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  • A learning recovery that wasn’t – missed opportunities and the ongoing costs of Covid

    A learning recovery that wasn’t – missed opportunities and the ongoing costs of Covid


    Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource

    Money is running low, and time is short to help America’s students fully regain the learning they lost since the pandemic. Based on their continued academic struggles and mental health challenges, a report released Wednesday concluded most probably won’t.

    The second yearly report by a national education research organization examining the impacts of Covid on K-12 education offered that sobering outlook while highlighting some notable state and local efforts nationwide. It also called for a shift in the mission of high school to make connections for students adrift in the wake of Covid. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called it “blurring the lines between high school, higher education, and the workforce” in an essay in the report.

    “The State of the American Student: Fall 2023,” produced by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which is affiliated with Arizona State University, focused on older students — recent graduates or those nearing graduation from high school.

    “We not only owe them restitution for extended school closures and missed proms — we owe them a special sense of urgency, given how little time they have left before transitioning to the next phase of their lives,” wrote Robin Lake, the center’s director.

    Data on younger students has been easier to collect. By some indicators — higher graduation rates and higher grades overall — older students may appear to have rebounded from Covid. But those measures are deceiving, said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education. Nationwide ACT college admission scores, which are the lowest in 30 years, point to grade inflation, and assessments by the company Renaissance Learning point to a steady decline in 10th grade math and reading scores since before the pandemic. Disparities in scores between Latino and Black students and white and Asian students underscore “staggering” inequalities.

    Chronic absence rates are alarming, as are measures of mental health. The proportion of teenage girls reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 36% to 57%; 30% seriously considered suicide, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2021 report on youth risk behavior.

    “The older the student, the more lingering the impact,” said Gene Kerns, chief academic officer of Renaissance. “The high school data is very alarming. If you’re a junior in high school, you only have one more year. There’s a time clock on this.”

    Source: CD survey cited in CRPE’s T”he State of the American Student: Fall 2023″

    According to the assessment publisher NWEA, it will take the average eighth grader 7.4 months to catch up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and 9.1 months in math. In the hardest-hit communities like Richmond, Virginia, and New Haven, Connecticut, students fell 18 months behind in math. Schools would have had to teach 150% of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row just to catch up. “It is magical thinking to expect they will make this happen without a major increase in instructional time,” wrote researchers Thomas Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford.

    Tutoring’s unfilled promise

    For whatever reasons — pandemic fatigue, a lack of state guidance, a labor shortage, the unwillingness of teachers to do after-school tutoring or summer school — districts have not achieved efforts at scale. Despite a consensus among researchers that high-quality, intensive tutoring is the most effective intervention, USC researchers found, based on a survey of 1,600 households, that less than 2% of students are “receiving tutoring that even meets a fairly moderate definition of ‘high-quality.’ And among those who likely need it most — students who receive grades C or lower — less than 4% are receiving high-quality tutoring.”

    The report credited Texas, Tennessee and Colorado for launching “admirable tutoring efforts.” California piloted a tutoring and mentoring program, led by 3,200 college students reaching students in 33 districts through College Corps, a volunteer program, but mainly it’s been every district for itself. Some, like Los Angeles Unified, relied on remote tutoring that was more like homework help, while Oakland turned to the nonprofit Children Rising and to Oakland REACH, a parent empowerment group, to train its own tutors.

    Having not heard crisis warnings from state or local leaders, many parents haven’t recognized the severity of the challenge, the report said. Good grades sent a contrary message; one USC survey found that only 23% of parents were interested in summer school, and 28% were interested in tutoring. Another survey cited in the report found that about 90% of parents, including those in Sacramento, believed their child was working at grade level or above.

    At first, there was no “voice in the back of my head” to raise doubt, said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. 

    Rodrigues and others in the report called for states to show more transparency for parents, with report cards that are candid about their children’s learning. It credited a half dozen states, such as Connecticut, for their candor.

    Source: 2023 survey by Learning Heroes cited in CPRE’s “The State of the American Student: Fall 2023”

    Money, labor troubles loom

    Lake called tutoring “a massive missed opportunity” and added, “What also concerned us is that the wind seems to be going out of academic recovery efforts just at a time when we think things are about to get much harder for schools and for teachers.”

    Those headwinds include, according to the report:

    • The Sept. 30, 2024, deadline to commit spending money from the American Rescue Plan, the final and largest chunk of nearly $200 billion in federal Covid relief, about $13.5 billion for California.
    • That, combined with declining enrollments in most states, including the majority of districts in California, will result in a drop in state attendance-based funding. The impact of the expected “fiscal cliff” will vary by district. But some districts, such as San Francisco and West Contra Costa, are already feeling the pinch.
    • A continued staff and teacher shortage in California. Last year was the first reduction in new credentials in eight years. The 16% drop — 3,130 fewer credentialed teachers ­— will compound the difficulty of meeting the demand for elementary and special education teachers.

    In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature’s allocation of $8 billion has the potential to expand mental and physical health programs for students and address academic inequalities — if used effectively. The money is split between creating thousands of community schools, funding six weeks of summer school and extending the day by three hours for low-income schools. 

    Since school budgets for the year are already set, there’s still time for districts to plan a major summer learning effort in 2024, Kane, the faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, wrote in his contribution to the report. The Biden administration could be persuaded to extend spending for one more year, although he and Lake agreed it should be restricted to proven strategies, like tutoring, summer learning and salary increases for an extended year.

    “Part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership,” Kane said. School district officials need the “political cover” to undertake significant reforms needed for students to catch up, he said.

    States and districts need to provide high school students with hope and innovation, the report said. It’s called for federal funds for a “gap year” as an immediate strategy for coming out of the pandemic. An idea usually associated with privileged students who take a year of enrichment before college, this would involve investing in community colleges “to help kids get back on track and help them prepare for their next steps in a really creative and positive way,” the report said. 

    The report also recommended putting more emphasis on adult-student relationships, rethinking high school school-to-career pathways and investing in a “New American High School,” which Lake argues “would connect students to meaningful work in their communities and expert knowledge around the globe.”

    It cited Purdue Polytech High School in Indiana, a public charter school network with higher ed and industry partnerships for careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, and Seckinger High School, an artificial intelligence-themed high school in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It pointed to Colorado, where about 53% of high school graduates earn college credit or industry credentials through dual and concurrent enrollment; the vision is for every high school student to graduate with an associate degree and an industry-recognized credential.

    None of the examples pointed to California, although in the last several years, the state has funded nearly $1 billion in dual enrollment programs, apprenticeship opportunities and Golden State Pathways, for students to explore college and noncollegiate pathways by 10th grade. The executive order last month to establish a master plan for career education within 13 months should provide a wider vision pulling components together.

    The aim moving forward, the report said, should be “a new definition of student success that focuses more on fulfillment and long-term happiness in careers than college as an end unto itself.”





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  • Learning at Temecula Valley Unified suffers as censorship fears rise

    Learning at Temecula Valley Unified suffers as censorship fears rise


    Credit: Alison Yin/EdSource

    May 12 began as a typical school day for Temecula Valley High School drama teacher Greg Bailey.

    But when he opened his mailbox, he found a printed copy of an email, sent on May 7, complaining that he taught the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Angels in America” by Tony Kushner, which deals with the AIDS epidemic in New York during the 1980s.

    Allegations mounted that Bailey was grooming students and that he forced them to perform a short, explicit scene involving a gay man who makes questionable choices while dealing with the pain of his partner who was dying of AIDS.

    Two days later, he was called to the principal’s office at Temecula Valley High School, and about 48 hours after that meeting, he was pulled out of the classroom and placed on paid leave, leaving his students in the hands of a long-term sub and the theater department that he runs in limbo.

    “Most kids who take Drama 1, that’s the only drama class they will ever take in high school, and my whole goal is to bring in the most important, most talked-about plays,” Bailey said during an August interview.

    “I tell them that it is about the AIDS crisis in the ‘80s in New York, that it contains adult language, that it has graphic situations in it. And it’s clear from the very first day of class in the fall semester that if students are uncomfortable with anything in the material or the way that anyone talks about them, that they just need to come to me, and we’ll make them comfortable because being comfortable in drama class is really, really important.”

    While Bailey has since returned to the classroom awaiting potential discipline, his three-month-plus suspension has had a chilling effect on district teachers, many of whom are having to censor course materials, compromising student learning, for the sake of keeping their jobs.

    Edgar Diaz, president of the Temecula Valley Educators Association, the district’s teachers union, said teachers sometimes feel like they have “36 eyes, 36 cameras” focused on them at any given moment — a situation some say has been challenging, especially since the school board banned critical race theory, temporarily removed the Social Studies Alive! curriculum over a mention of LGBTQ+ activist Harvey Milk and passed measures that would require school officials to notify parents if their child shows signs of being transgender.

    “You just never know what someone else takes as the main focus of what you’re trying to say in a lesson or side conversation, or take something out of context,” Diaz said, adding that teachers fear they’ll be accused of violating the state’s education laws and losing their teaching credentials. “If your credential comes under fire, then you’re no longer able to carry out work anywhere in the state. And that’s a scary thing.”

    The Temecula Valley Unified School District did not respond to EdSource’s requests for comment in response to Bailey’s story or to the allegations raised by teachers.

    In the theater 

    Bailey, who has taught in the district for five years, often incorporates a unit focused on American playwrights.

    At the start of the unit, he briefly introduces and summarizes 10 plays, and students pick one of them to study in groups. “Angels in America” was listed as one of the 10 options.





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  • A year after Alberto Carvalho vows to curb Covid learning loss, LAUSD struggles to recover

    A year after Alberto Carvalho vows to curb Covid learning loss, LAUSD struggles to recover


    LAUSD Superintendent Albert Carvalho at the Aug. 30, 2022 school board meeting.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    Last fall, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he would recover Covid-19 pandemic learning loss in two years. 

    One year later — and half way to that goal post — the 2023 California Smarter Balanced test scores revealed a small improvement in math scores, a minimal decline in English language arts scores and poor science scores in comparison to the previous year — and is still about 3 percentage points away from the pre-Covid-19 numbers, where roughly 44% of students met English language arts standards and about 33% met math standards in the 2018-2019 academic year, according to the CAASPP dashboard.

    With its scores remaining largely stagnant, Jia Wang, a professor at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, said getting scores back to 2018-19 levels is a “very ambitious goal” — but not out of the question. 

    The district’s ability to make up the lost ground, she said, depends on how well it supports struggling students. 

    But more than a year after Carvalho’s lofty promise to the district, many teachers and parents remain skeptical, and say the diagnostic tools and expanded interventions the district relies on to boost academic achievement are poorly implemented. 

    LAUSD’s test scores 

    Carvalho said he believes LAUSD’s Smarter Balanced test scores across subject areas accurately reflect where the district’s students are academically — but he remains confident that the district will meet its goals and fully recover on time. 

    This year, LAUSD saw a 2.01% increase in the rate of LAUSD students who met or exceeded standards in mathematics. Overall, 30.5% of students either met or exceeded the standards, while 69.5% failed to do so. 

    “Math was our Achilles’ heel. That’s why we went really strongly into math, and results are compelling. But math is a subject area that requires foundational skills that build upon each other, right? So you don’t transition to … multiplication, division of fractions until you master addition, subtraction, and you really understand numerator and denominator,” Carvalho said in an Oct. 25  interview with EdSource. 

    “If you don’t master that, you cannot advance. So, there are a lot of students who are stuck in a loop. They lack certain basic concepts.” 

    The district’s English language arts scores, however, decreased; 41% of students either met or exceeded state requirements in the subject — marking a 0.53 percentage point across-the-board drop from the previous year. 

    Carvalho described Los Angeles Unified’s ELA scores as a “mixed bag,” with some elementary grades “moving in the right direction” and other upper elementary and middle school grades in need of improvement. 

    Middle school grades had some of the district’s lowest English scores, with 38.62% meeting or exceeding standards in sixth grade and 38.9% of students either meeting or exceeding standards in eighth grade. 

    Of the core subject areas, LAUSD students struggled the most in science — with only 22% of students either meeting or exceeding state standards. The state’s average, in comparison, was about 30%. 

    Because the district has focused on recovering learning losses in English and math, Carvalho said, subjects such as science and social studies have fallen by the wayside and emphasized a need for that to change. 

    “Science often becomes a stepchild. It cannot be,” Carvalho said. “There are four major core content subject areas, and science and social science should not be on the back burner.” 

    These scores across subject areas can help illustrate the district’s progress in relationship to previous years and the state as a whole, Wang said. 

    But she said they also oversimplify students’ performance, which is “compounded by race and ethnicity, by the language proficiency, by the disability, by your school environment, school resources, you know … whether the students are taught by certified teachers or not, how many years of experience.”

    Pressure to move students forward regardless of academic performance 

    Another reason some remain skeptical about Carvalho’s goals is the practice of promoting students to the next grade level even when they have not met standards in core disciplines. 

    Raquel Diaz wanted her now 13-year-old daughter Hailey — an English learner with dyslexia — to be held back and repeat fourth grade because she was struggling. 

    “It doesn’t matter if you can’t understand everything right now. Your goal should always be: I can, and yes I can achieve it,” Diaz said she tells her daughter, according to an interview with EdSource that was translated into English. “Even if you are slower like a turtle, it does not matter. We will achieve it.” 

    Diaz said the school refused to hold Hailey back, and now she is a seventh grader who cannot read.  

    “We have to fight for our children and make (the schools) listen to us, so we can move forward,” Diaz said. “I am a single mother … and sometimes I get tired. I get frustrated. But I say ‘Oh, God, give me strength.’ Come on, I have to do it for them.” 

    Hailey has plenty of company among students with disabilities and English learners. 

    In the 2022-23 academic year, students with disabilities had some of the lowest standardized test scores in LAUSD — with about 12% meeting or exceeding ELA standards and only 8% meeting or exceeding math standards. 

    English learners also had disproportionately low scores in all areas, with about 4% meeting or exceeding the state’s English standards and almost 7% meeting the standards in math. 

    Even in cases where students are not meeting state standards, teachers say they feel pressure to promote them to the next grade level. 

    Carvalho said the trend of moving unprepared students up a grade is an “uncomfortable truth” and represents a “disconnect between what students can do versus what is taught to them.” 

    An LAUSD teacher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation told EdSource that in April 2021, her school’s principal had notified the teachers that “no student can be retained.” 

    “There is a lot of pressure … even more so as secondary teachers, to not give D’s and F’s … even if the student is doing no work,” the teacher said. 

    “The students’ needs aren’t being met, and they’re really going to struggle,” adding that many will drop out. “A lot of kids, especially older kids, are not coming to school because they’re struggling so much, and it’s so negative. … It just becomes worse and worse.” 

    Challenges in the classroom

    Part of Carvalho’s confidence in LAUSD’s ability to recover Covid learning losses is the 1,000 literacy interventionists hired to work with smaller groups of students on their specific needs as well as the district’s implementation of iReady, an online tool that teachers can use for diagnostic assessments and learning exercises. 

    Wang, the UCLA professor, said that while there is no perfect metric for students’ academic performance, learning support funneled into classrooms is just as important as student output.

    “Instead of just saying ‘here’s what the student produced,’ I also want to see information about what is being put into the classroom,” Wang said. “What kind of supports are being given to students (to) ensure they are given the opportunity to learn?” 

    Some teachers are claiming that the rollout of LAUSD’s intervention programs, where struggling students are pulled aside for additional support, has been challenging, starting with the diagnostic tool used to determine who is placed into intervention programs.

    Teachers who run the district’s intervention programs are supposed to rely on iReady to determine students’ levels of proficiency in reading and math and use the results to decide who needs additional support. 

    That diagnostic tool is available between August and October, according to a district spokesperson. 

    “Students continue to enroll throughout the first few weeks of school, and the window provides flexibility to schools,” the spokesperson said. “Schools were guided and supported to provide the best time to administer the assessment based on school needs. We aimed to ensure that teachers had ample time, support and training to successfully implement this assessment.”  

    That deadline, however, was too late, according to teachers, who stressed that the testing window takes up more than a month, causing interventions to start too late in the school year. 

    Once teachers determine who needs the extra help, elementary instructors carve out a schedule for different groups to be pulled out — a task some say has been challenging, given large blocks of “protected time.”

    “Trying to make a schedule at a school site is very difficult because there’s so many other things going on on campus, and so it really ended up taking students in the same class together. But that doesn’t mean … those are students who should be together based on their needs,” the teacher said. 

    In middle school, students are pulled aside for an intervention tutorial that takes the place of an elective, a district math teacher and interventionist who also wished to remain anonymous told EdSource. 

    “I don’t want them to hate math because they have math twice,” the teacher said. “I don’t give homework. I don’t give tests. … I tell them this class is to help your grade in the other classes, to get you better at math.” 

    During these tutorial sessions, the teacher uses iReady and other techniques that can also give students practice problems targeted at their individual levels. 

    iReady, according to an LAUSD spokesperson, has a participation rate above 95%, and technical difficulties have been “minimal to nonexistent.”  

    But the teacher said the tool is sometimes challenging because she can’t see the personalized programming created for each of her students and the problems they are assigned.  

    With other online tools, she can go through the problems herself, “pretending I’m them to see if it’s doable, and to see where spots might come up that might be difficult for them,” the teacher said. But with iReady, she “can’t find a way to figure out how I can do that. And that makes it difficult for me to know what they’re getting so I can support them.”

    While some teachers remain optimistic about LAUSD’s initiatives to boost achievement, several said they would like to see more support from higher up.

    “It just seems like … what we do is considered a very low priority on a school campus,” the elementary teacher said. “But the expectations on us are very high. And I kind of just feel like we’re being … set up to fail.” 





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  • The science of reading also applies to students learning English as a second language

    The science of reading also applies to students learning English as a second language


    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    As California pushes schools to adopt research-based approaches to teaching children how to read, often called the “science of reading,” some teachers and advocates for English learners have expressed concerns that techniques used to teach reading in English to native speakers may not work for students who are learning English as a second language.

    But an in-depth look at the science behind how language is developed reveals an interesting parallel between the science of reading and second language learning. In fact, the science of reading can actually provide support when it comes to teaching students whose native language is not English.

    The science of reading and the science of language learning both require an explicit and structured approach to literacy that can actually help answer the longstanding question of: How can I teach English academic skills to a student who has no English oral ones?

    A key strength of the science of reading approach is its focus on the development on both language (speaking) and literacy (reading) within the same instructional space. Gone are the days of encouraging separate subject blocks within English language arts, where literacy and oral fluency are taught as separate entities. Science-based approaches encourage teaching language and literacy hand-in-hand, complementing and building off one another based on each child’s development and progression. This focus is effective for all students, but especially for English learners who must learn oral skills at the same time as they are learning academic ones. As they are sounding out the word, they are also learning what that word means.

    The traditional separation of oral language and literacy skills in English leads to an increase of “scaffolding” support for native English speakers — and even more so for non-native English speakers. Already pressed for time, teachers often find themselves supporting needed oral skills within literacy instruction, only to turn around and add needed literacy skills within oral language instruction. By teaching the two skills separately, teachers end up taking more time for each skill that is developmentally intertwined with the other.

    The science of reading approaches these skills as interwoven, giving equal importance to both oral language and literacy instruction within the same space. This immediately reduces the need for scaffolds and emphasizes looking at language and literacy through a lens of cognition and development, instead of repetition and memorization.

    Teaching oral, comprehension and vocabulary skills alongside language structure and syntax is something that has been much-needed for teaching English learners. Take Marco, an English learner, for example. Marco might sound out the word “net” correctly and might recognize a sight word (a commonly used word such as “she,” “be” or “had”) when reading. But does he know what those words mean, or how to apply them in context? Is he even given the opportunity to find out? Too often, Marco has no idea. He simply gets a “high five” for decoding one word correctly and recognizing another with no comprehension because that was the skill focus for that lesson. Marco continues in his learning process, only learning certain skills in a limited sense and not a fully comprehensive and applicable one.

    This not only limits Marco’s literacy skills in the other language, but his language proficiency skills as well. He misses out on the opportunity for comprehension, vocabulary expansion, and active skill application of the language being learned because of this compartmentalized approach.

    Marco needs both the functional application and the comprehensive skills to be taught purposefully and in combination. He also needs this done within the same learning period while the concepts are still fresh and relatable.

    It’s an important step forward that this combined approach of language and literacy is now encouraged in whole-group and small-group instructional settings through the science of reading.

    Looking at reading and the science behind it from a cognitive standpoint can provide us with a more equitable approach to teaching because it is based on what constitutes — and makes sense functionally — in the brain’s processing of information, something that is universal. How vocabulary is developed, alongside its symbols and sounds in reading and writing, is simultaneously developed in all language and literacy learning.

     The science of reading challenges teachers to look beyond the surface of the language spoken and more deeply into how it functions. On the surface, it is easy for teachers to fear they cannot help or support English learners if they do not speak the student’s language. However, by applying the science of reading’s explicit language and literacy approach, teachers will be reminded of how they themselves made meaning and developed English literacy. Yes, they spoke English, but they still had to learn the structure and written form and how to read English in the classroom, just as their English learner students will. A key difference is that the English learner may not have any pre-existing English oral skills, but these skills, now more than ever, are encouraged and can be taught as they are developed, alongside literacy instruction.         

    Simply applying the science of reading won’t provide all the solutions to the complexities of teaching English learners, but it can provide teachers with a purposeful starting point through its explicit focus on, and the equal importance given, to both language and literacy development.

    ●●●

    Rachel Hawthorne has a background in linguistics and taught for several years as a bilingual teacher for grades preK-5. She now works as an English learner product developer for Really Great Reading, a company that provides literacy instruction support to educators. 

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





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  • One size doesn’t fit all in learning how to read

    One size doesn’t fit all in learning how to read


    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    The K-12 “reading wars” discussions have been missing a critical point: No matter the curriculum used, too often, teachers are being asked to stick to a script and execute equal teaching, not equitable teaching. And equal teaching is illegal.

    In the panicked quest to improve literacy outcomes, it’s tempting for schools and teachers to fall back on a “one-size-fits-all” scripted curriculum despite our knowledge that teaching all students the same thing, in the same way, at the same pace, can be ineffective for students with language or learning differences. Students have individual strengths and needs, and teachers should differentiate their approaches in response to the individuals in their class.

    If it’s the same for everyone, it’s not targeted toward anyone.   

    Equal, non-differentiated instruction is illegal for our students who are classified as English learners or who require special education services. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 ensures that students with special needs are appropriately served by schools. Modifications and accommodations are required based on students’ strengths and needs to meet their individual education plans. Equal teaching — everyone getting the same thing — is not appropriate.

    Similarly, in the 1974 Lau v. Nichols case, the Supreme Court determined that San Francisco’s school district was required to provide equal access — not equal instruction, but equal access — to all students. For students classified as English learners, English language development support was needed to provide students access to the core curriculum. The court based its decision on Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

    If we were to expand the intention behind the court’s decision, we would ensure that all students — regardless of home language, ZIP code, or cultural background — get equitable access to education. This means doing whatever it takes to support individual students, not giving every student the same instruction. In particular, research has shown that scripted curricula don’t work for multilingual students. So, what does? Recently, science of reading advocates and multilingual advocates — including researchers — published a joint statement identifying literacy practices that are effective for multilingual students.

    How can all students be successful? While a complete solution would extend beyond the education system, here are two important and realistic steps that could move us forward:

    Improved and ongoing professional learning for teachers. The better teachers get at observing, assessing, diagnosing and intervening at points of difficulty, the better they will get at modifying and differentiating instruction based on students’ needs and strengths. Identifying students’ needs before they fall behind is key. The further behind they fall, the harder it is for students to catch up. By identifying and meeting individual needs, teachers can help all students succeed. Doing so requires equitable — not equal — teaching. Ongoing professional learning is required to help teachers continually practice and improve their skills. 

    Culturally and linguistically responsive instruction. It’s important for students to see themselves in the curriculum to develop a sense of belonging and to increase engagement. Traditionally, students who are different in any way — whether by language, (dis)ability, culture, religion, race, ethnicity, immigration status, etc. — do not see themselves represented in the curriculum. Students from historically marginalized communities may not see themselves in the characters or content they study and can feel like outsiders, as if school is intended for others, not them. Teachers who learn from and about their students and who authentically integrate students’ lived experiences into the curriculum can engage and motivate students in their classroom. When teachers use culturally and linguistically responsive instruction, it is inclusive and not generic, not scripted and not the same for all. It is equitable, not equal.

    These research-based solutions are not complex, but they require districts’ focus and state funding for teachers to have access to high-quality professional learning.

    The most significant factor that impacts student learning is the teacher. So, the next time someone says that students should all receive the same instruction, share with them what works for individual students. Remind them that teachers have a legal obligation to provide all students access to content, and differentiated, culturally responsive approaches are needed to achieve that. 

    ●●●

    Allison Briceño is an associate professor at San José State University and an OpEd Project Public Voices Fellow.
    Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica is an associate professor of teaching at the University of California, Davis.

    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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  • New California teaching standards increase focus on family engagement, social-emotional learning

    New California teaching standards increase focus on family engagement, social-emotional learning


    Students at Edison High School in Fresno.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing approved long-awaited revised Standards for the Teaching Profession on Thursday that emphasize culturally responsive teaching, social-emotional learning and family engagement. 

    The standards, which guide teachers’ professional development and evaluation statewide, broadly describe the knowledge, skills and abilities expected of effective experienced teachers. State law requires that they are updated regularly.

    During the meeting Thursday, the overwhelming sentiment — from commissioners members, speakers from the public, and the letters received — supported the new standards; however, some asked the commission to push back the 2025-26 rollout of the new standards to allow university teacher preparation programs, school districts and commission staff more time to implement changes.

    “The revised CSTP aims to rehumanize our system by focusing on the whole student, their identities and what’s meaningful in this world to them, not us,” said Leigh Dela Victoria, an instructional coach in the Fontana Unified School District in San Bernardino County.

    “They have the potential to transform all of our classrooms into culturally and linguistically responsive and sustaining communities,” she said. “As a coach, I can tell you firsthand the impact this type of teaching has on students when their identities, assets and agency are valued.”

    She told commission members that the current standards, approved in 2009, are out of touch with what needs to be taught in classrooms.

    The six overarching domains of teaching in the new document are similar to the previous standards, and are parallel to other state standards, according to the commission. The elements within the domains include definitions and examples. The six domains are also used in the Teaching Performance Expectations, which outline what beginning teachers should know.

    Going Deeper

    Domain 1: Engaging and supporting all students in learning – Teachers apply knowledge about each student to activate an approach to learning that strengthens and reinforces each student’s participation, engagement, connection and sense of belonging.

    Domain 2: Creating and maintaining effective environments for student learning – Teachers create and uphold a safe, caring and intellectually stimulating learning environment that affirms student agency, voice, identity and development, and promotes equity and inclusivity.

    Domain 3: Understanding and organizing subject matter for student learning –  Teachers integrate content, processes, materials and resources into a coherent, culturally relevant and equitable curriculum that engages and challenges learners to develop the academic and social–emotional knowledge and skills required to become competent and resourceful learners.

    Domain 4: Planning instruction and designing learning experiences for all students – Teachers set a purposeful direction for instruction and learning activities, intentionally planning and enacting challenging and relevant learning experiences that foster each student’s academic and social–emotional development.

    Domain 5: Assessing students for learning – Teachers employ equitable assessment practices to help identify students’ interests and abilities, to reveal what students know and can do and to determine what they need to learn. Teachers use that information to advance and monitor student progress as well as to guide teachers’ and students’ actions to improve learning experiences and outcomes.

    Domain 6: Developing as a professional educator – Teachers develop as effective and caring professional educators by engaging in relevant and high-quality professional learning experiences that increase their teaching capacity, leadership development and personal well-being. Doing so enables teachers to support each student to learn and thrive.

    “The revised CSTP features several key shifts from the 2009 version, chief among them a more holistic approach to teaching and learning,” said Sarah Lillis, executive director for Teach Plus California, in a letter. “For example, the move from goal setting to designing learning experiences shifts the focus from results to students’ learning. Another notable shift is recognizing that all teachers, regardless of subject-specific credential areas, are teachers of literacy skills.” 

    Family engagement is a key element of new standards

    The new standards also focus on family and community engagement, requiring teachers to find effective strategies for communicating and creating relationships with families. 

    “These standards provide an invaluable road map that will undoubtedly strengthen how teachers, schools and communities partner with families,” said Bryan Becker, of the Parent Organization Network. 

    Also new to the standards are two sections, one asking teachers to examine their personal attitudes and biases, and how these impact student learning, and the other asking them to reflect on their personal code of ethics. 

    After speakers expressed concern about the few references to English learners and students with disabilities in the document, Chair Marquita Grenot-Scheyer made a motion to approve the standards with amendments that would “shine a brighter spotlight” on those students.

     She also asked that the amendment include direction to ensure teachers attend individualized education plan meetings. School staff and parents attend these meetings to review the education plan of students with special needs.

    Revision put on hold for two years

    According to the commission, the revision was a long time in coming. Originally adopted in the 1990s, the standards were most recently updated in 2009. An expert group of educators, administrators, researchers and state education staff came together in 2020 to update the standards. The group met online five times between June 2020 and May 2021, but work was paused a few months later “as Covid and other critical world events demanded pause and reflection.”

    Over the past two years, the commission has been focused on other state initiatives that would impact the new standards, including the new PK-3 Early Childhood Specialist Instruction Credential and the implementation of revised literacy standards and literacy-related teaching performance expectations mandated by legislation. Members of the expert group returned in 2023 to review and finalize the document.

    Board denies pleas for delay

    The commission voted for the newly revised standards to go into effect in the 2025-26 school year, despite numerous requests by speakers to extend the rollout to give teacher preparation and induction programs and the commission staff more time to prepare for them. 

    Grenot-Scheyer also directed commission staff to develop an implementation plan that will support school districts and teacher preparation programs during the transition.

    Audry Wiens, induction coordinator for Fontana Unified, was among those who asked the commission to delay the implementation of the standards for a year. She said programs would need to come to a common understanding of the shifts that need to take place, revise relevant documents, train mentors in induction programs and update accreditation websites.

    Some wanted the standards implemented as soon as possible.

    “I am not an induction program provider, but it really causes me pause to extend any sort of timelines, because we have got things to do here,” said Commissioner Megan Gross. “… I want us to capitalize on this sense of urgency that we have to do better for our kids.” 





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  • California must invest in professional learning for arts teachers

    California must invest in professional learning for arts teachers


    Maira Rodriguez, a teacher at Ferndale Elementary in Humboldt County, participates in professional learning.

    Credit: Joanna Galicha / the Humboldt County Office of Education

    California voters demonstrated their commitment to arts education in our schools with the passage of Proposition 28, which brings unprecedented resources for teaching the arts to every school in California. The state also adopted a forward-looking arts standards and curriculum framework and reinstated theater and dance credentials.

    But truly realizing the potential of that commitment requires arts teachers who are fully prepared to teach the arts. 

    Unfortunately, California currently faces a statewide shortage of credentialed and classified PK-12 educators, especially multiple-subject and single-subject arts credentialed educators. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s most recent data show a decrease in new arts teachers. Currently, only 3% of all credentialed teachers hold a single-subject credential in the arts. In the 2021-22 school year, California had about 7,500 teachers with clear arts credentials. This works out to be one teacher with a single-subject arts credential for every 785 California public school students.

    upcoming roundtable | march 21
    Can arts education help transform California schools?

    In an era of chronic absenteeism and dismal test scores, can the arts help bring the joy of learning back to a generation bruised by the pandemic?

    Join EdSource on March 21 at 3 p.m. for a behind-the-scenes look at how arts education transforms learning in California classrooms as schools begin to implement Prop. 28.

    Save your spot

    The thousands of new teachers needed to expand access to arts education will take years to recruit and prepare. With this persistent statewide hiring challenge, we urge immediate attention from state policymakers and district leaders to provide high-quality differentiated professional learning for arts educators already in classrooms and preparation programs. Professional learning is a critical component of California’s arts education infrastructure. Teachers are not a monolith and have a wide range of professional learning needs and interests. So we need tailored professional learning for a wide variety of arts educators, including:

    • Intern teachers. While data from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing shows that the arts have fewer intern teachers than the other single-subject areas on average, internships can offer a shorter path to the classroom. Since intern teachers are at the start of their teaching careers, key factors for keeping them in the classroom include mentoring, interaction with professional learning communities (PLCs), and networks of other arts teachers. 
    • Teachers, especially those with out-of-state preparation. These teachers will continue to need professional development in the recently adopted state framework and standards. The California Arts Education Framework for Public Schools, adopted in 2020, did not have a robust statewide rollout due to the pandemic and is an essential resource for new and established teachers. Funding professional learning in this area will benefit teachers trained in- and out-of-state. 
    • “Ineffective” credentials. According to California Department of Education data, arts students in California are more likely to be taught by an educator with an “out-of-field” or “ineffective” credential than students in other subject areas. While institutions prepare new arts educators, professional learning must be widely available, easily accessed and responsive to the many needs of educators who are already teaching but who may be classified by the State Board of Education as “ineffective” due to having out-of-field credentials and permits. Ideally, all educators charged with teaching the arts should be credentialed in the arts discipline they teach. In the meantime, professional learning can help build capacity and increase effectiveness to better support and equip teachers to teach arts content.   
    • Elementary teachers. The distribution of teachers with single-subject arts credentials is not evenly spread across grade levels. More than 75% of credentialed arts teachers work in sixth through 12th grades. As a result, teachers with multiple-subject credentials are a vital arts education provider to elementary students.  Besides being required in the California education code, arts education in elementary schools is an essential foundation that enables students, by middle and high school, to be successful in arts courses that meet the A-G admission requirements for University of California and California State University or in a career technical arts, media and entertainment pathway to prepare for a career. 
    • Multiple-subject teachers. They make up the largest group of credentialed educators in California, and research shows that multiple-subject teachers who integrate the arts in their teaching are reinvigorated and more engaged. Incorporating more preparation in the arts for multiple-subject credentialed teachers, through summer intensives, and job-embedded training builds teacher knowledge, skills and confidence in the arts while supporting arts learning across all grade levels.

    To meet such diverse needs, California needs support from the legislators, policymakers, higher education institutions, and PK-12 professional learning providers. The professional learning infrastructure exists, and there are many avenues across the state for high-quality professional learning. Prioritizing funding toward high-quality professional learning helps advance the intent of Proposition 28. 

    We must nurture and strengthen the entire system. Policymakers must advocate for a robust statewide funding effort similar to past models such as health education, history-social science, ethnic studies, mathematics, science, and computer science. Building capacity through professional learning for those already in classrooms and in teacher preparation programs should be funded and prioritized. There are many organizations across the state already engaged in effective professional learning, and these efforts are necessary to build our human capacity to fully realize the promise of Proposition 28. 

    •••

    Letty Kraus is director of the California County Superintendents Arts Initiative, which works through the 58 county offices of education to support high quality, sequential, standards-based arts education for all students in California. 

    Patti Saraniero is principal of Moxie Research, a research and evaluation firm serving arts, culture, science and educational organizations.

    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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  • Too much downtime, too little learning in special day classes

    Too much downtime, too little learning in special day classes


    A special education teacher walks down a hallway with her student in a Northern California school.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    A growing concern has emerged in California regarding the educational rights of students with extensive support needs.

    These students, who often require ongoing assistance in physical, communication, or social support, may not be receiving the mandated instructional minutes set by the California Department of Education. Further, recent studies suggest that special education teachers spend only 20% of their daily time on actual teaching, with students receiving most of their instruction from paraeducators and other service providers. These findings point to wide-ranging implications for how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is really implemented in schools.

    When one of us, Sara Caniglia-Schulte from San Jose State University, observed one such class as part of her supervisory responsibilities, I returned feeling disappointed by how much free time the students were given in class: Four paraprofessionals were sitting along the perimeter of the classroom, two students were on a computer, one was lying over a large exercise ball, one was holding his visual schedule, asking the adults in the room, “What’s next?” and the other students were pacing around the classroom.

    Although separate special education classes for students with extensive support needs have long been viewed as critical for providing intensive individualized support and education, researchers have noted that these students may spend substantial portions of their school day engaged in noninstructional activities such as extended periods of games, choice or play time, movie viewing, or other activities unrelated to academic instruction. 

    To be sure, students with extensive support needs may have diverse cognitive, sensory, physical and communication needs that necessitate frequent breaks and more flexibility in the classroom. However, the question arises: How much is too much? Instructional time is equally vital in special education classes, enabling students to learn and acquire new skills.

    Having been a teacher in a special day class for students with extensive support needs for over 18 years, I (Sudha Krishnan) am painfully aware of the number of times classroom instruction has stalled. In a special day class environment, numerous distractions from instruction exist naturally as a part of the classroom setup. These may include disruptive student behaviors such as interruptions, loud sounds, screaming and interpersonal interactions that divert attention from instruction. At times, extreme behaviors may require evacuating the classroom to ensure everyone’s safety. Additionally, when paraeducators need to take breaks as per their contract, free or choice time may be allocated so that the few remaining staff need only supervise without providing instruction. Moreover, there are regular classroom interruptions by service providers like speech therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists or physical therapists — whether they do the therapy in class or pull students out for sessions in their offices. Bus delays at the start of the school day or early dismissals to accommodate bus schedules (to avoid disrupting pick-ups/drop-offs at other schools) may also reduce instructional time. Research suggests that such interruptions and distractions significantly disengage students and decrease instructional time in the classroom.

    Further, excessive unstructured time can pose unique challenges for students with significant disabilities. Overall, students benefit academically and behaviorally when meaningfully engaged in learning. Students may engage in unproductive or potentially harmful behaviors without proper guidance and supervision. Prolonged periods of free time without meaningful choices or structured activities may lead to boredom, frustration and disengagement, ultimately hindering overall development and progress. Finally, limited access to structured learning activities may impede academic progress and skill development, perpetuating educational disparities and hindering students’ ability to reach their full potential.

    There are many strategies that teachers can employ to provide breaks for students while engaging them productively. Structuring the free time to include peer models to play games or other activities could improve interactive play skills. Preferred activities that require fine or gross motor skills to get kids moving could increase engagement, and simply allowing the students to move outside could improve student performance throughout the day.  Providing simple visual schedules and structured activities may provide students with options to use their free-choice time meaningfully.

    There is also an urgent need for more research into and scrutiny of the amount of instructional time spent in special day classrooms for students with extensive support needs and the level of student engagement during this time. If parents can demonstrate that the school district failed to provide the instructional minutes stated in the individualized education plan, they may be provided compensatory education funded by the district, which can prove costly. Current research in this area has raised stark equity questions and challenged the fundamental design of special education.

    It’s time to confront these realities head-on and question whether special education has been designed in a way that leaves some students behind.

    •••

    Sudha Krishnan, Ed.D, is an assistant professor of special education at San Jose State University‘s Connie L. Lurie College of Education, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

    Sara Caniglia-Schulte, Ed.D, is a lecturer at San Jose State University.

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

    California must not punish districts for being proactive on early learning


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

    Courtesy: Garden Grove Unified School District

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There is an opportunity to make this right.

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

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

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

    •••

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

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





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  • To teach math effectively, California must focus on deep, conceptual learning

    To teach math effectively, California must focus on deep, conceptual learning


    Third graders discuss possible ways to solve a new math problem.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    Fierce wars continue to rage around math instruction, but there are many practical changes we should make for mathematics students upon which most of us can probably agree, that could transform their ability to achieve. 

    A promising new initiative for California that we have both been involved with tackles two of the most pressing flaws of traditional math instruction with elegant solutions that should be appealing to many, no matter which camp they occupy in the debates. Ask any teacher of math what they wish they did not have to deal with, and they will tell you the excessive amount of content they need to teach, which leads to the second problem — the shallow coverage of hundreds of methods that students do not learn in meaningful ways.

    U.S. math textbooks are massive and heavy tomes. By contrast, math textbooks in Japan and China are small and slim. The reason for this is that U.S. curriculum repeats content every year. In China and Japan, content is taught less frequently but more deeply and conceptually. As teachers in the U.S. are forced to “cover” an extensive amount of content in every year of school, students only gain a shallow experience of mathematical methods and rules.

    The second problem, linked to the first, is that students are taught hundreds of methods as though they are all equally important, without experiencing the more foundational concepts deeply and conceptually. Some concepts are much more central than others because they link to other areas of content, and they deserve to be learned deeply, over multiple lessons, through applied tasks that relate to students’ lives.  An example of a central concept in grade four is “factors and groups.” Instead of learning about these through short questions and answers, students can learn them through rich tasks in which they are more deeply engaged, as can be seen here.

    Students can learn all foundational concepts, such as fractions or functions, by drawing, building and learning about them through real-world examples. Every important idea in mathematics can be learned visually, physically and conceptually, including algebra and calculus. Instead, most students work through pages of numerical calculations, absent of any connection to the world, and spend hours of algebra class manipulating X’s on a page.

    A solution to both of these problems is to teach the “big ideas in mathematics” for every grade, as set out in the California Mathematics Framework,  such as “being flexible within 10” (kindergarten) or “unit rates in the world” (grade seven), making sure that for each of the eight or so big ideas in every grade, students have a deep and rich experience of their underlying concepts: by drawing them, building them and talking about them. Even if it is only these eight or so ideas that are experienced in this way each year, they will serve as a foundation for everything else students learn as they progress.

    Many California school districts are now waiting for funding to be devoted to the training of teachers to move to the approaches set out in the framework. But in Kern County, leaders have been sharing these ideas for the past three years. Semitropic Elementary school, which serves mainly Latinx, English learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged students, is one example of a school that has moved to the approach of the framework. In the 2018-19 school year, before Covid-19 and the implementation of the new framework, only 5.6% of Semitropic students met or exceeded standards on math Smarter Balanced tests in grades 3-8, with less than 5% in grades four and five, and no students in grades 6 or 8. After the leaders in Kern County supported teachers in learning and implementing the ideas of the framework, through a series of professional development sessions to build capacity, with classroom demonstration lessons to model the new strategies, in action with their students, and coaching to meet teachers where they were, proficiency levels shot up, increasing to 16.3% overall, with the fourth grade showing the most significant increase, to 36.8%. There is more work to be done in this and other districts, but the demonstrable positive changes already unfolding are impressive.

    What changed in the classrooms of the schools in Kern County? The teachers focused on big ideas, such as “being flexible within 10” which starts in kindergarten and extends through the elementary grades. Instead of students learning 10 as a fixed number that they use to calculate, they now spend time learning how 10 is made up, and all the ways they can make 10. A powerful strategy teachers started to use was “number talks,” in which teachers pose a number problem and collect the different ways students approach the problem, representing them visually. They also started using richer, deeper tasks, encouraging students to discuss ideas and learn with visuals and manipulatives. The superintendent and county math coaches were thrilled with the high levels of engagement they saw in the classrooms, as well as the significant changes in state test scores.

    There are several problems with the systems of mathematics education in many states, and proposed solutions often spark disagreement. But perhaps we should all agree on one thing: Students need to learn important mathematical concepts deeply and well. They should not be working through sets of procedural questions that mean nothing to them, but rather should experience rich applied mathematics that inspires them, helps them learn effectively, and shows them that mathematics is important to their lives.

    •••

    Jo Boaler is a Stanford professor and author of “Math-ish: Finding Creativity, Diversity & Meaning in Mathematics.” She was one of the writers of California’s new mathematics framework.

    Cole Sampson is the administrator of professional learning for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools Office.

    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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