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  • UC moves to ban political statements on its websites by faculty and others

    UC moves to ban political statements on its websites by faculty and others


    Hundreds of UC Berkeley students walked out of class on Oct. 25, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The students are among thousands who have walked out on campuses nationwide as fighting between Israel and Hamas continues in Gaza.

    Credit: Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris

    This story was updated to reflect the UC board’s decision to table a vote on the issue.

    University of California faculty and other staff could be banned from publishing political statements, including those stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, on university websites and other university channels under a policy brought to UC’s board of regents.

    The consideration of such a policy comes after some units, including at least two ethnic studies departments, posted statements on their websites last fall supporting Palestine and condemning Israel. 

    The proposal is causing an uproar among some faculty who say it would repress their academic freedom and question how it would be enforced.

    UC officials behind the idea say it is necessary to ensure that the opinions of certain individuals or groups of faculty aren’t mistaken for the opinions of UC as a whole.

    “When individual or group viewpoints or opinions on matters not directly related to the official business of the unit are posted on these administrative websites, it creates the potential that the statements and opinions will be mistaken as the position of the institution itself,” regent Jay Sures, who helped develop the proposal as chair of the regents’ compliance and audit committee, said during Wednesday’s regents meeting.

    The regents won’t vote on the policy until March at the earliest. They initially planned to take action this week but opted to table the vote until their next meeting, scheduled for March 19 through 21, after the item caused much confusion and debate when discussed Wednesday evening.

    The effort is the latest fallout from the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has triggered sharp responses from pro- and anti-Israel groups.

    The policy does not specifically mention any particular issue, but some faculty see it as an attempt to prevent them from discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Since the fall, the website for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department has displayed a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” The website for UC San Diego’s ethnic studies department includes several statements and commentaries. One statement says the ethnic studies community at UC San Diego supports Palestinian people and their “freedom from an apartheid system that seeks to dehumanize them in unconscionable ways.” 

    Sures last fall also sharply criticized a letter by the UC Ethnic Studies Council. In the letter, the council said official UC communications denouncing Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel distorted and misrepresented “the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and thereby contribute to the racist and dehumanizing erasure of Palestinian daily reality.” Sures wrote a public response to the council saying the letter “is rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.”

    One regent, Hadi Makarechian, acknowledged during Wednesday’s regents meeting that the regents were considering the issue because “some people were making some political statements” related to Palestine and Hamas.

    Christine Hong, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, said during the public comment portion of the meeting that the regents are attempting to “repress academic freedom” and disallow “any critical study or discussion of Palestine.” 

    “Your emissary, regent Jay Sures, declared war on ethnic studies,” Hong added.

    Sures maintained Wednesday that the policy isn’t meant to impede free speech and that he believes there “are many avenues” for faculty to share their viewpoints.

    “I’m not so sure that it needs to go on the landing pages of departmental websites,” he said.

    The final language of the policy that the regents could vote on isn’t yet known. According to their agenda, regents were scheduled to vote Wednesday on a policy stating that “official channels of communication, including the main landing pages of websites, of schools, departments, centers, units, and other entities should not be used for purposes of publicly expressing the personal or collective opinions of unit members or of the entity.”

    That language was criticized for being too ambiguous, including by two key UC law professors who urged the regents to reject the proposal. The professors — Ty Alper of UC Berkeley and Brian Soucek of UC Davis — each previously served terms as chair of the UC Academic Senate’s university committee on academic freedom. As chairs, they helped develop a 2022 recommendation by the Senate that faculty departments should be allowed to issue opinionated statements. 

    In a letter to the regents, Alper and Soucek said the proposed policy “raises more questions than it settles.” Do official channels include a department’s social media pages, even though those aren’t UC-hosted websites? Do emails sent by a dean or department chair count as official channels? Are faculty departments violating the policy if they were to sign a public statement hosted on a website not operated by UC?

    Acknowledging that the language was indeed ambiguous, UC staff during the meeting amended it and presented two different options to regents. Under the first option, faculty departments would be banned from expressing opinions only on the “main landing pages” of university websites. The second option featured language that would extend the ban beyond the landing pages and to other websites, at the discretion of a university administrator.

    But those options also caused confusion and debate among regents and UC officials. 

    “Even if it’s not on the main landing page, if someone says, this is the official viewpoint of Department X on this political issue, I think you could interpret some of this language to say, we also don’t want people to do that,” Howard Gillman, the chancellor of UC Irvine, said Wednesday while addressing the regents.

    Some regents and officials also suggested that the policy include language that university departments should have designated opinion pages on their websites, and that any political statements or other opinions should be limited to existing on those pages.

    Sures agreed to work overnight with fellow regent Lark Park and UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, to further revise the policy and return Thursday with a new action item. On Thursday, however, the regents agreed to table the item until March following a motion by regent John Pérez.

    “Issues of First Amendment protection are crucial to the institution. I am supportive of the concept that we’re trying to get through here. After looking at the product of work that’s come forward, I don’t think we’ve got enough to act on in a meaningful way, in a way that’s defensible to the core mission of the university. I think we would benefit from more input,” Pérez said.

    By possibly banning faculty departments from making political statements, UC’s new policy could run counter to the 2022 Academic Senate recommendation, some faculty say. At that time, the Senate’s academic council and university committee on academic freedom agreed that “departments should not be precluded from issuing or endorsing statements in the name of the department,” noting that freedom of expression as well as academic freedom are “core tenets of the UC educational mission.” The Senate took up the issue after UCLA’s Asian American studies department published a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinians and denouncing Israel.

    In a social media statement Wednesday, the Berkeley Faculty Association said the idea to ban departments from making political statements was already considered and rejected by the Academic Senate in 2022. The faculty association also questioned how the new policy would be enforced and urged the regents to reject it.

    “Who gets to decide what is a political statement and who will be responsible for policing the websites and social media accounts of academic units? We urge the Regents not to approve a dangerously ambiguous policy which raises alarming questions about governance and academic freedom,” the faculty association wrote.





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  • California moves a step closer to eliminating one of the state’s last teacher assessments

    California moves a step closer to eliminating one of the state’s last teacher assessments


    Legislation that would remove one of the last tests teachers are required to take to earn a credential in California passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously Wednesday with little opposition.

    Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, will now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If ultimately approved by the Legislature, it will do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA. 

    The assessment requires that teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice. 

    Eliminating the assessment would encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, author of the bill and chairman of the Senate Education Committee at Wednesday’s hearing.

    “Despite its well-intentioned purpose, the demands associated with preparing for the TPA have actually had the perverse impact of reducing the overall quality of teacher preparation by undermining the capacity of teacher candidates to focus on what’s most important, which is their clinical practice,” Newman said.

    He said the performance assessments duplicate other requirements teachers must fulfill to earn a credential, including proving subject-matter competency, taking teacher preparation courses, being assessed for reading instruction proficiency and completing 600 hours of clinical experience.

    Brian Rivas, senior director at The Education Trust‒West, a nonprofit education research and advocacy organization, spoke in opposition to the legislation.

    “We concluded when we reviewed the research that teaching performance assessments are the best available measure of teacher preparedness and whether or not a candidate is prepared to enter a classroom,” Rivas said. 

    The test offers a common standard to measure how well credentialing programs are preparing teacher candidates and could mean fewer prepared teachers in schools serving low-income students, which are already disproportionately taught by novice teachers, he said.

    California moved away from standardized testing for teacher candidates in recent years as the teacher shortage worsened.

    In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.

    Around the same time, the state also has joined a national effort to change how reading is taught in schools, focusing on a method that teaches students to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics. 

    Last summer, Senate Bill 488 passed the state Legislature. The bill replaced the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, also known as RICA, with a literacy performance assessment based on a new set of literacy standards and Teaching Performance Expectations centered on phonics and other foundational reading skills.  The assessment was scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. The CTA supported the bill.

    Union leaders later said that a survey of its membership persuaded them to change course and to sponsor SB 1263, which would repeal the performance assessment.

    Senate Bill 1263 doesn’t remove the requirement that candidates for a preliminary, multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a test that evaluates their ability to teach reading, meaning the passage of SB 1263 could result in the RICA remaining beyond the 2025 date when it was scheduled to be abandoned.

    The RICA has been a major hurdle for teacher candidates for years. About a third of all the teacher candidates who take the test fail the first time, according to state data collected between 2012 and 2017. Critics also have said that the test is outdated, racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.

     The California Teachers Association also opposed Assembly Bill 2222, which would have required California teachers to use “science of reading” instruction in their classrooms. Last week the bill died without a hearing.

    CTA representative Mandy Redfern spoke in support of Senate Bill 1263 Wednesday, calling the performance assessment a barrier to a diverse teacher workforce.

    “Over the past 20 years, the TPA, or the teacher performance assessment, has evolved into a high-stakes, time-consuming costly barrier for aspiring teachers,” Redfern said. 

    “The current iteration of the TPA has been proven to be ineffective at preparing educators for the realities of the classroom,” she said. “The CTC’s data shows that TPAs disproportionately harm aspiring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) educators.”

    The most recent passing rates on the assessment for people of color are not significantly different from others who took the test, said Mary Vixie Sandy, Commission on Teacher Credentialing executive director, at the hearing. For example, Black teacher candidates had a 75% first-time pass rate and a 95% ultimate pass rate, which is right within the norm, on average with the whole population of teachers who took the assessment, Sandy said.

    The bill would also do away with oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.





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  • Maurice Cunningham: DFER Moves into MAGA Orbit

    Maurice Cunningham: DFER Moves into MAGA Orbit


    Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the university of Massachusetts and a specialist on dark money in education, exposes the rightward shift of Democrats for Education Reform, as well as its continuing disintegration. DFER spent years cheerleading for charter schools and test-based teacher evaluation, but its pretense has dissolved. Cunningham said it is now closely aligned with rightwing groups.

    Cunningham writes:

    Democrats for Education Reform, the front operation for billionaire privateering of public education, has gone all-in for right-wing policies. This likely reflects two factors: the collapse of DFER nationally, and an opportunistic pivot to Trump’s MAGA regime.

    DFER was established upon the premise, according to its hedge fund co-founder Whitney Tilson, that it would spend lavishly as part of an “inside job” to turn the Democratic Party away from teachers unions and public education and toward charter schools. Its CEO Jorge Elorza has just announced the organization will race even further to the right: DFER will now “Explore innovative funding models such as education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tax credit programs.” (emphasis in original). This is the program of billionaires Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos–and Donald Trump.

    Judging by the number of high-level staff fleeing from DFER, Elorza has been driving the operation into the ground. Jessical Giles, who served for six years as Washington, D.C. executive director recently resigned because DFER’s policies “no longer align with my values and vision.” 

    Other DFER leaders have complained of the group’s gallop toward political extremism. In a complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, former Massachusetts executive director Mary Tamer wrote that Elorza retaliated against her for “inquiring about Mr. Elorza’s decision to join a Koch-funded right-wing coalition that seemed contrary to the organization’s best interests and mission.” The right-wing coalition seems to be the No More Lines Coalition, which includes not only Koch aligned organizations but Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childrenand the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Elorza has been a guest speaker at the Charles Koch Institute. Tamer is seeking damages against  DFER, and the allied Education Reform Now and Education Reform Now Advocacy for gender and age discrimination.

    Tamer’s complaint alleges a number of defections by key DFER leaders. Within months of Elorza’s arrival COO Shakira Petit left, and CFO Sheri Adebiyi was fired. Board Chair Marlon Marshall and Charles Ledley, a co-founder, resigned. The complaint further alleges that “Ms. Tamer is one of several women in leadership positions who have been terminated or pushed out by the Defendants.” That list includes Connecticut state director Amy Dowell and Jen Walmer of Colorado, a close adviser on education to Governor Jared Polis and one of DFER’s most effective advocates.

    Despite the name, DFER has raised millions over the years from Republican-backing billionaires. The Walton Family Foundation, the non-profit corporation of the notoriously anti-union family that owns WalMart, has sustained DFER. Rupert Murchoch, who regards K-12 education as a $500 billion market gave DFER at least $1 million, apparently in the hopes the operation would help his ed tech company. 

    Elorza’s announcement of DFER’s shift leans on the “market-based solutions” language of neo-liberal privateering, but the reality is that neo-liberalism is not where the action is in 2025. Families for Excellent Schools, at one time a privateering powerhouse, collapsed in 2018. In 2011 Stand for Children president Jonah Edelman boasted his organization had nine state affiliates and would grow to twenty states by the end of 2015. In 2025 Stand for Children is hanging on in seven states. 

    Since its 2007 founding, DFER has claimedchapters in nineteen different states plus D.C. and a teachers group. By February 2025 only four chapters remained. In January 2023, DFER listed thirteen national staffers. By February 2025, it had only four. As of May 2025, the “States” and “National Staff” links on DFER’s webpage have disappeared. An Elorza biography lives on. 

    The action now is with extremist organizations like the Koch and Leonard Leo aligned Parents Defending Education and Heritage Foundation offspring Moms for Liberty. 

    Self-described “school choice evangelist” Corey DeAngelis accurately sees that DFER has joined with the far right on education privateering.  DeAngelis was the face of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children  until he was fired after revelations he had starred in gay sex porn films. He is now a “senior fellow” at the American Culture Project, which is tied to the Koch network through the Franklin News Foundation. DeAngelis is cheering DFER’s embrace of the Republican education privateering platform. 

    What has DFER really joined here? The end game was spelled out in a 2017 memorandumfrom the secretive Council for National Policy to Trump and DeVos: abandon public education in favor of “free-market private schools, church schools and home schools.” 

    That is your “choice.” 

    DFER has never been a membership organization—there are few real Democrats involved. To be sure, it has gotten donations from charter favoring Democratic billionaires as well as an array of Republican privateers, plus millions of dollars in untraceable dark money. DFER’s organizational drift and rank political opportunism have now cemented its bond with Trump’s MAGA regime.

    Maurice T. Cunningham is a retired professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization(2021).



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  • New law moves toward better translation of special ed documents, but families want more

    New law moves toward better translation of special ed documents, but families want more


    A special education class at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland.

    Alison Yin / EdSource

    California schools will soon have a template for special education programs translated into 10 languages in addition to English.

    Advocates and parents of children with disabilities who speak languages other than English say it is a tiny step forward, but there is still work to be done to fix long waits and faulty translations experienced by many families statewide.

    “Ultimately, if parents can’t receive translated documents, they can’t meaningfully engage in their child’s education,” said Joanna French, senior director of research and policy strategies at Innovate Public Schools, an organization that works with parents to advocate for high-quality education. “They can’t provide informed consent. They can’t ask questions or push back on the services that are being proposed.”

    A bill introduced last year by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, would have required school districts, charter schools and county offices of education to translate individualized education program (IEP) documents within 30 days. But the bill stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where lawmakers decide whether the state has enough money to pay for legislation. This spring, the bill was revived, and Portantino revised it to require the California Department of Education (CDE) to create guidelines suggesting, rather than mandating, timelines for translation and how to identify quality translators and interpreters. But that version, too, was eventually scrapped. 

    The version of the bill that finally did pass the Legislature and was signed by the governor requires a template for IEPs to be translated into the 10 languages most commonly spoken in California other than English. The translated template must be made available online by Jan. 1, 2027. The template, which can be found in this document, includes categories of services, but also has blank space for language adapted to each student.

    “Obviously, whenever you get a partial victory, you take it and you celebrate,” said Portantino. “This is an incremental improvement. Having the template is a good thing. But obviously, these are individualized plans, so my hope is that someone takes up the mantle to get individual plans translated in a more timely manner.”

    Aurora Flores said she has had to wait sometimes six or seven months for special education documents to be translated into Spanish. Her 10-year-old son has Down syndrome and autism and attends school in the Long Beach Unified School District.

    “It’s really sad for us Spanish-speaking parents because the points that you want to clarify, you can’t understand. They just summarize really fast, with an interpreter, but sometimes it’s not a certified person,” said Flores in Spanish.

    Individualized education programs are required for students with disabilities who qualify for special education, and are updated each year or when needs change. Before schools can implement these programs, parents must agree.

    The person most affected by long waits for translations is her son, Flores said, because it takes longer for her to sign off on new services that he needs.

    “When you least expect it, you realize the next IEP meeting is coming up, and you have just received the documents from the last one,” Flores said.

    A spokesperson for Long Beach Unified, Elvia Cano, wrote in an email that the district “is dedicated to ensuring that all families, regardless of their primary language, have timely access to critical educational information, including Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).”

    However, she said getting high-quality translations of special education documents can be challenging.

    “Translating IEPs requires specialized linguistic and technical expertise. Translators must be fluent in the target language and possess a strong understanding of educational terminology. Finding professionals with these qualifications can be challenging, especially for less commonly spoken languages. Additionally, the complexity of IEPs and the volume of translation requests may extend the timeframe for completion,” Cano wrote.

    Portantino said that some felt the previous version of the bill requiring the California Department of Education to create guidelines for translation “was too onerous, too much pressure.” 

    “I think the education community didn’t want to be forced to do things. I think there were districts who felt they don’t have the personnel, and I think CDE felt the overall structure was not in place,” Portantino said. 

    Holly Minear, executive director of student services at the Ventura County Office of Education, said she thinks most school districts and county offices understand the importance of giving families a written translation of IEP documents in a timely manner, but it is sometimes a challenge, especially when the translation is for a language that is not common.

    “I think a lot of districts use internal translators, and if you have someone out sick or on leave, or if districts work with contract agencies, sometimes the timeline is more than 30 days,” Minear said. 

    Minear said the Ventura County Office of Education has two Spanish-English translators on staff, but they use outside agencies for other languages like Farsi and Mixteco, an indigenous language from southern Mexico. She said she thinks the template will help districts and translators do a better job.

    “Although our IEPs differ … I think we use a lot of the same terms, a lot of the same language,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to having it on the template, because if there’s ever a word or phrase you need, it’s there for you, and it’s free.”

    Sara Gomez, who has a 4-year-old with autism who attends preschool in Santa Clara County, said she thinks the law is a good step forward.

    “I think the law is positive, in that it gives a sense of alarm that translations need to be done urgently,” Gomez said. “But we still don’t have a required timeline.”

    Gomez said she has had to wait three or four months for her son’s individualized education program to be translated into Spanish. Gomez, who is from Venezuela, speaks English, but her husband speaks only Spanish.

    She said she has heard of other parents waiting up to a year for translations, leaving them unable to make informed decisions about their children’s education.

    “Even four months for a young child make a big difference,” Gomez said in Spanish. “When they are the youngest is when they need the most help.” 

    Advocates and families said they will keep pushing the state for guidelines about how to access qualified translators and a time limit for translations. 

    “We understand that districts experience challenges in finding qualified translators, especially for less common languages, and turning around documents quickly,” said French, from Innovate Public Schools.

    However, she said, different districts have very different timelines for translations.

    “We don’t believe it should be that inconsistent, if a parent lives in one district versus another,” French said. “There should be equity across the state about what a parent should expect in terms of translated documents.”

    Allegra Cira Fischer, senior policy attorney for the nonprofit organization Disability Rights California, agreed. She said she was dismayed to see that the 30-day timeframe was removed from the bill.

    “Parents tell us that sometimes their student will have a better teacher or a better case manager and they’ll get things in a more timely manner. But parents shouldn’t have to rely on an especially committed teacher or case manager,” Fischer said. “This is a situation that is really untenable and ultimately is harmful to children with disabilities.”





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  • Months after fire, Pali High moves into Santa Monica Sears building  

    Months after fire, Pali High moves into Santa Monica Sears building  


    Students return to Pali South in Santa Monica on April 22.

    Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

    It was like the first day of school on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica. 

    Campus security directed parents as they mapped out drop-off routes. Staff greeted students, who lugged backpacks, musical instruments and sports gear. High schoolers embraced and marveled at their new campus. 

    But unlike most first days of school, even seniors on the verge of graduating wandered around, asking where to go. Teachers wondered where to lock their bikes. 

    “[I’m] definitely nervous,” said Aurora Robles, a freshman. “I don’t think I would know where any of my classes are or where any of my friends are.” 

    It’s April 22 — more than three months since the Palisades Fire ravaged over 23,000 acres in Los Angeles and destroyed roughly 30% of the historic Palisades Charter High School, which is known for its appearances in films such as “Carrie” and “Freaky Friday.” 

    Unlike other schools in both Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified that returned to in-person learning weeks after the fires, Pali High’s roughly 2,500 students had been learning online. 

    And as of Tuesday, its students, teachers, administrators and staff can call an old Sears building — now called Pali South — their new, temporary home. It took roughly eight weeks to transform the industrial building into a learning space complete with the school’s lettering, Lauren Howland, a spokesperson for the City of Santa Monica, told KTLA. 

    “I’m happy to welcome the administrators, educators and students of Palisades Charter High School back to in-person learning,” said Governor Gavin Newsom in a statement released Tuesday.

    “While this home is only temporary until we can get them back to their regular site, the partnership and collaboration between state and local officials to get this new site up and running shows the spirit of our recovery. This is an important step forward for the Palisades community as we rebuild and rise together.”

    The Los Angeles Unified School District is chipping in with about $300 million to help Pali High rebuild over the next few years. And debris from the original campus has already been cleared by the Army Corps — with the hope that the campus community can return to its true home with portable classrooms at some point in the next year, according to LAUSD School Board Member Nick Melvoin, who spoke at a town hall for the Pali High community earlier this month. 

    “I definitely didn’t expect it would happen,” said senior Lucas Nehoray. “I told a lot of people that I just didn’t think it would have time to come to fruition at a different site. But here it is… I’m really happy.” 

    Despite being used to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, several students expressed their excitement at being back. Some of them, including senior Samantha Murillo, hadn’t seen their peers since December, before winter break. 

    “I get to see my friends after five, six months,” Murillo said. “But I’m also kind of thrown off a little bit because it’s a whole different location…It’s weird, but in a good way.” 

    Others said they were looking forward to learning more in person — especially with AP exams around the corner in May. 

    The “last few months have been easier academically,” Nehoray said. “I’m glad I’m in person and I can actually learn.”





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