hours every day where we can make up lost ground and prepare our kids to be the best versions of themselves — after school.
•••
Nick Melvoin is a member of the Los Angeles Unified school board, representing the Westside and West San Fernando Valley, and is currently running for Congress.
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.
The pandemic had a devastating impact on learning, experts say, with lasting ramifications for the world of education at large.
During the chaotic period when California families were running scared, public schools were shuttered and playgrounds off-limits, an estimated 152,000 California children went missing from classrooms, according to a collaboration between Stanford professor Thomas Dee and The Associated Press.
Now, after a new analysis of the most recent data, experts say they know what happened to roughly 65,000 of those children, meaning the number of missing kids has shrunk considerably, leaving only an estimated 87,000 children still missing from public school rolls. The mystery of exactly where they went lingers, however.
This analysis tracked plummeting public school enrollment from 2019-20, when the pandemic first struck, to 2022-23, by the time schools had reopened. During that rocky time, the school-age cohort in California, the nation’s most populous state, plunged by about 188,000, according to census data, while the number of home-schoolers rose by 8,431 and private school enrollment grew by about 28,000, according to the report.
Tallying all the known factors accounts for about 65,000 students of the state’s total decline of 152,000. Do the math and that leaves roughly 87,000 students, or 28% of the enrollment decline. Where these students went remains unknown, but experts suggest there are myriad factors to consider.
“These data are generative of questions that matter for education policy. … I would encourage you to think of it as an important indicator and kind of a canary in a coal mine,” Dee said.
Data suggests some of the overall decline in enrollment stems from children who have simply aged out of the system at this point. Basically, the school-age population is much smaller than it once was, with 188,000 fewer children in the 7-18 age range in 2022-23. If you were 16 when the pandemic started, you are no longer in this cohort.
After all, California, like the rest of the nation, is grappling with the aftershocks of a declining birthrate. The state’s birth rate is at its lowest level in roughly 100 years, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report. The steep cost of child care coupled with the high cost of housing are often cited by experts as among the key reasons for the falling birth rate.
“Demographic change is continuing to accelerate,” said Dee, “the graying of the country and the continued decline in the number of school-age children.”
As a whole, there’s been an unprecedented exodus from public schools nationwide that experts say has been worse in states like California that focused on remote learning. This trend initially most deeply impacted the youngest learners, such as kindergartners, who struggled mightily with Zoom school. While many experts expected public school enrollment to bounce back sharply as the pandemic faded from view, that has not been the case.
“At the time I thought to myself, this is likely to be a temporary phenomenon,” said Dee. “I was expecting them to crowd into kindergarten in fall of 2021 or skip ahead to first grade, having lost a key kind of developmental opportunity by forgoing kindergarten. And was surprised to see that neither occurred.”
The continued sustained missingness in places like California and New York raises questions for which we still don’t have answers.
Thomas Dee, the Stanford education professor who led the analysis
Many families also fled the Golden State, seeking greener pastures in more affordable spots. That has led to losses in California and gains in Florida, for example.
“In many places, the demographic trends were accelerated by pandemic mobility,” said Dee, “the fact that families reshuffled around the country and out of states like California and New York.”
Many children also switched to homeschooling, which held extra appeal for parents amid recurring outbreaks. Private schools, which resumed in-person classes faster than public schools, also got a big boost.
“There’s been this resetting of enrollment patterns across public and nonpublic settings that is enduring,” Dee said. “We’re seeing that in terms of the sustained growth in nonpublic schooling. … We’re in this new normal where there’s this stickiness there.”
The bad news for public schools is that there are still tens of thousands of children who seem to have fallen off the grid. They didn’t leave the state, they didn’t go to private or homeschool. While there’s a chance some children are being homeschooled without filling out the required big pile of paperwork, there may still be a missing cohort out there.
It should be noted that possible explanations for these remaining missing kids are both numerous and complex. Some of it may be families keeping kids in preschool instead of enrolling them in kindergarten. Some of it may be high-schoolers getting jobs but not officially dropping out.
Part of it might be newly homeless families, displaced by the tidal wave of post-pandemic evictions, who can’t get the kids to school amid their other struggles. Part of it could also be the margin of error on the census population estimate.
“The factors you mention could be occurring simultaneously,” notes Dee.
One near certainty is that the ongoing disengagement with the public school system seems to cut deep. That’s one reason chronic absenteeism has also been escalating, experts say. In the 2021-22 school year, a third of students in California’s public schools were chronically absent, an all-time high. That’s more than three times the rate of absenteeism before Covid.
This spike also holds nationally. One analysis estimated 14 million chronically absent students during the 2021 school, an increase of nearly 7 million since 2017.
Going Deeper
View kindergarten enrollment changes from 2019 to 2021 in California with EdSource’s interactive map.
Some say it may be indicative of a lack of student and parent engagement. Some of that dissatisfaction may have been triggered during remote learning at the height of the pandemic, some say, when parents got to experience what their children were learning firsthand.
“The pandemic gave parents a rare window into the classroom via Zoom,” said Bill Conrad, a Bay Area educator for 47 years and author of “The Fog of Education.” “They were not impressed with the failed teaching practices, especially for reading. Parents elected to provide different learning opportunities for their children. Can you blame them? They are protesting with their feet.”
This trend is particularly disturbing from an equity lens, some say, because families without resources cannot simply shell out for private schools, work at home to manage homeschooling or hire tutors. That may widen the already unsettling achievement gap, some fear.
“The biggest challenge from my point of view is the socioeconomic inequity,” said Jenny Mackenzie, director of the literacy crisis documentary “The Right to Read.” “In other words, families who would like to take a break from the public school system … cannot afford to do that.”
Some families who lost faith in the ability of schools to meet the needs of students across a wide range of issues, including literacy and numeracy, may need to feel that their voices are being heard. The pandemic was the tipping point, some say, but the issues may go beyond school closures.
“Since the pandemic, more parents question whether their child is better off in school,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care and preschool centers. “This is good news because parents should question everything about California’s education system. Decade after decade, less than half of students are proficient in language and math. Perhaps it is the instructional methods or curriculum that lack proficiency?”
Forging stronger connections with families who face challenges with school attendance may also be part of the solution.
“The reasons behind student absenteeism are incredibly complex, and so the responses have to be complex as well,” said Heather Hough, director of Policy Analysis for California Education, noting that the first step should be asking families what challenges they face coming to school.
Low-income students and students of color often feel less sense of belonging at school than their peers, research suggests. Strengthening that frayed bond may not be easy, some warn, but it is necessary.
“School is sometimes a source of trauma, and even intergenerational trauma, disproportionately for historically marginalized groups,” said Shantel Meek, founding director of the Children’s Equity Project, an advocacy and research organization based at Arizona State University. “We’re all familiar with the data on harsh discipline and how Black children are more harshly disciplined than everybody else, despite not having any worse behavior.”
Some suggest we may be approaching a watershed moment, a time for education to pivot to better meet changing student needs.
“Public education has failed to shift post-pandemic to the new way of learning,” said Alex Cherniss, superintendent of Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified. “Now students and families are seeing alternative ways, and often better ways, to learn. As a result, homeschooling is at an all-time high, remote learning is mainstream, and public school can either evolve or continue to deteriorate.”
Amid the looming ambiguities, one certainty emerges. Snowballing enrollment declines are poised to undermine the financial stability of the public school system just as pandemic relief funds expire and learning loss deepens.
Enrollment has fallen at nearly three-quarters of California school districts over the last five years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, and these losses are expected to continue, with state officials estimating a drop of over a half million students by 2031–32.
“That’s so important at this moment,” Dee said, “because we’re seeing many school districts struggle with chronic under-enrollment of their schools and having to reckon with the fiscal reality of that at a time when ESSER (emergency school relief) funds are going to sunset.”
When Sunny Lee’s son was ready for kindergarten in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic had just begun. His school in Pleasanton, an eastern suburb of the San Francisco Bay, was holding classes online, like most others.
Lee opted out, after seeing what distance learning via Zoom was like for young children.
“I think the formatting was not ideal for young kids. It was just very disruptive and hard to keep track of, and there was just not that much engagement,” Lee said. “Socialization was a big reason for me to send him to school, and he wasn’t getting that.”
The following year, in 2021, when school was back in person, Lee’s son started first grade and her daughter started kindergarten. But after two weeks of school with Covid restrictions, she pulled both children out and began homeschooling them again. They returned to public school for the 2022-23 school year.
Lee’s children are among thousands that did not enroll in public kindergarten in California in 2020 or 2021, years when the state saw drops in kindergarten enrollment. And even among students who enrolled, many missed a lot of days in school.
NATIONAL disengagement from kindergarten
Kindergarten enrollment is down across the country. EdSource collaborated with The Associated Press on a national story about this. You can read that story here.
The pandemic triggered a different attitude about kindergarten, with a growing number of parents either opting for other programs, waiting a year to start kindergarten, or skipping kindergarten and beginning public school in first grade at the mandatory school attendance age of 6 years old.
Some parents were deterred by virtual learning; others were spooked by Covid risks and restrictions. Three years after the pandemic began, many parents still feel their children aren’t ready for kindergarten, after the pandemic disrupted and delayed their ability to play and socialize with others and learn skills from coloring and counting to potty training.
“The pandemic kids have really been struggling on the social side, with ADHD, anxiety and all that comes with not knowing how to play with other children,” said Deana Lundy, client services manager at Bananas, an agency in Oakland that helps families find child care and state subsidies for child care. “If you get a kid that was with grandma all this time and never even went to a child care center, it’s an even bigger barrier.”
Kindergarten is considered a crucial year for setting children up for academic success. Some experts worry that some of the children missing kindergarten will lag behind their peers in elementary school.
Going Deeper
View kindergarten enrollment changes from 2019 to 2021 in California with EdSource’s interactive map.
Kindergarten enrollment statewide dropped precipitously — 9%— from before the pandemic, 2019-20, to 2020-21, when learning was virtual in most school districts. In 2021-22, the latest year for which data is available, it stayed at relatively the same level as the year before.
Enrollment for 2022-23 was also below projections. The data currently available for 2022-23 lumps together children enrolled in both transitional kindergarten and kindergarten. Transitional kindergarten is a grade before kindergarten, open to some 4-year-olds. Though the overall numbers for both grades together increased by about 5% from 2021-22 to 2022-23, that may be partially due to the expansion of transitional kindergarten to include more 4-year-olds.
The California Department of Education declined to release the 2022-23 enrollment number for transitional kindergarten, adding that the data are set for release in early 2024, on the traditional schedule.
Those numbers are exacerbated by the number of students enrolled but missing a lot of school. According to Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works, chronic absenteeism — when children miss more than 10% of days in the school year — surged to 40% among kindergarten students in the 2021-22 school year. Among all grades, the rate is 30%.
Chang said part of the reason absenteeism went up so much in kindergarten is that many children did not attend preschool during the pandemic, and because after the pandemic, parents were not allowed to go inside many schools.
“Parents now just drop them off at the door, and they don’t see what’s happening in the classroom. And now they also haven’t had their kids in preschool experiences where they might have understood the value of what you get from early learning,” Chang said.
“The pandemic kids have really been struggling on the social side, with ADHD, anxiety and all that comes with not knowing how to play with other children.”
Deana Lundy, client services manager at Bananas
All income groups opting out
When Sunny Lee and her husband chose to homeschool their children in both 2020-21 and 2021-22, they were concerned about distance learning and the risk of Covid. At the same time, they didn’t want their daughter to have to wear a mask because she has asthma, and they felt it could make breathing more difficult. To make matters worse, wildfire smoke began filling the air in the fall of 2021 and children weren’t getting much outdoor playtime.
On top of all of that, Lee’s husband is a physician and was working long hours during evenings and nights in the ICU during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Because of school and my husband working in the ICU, the risk was really high, and the schedule was really hard,” Lee said. “They wouldn’t have gotten to spend much time with him.”
Lee contacted a friend in New York who homeschooled her children in New York to get help planning her lessons. Her children returned to school in fall 2022, when her daughter was in first grade and her son was in second grade. She said both her children learned to read at home.
“Looking back, I’m glad I did it,” Lee said. “I think they actually did better. I think they learned more and I was able to focus and hone in on the stuff they needed to learn.”
Some families like Lee’swho are deciding to delay or opt out of kindergarten can afford to pay for another year of child care or preschool or have the time to manage homeschooling.
But the trend to skip kindergarten is also growing among some low-income families who qualify for subsidized child care. Subsidies can be used for many different kinds of settings, including child care centers, home-based family child care programs, and informal care by friends and family.
Christina Engram was all set to send her 5-year-old, Nevaeh, to kindergarten this fall at her neighborhood school in Oakland.
Then she found out the after-school program didn’t have spots for all children and instead, there was a wait list. If Nevaeh didn’t get a spot, she would need to be picked up at 2:30 p.m. most days, and at 1:30 on Wednesdays.
“If I put her in public school, I would have to cut my hours and I basically wouldn’t have a good income for me and my kids,” said Engram, who is the sole parent of two children and works as a preschool teacher in another child care provider’s home day care program. Her younger child is 4 years old.
Christina Engram spends time at home with daughter, Neveah, 6, and 4-year-old son Choncey, right, in Oakland last month.Credit: AP Photo/Loren Elliott
Rather than potentially cut her work hours or quit, Engram decided to keep Nevaeh in a child care center for another year. She could afford it because she receives a state child care subsidy that helps her pay for full-time child care or preschool until her child is 6 years old and must enroll in first grade.
Engram was not worried about Nevaeh’s ability to do well academically in kindergarten, but she did feel that the girl needed some extra support and attention socially. In part, she said that could be because Nevaeh didn’t have as much interaction with other children during the pandemic, and when she started attending preschool in 2021, all the children wore face masks.
“She knows her numbers, she knows her ABCs, she knows how to spell her name,” Engram said. “But when she feels frustrated that she can’t do something, her frustration overtakes her. She needs extra attention and care. She has some shyness about her when she thinks she’s going to give the wrong answer.”
Socialization is not the only thing some children missed during the pandemic. Some families are also waiting to start public school because their children were not potty-trained during the pandemic, Lundy said. Bananas offers free diapers to low-income families, and staff have noticed the sizes requested getting bigger and bigger since Covid began.
Many reasons for opting out
Overall enrollment in California public schools has been steadily dropping for several years, in part due to a decrease in population and birth rate. But the drop in kindergarten enrollment of almost 40,000 children between 2019-20 and 2020-21 reflects other factors, researchers said.
“Kindergarten, and to a lesser extent first grade, are moving differently from other elementary grades,” said Julien Lafortune, research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “It’s definitely something that’s not just the underlying demographics.”
The drop in 2020 was likely in large part due to kindergarten being online in most school districts.
“Asking a 4-year-old to sit in front of a computer for the whole day, it’s totally not what they need,” said Patricia Lozano, director of Early Edge California, a nonprofit organization that advocates for quality early learning. “If you know about child development, you try to avoid screens as much as possible. They need interactions. They need to play.”
When schools returned to in-person learning in 2021, there were many rules for children to follow to prevent the spread of Covid-19: masking, testing and keeping a safe distance from other students.
In addition, some families were concerned about the risk of their children getting Covid-19 in school or bringing it home to younger siblings, particularly before vaccines were available for young children.
Some families may have also moved out of California during the pandemic, in part because of rising housing costs in California coupled with the parents’ ability to work remotely, Lafortune said.
Districts trying to attract youngest students
Several district spokespersons said districts are trying to recruit more children to enroll in both transitional kindergarten and kindergarten, advertising on television, radio, and social media, and holding community events.
Since transitional kindergarten is gradually expanding to serve all 4-year-olds, districts are trying to leverage that expansion to enroll families early.
Their biggest challenge is continuing drops in kindergarten enrollment, reported by more than half of California’s nearly 1,000 districts between 2019-20 and 2021-22.
Districts contacted by EdSource say the decline continued into the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.
Early learning grades should not be seen as optional in our community. They are essential in the life of young children.
Fresno Unified spokesperson A.J. Kato
Anaheim Elementary School District in Orange County has seen kindergarten enrollment fall year after year since the pandemic. The district’s data for 2023-24 shows a 22.7% drop from pre-pandemic levels, from 2,169 in 2019-20 to 1,676 this year.
The district’s drop in kindergarten enrollment started with Covid-19 and health concerns and expanded, said Mary Grace, assistant superintendent of education services in the district. “Anaheim and most Orange County school districts have experienced ongoing demographic changes and reduced birth rates that play a role in our enrollment numbers over the past few years.”
To stem the drop, Grace said the district is trying to attract more students to both transitional kindergarten and kindergarten with information sessions and an annual “enrollment festival” and advertising that the district offers dual-language immersion classes in Spanish, Korean and Mandarin at all 24 schools in the district, and transitional kindergarten at all schools.
Fresno Unified, which is the third-largest district in the state and also has the third-highest kindergarten enrollment, has seen more than a 16% drop in its kindergarten enrollment from 2019-20 to 2023-24, district data shows.
“The superintendent’s message to our community has been that early learning grades should not be seen as optional in our community. They are essential in the life of young children,” said district spokesperson A.J. Kato. “We are confident that with community outreach efforts and families feeling more comfortable sending their young children to school, we should see and continue increasing enrollment.”
Erica Peterson, the director of education and engagement for School Innovations & Achievement, a national firm that tracks attendance at 356 school districts in California, said school districts need to do more to attract families with young children post-pandemic.
“If we’re trying to stave off declining enrollment, what are we doing to entice people to choose their local home school?” said Peterson. “Because there are a lot of options and the pandemic created a whole wealth of options that didn’t even exist before,” she added, referring to homeschooling and private schools.
Where they went
It’s not completely clear what children did instead of kindergarten in the years since the pandemic. Lafortune said the numbers of students enrolled in private school and registered with the state as being in homeschools are not large enough to account for all of California’s missing kindergartners.
However, since kindergarten is not mandatory in California, parents and guardians are not required to register their children as enrolled in homeschool.
Children enrolled in private preschools or child care centers would not show up in the number of children enrolled in private K-12 schools. Preschools and child care programs are licensed separately by the Department of Social Services and do not have to register with the Department of Education as providing elementary school.
Lafortune said some parents may have chosen to skip kindergarten and then enroll their child in first grade the following year, but first grade has also seen drops in enrollment, so it is difficult to know how many kindergarteners enrolled. He said others may have chosen to wait a year to enroll their children in kindergarten, when they were 6 rather than 5 years old.
Some private preschools opened kindergarten-age classes during the pandemic to cater to families that preferred in-personlearning for their 5-year-olds. Even after public schools returned to in-person learning, these preschools continued to attract some families who wanted to keep their children in a more intimate setting with more play and exploration.
Nancy Lopez chose to keep her daughter Naima at a “forest” preschool, Escuelita del Bosque, which holds classes outside in a redwood forest park in the Oakland hills, in part because of the small class size. Kindergarten classes in Oakland can be up to 28 children with one adult. Escuelita del Bosque had a 10-to-1 ratio, with a kindergarten teacher who Lopez says was beloved by families. Naima is now enrolled in first grade at a public school.
“We just felt like there was nothing to lose from Naima being in this environment that’s more catered to this small group,” Lopez said. “It almost felt like we were gifted another year. It was almost pushing off the inevitable.”
EdSource data journalist Daniel J. Willis contributed to this story.
Glenn Sacks is a veteran social studies teacher in a Los Angeles public high school. Many of the students he teaches are immigrants. He describes here what he has learned about them.
President Trump says he is defending Los Angeles from a “foreign invasion,” but the only invasion we see is the one being led by Trump.
Roughly a quarter of all students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are undocumented. The student body at the high school where I teach consists almost entirely of immigrants, many of them undocumented, and the children of immigrants, many of whose parents and family members are undocumented. This week we held our graduation ceremony under the specter of Trump’s campaign against our city.
Outside, school police patrolled to guard against potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Amidst rumors of various actions, LAUSD decided that some schools’ graduations would be broadcast on Zoom.
For many immigrant parents, graduation day is the culmination of decades of hard work and sacrifice, and many braved the threat of an ICE raid and came to our campus anyway. Others, perhaps wisely, decided to watch from home.
They deserve better.
Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calls us a “city of criminals,” and many Americans are cheering on the Trump administration and vilifying immigrants. What we see in LAUSD is an often heroic generation of immigrant parents working hard to provide for their children here while also sending remittance money to their families in their native countries. We see students who (usually) are a pleasure to teach, and parents who are grateful for teachers’ efforts.
Watching the students at the graduation ceremony, I saw so many who have had to overcome so much. Like the student in my AP U.S. government class who from age 12 worked weekends for his family’s business but made it into UCLA and earned a scholarship. There’s the girl who had faced homelessness this year. The boy with learning issues who powered through my AP class via an obsessive effort that his friends would kid him about, but which he committed to anyway. He got an “A,” which some of the students ribbing him did not.
Many students have harrowing, horrific stories of how they got to the U.S. — stories you can usually learn only by coaxing it out of them.
There’s the student who grew up in an apartment complex in San Salvador, where once girls reached a certain age they were obligated to become the “girlfriend” of a member of whatever gang controlled that area. When she was 14 they came for her, but she was ready, and shot a gang member before slipping out of the country, going all the way up through Guatemala and Mexico, desperate to find her father in Los Angeles.
As she told me this story at parent conference night, tears welled up in her father’s eyes. It’s also touching to watch their loving, long-running argument — he wants her to manage and eventually take over the small business he built, and she wants to become an artist instead. To this day she does not know whether the gang member she shot lived or died.
At the graduation ceremony, our principal asks all those who will be joining the armed forces to stand up to be recognized. These students are a windfall for the U.S. military. I teach seniors, and in an average class, three or four of my students join the military, most often the Marines, either right out of high school or within a couple years.
Were these bright, hard-working young people born into different circumstances, they would have gone to college. Instead, they often feel compelled to join the military for the economic opportunity — the so-called “economic draft.”
Some also enlist because it helps them gain citizenship and/or helps family members adjust their immigration status. A couple years ago, an accomplished student told me he was joining the Marines instead of going to college. I was a little surprised and asked him why, and he replied, “Because it’s the best way to fix my parents’ papers.”
Immigrants are the backbone of many of our industries, including construction and homebuilding, restaurants, hospitality and agriculture. They are an indispensable part of the senior care industry, particularly in assisted living and in-home care. Of the couple dozen people who cared for my ailing parents during a decade of navigating them through various facilities, I can’t remember one who was not an immigrant. There is something especially disturbing about disparaging the people who care for us when we’re old, sick, and at our most vulnerable.
Immigrants are woven into the fabric of our economy and our society. They are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends, and an integral part of our community. The average person in Los Angeles interacts with them continually in myriad ways — and without a thought to their immigration status.
Immigrants are also maligned for allegedly leeching off public benefits without paying taxes to finance them. This week conservative commentator Matt Walsh called to ”ban all third world immigration″ whether it’s “legal or illegal,” explaining, “We cannot be the world’s soup kitchen anymore.”
One can’t teach a U.S. government and politics class in Los Angeles without detailing the phenomenon of taxpayers blaming immigrants for the cost of Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs. My students are hurt when they come to understand that many Americans look at their parents, who they’ve watched sacrifice so much for them, as “takers.”
Nor is it true.
Californians pay America’s highest state sales tax. It is particularly egregious in Los Angeles, where between this and the local surcharge, we pay 9.75%. As I teach my economics students, this is a regressive tax where LAUSD students and their parents must pay the same tax rate on everything they buy as billionaires do.
Moreover, most immigrants are renters, and they informally pay property taxes through their rent. California ranks 7th highest in the nation in average property taxes paid.
Part of what is driving the current protests is the sense that once somebody is taken by ICE, their families won’t know their fate. Where will they be sent? Will they get due process? Will they end up in a Salvadoran megaprisonwhere, even if it’s ordered that they be returned home, the president may pretend he can’t get them back? It is fitting that the flashpoint for much of the protests has been the federal Metropolitan Detention Center downtown.
We also question the point of all this, particularly since the Trump administration can’t seem to get its story straight as to why ICE is even here.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan says the raids are about enforcing the laws against hiring undocumented workers and threatens “more worksite enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation.” By contrast, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, citing “murderers, pedophiles, and drug traffickers,” says the purpose of the raids is to “arrest criminal illegal aliens.”
And now, having provoked protests, the Trump administration uses them as a justification for escalating his measures against Los Angeles.
Amid this, our graduating students struggle to focus on their goals. One Salvadoran student who came to this country less than four years ago knowing little English managed the impressive feat of getting an “A” in my AP class. He’d sometimes come before school to ask questions or seek help parsing through the latest immigration document he’d received. Usually, whatever document I read over did not provide him much encouragement.
He earned admission to a University of California school, where he’ll be studying biomedical engineering. Perhaps one day he’ll help develop a medicine that will benefit some of the people who don’t want him here.
When we said goodbye after the graduation ceremony, I didn’t know what to say beyond what I’ve often told him in the past — “Just keep your head down and keep marching forward.”
“I will,” he replied.
Glenn Sacks teaches government, economics, and history in the Los Angeles Unified School District. His columns on education, history, and politics have been published in dozens of America’s largest publications.
The first time I met Micah, a Black elementary school student, I was struck by his cherubic face, bright eyes and nonstop knock-knock jokes that had me laughing out loud. He was warm and polite. His grandmother — his guardian — sat close by during the visit, gently encouraging his respectful tone. She described him as responsible and kind, and everything I saw affirmed that.
So, I was puzzled — then troubled — by his school’s mental health referral. Teachers had described Micah as a “behavior challenge” and asked for help managing his “defiance.” His school records even falsely claimed his mother was a “cocaine addict.” None of it matched the child in front of me.
As I got to know him, the real story came out: Micah had just watched his father collapse and die after he tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him. My heart sank as my evaluation revealed that his grief had been misread as misconduct, his pain distorted through the lens of pathology. Frustrated by repeated suspensions and missed learning, his grandmother eventually transferred him to another school.
As a child psychiatrist, I’ve seen how often Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous children, like Micah, are unfairly mislabeled and misunderstood. One diagnosis keeps showing up in ways that harm these children: oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) — a common childhood behavioral disorder characterized by anger, defiance and vindictiveness.
Too often, ODD becomes a “bad kid” label, punishing racially minoritized children for behaviors rooted in trauma, racism or structural inequities, rather than addressing the hardships they face.
Oppositional defiant disorder is overdiagnosed in Black, Hispanic and Indigenous children because of biased behavior assessments. Adultification bias leads Black children to be seen as older, stronger and less innocent than they are. Anger bias results in Black students being perceived as angry even when they’re not.
This overdiagnosis often ignores what’s really going on. Anger or irritability can be signs of anxiety or depression, while defiance can be an adaptive response to trauma or discrimination. Gender-nonconforming students of color are at special risk of being labeled defiant when they are simply resisting mistreatment or bullying.
But instead of getting support, these kids are too often punished and criminalized.
Since racially minoritized children already face higher rates of suspension, expulsion and police involvement, an improper diagnosis reinforces exclusion, pushing them out of school and into the justice system.
An ODD diagnosis doesn’t explain a child’s behavior. It blames them for it.
In 2013, California began to ban suspension for willful defiance, eventually in all grades K-12. This measure reduced overall suspensions, but racial disparities in discipline remain stark. Black and Indigenous students are suspended earlier and more often, with Black students with disabilities most affected in middle school.
Disciplinary codes that remain — like “disruption,” “defiance” and “profanity” — are vague and subjective, leaving room for racial bias. In one California school district, Black students with disabilities accounted for three-quarters of all suspensions for these offenses.
While students can’t be suspended from school for willful defiance anymore, teachers can still suspend students from class for it. An oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis can still justify exclusion — through special education placements, psychiatric referrals, or other punitive measures — serving as a backdoor for exclusionary discipline.
There is no denying thateducators face enormous challenges in classroom management, and that they often don’t have the best tools and resources to help. Restorative justice and trauma-informed approaches, for instance, can be difficult to implement because of limited staffing and administrative support. But it’s also true that questioning the “bad kid” label with ODD or defiance can lead to more just outcomes.
How? Here are four things educators and other adults can do:
Recognize bias in discipline and mental health diagnoses A Black student questioning authority may be labeled defiant, while a white student is called assertive for the same behavior. Bias training and reflective practice are key to addressing these misperceptions. While California has introduced implicit bias training as part of teacher professional development, none of these initiatives specifically address diagnostic bias.
Contextualize student behavior Before labeling a child oppositional, ask:
Are they facing hunger, housing instability or bullying?
Are they reacting to discrimination or past trauma?
Building strong relationships with students and families helps uncover the full story.
Support, don’t punish Because they address the root causes of distress, behavioral interventions that teach emotional regulation and restorative practices that repair relationships can be more effective than exclusion.
Be skeptical of mental health referrals Referrals don’t guarantee unbiased care. Psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists aren’t required to account for racism or the school-to-prison pipeline when diagnosing oppositional defiant disorder. California’s medical and behavioral health boards don’t mandate an antiracist approach, meaning students are often assessed without consideration of systemic factors.
ODD’s overdiagnosis among Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students reflects a deeper problem, where certain children’s emotions are pathologized and punished, while the emotions of others receive understanding and support.
By questioning bias and shifting from labels to solutions, schools can ensure every child gets the support they need to thrive.
For Micah, the Black elementary school student grieving his father’s death, the solution wasn’t medication or behavior interventions. It was removing the ODD label and validating his grandmother’s sense that the school was mistreating him. What helped was switching schools and witnessing his grandmother go to bat for him. These actions gave him what he truly needed: love, support and a sense of belonging.
There are no bad kids. There are only systems that fail them. Let’s lift them up, not push them out.
•••
Dr. Rupinder K. Legha is a double board-certified psychiatrist based in Los Angeles who specializes in child, adolescent and adult mental health.
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 commentary guidelines and contact us.
Los estudiantes de Las Positas College en Livermore participaron en una huelga en el campus en protesta por las políticas de inmigración de la administración actual.
Families should have truthful conversations with children to help process feelings related to ongoing immigration raids.
Students who are afraid to go outside due to encounters with immigration agents can use remote, free mental health services in California.
During the summer, unstructured routine, social isolation and increased social media use can exacerbate feelings of sadness and fear.
With school out for the summer, some students may no longer have access to crucial support and services available during the academic school year, as fear and anxiety rise in their communities from ongoing immigration raids.
California schools are still safe havens for students attending summer school, meaning federal immigration officers are prohibited from entering them and child care facilities without proper legal authorization. But fears remain unabated for both children of immigrants and their friends, as federal immigration agents in California continue to detain, arrest and deport residents, in what community members say has become an indefinite fixture of the Trump administration.
Research shows that students are six times more likely to access mental health care during the school year than in the summer months, and that the absence of school-based services often leads to worsening mental health for students during the summer.
School social workers are unable to offer routine check-ins and on-campus counseling for students during the summer break, but families can take steps to support their child’s mental health and prepare for what experts are calling a child welfare and human rights crisis.
Talk through your child’s feelings
During the summer, children are much more likely to internalize traumatic events like raids on social media or outside of school, often in isolation and lacking the safe environment of a classroom to talk through their feelings about the day’s news.
To help them feel safe, school counselors and child psychologists recommend that families have truthful, open conversations about sweeps, rather than trying to shield them. Ahmanise Sanati, a school social worker in Los Angeles who works with children from immigrant communities as well as those unhoused, said families should start by asking children: “What have you heard?” and “How are you feeling?” They should then validate their child’s feelings of confusion, anxiety, grief or concern in developmentally appropriate ways, she said.
Both young and older children should understand their family’s risk profile — whether a family member could realistically be detained or deported by ICE, or whether they can be exposed to ICE agents in public spaces, for example. Families should spare younger children graphic or unnecessary details and limit or schedule older children’s social media use, Sanati said. Parents can assure their children that they’ll be OK, but not by telling them, “don’t be afraid” — because fear is a natural reaction.
Sanati says parents should center a child’s feelings, regardless of age, and that when feelings are repressed or minimized, witnessing raids, detentions and deportations, especially in childhood, can exacerbate risks of long-term mental illness.
“Children are already seeing masked individuals with weapons coming into the communities, tackling people and taking them away and putting them into vehicles,” Sanati said. “We have to acknowledge that some very scary things are happening in all of our communities — by lying about the magnitude of this, we may be risking our trust with our children in the future.”
Prepare for emergencies
If a loved one is at risk of being detained or deported, families should prepare and rehearse a step-by-step emergency plan with their child.
Students age 12 and over can role-play scenarios in which they might have to call for legal assistance or help build their legal defense, such as by taking pictures and recording names, badge numbers and descriptions of encounters with immigration agents, if possible. If a family member is detained by ICE, they should ensure other family members, including children, and emergency contacts have a copy of their A-Number, which is assigned to an undocumented person by the Department of Homeland Security, if they have one. Older children and family members should also know how to use the ICE detainee locator to find someone in custody.
“One way to validate a child who is afraid is by letting them know that their family will be ready for a worst-case scenario,” said Marta Melendez, a social worker with LAUSD. “If you don’t feel safe picking up groceries, for example, we have volunteers doing that for families. It’s OK for parents to feel afraid — that should not keep them from seeking support.”
Create a child care plan
Since children are spending more time at home and less time on protected school grounds during the summer, families should also create a child care plan in case a child is left unsupervised due to detention or deportation.
They can arrange for their child to be under the care of another trusted adult, such as a relative, family friend or neighbor, through a verbal agreement. Since this option is an informal arrangement, families should note that the chosen caregiver will not have legal authority to make medical or school-related decisions for their child.
Alternatively, families can have a trusted caregiver complete a Caregiver’s Authorization Affidavit, which would give them legal authority to make medical and school-related decisions on their child’s behalf. The CAA can only be used in California. It does not affect existing custody or parental rights.
Families can also have a state court appoint a guardian for their child, which, unlike a CAA, would grant the new guardian full legal and physical custody of the child. While guardianship does not terminate parental rights, it temporarily suspends them while the guardianship is in place. Families should seek legal counsel before considering this route.
If a child is a U.S. citizen, they should have their passports with them. They should also have important medical documents on file, including a list of medical conditions and medications, when applicable. Importantly, families should walk children through their child care plan and assure them that they will be cared for.
If families are unable to create a child care plan in case of an emergency, or if they become unhoused, they can go to any school that is open during the summer and ask to speak with their Pupil Services and Attendance counselor. Even if a child is not enrolled in summer school or programming, they have a right to stay on campus if there is no other safe location for them to go. PSA counselors can help families find long-term care for their child if necessary.
Families with undocumented or legal status have become increasingly afraid of stepping out — even for doctor’s appointments.
With the risks of seeking in-person care, combined with a lack of on-campus counseling during the summer, students can utilize various remote mental health services and asynchronous resources available for free.
BrightLife Kids, a part of California’s CalHOPE program, provides online behavioral health support through one-on-one coaching with licensed wellness coaches, educational and self-help tools and peer communities. Children age 0 to 12, parents and caregivers can use the program’s remote services to help kids manage worries, express feelings like sadness, anger and frustration, and learn resilience, problem-solving and communication. Coaching services are offered in both English and Spanish. Kids, parents or caregivers do not need to be U.S. citizens, nor do they have to have health insurance. Families can sign up on the BrightLife Kids website here.
Soluna, which is also a part of the CalHOPE program, offers free, confidential mental health support for people 13–25 years old in California. The app allows young Californians to select coaches based on 30 areas of focus, including anxiety, loneliness, substance misuse and demographic preferences such as ethnicity and gender. Users can also join peer support groups in carefully moderated, confidential environments. The app download is available on the Soluna website here.
School-based wellness centers often have year-round mental health intervention and support services available for students. Many offer psychiatric social workers who provide services like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and programs for children and families who have experienced adverse events or traumatic stress. A full list of wellness centers in California is available here.
Los Angeles Unified students and families can call 213-241-3840 on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. to get access to mental health services. Families can also directly refer their children to in-person or telehealth counseling through a referral form for the School Mental Health Clinics and Wellness Centers.
Practice healthy coping skills as a family
According to Melendez, families can prepare for scenarios like an ICE raid, detention or deportation by preemptively building their and their child’s mental health tool kit, similar to an emergency plan. Research shows that even basic mindfulness interventions can mitigate the short- and long-term negative effects of stress and trauma, and these techniques, when taught bilingually, are especially effective for populations such as the Latino community.
To start, Melendez recommends learning mindfulness practices such as box breathing, butterfly hug, guided meditation and positive affirmation, which are common techniques known to help children regulate their nervous system, cope with symptoms of anxiety or depression and perform better in school. Parents and caregivers should practice these techniques with their child to model calming rituals and build emotional resilience as a family unit, Melendez said.
“You should also prioritize something that is a positive outlet for the child,” Melendez said. “Whether they like to play sports, to write about their feelings, draw about their feelings, sing about their feelings, if they want to dance about their feelings — make sure that they have a way of processing all the emotions that they are experiencing.”
Data indicate a spike in both substance use and feelings of sadness among adolescents during the summer, which worsens in part due to unstructured routine, increased isolation and increased social media use.
To create a sense of normalcy for children, Melendez said families should do their best to maintain healthy routines and hobbies during the summer, especially those that promote social connection with their peers.
Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor for North Alabama. She writes an important blog called Civil Discourse, where she usually explains court decisions and legal issues. Today she turns to education.
Today I’m recovering from the graduation tour, one in Boulder and one in Boston in the last two weeks, and getting back into the groove of writing as I continue to work on my book (which I hope you’ll preorder if you haven’t already). The graduations came at a good moment.
Watching my kids graduate, one from college and one with a master’s in science, was an emotional experience—the culmination of their years of hard work, sacrifice, and growth, all captured in a single walk across the stage. They, like their friends, my law students, and amazing students across the county, now enter society as adults. Even beyond the individual stories of hardships overcome and perseverance, witnessing these rites of passage makes me feel profoundly hopeful. The intelligence and commitment of the students—many of whom are already tackling big problems and imagining new, bold solutions—gives me a level of confidence about what comes next for our country. In a time when it’s easy to get discouraged, their commitment and idealism stands as a powerful reminder that they are ready to take on the mess we have left them.
The kids are alright, even though they shouldn’t have to be. Talking with them makes me think they will find a way, even if it’s unfair to ask it of them and despite the fact that their path will be more difficult than it should be. Courage is contagious, and they seem to have caught it. Their educations have prepared them for the future we all find ourselves in now.
As students across the country prepared to graduate this year, Trump released his so-called “skinny budget.” If that’s how they want to frame it, then education has been put on a starvation diet—at least the kind of education that develops independent thinkers who thrive in an environment where questions are asked and answered. Trump pitches the budget as “gut[ting] a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security.” Defense spending would increase by 13% under his proposal.
The plan for education is titled, “Streamline K-12 Education Funding and Promote Parental Choice.”Among its provisions, the announcement focuses on the following items:
“The Budget continues the process of shutting down the Department of Education.”
“The Budget also invests $500 million, a $60 million increase, to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, that have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.”
As we discussed in March, none of this is a surprise. Trump is implementing the Project 2025 plan. In December of 2024, I wrote about how essential it is to dumb down the electorate if you’re someone like Donald Trump and you want to succeed. A rich discussion in our forums followed. At the time I wrote, “Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.” But it’s really true for the entirety of democracy.
Explaining the expanded funding for charter schools, a newly written section of the Department of Education website reads more like political propaganda than education information: “The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it has reigned [Ed: Note the word “”reigned” is misspelled] in the federal government’s influence over state Charter School Program (CSP) grant awards. The Department removed a requirement set by the Biden Administration that the U.S. Secretary of Education review information on how states approve select entities’ (e.g., private colleges and universities) authorization of charter schools in states where they are already lawful authorizers. This action returns educational authority to the states, reduces burdensome red tape, and expands school choice options for students and families.”
There are already 37 lawsuits related to Trump’s changes to education. Uncertainty is no way to educate America’s children. Cutting funding for research because you want to score political points about DEI or climate change is no way to ensure we nurture future scientists and other thinkers and doers…
I am reminded again of George Orwell’s words: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” The historians among us, and those who delve into history, will play a key role in getting us through this. Our love and understanding of history can help us stay grounded, understanding who we are, who we don’t want to become, and why the rule of law matters so damn much to all of it….
Thanks for being here with me and for supporting Civil Discourse by reading and subscribing. Your paid subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources necessary to do this work, and I am deeply grateful for them.
Melissa Ramirez, a first grade teacher at Lockeford Elementary in Lodi, holds up a flashcard while students say and spell the word ‘water.’
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Despite a newfound national focus on the science of reading, states, including California, aren’t doing enough to support and train teachers to effectively teach literacy, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Thirty-two states have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based reading instruction in the last decade. Despite that, nearly every state could do more to support literacy instruction, according to the report, “Five Policy Actions to Strengthen Implementation of the Science of Reading.“
“While states are rightly prioritizing literacy, they are not focusing enough attention on teacher effectiveness and teacher capacity to teach reading aligned to the science,” council President Heather Peske told EdSource. “If these efforts are to succeed … the state needs to ensure that teachers are prepared and supported from the time that they are in teacher preparation programs to the time that they enter classrooms.”
The report rated states as strong, moderate, weak or unacceptable, based on whether they have policies to ensure students receive science-based reading instruction that includes teaching them to sound out words, a process known as phonics. Only 12 states, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia, were rated as strong.
The state gets high marks for setting reading standards for teacher preparation programs, adopting a strong reading licensure test for teachers, and requiring districts to select high-quality reading curricula. California scored lower on whether it requires ongoing literacy training for teachers and on its oversight of teacher preparation programs to ensure they are teaching the science of reading.
Not all teachers are trained in the science of reading
While California provides funds to school districts to offer literacy training to teachers, it does not require all elementary school teachers to be trained in the science of reading, as other states do, Peske said, adding that without proper training, teachers often flounder when teaching literacy, despite having access to high-quality instructional materials.
Effective teaching is critical to improving students’ reading skills. More than 90% of students would learn to read with effective reading instruction, according to the report.
About 40% of students entering fourth grade in the United States can read at a basic level, according to the research. The latest California test scores show fewer than half of the students who were tested were proficient in reading. These results have not changed much in the past decade.
“Why do we see staggering numbers of children, especially children of color and from low-income backgrounds, without fundamental literacy skills? said Denise Forte, president and CEO of The Education Trust. “Because in many districts and schools nationwide, outdated teaching methods and curricula that have been proven ineffective, and even harmful, are still being used.”
The report comes as California and other states are renewing their focus on the science of reading, which is based on over 50 years of research that provides a clear picture of how effective literacy instruction can produce a skilled reader, Peske said.
Only two of the 41 teacher preparation programs reviewed in California adequately cover all five components of the science of reading, according to the report. The five components include phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
California puts renewed emphasis on reading
But that could change soon. By July 1, California will require teacher preparation programs to provide literacy training based on the science of reading and the state’s new literacy standards.The new standards include support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs, incorporating dyslexia guidelines for the first time.
The state is also eliminating the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment in 2025. It will be replaced with a performance assessment based on literacy standards and a new set of Teaching Performance Expectations.
“This latest set of standards and TPEs are probably the strongest statements we’ve had about reading and literacy in teacher preparation,” said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. “We are going gangbusters to get them in the field.”
More than half of the states use outside accreditors to review teacher preparation programs, which researchers say is not ideal. The report includes California as one of those states, but Sandy says that is not the case. Teacher preparation programs in California must be reviewed every seven years by a commission-approved institutional review board made up of university faculty and practitioners across all credential areas, Sandy said. Members are trained on the standards, or have a background or credential in the subject being reviewed, she said.
Teacher preparation programs that want a national accreditation can choose to use an outside accreditor, but it is not required for state accreditation, Sandy said.
California should also include data it collects on teacher pass rates on the state reading licensure test as part of the review of teacher preparation programs, Peske said.
California’s changes to teacher preparation and emphasis on the science of reading were taken into consideration by National Council on Teacher Quality’s researchers when evaluating the state, Peske said. The research was also sent to the California Department of Education at least twice for review. No one at the department said the research was in error, according to the council.
The council has provided a guide to help states implement and sustain strong reading instruction.
“Helping all children learn to read is possible when you have teachers who’ve been prepared in the science of reading,” Peske said. “Much like an orchestra needs each section of instruments to come together to successfully create music, states need to implement multiple teacher-focused reading policies that work together to improve student outcomes.”
Despite the fanfare surrounding its launch in August 2022, the California Kids Investment and Development Savings program (CalKIDS), a state initiative to help children from low income families save money for college or a career, has been underutilized as eligible families lack awareness about its existence.
According to a March 6 announcement from CalKIDS, 300,000 students and families — a fraction of the 3.6 million eligible across the state — have accessed the state-funded account.
That translates to about 8.3% of eligible students statewide with similar low percentages locally, which Devon Gray, president of the advocacy organization End Poverty in California (EPIC), said illustrates the gap between a program run by the state and local implementation.
CalKIDS is meant to help families save for college or career training after high school by creating a savings account and depositing between $500 and $1,500 for eligible low-income students in the public school system. The program was created to help students, especially those from underserved communities, gain access to higher education.
While pleased with the state’s investment of nearly $2 billion for the program, Gray said successful implementation of CalKIDS is key.
Though supported by the governor, the program doesn’t have enough staff to consistently spread awareness across the large, diverse state, said Joe DeAnda, communications director with the California State Treasurer’s Office, which oversees the CalKIDS program and its outreach efforts. He cites a lack of resources, also an explanation for school districts that are having trouble informing families about the program.
Consequently, families across the state are confused, uninformed or unaware of CalKIDS and face challenges in even claiming the accounts once aware, EPIC leaders say.
The state’s low percentage of claimed accounts may seem indicative of poor program adoption, DeAnda said, but CalKIDS credits its ongoing outreach and collaboration to raise awareness of the program among schools, community-based organizations and government agencies as the reason for the “major milestone” of hundreds of thousands claiming their accounts so far.
Fresno Unified, one of the state’s largest school districts, hopes to reach a milestone of its own.
The school board voted on March 6 to create a districtwide campaign to raise awareness about the CalKIDS accounts that are available to most of its students — a move that districts statewide can emulate, advocates say.
In Fresno Unified, only 6.64% of eligible students have claimed their accounts — partly because the district has not publicized the program as it can and should, Andy Levine, a member of the district’s board of trustees, said during the board meeting.
Levine proposed a resolution requiring the district to make a systemwide commitment to increase student awareness and access to the accounts.
He cited studies indicating that having as little as $500 in a college savings account makes a student three times more likely to enroll in college and four times more likely to graduate than a student without savings.
“I believe (it) is critically important to our city overall, with tens of millions of dollars collectively waiting for our students to utilize,” Levine told EdSource.
Program gives $500 to eligible low-income students
In this file photo, Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at Ruby Bridges Elementary School in Alameda in March 2021. At the time, Newsom was still proposing the college savings accounts for all low-income students in California.Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource
Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 invested about $1.9 billion in the accounts; Fresno Unified students are eligible for about $30 million.
According to program details, low-income public school students are awarded $500 in a CalKIDS account if they were in grades 1-12 during the 2021-22 school year, were enrolled in first grade during the 2022-23 school year or will be in first grade in subsequent school years.
An additional $500 is deposited for students identified as foster youth and another $500 for students classified as homeless.
Children born in California after June 2023, regardless of their parents’ income, are granted $100. Those born in the state between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, were awarded $25 before the seed deposit increased to $100. Parents who link the CalKIDS account to a ScholarShare 529 college savings account are eligible for an additional $50 deposit for their newborns.
The California Department of Education determines eligibility based on students identified as low income under the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, and the California Department of Public Health provides information on newborns.
State outreach does not address all the challenges
During the program’s initial rollout, Newsom described the initiative as California “telling our students that we believe they’re college material.”
“Not only do we believe it,” Newsom said at the time, “we’ll invest in them directly.”
Since then, Newsom and his office have regularly highlighted the program, spokesperson Izzy Gardon said. The governor’s backing garnered a lot of attention for the program in its first year, DeAnda said. Most Fresno County students who have claimed the accounts did so in the first year. Across the 33 school districts in Fresno County, 6,058 students claimed the account in the 2021-22 school year when the program launched; last school year, 404 registered the account, based on state data provided to EPIC.
Millions of dollars have been allocated to ensure families take advantage of the program.
According to the 2022-23 state budget, enacted in June 2022, the state increased its one-time general funding by $5 million for local program outreach and coordination with CalKIDS as well as another $5 million in ongoing funding for financial literacy outreach to educate families about the long-term benefits of a savings account with CalKIDS.
Besides outreach and collaboration with schools and organizations, the multimillion-dollar outreach efforts include marketing the program through partnerships, mailers, webinars, advertisements, social media and outdoor signage. With the state’s budget allocation, the program is also in the process of launching a $7.5 million media campaign to supplement current outreach.
Informing newborn parents looks slightly different
The mailers are one-time notification letters to inform students about the CalKIDS account and how to access it, according to the state treasurer’s office. Between November 2022 and June 2023, the program sent letters to over 3.3 million students. In January, the program sent notification letters for nearly 270,000 first graders who became eligible after last school year.
Every month, the program sends notification letters to newborn parents. Nearly 4% of more than 536,000 newborns eligible for CalKIDS had claimed the accounts, as of Dec. 31, according to CalKIDS data. As of March 1, the program had sent more than 634,000 letters to newborn parents since the program began, according to the treasurer’s office.
In addition to the mailers, the program has sent emails to over 316,000 parents to notify them of their newborn’s CalKIDS account. The California Department of Public Health, which provides information on newborns, sends the program email addresses of parents who provide the contact information during the birth registration process.
CalKIDS does not have access to student or parent email addresses from the education department.
Gray, the president of EPIC, said many in low income communities ignore the mailers because they don’t trust the communication or question its credibility, even if it has an official letterhead.
Advocates told EdSource that the success of other state outreach, such as webinars, depends on families being aware, and awareness — or a lack, thereof — is the No. 1 challenge related to CalKIDS account access. Other issues include the state’s large population as well as the workload of state officials who are tasked with promoting and offering various programs, not just CalKIDS.
DeAnda said it’s challenging for the small CalKIDS team, a group of about four people, to reach millions of families spread across the different rural and urban communities in California.
And even though CalKIDS has asked districts to promote the program as well, especially for students who will soon graduate, some districts also struggle with having enough resources to do their own outreach beyond what the state has done, Gray said. The program, according to the state treasurer’s office, offers an online toolkit for schools and districts to download and use fliers or posters, content for emails or social media and videos for CalKIDS outreach.
If families are not exposed to or participating in state or local outreach, they won’t know or learn about the program.
According to Gray, during EPIC’s listening tours across the state, he often asked families and community leaders about CalKIDS.
“And, usually, it’s blank stares,” he said.
Widespread confusion
In places such as San Francisco and Oakland, there is confusion about CalKIDS because the communities have local college savings account programs of their own.
Of over 33,000 eligible students in San Francisco County, just over 1,600 students, or 5%, have claimed the CalKIDS accounts. In Alameda County, where Oakland is located, more than 100,000 students are eligible, but just over 8,000, or 8%, have claimed their accounts.
Even when families are aware, claiming the account has proven difficult, said Jasmine Dellafosse, the director of organizing and community engagement with EPIC.
The seed deposits into the savings accounts are automatic, but families must claim the accounts by registering online — a step that less than 4,200 eligible Fresno Unified students had taken as of last school year.
To check student eligibility and register the account, families must enter students’ Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), a 10-digit number that appears on student transcripts, the CalKIDS website said.
Dellafosse said many Fresno Unified families don’t know where to find the ID numbers, and there’s often no straightforward answer on how to obtain them. The CalKIDS website instructs families to contact their child’s school or school district if they’re unsure of how to locate the number.
Board member Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, at the March 6 board meeting, noted the difficulty she had in finding the SSID number for her child. She contacted the CalKIDS program, which referred her to the state mailer she said she never received.
For a board member who works in the district and has access to resources to struggle to identify the number, Dellafosse said, shows the barrier families have and will experience.
“We’re not just seeing that happening in Fresno,” she said, “we’re seeing that happening everywhere.”
With the school board’s resolution, Rosas said the district has an opportunity to help its families participate in the program and a chance to work with the state to make the process easier.
Fresno Unified leads state in effort to raise awareness
More than 60,000 of the district’s 70,000 plus students could qualify for $500, while more than 1,000 students experiencing homelessness or living in foster care qualify for up to $1,000 more, according to the board resolution proposed by Levine.
Going Deeper
EPIC leaders want other districts to make systemwide commitments for increased awareness of and access to the CalKIDS accounts.
“We can’t just stop at Fresno,” Dellafosse said.
As California is a large, diverse state, the outreach strategies that work in one region may not work in another. Still, advocates say there are ways to address the barriers impacting CalKIDS account access, such as:
Providing CalKIDS welcome kits with the SSID numbers.
Rewriting informational materials to a third-grade reading level so more families understand the content.
Having local leaders educate families.
Advocating for multilingual outreach at the state level.
And bolstering communication between districts and the state.
“You have to know the money is waiting for you,” he said.
According to the resolution, which includes the goal of increasing student account access from less than 7% to at least 25%, there is a “clear need for intentional district outreach, education and support.”
By June, Fresno Unified will create a CalKIDS engagement plan to outline strategies for account registration and data collection for all eligible students and set goals to ensure graduating students use their funds for post-secondary plans.
Levine said that the district’s plan can be a model for how school districts across the state can engage and educate families about the CalKIDS program.
Based on the resolution, the district’s commitment to making families aware of the program can increase access to funding, improve students’ chances of attending and graduating from college, and improve current statistics showing that less than 25% of Fresno County residents over 25 have a bachelor’s degree.
“As someone who comes from a very disadvantaged family, I know the difference that some dollars in a savings account can really make,” board member Veva Islas said.
“No matter what the amount is, as long as there is some thought about sending children to college and some planning, (there) seems to (be) a very high correlation with that being the end result.”
Leading literacy experts agreed that more young California students need to learn how to read, but they couldn’t reach a concensus on how to make it happen.
While several participants in EdSource’s May 14 Roundtable discussion, “Getting California Kids to Read: What Will It Take?” suggested they would work together to pass a literacy bill, they also acknowledged that their disagreements remain in the details.
Moderated byEdSource reporters John Fensterwald and Zaidee Stavely, the lively hourlong roundtable focused on how to achieve literacy for California children. The panel grappled with a myriad of thorny issues including state policy dynamics, the needs of dual-language learners and long-standing disagreements over how best to teach reading amid rising illiteracy rates.
Putting the needs of children and their teachers first should be the North Star when trying to solve the deepening literacy crisis, panelists agreed.
The bottom line is grim. In 2023, just 43% of California students were reading at grade level by third grade, state data shows. Worse still, far fewer Black and Latino students met that standard.
“This is also a matter of civil rights,” said Kareem Weaver, an NAACP activist, co-founder of the literacy advocacy group FULCRUM and a key figure in the “The Right to Read” documentary, who has long argued that literacy is a matter of social justice too often obscured by esoteric debates about pedagogy. “Kids need access to prepared teachers, and communities like ours, I feel like we’re bearing the brunt.”
“We’re counting on reasonable people to come together and figure this stuff out,” said Weaver. “These decisions that are made, they do fall on real kids, real communities.”
What will it take to make sure that all kids, including English learners, read by third grade?
While the state has taken some steps to get all kids to grade level, such as funding for tutors and testing students for dyslexia, a reading disability,there is no comprehensive plan. Given local control policies, districts decide how reading is taught, and many use methods that have been debunked by some experts. That’s a problem because consensus is key to reform, experts say.
“You want to make sure that whether you’re in the district office or you are a teacher in the classroom, you’re singing the same song,” said Penny Schwinn, former Tennessee education commissioner, who led that state’s renowned reading reform initiative, Reading 360. “The curricular materials are aligned, the professional development is aligned. All of that has to row in the same direction. Otherwise, you have people who are all doing different things in different ways and kids get confused.”
What’s standing in the way of systemic change in California? One key question underpinning this debate is whether a statewide approach can meet the needs of English learners.
“I do have to say that many times students and biliteracy programs are not included in the literacy conversation,” said Martha Hernández, executive director of Californians Together, an advocacy group. “Our literacy policy must have a focus on student-responsive teaching. I will say that multi-literacy is really the way of the future, particularly for our diverse state in this 21st century. It must be a cornerstone of literacy, biliteracy education policy in California.”
Another key obstacle is the resistance to any top-down mandate that the state imposes on schools.
“When you do not have educators at the center of this, along with parents and students, it is set up to fail,” said David B. Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association. “Frankly, going and passing legislation that reinforces a top-down approach, it’s antithetical to what all of our goals are about: really having all students succeed.”
In hopes of giving the state a comprehensive plan focusing on phonics and other skills like vocabulary and reading comprehension, supporters backed Assembly Bill 2222 authored by Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park. It also had the support of the California State PTA, state NAACP and more than 50 other organizations. But the bill died last month in committee before it could even get a hearing, succumbing to opposition from the state teachers union and English language advocates.
Getting a literacy bill passed, as hard as that may be, is just the beginning, experts warn.
“That is the easiest part of the process,” said Schwinn. “You can pass legislation, but implementation is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, because you have to win hearts and minds and you have to make sure you do it with respect and make sure you are operating with extreme dignity and professionalism and with a high quality bar for the people who are in the profession every day.”
In a state as big and diverse as California, consensus can be elusive, noted Claude Goldenberg, emeritus professor of education in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. While almost everyone agrees that literacy instruction should be culturally relevant and content-rich as well as foundational, there remain disagreements about what exactly that looks like in the classroom.
“One of the big problems is when we speak at this level, there’s a lot of agreement,” said Goldenberg, “but we know the devil is in the details. … Time is limited in schools. Six hours tops, maybe six and a half, maybe five and a quarter. … We’ve got to make some choices and we’ve got to make some priorities at different stages of reading development. And that’s where the conversation kind of breaks down, because it gets very weedy, it gets very difficult. … We end up looking like we agree, but the subtext here is we’re still disagreeing.”
One of the big hurdles is over whether the state should embrace what is known as the science of reading, which refers to research on how the brain learns how to read. In response to a question from moderator Fensterwald on what is irrefutable about that research, Goldenberg said there was no doubt about how children need to be taught how to read.
“We have research on what to do when kids are having difficulty getting traction in beginning reading, whether they’re in Spanish reading programs or in English reading programs as English language learners,” said Goldenberg. “We know that there’s a reason they’re called foundational literacy skills. Because if you don’t have these skills, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to become literate.”
While she agreed on many broad themes, Hernandez pointed out that children have differing needs.
“Of course, you know, science is never settled,” said Hernandez. “What works for one student may not work for another.”
As the president of the state’s largest teachers union, Goldberg, for his part, noted that any approach that does not center the expertise of teachers is likely to be a non-starter. Teachers must have a seat at the table, he argued.
“We have had decades of disinvestment in public education,” said Goldberg. “So when we hear educators, when our voice is constantly not listened to … when educators do not feel like their agency is respected, like the fact that we are educating many kids with diverse language needs, all kinds of issues, not the flavor of the month … it has to have deep engagement at the very base level to get educators to buy in.”
He is also concerned that the voices of students of color will be overlooked in the debate.
“As a bilingual educator, how it comes across is that bilingual students, students of color in particular, their needs are always being pushed into silence,” said Goldberg. “And so I hear what you’re saying, but if these programs have any legitimacy, they must put the needs of the most vulnerable people at the center.”
Megan Potente, co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA, an advocacy group, suggested that a statewide literacy initiative could be more akin to guardrails than a mandate. Certainly, many other states, including those with substantial bilingual populations, from Florida and Mississippi to Tennessee, have already launched comprehensive state policy reforms to change the way reading is taught, with impressive results.
“It’s not about one-size-fits-all because, just like in other states, there would be many choices of reading professional development and instructional programs,” said Potente. “And the choices would be vetted by state experts to ensure that they provide what California kids need to learn.”
She argues that it’s actually the most vulnerable kids who may have the most to gain from a comprehensive literacy plan. Her organization fought long and hard for dyslexia screening legislation, for example, that only recently passed.
“It took eight years and four bills to make it happen. We are in this for the long haul because we know that matters,” said Potente, a veteran teacher and the mother of a dyslexic child. “We talk about structured literacy a lot. … It really needs to be the standard of care. Non-negotiable. Why is it not? That’s really what sticks with me. Why is it so hard to find access to evidence-based instruction that works for all kids? Why?”
