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  • Thousands of LA students experience homelessness; we must act urgently to help them

    Thousands of LA students experience homelessness; we must act urgently to help them


    Encampments line the street that runs along Virgil Middle School’s lower field in Los Angeles County on November 30, 2022.

    Credit: Kate Sequeira / EdSource

    Homelessness and housing are at the center of political, policy and budget conversations across California, with indelible images of tents on sidewalks and people struggling against addiction and mental health often driving our understanding of the crisis.

    But homelessness is not only a story of encampments or shelters; it is a story of women, children and families, who are among the fastest-growing populations of people experiencing homelessness. These are too often the invisible faces of this crisis, and we must recognize them and act urgently to deliver solutions.

    According to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, students qualify as homeless if they lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. This includes children who live doubled or tripled up with other families, in hotels, motels, shelters or other temporary arrangements.  

    Today, Los Angeles County serves 1.3 million students across 80 school districts, with 47,689 students identified as experiencing homelessness in 2022-23.

    These figures do not include our earliest learners — children from birth to transitional kindergarten — or the many families on the brink of housing instability, often one emergency away from becoming unhoused. Young children in unstable housing situations are among the most vulnerable, with their development and well-being deeply impacted by housing insecurity.  

    In Los Angeles County, voters are weighing Measure A, a citizens’ initiative that would repeal and replace the existing ¼ cent homelessness sales tax, set to expire in two years, with a new, ½ cent sales tax. The measure, tied to accountability and results, is expected to bring in $1.1 billion annually to the county to fund affordable housing, mental health and substance abuse services.

    Crafted by a coalition of housing experts, mental health professionals, labor leaders and community advocates, Measure A applies lessons learned from past efforts to expand investments in mental health and substance abuse services to get unhoused Angelenos off the streets and into treatment, increase resources for housing to make it more affordable for everyone, require accountability with clear goal-setting, regular audits and spending reports, and move funding away from programs that do not show proven results. 

    Measure A also establishes a new governance approach to deploy resources into one unified plan for addressing homelessness and the housing crisis. This plan is also informed by a Leadership Table made up of a cross-section of community leaders who will make funding and policy decisions about how these critical resources are spent that includes seats for education agency leaders and experts. 

    We believe that the innovations in Measure A would help develop stronger collaborations between school districts, housing agencies and nonprofits to offer wraparound services for families and create systems that make it easier for families to self-identify without stigma. By expanding housing programs that prioritize families and include transitional housing options connected to schools, we can better ensure that no student falls through the cracks.

    On the ground, our dedicated teachers, administrators and campus staff are navigating the challenges of homelessness with our families every day. For example, recently we had a single mother facing homelessness send her older daughter who had special needs to live with relatives, while she tried to find housing with her younger daughter. They moved around often, and getting to school was difficult.

    The school worked with the family to arrange transportation for the younger daughter so she could stay in school and helped the mother find crisis housing. Once the family was in temporary housing, the mom brought her older daughter back home, and the school helped set up transportation for her as well, allowing both children to attend school consistently.

    Measure A would help provide the dedicated resources for housing programs and critical services that our communities need to weather these challenges without disrupting their education to break the cycle of instability. 

    Without stable housing, students struggle to succeed academically and emotionally, leading to long-term consequences for our communities. By shifting some of the county’s homelessness funding toward preventive and family-focused solutions, we can make a lasting difference in the lives of children and help break the cycle of poverty and homelessness. 

    We must recognize the invisible faces of homelessness and prioritize their needs. We owe it to our students and families to ensure sustained funding, accountable spending, and a holistic, regional approach that expands our understanding of homelessness beyond individuals on the street to include students and families living in unstable housing situations. We must center on preventive and family-focused solutions, or risk losing the potential of an entire generation. It’s not just a matter of education; it’s a matter of equity, compassion, and justice, and a thriving future for California. 

    •••

    Debra Duardo, M.S.W., Ed.D., is the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools. Miguel A. Santana, is the president and CEO of the California Community Foundation.

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





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  • For a true meritocracy, education must not be one-size-fits-all

    For a true meritocracy, education must not be one-size-fits-all


    A student in Oakland’s Skyline High School Education and Community Health Pathway sculpts a clay model of the endocrine system.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    It’s time to balance out our lopsided education system. Millions of parents and students have long struggled with our one-size-fits-all model, which primarily teaches to, tests for and celebrates students as theorists, not practitioners.

    Our current system acts as a gatekeeper to the middle class by doling out opportunity based on grades and test scores in a traditional classroom setting, but rarely recognizes competencies and interests beyond standardized exams and essays.

    Fifty years ago, students could opt into publicly funded trade schools and apprenticeships or enroll in practice-based classes like home economics and shop in traditional academic schools, which taught skills that led to well-paying jobs in carpentry, culinary arts and other trades. But over time, public funding for such programs dried up. The share of federal spending on vocational instruction as part of elementary and secondary education dropped from roughly 30% in 1970 to just 7.5% in 2022. Even as elementary and secondary education spending ballooned from $5.8 billion a year to $96 billion during this period, the vocational component grew only from $1.8 billion to $7.2 billion.

    Most publicly funded instruction now happens at desks, with grading based on written exams, essays and problem sets rather than demonstrations and hands-on learning. Some students are more prepared than others to succeed in such a system, exacerbating existing inequalities. 

    Research by the Economic Policy Institute found that social class, as defined by parental income, education and job, is the leading predictor for a student’s school readiness: Kindergartners from the highest social class possess more theory-based skills and perform an entire standard deviation higher on math and reading tests than kindergartners from the lowest social class. The gaps are particularly high for Black and Hispanic students, who are more likely than white children to live in poverty. When some students inevitably falter, the system tells them they are failures and offers trade schools and technical colleges as second-tier alternatives they often must pay for themselves.

    It didn’t have to be this way. The United States originally based its system on a German/Prussian model, which prioritized efficiency by tracking students into “academic” or “vocational” tracks at age 10. In that model, still in place in Germany today, students are expected to know what they want to do by adolescence, and many simply end up in the same track as their parents. 

    The United States, hoping to advance a true meritocracy, did not want a system that limited intergenerational mobility in this way, and over the 20th century we adopted a liberal arts approach that was supposed to prioritize economic and social mobility. But in a myopic attempt to get rid of tracking, we inadvertently eliminated vocational education and simply tracked all our students into the academic model. The result? The worst of both worlds for less traditional students who struggle in a sink-or-swim academic system.

    Student outcomes now depend a lot on parents’ backgrounds, just like in Germany.

    There is another possibility. Consider Finland, which in the 1970s switched from the German model to one that teaches a combination of academic and technical subjects until age 16, when students choose a track. The vocational path for students interested in highly -skilled trades includes carpentry and culinary arts, but it also offers applied sciences, health care, and social services, which in the United States would require attending traditional academic universities. 

    Finland’s vocational path is highly competitive and includes matriculation at rigorous polytechnic universities with high-level training in subjects like business, engineering and nursing and quality instructors with connections to actual companies — not an alternative education. With a system that celebrates the value of highly skilled thinkers and workers, Finland recently ranked first out of 143 countries on the World Happiness Report for the seventh consecutive year, and as of 2021, its income inequality is eighth lowest among 37 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the United States ranks 23 on the World Happiness Report, and its income inequality is down at 33, beating only Turkey, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica).

    Of course, the United States is not Finland, and we cannot simply adopt its system. (Though before you discount Finland because of its smaller or more homogeneous population, consider that its size and composition are comparable to many U.S. states, and much of U.S. education policy is decided at the state level.) What we can do is stop deciding who is educated, intelligent and successful based on only one type of student. Instead, we should recognize the value of all students, and offer more mainstream career and technical opportunities across K-12 education. 

    States and the federal government should fund more career and technical education, including apprenticeships, hands-on learning courses and training and recruitment for vocational teachers. They should work with employers, schools, training organizations and other groups to tie education to the workforce needs of their region. 

    Everyone should be given the opportunity to pursue a traditional academic education, but they should also be able to pursue an equally rigorous vocational one, equipped with public resources and support. Only then will the middle class truly be open to all.

    •••

    Eric Chung is a lawyer, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project. His work focuses on law and policy related to economic mobility and educational opportunity.

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





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  • We must do more to ensure college is worth it for all students

    We must do more to ensure college is worth it for all students


    Credit: People Images / iStock

    The national rhetoric regarding the value of attending a college or university has reached a fever pitch. Being “better off” goes well beyond politics and the price of milk and eggs or an understanding of how tariffs work. Let’s face it: Education provides opportunity, and making higher education work for everyone must be a priority if we are to be a thriving, civilized society. 

    Let’s start with the current disruptive notion that poses the discomfiting question: Is a college degree worth it?

    Many of us working in postsecondary education felt that question didn’t go far enough in looking for the opportunity to improve in new and better ways when the stakes are higher than ever.  

    So, we took that question on as a challenge and expanded it to ask: What is college worth, and how do we measure and improve its value, especially for low- and moderate-income learners? Answers to such questions should prove fruitful, especially given that a new Gallup survey reports Californians overwhelmingly value postsecondary degrees or credentials, particularly because of their career-related benefits. Yet, we know that many are hesitant to enroll in college or university because of the perceived unaffordability of earning a credential or degree.

    This led our organizations to explore what kind of return on investment higher education institutions — part of a stale, antiquated system that does not always deliver on its promise of economic mobility and equity — provide to their learners. The ensuing report produced more nuanced data to inform continuing conversations on the value of postsecondary education, which, frankly, helps learners and their families make decisions on where they want to make a higher education investment from a value and return-on-investment perspective.

    Our first step was to look at the value that California institutions offer their low- and moderate-income learners. We also wanted to know if certain college programs or credentials made a difference.

    After all, learners who choose a postsecondary education should end up better off for it, right? 

    The good news we found was, yes, most students were better off for the most part. The troubling news, though, was that for some students, it was not always, and sometimes, never. 

    We’ve also learned that sometimes a student’s college major can matter just as much for an economic return-on-investment — if not more — than the institution itself. Some programs provide a strong return, but some offer none whatsoever, even leaving some degree or credential graduates making less than a high school graduate.

    For example, we found that almost all programs (97%) offered at public institutions in California show their graduates being able to earn back the costs of obtaining a degree or credential within only five years. Essentially, these graduates earn enough of an “additional income” because of their college degree to make their college program worth it.

    And, also impressive, nearly half of public college programs (48%) allow this within one year’s time. Programs at private nonprofit colleges in California generally take students longer, as only 7% enable graduates to recoup their costs within 12 months. And worrisomely, for-profit colleges show their graduates struggling to recoup their college costs, and nearly a fifth of their programs (17%) show no economic return whatsoever.

    This work is not a denouncement of any specific program or desired area of study, but rather an opportunity for further research to understand why and how these institutions and college programs produce these outcomes and where there may be policy and practical implications.

    A simple example of such a practical change may be for institutions to provide a clearer picture to students before they enroll of how much a specific program will cost — and provide information on how much former students typically earn. Another may be more geared toward college administrators to ensure that they are equipping students with the right skills — and necessary credentials — to pursue and succeed in careers within the geographic region where the institution is located.   

    Institutional leaders and elected officials must lean into discussions that are happening right now about the value of a college education and how it ties to learners’ futures and where improvements can happen.

    While more questions must be answered — and more research will follow — one thing has become abundantly clear: Our higher education system can no longer be enabled by a “this is the way we do things” mentality in places where it is not working.

    Postsecondary attainment must be tied to value, economic mobility and equity, as this is essential to creating a higher education system that drives a robust, inclusive economy that works for all Californians. 

    •••

    Eloy Ortiz Oakley is president and CEO of College Futures Foundation, whose mission is based on a belief in the power of postsecondary opportunity.

    Michael Itzkowitz is founder and president of the HEA Group, a research and consulting agency focused on college access, value, and economic mobility.

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

    EdSource receives funding from many foundations, including The College Futures Foundation. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage. 





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  • California must put money, mandates behind promises of bilingual education, researchers say

    California must put money, mandates behind promises of bilingual education, researchers say


    Photo courtesy of SEAL

    California needs to mandate bilingual education in districts with significant numbers of English learners and invest much more to support districts to offer it, according to a new report released Thursday.

    The report, “Meeting its Potential: A Call and Guide for Universal Access to Bilingual Education in California” was published as part of a package of research and policy proposals on civil rights in education by the UCLA Civil Rights Project.

    The authors said California is far behind other states in enrolling students in bilingual programs, despite having published documents like the English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030, that lay out a vision for significantly expanding bilingual education in the state.

    “It’s particularly significant because of the loud promises the state has made on behalf of bilingual education,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “When it comes down to actual resources devoted, they’ve come so far short.”

    The authors of the report recommend three main actions for California state leaders to take: Expand bilingual education programs with more funding and requirements for districts to offer them; prioritize enrollment of English learners in bilingual programs; and invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs.

    In order to expand bilingual education programs, the authors said California should follow the lead of Texas and pass legislation that requires districts to offer bilingual education if they have at least 20 students in any grade level that speak the same home language. In addition, they recommend the state provide districts more funding for every student enrolled in a bilingual program.

    The authors said this “carrot and stick” approach in Texas has helped the state enroll a much higher percentage (36.7%) of English learners in bilingual programs. In contrast, California has enrolled only 16.4 % of English learners in bilingual programs.

    The report cites research that shows bilingual education improves academic achievement, progress in learning English, retention of home language, high school graduation and college attendance, in addition to other benefits.

    “Bilingual education should not be a partisan issue, because of the vast and wide-reaching benefits of it,” said Ilana Umansky, associate professor of education at the University of Oregon and one of the authors of the report. “It’s very telling that a state like Texas mandates bilingual education in a lot of circumstances and incentivizes bilingual education and has twice the enrollment of English learners in bilingual education as California.”

    In addition to expanding the number of bilingual programs, the authors also called on state and district leaders to make sure there are spaces set aside in bilingual programs for English learners, that they are located in neighborhoods where English learners live or that they can easily reach by transportation.

    “It’s critical to prioritize English learners, because it’s English-learner-classified students that most need and benefit from bilingual programs,” Umansky said.

    Umansky said many dual-language immersion programs are often located in neighborhoods where most families speak English, because English-speaking parents are often the loudest advocates pushing for them. And she said some districts outright bar recent immigrant students from enrolling in bilingual programs, incorrectly assuming they are not beneficial for them.

    Finally, the report’s authors are recommending the state also invest more in bilingual teacher preparation programs and in making such programs more affordable for students. They pointed out that after voters passed Proposition 227 in 1998, limiting bilingual education in California, many bilingual teacher preparation programs were closed.

    “Prop 227 had such a devastating effect on traditional bilingual teacher programs, we have got to invest in them. They have to be bigger, they have to be stronger, and we have to have support for the programs and support for the students,” Umansky said.

    Proposition 227 was overturned in 2016, when voters passed a separate measure, Proposition 58.

    “California has put its foot down about saying, ‘We believe in multilingualism, we’re going to get students to be multilingual,’” Umansky said. “Now is the moment to really start putting money and efforts behind those intentions.”





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  • Bilingual teacher training must be a long-term investment in California schools

    Bilingual teacher training must be a long-term investment in California schools


    Photo courtesy of SEAL

    Speaking more than one language is a superpower and a growing necessity in our global economy. If we want more California students to experience the economic, academic, social and emotional benefits of multilingualism, bilingual or dual language classrooms should be the gold standard for all schools. English learners, who often fall behind in school, especially stand to benefit from bilingual/dual language programs.

    Families across the state — regardless of political affiliation, or whether they speak English at home — can recognize the academic, cognitive and economic advantages of bilingualism. They want multilingual education for their children when they see the data and experience these benefits for themselves. While California has made major strides toward making bilingual classrooms the norm, there is a long road ahead, particularly in communities with large numbers of English learners. This is a grave injustice for the 40% of California children who speak a language other than English at home, because these children would excel in bilingual classrooms academically while still developing literacy in their home language and English. We need long-term investment from the state for our students to realize their full potential.

    A recent report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project underscores this urgent need. Proposition 227, which passed in 1998, mandated English-only education for English learner students in public schools and dismantled bilingual teacher preparation programs. Then, in 2016, California voters passed Proposition 58 with 73% of the vote, overturning Proposition 227 and making it easier, in theory, to implement bilingual classrooms.

    However, more than two decades of “English-only” education has left us without enough qualified bilingual teachers, even though there is now more demand for them. According to the UCLA report, out of 1.1 million English learners in California, only 188,381 students, or 16% of that population, were enrolled in these programs as of the 2019/2020 school year.

    California is still a nationwide leader in supporting bilingual education, despite these numbers. The state’s English Learner Roadmap and Global California 2030 show that our education leaders really do want to improve our students’ critical thinking skills, family and community relationships, and earning potential through bilingual education. And one-time programs like the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program, English Learner Roadmap Power in Collaboration Across California, and the English Learner Roadmap Implementation for Systemic Excellence are doing important work to fulfill these goals.

    But visionary policies and initiatives, along with one-time grants alone, are not enough. Schools and districts require sustained resources and incentives to train bilingual teachers, set up classrooms, purchase materials, recruit families and ensure their programs can launch and thrive. Right now, we simply do not have that in California. It’s a symptom of our state’s fundamental lack of investment in education overall — California is the world’s fifth largest economy, but we rank 18th in education funding out of the 50 states.

    To illustrate this, the UCLA report compares California to Texas, another state with similar English learner populations. Even though California has a large number of English learner students and high interest in bilingual education, it’s still difficult to expand these models in California classrooms. Meanwhile, in Texas, enrollment in bilingual education programs is twice as high as in California. This is because Texas mandates bilingual education for districts enrolling significant numbers of English learners and provides extra state funding per student enrolled in these programs. This ensures strong demand for bilingual teachers and secure funding for their training.

    Districts and schools need ongoing funding sources like this embedded in their funding formula. Policymakers must support both one-time initiatives like those mentioned above and long-term sustainable funding sources that help increase our bilingual teacher pipeline and incentivize schools to build high quality bilingual/dual language programs.

    These long-term solutions could be modeled after initiatives like First Five, which has received $492 million in state investments since 2000. We need a comprehensive approach to the bilingual teacher pipeline, such as giving colleges and universities “Jump Start” funds to hire faculty and build out their bilingual teacher prep and authorization programs. California should also create initiatives to recruit and give incentives to students who graduate from high school with a State Seal of Biliteracy to enter bilingual teacher preparation programs.

    Language is the vehicle of learning. When educators understand how to integrate and leverage language development across everything, all students thrive. We must invest in bilingual education long-term if we are ever going to create a sustainable future for our state’s most valuable resource: our children.

    •••

    Anya Hurwitz is president and executive director of SEAL (Sobrato Early Academic Language), a nonprofit initiative of the Sobrato Foundation and vice president of the board of directors for Californians Together. She holds a doctorate in education from University of California Berkeley.

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





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  • California leaders must keep their promise by funding ethnic studies

    California leaders must keep their promise by funding ethnic studies


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Decades of institutionalized racism and inadequate funding have left California with a racial achievement gap in its schools. All of our students deserve the chance to learn and succeed, but all too often, students of color have been failed by an education system that still bears the marks of a long history of racism and inequality.

    To address this persistent structural problem, Gov. Gavin Newsom has allocated funding that will be directed toward the poorest schools, to be used specifically to help all student groups improve academic achievement in this year’s proposed budget.

    The governor did not, however, explicitly allocate funding to support Assembly Bill 101, the mandate that all public high schools offer an ethnic studies course in the 2025-26 school year and require all students to complete a one-semester ethnic studies course for graduation, beginning with the school year 2029-30. The lack of explicit funding has emboldened opponents of ethnic studies education, who now argue that the ethnic studies requirement must be delayed or withdrawn.

    Delaying or abandoning the state’s commitment to ethnic studies would not only break the promise that the governor and the Legislature made to the people of California at a time when this kind of education is more important than ever, but also threaten efforts to close the racial achievement gap. Although ethnic studies isn’t designed with the specific goal of reducing or closing racial achievement gaps, it has a track record of doing exactly that.

    For example, Stanford researchers Thomas S. Dee, Emily K. Penner and Sade Bonilla found San Francisco’s ninth-grade ethnic studies course to improve students’ GPA, school attendance, and graduation rate. University of Arizona researchers Nolan L. Cabrera, Jeffrey F. Milam, Ozan Jaquette and Ronald W. Marx found that participation in Tucson’s Mexican American studies program raised students’ achievement on the state’s reading, writing and math achievement tests and virtually closed racial achievement gaps.

    San Francisco State University researchers found that students who major in ethnic studies graduate within six years at a much higher rate (92%) than students in other majors and students in other majors who take at least one ethnic studies course boost their graduation rates compared with students who do not. At the University of Louisville, researcher Tomarra A. Adams found that Black students who major in Pan-African studies have a higher graduation rate than Black students who major in something else.

    Ethnic studies has consistently positive impacts on the academic achievement of students from racially marginalized backgrounds. By offering a relevant curriculum that speaks to issues of concern to their lives and communities, ethnic studies taps into and engages the knowledge students bring to the classroom, allowing them to draw from and recognize their own expertise.

    Ethnic studies classes offer an environment where important and relevant issues related to race and ethnicity can be addressed openly rather than be belittled or ignored. Further, as students come to see education as relevant to addressing problems and needs in their communities, and themselves as academically capable, they gain confidence to thrive in school more generally.

    Ethnic studies benefits all California students while helping to close the racial achievement gap and preparing the workforce of tomorrow for the multicultural reality of our state. It was in recognition of these benefits that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 101, declaring as part of the signing statement that “these courses boost student achievement over the long run — especially among students of color.”

    Recently, Assembly Bill 1468 was introduced to authorize the development of content standards for high school ethnic studies. This bill is unnecessary and potentially harmful. Ethnic studies is a highly contextual approach to curriculum and teaching because it connects with the local cultures and issues of specific communities in which it is being taught.

    For that reason, there can be no standardized ethnic studies curriculum. Within the current Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, we already have a set of six guiding values and principles that are broad enough to allow for diverse contextualized approaches to ethnic studies, while they are also sufficiently direct as standards.

    I worry that further specification of what should be in an ethnic studies curriculum will authorize one version of ethnic studies to the exclusion of others. This has been my experience with content standards for decades. In addition, ethnic studies is interdisciplinary, which means that the standards for that subject (such as history or English) should be used along with the seven ethnic studies guiding principles. AB 1468 unnecessarily adds layers to the standards we already have.

    Ethnic studies needs to be a part of the curriculum offered to California’s students, and it is incumbent on the governor and the Legislature to make good on that promise by resolving any ambiguities about the funding of AB 101.

    •••

    Christine Sleeter is professor emerita in the College of Education at California State University Monterey Bay, known for pioneering research into multicultural education and anti-racism.

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

    A version of this commentary originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee.





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  • Why California must champion community college bachelor’s degrees

    Why California must champion community college bachelor’s degrees


    Cerritos College students honing their skills in ironworking during hands-on training.

    Credit: Courtesy Cerritos College

    A college degree or certificate is a proven pathway to higher earnings, job stability and economic mobility. Yet, nearly half of California’s adults have not pursued higher education due to barriers like cost, rigid schedules and a lack of local options.

    California set an ambitious goal: By 2030, 70% of working-age adults should hold a college degree or certificate. However, instead of making it easier to achieve this, public universities are blocking one of the most promising solutions — community college bachelor’s degree programs.

    Cerritos College is leading the way with its first-of-its-kind field ironworker supervisor bachelor’s degree, which was developed with the California Field Ironworkers. The program creates a direct path from apprenticeship to high-paying supervisory roles. Designed for working professionals, it offers flexible online coursework that fits the schedules of full-time ironworkers.

    With over 1,300 supervisor job openings annually in Los Angeles County alone, this program helps close critical workforce gaps while fostering regional social and economic mobility. First-line supervisors with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $34,000 more in their annual salary than those with a high school diploma or associate degree. At under $11,000 in total tuition costs — less than half the price of even the most affordable public universities, our students can recoup their investment in as little as four months, making this program a powerful tool for upward mobility.

    Beyond the numbers, programs like these change lives. Rocio Campos, an ironworker and mother, defied societal expectations to pursue a career in construction. While balancing work, family and education, Rocio gained the training and resources to grow her career in ironworks through the field ironworker apprenticeship program at Cerritos College. She aims to earn a bachelor’s degree in ironworker supervision once the program receives full approval, giving her a chance to advance into a supervisory role.

    Community college bachelor’s degrees are game-changers, especially for underrepresented communities. At Cerritos College, 73% of students in the ironworker apprenticeship program come from diverse backgrounds, and active recruitment efforts are bringing more women into this historically male-dominated field. These programs don’t just increase wages; they provide economic mobility by helping workers build stability, advance their careers, and lift their families into greater financial security.

    Several community colleges have received provisional approval to launch bachelor’s degree programs in health care, technology and public safety — fields where California urgently needs skilled professionals. However, many of these proposals remain under review because of objections from public universities, particularly within the CSU system. Despite meeting workforce demands and serving students who might not otherwise pursue a four-year degree, these programs face unnecessary roadblocks. The final approval ultimately rests with the California Community Colleges board of governors, but these initiatives risk being delayed indefinitely without broader policy support.

    California cannot rely on four-year universities alone to meet its growing workforce needs. Expanding community college bachelor’s degree programs will strengthen industries, create more opportunities and solidify California’s leadership in workforce innovation. It’s time for policymakers, industry leaders and educators to support these programs and invest in the future of our state.

    •••

    Jose Fierro is the president/superintendent of Cerritos College in Norwalk. Cerritos College serves as a comprehensive community college for southeastern Los Angeles County.

    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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  • Pandemic-era push to ‘build solutions’ must continue, panel says

    Pandemic-era push to ‘build solutions’ must continue, panel says


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemKlBPWB2E

    The Covid-19 pandemic, which first shuttered schools five years ago, disrupted learning, disengaged students and harmed their mental health, amplifying the long-standing inequalities in their achievement.  

    Recovering from the effects of the pandemic has proven difficult for most California schools, and the challenges that defy easy fixes, such as chronic absenteeism, require partnerships with families, community members and organizations to develop support systems that will focus on student academic success, as well as a willingness to analyze and change those approaches, according to panelists at EdSource’s Thursday roundtable, “Five years after Covid: Innovations that are driving results.”

    “The pandemic showed us that schools are so much more than just places to teach our students in the classroom,” said Lorena Solorio, associate director of the Care Corps Program at Rocketship Public Schools, a group of TK-5 charter schools, mostly in East San Jose, that enlisted care coordinators during the pandemic. “We have to support our students and their families to get them to school, but also that they’re prepared to learn because our students can’t learn if they’re coming to school hungry.”

    While the pandemic is mostly defined by the personal loss and academic setbacks that most experienced, it presented opportunities for some communities to become creative and innovative in igniting change to improve the conditions that the pandemic magnified. 

    The policy and advocacy work of Oakland REACH, for instance, wasn’t improving student outcomes before the pandemic. The pandemic became an opportunity for the parent advocacy group to “build the solution around education that we really know that our families wanted and needed,” co-founder and CEO Lakisha Young, a panelist, said. 

    Oakland REACH created a virtual family hub that trained parents and caregivers to tutor their children in early literacy — “a model that takes parents off the sidelines and to the front lines in an academic way.” 

    “Parents set the tone for how kids decide they want to engage in education,” Young said. 

    After five weeks of remote learning with the virtual hub, long before anyone realized school closures would last for at least a year, students in grades K-2 saw significant gains, as 60% improved by two or more reading levels and 30% increased by three or more reading levels on Oakland Unified’s assessment.

    Since the return to in-person learning, REACH has partnered with the school district to train parents, caregivers, and community members to go into classrooms as tutors teaching reading and math. 

    Rocketship Public Schools was inspired at the height of the pandemic to work directly with families and connect them with resources and services through care coordinators in all of its charter schools, according to Solorio. 

    The care coordinators, for example, connected families struggling with housing with community partners and hosted on-campus resource fairs and health, vision and dental screenings, referring students for additional services, as necessary, and allowing them to “show up and learn in the classroom,” Solorio said. 

    Today, the coordinators’ roles have expanded to help school leaders address chronic absenteeism. 

    “Helping support a culture of learning, a culture of coming to school is important,” Solorio said about coordinators helping families, “whether it’s changing mindsets or it’s driving out core root causes of some of these obstacles.” 

    Finding, providing and sustaining innovation

    Districts have used one-time pandemic relief funding and/or their own resources to address the persistent challenges facing students during and since the pandemic, including the fact that California schools have more staff now than at any time in history. 

    Federal pandemic relief and recovery funds from the state put California’s spending at over $18,000 per student, said panelist Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, an education finance research center based at Georgetown University. 

    “While the state was seeing some growth in scores earlier in 2014, 2016, there’s some decline during the pandemic,” she said. “But the part that frustrates us, I think, is the continued decline, on average, even after these investments were happening.”

    The high spending and low test scores make the state one of the nation’s worst in its “returns on investments,” the Edunomics Lab found. 

    There are districts, such as Compton and Milpitas Unified, that defy the average and show a rapid recovery for their students, Roza said. 

    Now, billions in pandemic-era funding have expired. California districts still have $6 billion in state funding to replace the federal relief, but as the Edunomics research shows, the spending alone won’t address student success. From now on, schools must know when to change their approach, panelists said. 

    Compton Unified exemplifies the importance of doubling down on a strategy that works. Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley said that consistently assessing student performance to determine the academic strategies that schools use has led to the district being No. 1 in California in terms of growth in English and math test scores.

    “We’re measuring everything,” including graduation rates, core graduation requirements and chronic absenteeism rates that are also improving, Brawley said.  “It’s all about data: reflecting on that data, coming together as teams to reflect on how each individual school is doing, receiving that feedback.” 

    The common characteristic of districts nationwide that beat the odds for their kids, Roza said, is “they really focused on reading and math.” 

    Roza attributed the reading and math focus of Oakland REACH to its success. 

    Although the group will soon end its partnership with the district, Oakland Unified can continue the approach Oakland REACH started, much like 12 Denver schools recently did by replicating the model.

    “REACH exists out of a problem,” Young said about not knowing if the literacy and math it brought into the homes of low-income families would work, at first. Whether we think something is good or not, let’s test it. We cannot be so vulnerable to system disruption. When we’re vulnerable to disruption, our families are vulnerable to disruption.”

    Panelists echoed the importance of finding a method that works — and being unafraid to try things. 

    “If it doesn’t work, you’ve got to try something else, including nontraditional strategies,” especially in addressing attendance, Roza said. “I think we hear from district leaders all the time: ‘I would love to do these great ideas, but we can’t because dot, dot…”

    It’s that fear that leads to the status quo, Brawley said. 

    Cheryl Jordan, superintendent at Milpitas Unified, which developed an Innovation Campus that offers students real-world work and life experiences through internships, apprenticeships and project-based learning, said that it is only through looking at the opportunities that a crisis provides that schools and districts can “develop something that’s better and meets the needs of our learners in a way that is innovative and really excels them to become the leaders and creators of the future.” 





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  • Nancy Flanagan: Teachers Must Be Heard!

    Nancy Flanagan: Teachers Must Be Heard!


    Nancy Flanagan is a retired veteran teacher. Her blogs are always insightful because she sees the issues from the perspective of her long career in the classroom. In this post, she explains why some conferences work and some don’t. She wrote it after returning home from the Network for Public Education conference.

    She writes:

    I am just back from the Network for Public Education conference, held this year in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is an eight-hour drive from my house, and we arrived at the same time as ongoing flood warnings. But—as usual—it was well worth the time and effort expended.

    For most of my career—35 years—I was a classroom teacher. Garden-variety teachers are lucky to get out of Dodge and attend a conference with their peers maybe once a year. Teachers don’t get airfare for conferences in other states and often end up sharing rides and rooms, splitting pizzas for dinner. They go with the intention of getting many new ideas for their practice toolboxes—lesson plans, subject discipline trends and tips, cool new materials—and to connect with people who do what they do. Be inspired, maybe, or just to commiserate with others who totally get it.

    In the real world (meaning: not schools), this is called networking. Also in the real world—there’s comp time for days missed at a weekend conference, and an expense form for reimbursements. Conversely, in schools, lucky teachers get a flat grant to partially compensate for registration, mileage, hotel and meals. In many other schools, nobody goes to a conference, because there’s just not enough money, period.

    When you hear teachers complaining about meaningless professional development, it’s often because of that very reason—there’s not enough money to custom-tailor professional learning, so everyone ends up in the auditorium watching a PowerPoint and wishing they were back in their classrooms.

    Back in 1993, when Richard Riley was Secretary of Education, his special assistant, Terry Dozier, a former National Teacher of the Year, established the first National Teacher Forum. (In case you’re wondering, the Forums lasted just as long as the Clinton administration, and Riley, were in the WH.) Teachers of the Year from all 50 states attended. The purpose of the conference was to engage these recognized teachers in the decision-making that impacted their practice. In other words, policy.

    It was probably the most memorable conference I ever attended. I took nothing home to use in my band classroom, but left with an imaginary soapbox and new ideas about how I could speak out on education issues, engage policymakers, and assign value to my experience as a successful teacher. The National Teacher Forum literally changed my life, over the following decades.

    But—the idea that teachers would start speaking out, having their ideas get as much traction as novice legislators’ or Gates-funded researchers, was a hard sell. Education thinkers aren’t in the habit of recognizing teacher wisdom, except on a semi-insulting surface level. In the hierarchy of public education workers, teachers are at the lowest level of the pyramid, subject to legislative whims, accrued data and faulty analyses, and malign forces of privatization.

    Which is why it was heartening to see so many teachers (most from Ohio) at the NPE conference. The vibe was big-picture: Saving public education. Debunking current myths about things like AI and silver-bullet reading programs. Discussing how churches are now part of the push to destabilize public schools. New organizations and elected leaders popping up to defend democracy, school by school and state by state.  An accurate history of how public education has been re-shaped by politics. The resurgence of unions as defenders of public education.

    Saving public education.  A phrase that has taken on new and urgent meaning, in the last three months. Every single one of the keynote speakers was somewhere between on-point and flat-out inspirational.

    Here’s the phrase that kept ringing in my head: We’re in this together.

    The last two speakers were AFT President Randi Weingarten and MN Governor Tim Walz. I’ve heard Weingarten speak a dozen times or more, and she’s always articulate and fired-up. But it was Walz, speaking to his people, who made us laugh and cry, and believe that there’s hope in these dark times.

    He remarked that his HS government teacher—class of 24 students, very rural school—would never have believed that Tim Walz would one day be a congressman, a successful governor and candidate for Vice-President. It was funny—but also another reason to believe that public schools are pumping out leaders every day, even in dark times.

    In an age where we can hear a speaker or transmit handouts digitally—we still need real-time conferences. We need motivation and personal connections. Places where true-blue believers in the power of public education can gather, have a conversation over coffee, hear some provocative ideas and exchange business cards. Network.

    Then go home–and fight. 



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