The National Science Foundation was a target for Elon Musk’s DOGE boys. Trump seemed to dislike science, so he went along with deep cuts. We can hope that historians will one day explain Trump’s disdain for science. At the moment, it’s inexplicable.
Only days ago, Trump released an executive order that places political appointees in charge of grantmaking, with the power to ignore peer reviews.
Science magazine reported:
Research advocates are expressing alarm over a White House directive on federal grantmakingreleased yesterday that they say threatens to enhance President Donald Trump’s control over science agency decisions on what to fund. It would, among other changes, require political appointees to sign off on new grant solicitations, allow them to overrule advice from peer reviewers on award decisions, and let them more easily terminate ongoing grants.
Although many changes described in the order are already underway at research agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation (NSF), its existence could strengthen the hand of Trump appointees, says Carrie Wolinetz, a former senior administrator at NIH.
“We’ve already seen this administration take steps to exert its authority that have resulted in delays, freezes, and termination of billions of dollars in grants,” says Wolinetz, now a lobbyist for Lewis-Burke Associates. “This would codify those actions in a way that represents the true politicization of science, which would be a really bad idea.”
149 NSF employees, all members of the American Federation of Government Employees chapter that represents the agency’s workforce, sent a letter to Congress warning staffing cuts and other disruptions to NSF operations were threatening the agency’s mission and independence. Jesus Soriano, president of the chapter, said NSF has lost one-third of its staff—or nearly 600 employees—since January. The agency also began canceling hundreds of its research grants in April and has now scrapped 1,600 active grants, employees said.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it is going to evict NSF from its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, to make room for the Housing and Urban Development Department, and has yet to unveil a plan detailing where the agency will relocate. President Trump proposed slashing NSF’s budget by 56% in fiscal 2026.
“What’s happening at NSF is unlike anything we’ve faced before,” Soriano said at a press conference held last week by Democrats on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. “Our members—scientists, program officers, and staff—have been targeted for doing their jobs with integrity. They’ve faced retaliation, mass terminations, and the illegal withholding of billions in research funding.”
Written by NPE Executive Director Carol Burris, the report will be released in three sections. The first one, Decline, documents the startling halt in charter school growth. Once heralded as the salvation of American education, charter schools are no longer growing. Despite the lack of demand for new charters, the Trump administration recently increased the annual appropriation to the federal Charter Schools Program from $440 million every year to $500 million a year.
The report will be released in three parts: Decline, Disillusionment, and Costs. This is the first part.
Burris begins:
In 1992, City Academy — the nation’s first charter school — opened in St. Paul, Minnesota. Created and led by experienced teachers, it was designed as an alternative school for students struggling in traditional settings. With just 53 students, City Academy embodied the original vision for charter schools: small, teacher-run schools within public districts that tested innovative strategies to reach hard-to-teach kids.
When successful, those strategies would inform and strengthen public education as a whole.
That was the idea supported by American Federation of Teachers President Al Shanker in 1988.
But by the early 1990s, Shanker had become disillusioned. As his wife Edith later explained, “Al became increasingly critical of charter schools as they moved further from their original intent.
He warned that without well-crafted legislation and public oversight, business interests would hijack the charter school concept, ‘whose real aim is to smash public schools.’”
His warning proved prophetic. In the decades since, real estate investors, for-profit management companies, and corporate charter chains have taken over what began as teacher-led experiments. Today, more than fifty charter trade associations—some state-based, others national—lobby aggressively to block charter school oversight and resist any legislative reform. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools reported over $26.5 million in income in 2023, with more than $28 million in assets. The California Charter Schools Association reported nearly $13 million in revenue that same year. These organizations are not only advocates but powerful lobbyists, intent on protecting all existing charters and promoting unlimited growth.
During the Obama years, federal initiatives like Race to the Top fueled charter expansion with strong bipartisan support. But that coalition has since un-raveled. While Republican enthusiasm for any alternative to public education— charters, vouchers, homeschools — has surged, Democratic support has eroded, particularly as concerns grow over transparency, equity, and privatization.
Today, the charter sector stands at a reckoning point. Growth has slowed.
For-profit models are expanding. The push to create religious charter schools has fractured the movement from within. Meanwhile, charters are now competing not just with public schools and each other, but with a growing network of voucher-funded private schools and publicly subsidized homeschools.
This report, released in three parts — Decline, Disillusionment, and Costs —examines the trajectory of the charter school movement. It contrasts the promise of its early days with its complex, often troubling reality today.
As the charter experiment enters its fourth decade, the question is no longer what charter schools were meant to be — but whether they can still be reformed in order to serve the public good….
Burris questions why the federal government–which claims to be cutting costs and cutting unnecessary programs–continues to send $500 million every year to a sector that is not growing and does not need the money. DOGE eliminated most employees of the U.S. Department of Wducation but left the federal Charter Schools Program untouched.
The charter school sector stands at a critical juncture. Once heralded as a bold experiment in innovation and opportunity, it is now characterized by stagnation, retrenchment, and rising school closures. Between 2022 and 2025, growth has nearly halted, and closures — often sudden and disruptive— are accelerating. Federal investment, rather than adapting to the sector’s shifting realities, has ballooned to half a billion dollars annually, funding schools that never open, quickly fail, or operate with minimal oversight and accountability.
As the data show, under-enrollment is the primary driver of failure. There is no crisis of unmet demand. Hundreds of charter schools, according to NCES data, can’t fill even a single classroom. The frequently cited “million-student waitlist” has been thoroughly debunked, yet continues to be invoked to justify ever-increasing taxpayer support.
Meanwhile, mega-charters and online schools like Commonwealth Charter Academy siphon vast sums of public dollars while delivering dismal academic outcomes. Others, like Highlands Community Charter School, have defrauded taxpayers and exploited students under the guise of second chances.
With enrollment stagnating and oversight failing, taxpayers should ask: Why are we continuing to fund with federal dollars an expansion that isn’t happening? It is time for Congress and the Department of Education to reassess the Charter Schools Program. Federal dollars should no longer subsidize a shrinking and troubled sector. Instead, they must be redirected toward accountable, transparent, and student-centered public education.
Part II of this report, Disillusionment, to be published this fall, will further explain the reasons behind the sector’s decline.
Students at UCLA Community School pass by one of several outdoor campus murals on their way to class.
Credit: Allison Shelley/EDUimages
EdSource asked Martin Blank for his perspective on California’s massive investment in community schools in the context of the community schools movement that he was instrumental in creating.
For 20 years after he co-founded it in 1997, Blank directed the Coalition for Community Schools, a national organization that advocates for policies that support the implementation of quality community schools. He also served as president of the Institute for Educational Leadership, the coalition’s home.
Marty Blank
After serving as a VISTA volunteer in the Missouri Bootheel region, Blank, an attorney, was a senior staff member at A.L. Nellum and Associates, the nation’s first African American-owned consulting firm.
Through two-year planning and five-year implementation grants, more than 2,000 schools could become community schools to broaden services to meet children’s multiple needs and schools’ connections with the community. More than a place, the book says, a community school “is a set of partnerships built on a foundation of mutually beneficial relationships between schools and communities.”
With growing gaps in wealth and an increase in poverty, is it important that schools take a larger role than traditionally people have thought schools should take?
Yes, the school should have a larger role, but that role should be as an ally with an array of partners with expertise and people who want to help kids thrive.
The idea that schools could take on a larger role and do everything is mistaken. You open up the school to the community, you open up the potential for greater family engagement, and you get people to think about kids in different ways. Health people, youth people, school people, organizers all have a slightly different view of the world and how it should change. When you put them together, you can really create a synergy that leads to a better strategy and better results. It’s the wisdom of the group, rather than a single entity being in charge of everything.
The title of your book is “The Community Schools’ Revolution: Building Partnerships, Transforming Lives, Advancing Democracy.” What’s revolutionary, and how would parents and teachers know that they’re in the middle of a revolution?
That partnerships are essential in today’s public school and policy environment is a revolutionary concept. The power of partnership between schools and community is the essence of our work. We’ve begun to demonstrate how powerful that is.
Listen: How parents, teachers, and the community can tell if the community schools “revolution” is in their midst
We also have leaders in community schools who are thinking and acting differently. Principals are not only focused on their school, on their academic responsibilities, but they also recognize their ability to build a community of parents, teachers and now partners that support their students.
The community schools revolution is also demonstrated by their growth. There are thousands of schools across the country. We have evidence of success, and we have a growing investment. California’s is significant and we’ve got substantial federal money. Maryland has embedded community schools across all school districts, by including them in the school funding formula, and a growing number of states are funding community schools development.
California’s is the biggest bet yet on community schools. In part, it was driven by money. California had a huge surplus, and so the Legislature and the Newsom administration, at the encouragement of State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, put down $4.4 billion over seven years. It made this commitment without really anything in place as a state system. Does it concern you that it might fall short of its potential?
If I could control the way policy functions, one might do very careful planning, then implement, then evaluate. But in the United States, we don’t do policy that way. It’s all a bit chaotic, and that makes it really hard for school people.
We were worried when New York expanded from 40 community schools to 150, because we thought that was going to be challenging. And it was. But in time, because the school system and the city government and the community-based organizations and the school leaders stayed together, there are now 420 plus community schools in New York, and they’re working toward a set of common goals. Are there challenges? Do we worry that money is going to be taken away? Of course, but sustainable partnerships emerging.
Listen: Whether California’s approach to community schools, through planning grants, followed by implementation grants on a mass scale, makes sense
We saw measurable progress in New York. A report by Rand demonstrated there was some improvement in math achievement, that students were more connected to adults and to the school, that there were improvements in attendance. We saw progress in California, where there are community schools that people could draw on — in San Francisco, West Contra Costa, Oakland, Los Angeles and other places.
We’re hoping that school and community organization leaders will realize that if they go beyond vendor and contract relationships, to really become partners, there will be a foundation on which to continue. Grants may come, but if the relationship between the school and their partners remains, then the essence of the community school will remain.
California is investing many billions of dollars in other services, too, such as mental health, transitional kindergarten, and an extended day and year, particularly for low-income schools. What difference will this make in a community school?
California represents a real opportunity. If it works the way we hope, the person in charge of new mental health money, the person running the after-school program, and other partners will be talking to each other and educators about what they want to accomplish. I remember a principal telling me he was responsible for all partners. They would ask for space and for equipment. He held a meeting and said, “Who are you and why the hell are you here?” What we want is for those potential allies to sit and talk regularly, to listen to students and their families and figure out how to make progress together.
Oakland and UCLA are prominent in your book. Any school would be fortunate to be associated with a university like UCLA. And Oakland has more nonprofits than coffee shops. But there are lots of communities that don’t have those opportunities. If you are in rural San Bernardino County or Humboldt County, what do you do?
The first thing is to go out in the community and talk to the business community, to the religious community. In every community, there are some nonprofit organizations. Every community has resources. We’ve had community schools where the emphasis was on bringing in elders from Appalachian communities to teach about the local history. We’ve had community schools where the kids have learned about the fishing industry. 4H is a significant player in many rural communities.
It’s a mindset issue. People have assets and expertise. If you assume there’s nothing, it puts the school and the teachers in a very negative mindset about what they’re trying to accomplish.
A crucial person will be the community schools coordinator, which all community schools in California must hire to receive state funding. Whom should districts be looking for, and why is that person important?
A community school coordinator is a bridge builder. We’ve had innumerable principals say, “I don’t know how I managed before I had a community school coordinator.” A community school coordinator is vital to connecting the work of partners and school staff. They should be collaborative and like to work with other people; they should be someone who knows how to listen to families and young people, who can bring ideas from partners to the principal and teachers and be part of the school leadership team.
The California Teachers Association has taken a position and some local unions in negotiations that the community schools coordinator should be a certificated teacher. A number of districts have said that first and foremost, the person should come from the community and know the community. What’s your view?
Sometimes you’ll find a social worker with community organizing training. Or a teacher who was a Peace Corps volunteer, a parent or community resident with strong relational skills. We need someone who can build bridges to the community whether they work for a school system, a nonprofit organization or a higher education institution. We should not limit ourselves when we think about where we look for people.
What might be early wins that might set the right tone and culture for community schools?
Attendance is a big issue and really a critical place to start. People are worried about it all across the country. When you have partnerships, whether it’s around health and mental health or just outreach with the ability to talk to parents and meet in their homes or workplaces, you can encourage improvement in attendance. In Baltimore, grassroots groups of Black men, some of whom are formerly incarcerated, have become involved with schools to try to make connections.
I can imagine some principals and teachers might say, “We welcome the partnerships, we welcome the additional resources, but leave instruction and learning to us.” How can what goes on in the school day be integrated into the community school?
We’ve seen teachers do walk-arounds in neighborhoods, so they understand their students’ lives and communities and use that knowledge in the classroom. At the UCLA Community School, the kids have worked on immigration and housing issues. We’ve seen young people get involved in dealing with hunger and nutrition issues in their neighborhoods. Partners can help facilitate that.
Listen to kids. You can build a standards-based curriculum that involves kids dealing with science and math, and everything else around problems that matter to them and to their neighborhood.
Listen: How principals must open up schools and themselves for community schools to succeed
The community can be a resource for learning apprenticeships and internships. The University of Pennsylvania has students going into labs and doing summer work. All of that is part of what can happen in a community school.
For this $4 billion public investment, what metrics should the public use to gauge whether community schools are making a difference in the lives of students including, academic achievement?
They would see better attendance. They might see reductions in disciplinary incidents because they’ve applied restorative justice practices. They might see indications of improvement in mental health, not only because young people have had access to mental health professionals, but also because they’ve just had more opportunities to be on a team, whether it’s a robotics team or a football team, They should be looking for parents to stand up and say, “This school works for our kids” and for kids to be saying the same kinds of things.
I was told by a high school principal who was a community schools manager that building trust can be difficult and that the initial efforts can be frustrating. Parents are busy, and perhaps their own experiences may have turned them off to school.
It’s a never-ending process. Each of us, in our personal lives, in our professional lives, has had situations where we built some trust, we lost the trust, we had to rebuild it. Parents are busy, but if you knock on doors and listen to them, you can capture the essence of what they want. Educators and partners build trust when they look at data together to solve problems.
You mentioned timing may be both right and difficult now, with so much scrutiny on schools for various reasons and tensions brought into schools from the outside. Your book ends with this quote: “Now more than ever, with a deeply divided electorate and an often toxic political environment, community schools may represent a strategy that can bring people together, build community, and even bridge ideological divides.” Why are you confident that a community school can achieve such ambitions?
If you’re not a dreamer or ambitious, then you’re not going to be able to overcome the historic inequities that have existed in our public school system and society. I’ve been at this work for 60 years, and it’s been urgent for all 60 years. When we first opened the migrant education program in a formerly segregated school in southeast Missouri, it was urgent. Now, with our politics so divided, the fact that there can be community schools in Florida and Idaho, in New York and California, in Wisconsin and Texas, indicates there’s a power in the idea of public school being the vehicle around which we build community.
School leaders have to realize that they gain power by being more open. And that’s a challenge, given the politics of the moment. But our schools are a place that everyone knows, where we can all come together and act democratically. It’s not the only solution, but it offers the possibility of creating the kind of trust, the kind of relationships and the kind of places where people can come and see that we all care about each other’s kids.
Community schools show how people and organizations can come together to solve problems.
The lobby at UC Riverside’s new Student Health Center.
Credit: Stan Lim / UC Riverside
A newly built $36 million student health clinic at UC Riverside aims to provide a wide array of medical and mental health services in an attractive building that showcases views of nearby mountains. The two-story Student Health and Counseling Center includes a food pantry, a pharmacy, an outdoor balcony for meditation and waiting rooms that look like hip hotel lobbies.
And beyond serving Riverside students, it may become a national model of how campuses are investing more resources to keep their students physically and emotionally well in the post-pandemic era, experts say.
The 40,000-square-foot clinic will provide “one-stop shopping for wellness” that integrates physical and mental health services, said Denise Woods, UC Riverside’s associate vice chancellor of health, well-being and safety. During a recent tour, she said she expects that the building will make it easier for a student to tap into multiple types of services.
The new UC facility replaces a 60-year-old building that is half its size and was built when the student population, now about 27,000, was much smaller. Paid for by UC bonds and other funds, the clinic centralizes services that had been scattered around campus and moves them closer to dormitories for students’ convenience.
Credit: Stan Lim / UC Riverside
The new Student Health Center at UC Riverside.
Nadia Colón, a fourth-year psychology and law and society double major who is a student senator, said many students have been looking forward to the new building, which opened last month. “I think it will be perfect for students who need medical or counseling help,” she said. The old, smaller building has some good services, but “the new building, from what I have seen, is updated and has more resources.”
The medical health clinic and pharmacy are on the first floor along with a satellite food pantry for students who need food or household supplies to get through the week. Mental health counseling rooms are on the second floor, with extra soundproofing so passersby cannot hear therapy sessions.
Helps with recruiting
Experts say the new health center is an example of how colleges and universities are emphasizing students’ medical and psychological wellness much more than in the past, particularly after the challenges posed by the pandemic and the emergence from it. In the long run, they say, such attention pays off for the schools, helping to recruit new students and improving graduation rates and alumni relations.
“For a long time, we’ve known that physical and mental health and well-being are an important part of academic success, retention and graduation. It’s been shown that when students are physically and emotionally well, they perform better,” said physician Michael Huey, former interim chief executive officer of the American College Health Association and former executive director of Emory University’s health and counseling services.
More universities are renovating or replacing old health facilities and grouping services under one roof, he said. For students seeking medical or counseling assistance for the first time without their parents’ guidance, encountering a “modern, spacious, clean and professional-appearing center” helps them get past initial fears, Huey added. And ensuring privacy in counseling rooms helps to ease the stigma some young people might feel about reaching out for emotional help, he said.
New health centers can also bolster new enrollment, according to Richard Shadick, who is a board member of the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors and director of the counseling center at Pace University in New York City. “I think having a new building that addresses the needs of students, the physical and psychological needs of students, is a great idea. More and more families are looking at the wellness services provided by schools when making a decision about where the students go to college. It’s become rather common for that being a selling point for a college or university,” he said.
Credit: Stan Lim / UC Riverside
The pharmacy at the Student Health and Counseling Center.
National surveys by the American College Health Association show a significant drop this past spring in the rate of undergraduates who rated their health as very good or excellent compared with 2020: 47% compared with 55%. However, it shows that the most common health ailments are not life-threatening at their age, such as allergies, back pain, sinus infections and colds.
On the psychological side, more students are coming to college already having experience with mental health counseling or medication. Research by the Center for Collegiate Mental Health, which is located at Penn State, showed that about 60% of students who use college counseling services had been in prior mental health treatment, compared with 48% about a decade ago. Social anxiety among students is on the rise, fueled by social media and concerns about coming back to in-person classes after isolation during the pandemic, according to the center.
Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource
Dr. Kenneth Han, UC Riverside’s chief medical officer in the new clinic.
At UC Riverside, the new center’s layout placing counseling on a separate floor provides privacy, but the easy proximity to the medical floor also can help physicians and counselors to work closely together and with patients if need be, said Kenneth Han, UC Riverside’s chief medical officer.
“It’s not just about a specific ailment. It’s so much more than that for (a student) to be successful. How are things going in with your classes? With your friends? With your professors? I can see you for your diabetes, your cough, your cold. And we will talk about all those things,” he said.
Last year, about 1,840 students a month came for medical visits and about 590 for counseling and psychological care, the campus reports.
The center handles mainly routine illnesses and injuries like flu, urinary tract infections, stomach pain and sprains and offers vaccinations and birth control. It sends students to local hospitals for emergencies and surgeries.
Credit: Stan Lim / UC Riverside
The Student Health and Counseling Center has 25 exam rooms, more than twice that of the old building.
For example, the center’s doctors will not reset bones and will stitch wounds only if away from the face or hands, officials said. It is open weekday daytime hours, although a nursing phone line is available around the clock, seven days a week, and students may be referred to off-campus urgent care centers on nights and weekends.
Fourth-year student Allison Escobar, a psychology major from Redwood City, said she thinks the new building will attract more students. Recently she worked there as part of a team preparing the center for its opening. It is a big improvement over the old one, which she said “had a lot of things wrong with it.” Here, she said, students especially appreciate the improved and soundproofed counseling rooms. “Students care about their privacy during what they are going through. A lot of consideration for privacy is a huge thing,” she said.
Counselors respond to mental health emergencies
Set to launch within months, a new emergency response team of mental health professionals — rather than campus police — will be first responders to most mental health emergencies such as a suicide threat or depression. In response to systemwide UC policies enacted two years ago, all UC campuses have formed or are starting similar teams.
Credit: Larry Gordon/EdSource
The van of the new crisis response team at UC Riverside.
That is now the preferred alternative to dispatching uniformed police in patrol cars whose presence sometimes escalates a situation, although police are available to counter any violence, officials say. The Riverside campus experiences about four such emergency episodes a month on average.
The new emergency intervention team will have offices in the health center, and its blue van is parked just outside, painted with a rainbow logo declaring “UCR Health, Well-Being & Safety, Supporting Student Success Holistically.”
“We want the right people to address the right issues,” Han said. “If there is an underlying mental health issue, we don’t necessarily need to have security get involved.”
Bringing in the outdoors
The clinic was designed by the HGA architectural firm, which has several offices around California, and was built by Turner Construction. Kevin Day, the project’s design principal architect at HGA, said it was important to provide views of the Box Springs Mountain Reserve, a large park next to campus, through the lobby’s glass walls and big windows as well as to have an outdoor courtyard and balcony with shade. Appointment windows on both floors look like contemporary theater box offices, and the interiors are painted in cool pastel shades.
Connecting the clinic to the natural landscape “becomes a part of the healing process. It is really about creating a welcoming environment,” Day said. Knowing that coming to a medical appointment can be stressful, his team’s goal was to design a building that would help “lower the blood pressure.”
The building takes into account the recent pandemic. The 28 counseling rooms are much larger than usual to provide safe distances between therapist and patient. Several of the 25 urgent care and primary care exam rooms have special ventilation systems to limit the spread of air-borne illnesses.
Credit: Stan Lim / UC Riverside
A Student Health and Counseling Center exam room.
The soundproofing for counseling rooms is a switch from the old building, where therapists sometimes had to use noise machines to block conversations from the public. All those rooms have windows, for a brighter atmosphere. Plus, the center is developing a mobile check-in system so students who do not want to wait in a public lobby can go directly to their appointments when notified via text.
Online counseling became more popular during the pandemic, and that will still be offered as an option. However, many colleges and universities across the nation reported overall declines in demand for all counseling services during the pandemic even as mental health problems increased. Numbers have rebounded at many schools but not to the pre-pandemic level. UC Riverside hopes to build up those visit numbers as students get familiar with the new building.
Unless they opt out and use family or other coverage, UC Riverside students pay about $2,100 a year for campus health insurance as part of their registration fees and receive most medical services without any additional costs. All students, regardless of insurance status, can get free, unlimited counseling sessions, although most usually need only four to six visits; that is funded through the mandatory $410 annual student services fee.
in Robin Bryant’s class at West Contra Costa Unified’s Stege Elementary School are learning how to add and subtract.
Photo: Andrew Reed/EdSource
This story was updated on Nov. 15 to correct information received from a source.
Most exams to prove teachers are prepared to teach reading are ineffective, according to an analysis released Tuesday by theNational Council on Teacher Quality. Only six of the 25 licensure tests currently used in the U.S. are considered to be strong assessments, including the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, which California will do away with in 2025.
Fifteen of the 25 reading licensure tests being used in the U.S. were “weak” and four were “acceptable,” according to the analysis. One state does not require a reading licensure test.
Council researchers based their rankings on whether the licensure exam adequately addresses the five core components of the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. They also took into consideration whether the tests combined reading with other subjects and tested teachers on methods of reading instruction already debunked by researchers.
“The science of reading or scientifically-based reading instruction is reading instruction that’s been informed by decades of research on the brain and research on how people and how children learn to read,” said Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan research and policy organization.
California will replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, or RICA, with a literacy performance assessment that allows teachers to demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips and written reflections on their practice.
“The state really needs to ensure that this new assessment is aligned to the science of reading and can provide an accurate and reliable signal that teachers have the necessary knowledge and skills to teach reading effectively,” Peske told EdSource.
The RICA addresses more than 75% of the topics in each of the five components of the science of reading. The state also gained points for not combining reading and other subjects in the examination, according to the analysis.
In California, the reading instruction assessment is required of teacher candidates seeking a multiple-subject, a prekindergarten to third grade early childhood education or an education specialist credential.
The RICA has not been popular in California in recent years. Critics have said it does not align with current state English language arts standards, is racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.
Between 2017 and 2021, more than 40% of teachers failed the test the first time they took it, according to state data. Black and Latino teacher candidates overall have lower passing rates on the test than their white and Asian peers.
“I think that when you have a test that is aligned to the research like the RICA and … a third of candidates are failing, it signals that they’re not getting the preparation aligned to the assessment, aligned to what’s on the test,” Peske said.
Low student test scores nationwide have most states reconsidering how they teach literacy. Fewer than half of students who took the California Smarter Balanced Tests met or exceeded state standards in English language arts in 2023.
California Senate Bill 488, passed in 2021, called for new literacy standards and a teacher performance assessment that emphasized teaching foundational reading skills that include phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency. The new standards also included support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs. The California Dyslexia Guidelines have been incorporated for the first time.
The California literacy performance assessment that will replace the RICA on July 1, 2025, is based on new literacy standards and teaching performance expectations approved by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing last year. The standards and teaching expectations are derived from state literacy policies and guidance, including the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework and the California Comprehensive State Literacy Plan.
The performance assessment was designed by a team of teachers, professors, researchers, nonprofit education advocacy organizations and school district administrators. It will be piloted in next spring, said Nancy Brynelson, statewide literacy co-director at the California Department of Education, who serves as a liaison to the assessment design team.
“There was a view that a performance assessment would do a better job of showing what a teacher can really do, how a teacher can apply their knowledge about literacy to a classroom situation and to particular students who need support,” Brynelson said. “And there had been a call for changing that test for quite a while.”
The assessment will be revised in the summer and field-tested with a larger number of teacher preparation programs in the 2024-25 school year, said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
“High-stakes standardized tests evaluate whether prospective teachers know enough about a subject, while performance assessments measure whether students can apply the knowledge appropriately in various contexts,” Sandy said. “As such, performance assessments serve to strengthen and deepen a prospective teacher’s knowledge and skill based on authentic practice in real classrooms.”
Among its many stupid decisions, Elon Musk’s DOGE cut the staff of NOAA and the Natuonal Weather Service. Experts warned that people would die without accurate warnings. Trump ignored the warnings; so did Republicans in Congress. The cuts were imposed. The savings were a pittance. Unprepared for the storm and flooding in Texas a few days ago, people died.
As the best and the brightest were being fired at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by senseless and draconian ‘DOGE’ cuts earlier this year under Trump, with no reason given except for the need to cut a paltry amount of the government’s budget, experts warned repeatedly that the cuts would have deadly consequences during the storm season. And they have.
Dozens and dozens of stories have been written in the media citing hundreds of experts which said that weather forecasting was never going to be the same, and that inaccurate forecasts were going to lead to fewer evacuations, impaired preparedness of first responders, and deadly consequences. I quoted many of them in my daily Bulletins and wrote about this issue nearly 20 different times.
And the chickens have come home to roost. Hundreds of people have already been killed across the US in a variety of storms including deadly tornadoes – many of which were inaccurately forecasted. And we are just entering peak hurricane season. Meteorologist Chris Vagasky posted earlier this spring on social media: “The world’s example for weather services is being destroyed.”
Now, after severe flooding in non-evacuated areas in Texas has left at least 24 dead with dozens more missing, including several young girls at a summer camp, Texas officials are blaming their failure to act on a faulty forecast by Donald Trump’s new National Weather Service gutted by cuts to their operating budget and most experienced personnel.
At a press conference last night, one official said: “The original forecast we received on Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3-6” of rain in the Concho Valley and 4-8” of rain in the hill country. The amount of rain that fell in these locations was never in any of their forecasts. Everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service. They did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”
Reuters published a story just a few days ago, one of many warning about this problem: “In May, every living former director of the NWS signed on to an open letter with a warning that, if continued, Trump’s cuts to federal weather forecasting would create ‘needless loss of life’. Despite bipartisan congressional pushback for a restoration in staffing and funding to the NWS, sharp budget cuts remain on pace in projections for the 2026 budget for the NOAA, the parent organization of the NWS.”
But Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose agency oversees NOAA, testified before Congress on June 5 that the cuts wouldn’t be a problem because “we are transforming how we track storms and forecast weather with cutting-edge technology. Under no circumstances am I going to let public safety or public forecasting be touched.” Apparently the “cutting edge technology” hasn’t arrived yet.
And now presumably FEMA will be called upon to help pick up the pieces of shattered lives in Texas – an agency that Trump said repeatedly that he wants to abolish. In fact, Trump’s first FEMA director Cameron Hamilton was fired one day after he testified before Congress that FEMA should not be abolished.
The voters of Texas decided that they wanted Donald Trump and Greg Abbott to be in charge of the government services they received. That is exactly what they are getting. And as of this writing on Saturday morning, Trump still hasn’t said a word about the storm and the little girls who were killed at the camp.
However, Trump was seen dancing on the balcony of the White House last night celebrating the latest round of cuts in his budget bill that just became law so billionaires and corporations can have huge tax cuts. People are dying and more will die because of their recklessness, just like we saw during covid. And now millions won’t even have health insurance to deal with the consequences.
Melissa Ramirez, a first grade teacher at Lockeford Elementary in Lodi, holds up a flashcard while students say and spell the word ‘water.’
Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource
Despite a newfound national focus on the science of reading, states, including California, aren’t doing enough to support and train teachers to effectively teach literacy, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Thirty-two states have passed laws or implemented policies related to evidence-based reading instruction in the last decade. Despite that, nearly every state could do more to support literacy instruction, according to the report, “Five Policy Actions to Strengthen Implementation of the Science of Reading.“
“While states are rightly prioritizing literacy, they are not focusing enough attention on teacher effectiveness and teacher capacity to teach reading aligned to the science,” council President Heather Peske told EdSource. “If these efforts are to succeed … the state needs to ensure that teachers are prepared and supported from the time that they are in teacher preparation programs to the time that they enter classrooms.”
The report rated states as strong, moderate, weak or unacceptable, based on whether they have policies to ensure students receive science-based reading instruction that includes teaching them to sound out words, a process known as phonics. Only 12 states, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia, were rated as strong.
The state gets high marks for setting reading standards for teacher preparation programs, adopting a strong reading licensure test for teachers, and requiring districts to select high-quality reading curricula. California scored lower on whether it requires ongoing literacy training for teachers and on its oversight of teacher preparation programs to ensure they are teaching the science of reading.
Not all teachers are trained in the science of reading
While California provides funds to school districts to offer literacy training to teachers, it does not require all elementary school teachers to be trained in the science of reading, as other states do, Peske said, adding that without proper training, teachers often flounder when teaching literacy, despite having access to high-quality instructional materials.
Effective teaching is critical to improving students’ reading skills. More than 90% of students would learn to read with effective reading instruction, according to the report.
About 40% of students entering fourth grade in the United States can read at a basic level, according to the research. The latest California test scores show fewer than half of the students who were tested were proficient in reading. These results have not changed much in the past decade.
“Why do we see staggering numbers of children, especially children of color and from low-income backgrounds, without fundamental literacy skills? said Denise Forte, president and CEO of The Education Trust. “Because in many districts and schools nationwide, outdated teaching methods and curricula that have been proven ineffective, and even harmful, are still being used.”
The report comes as California and other states are renewing their focus on the science of reading, which is based on over 50 years of research that provides a clear picture of how effective literacy instruction can produce a skilled reader, Peske said.
Only two of the 41 teacher preparation programs reviewed in California adequately cover all five components of the science of reading, according to the report. The five components include phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
California puts renewed emphasis on reading
But that could change soon. By July 1, California will require teacher preparation programs to provide literacy training based on the science of reading and the state’s new literacy standards.The new standards include support for struggling readers, English learners and pupils with exceptional needs, incorporating dyslexia guidelines for the first time.
The state is also eliminating the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment in 2025. It will be replaced with a performance assessment based on literacy standards and a new set of Teaching Performance Expectations.
“This latest set of standards and TPEs are probably the strongest statements we’ve had about reading and literacy in teacher preparation,” said Mary Vixie Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. “We are going gangbusters to get them in the field.”
More than half of the states use outside accreditors to review teacher preparation programs, which researchers say is not ideal. The report includes California as one of those states, but Sandy says that is not the case. Teacher preparation programs in California must be reviewed every seven years by a commission-approved institutional review board made up of university faculty and practitioners across all credential areas, Sandy said. Members are trained on the standards, or have a background or credential in the subject being reviewed, she said.
Teacher preparation programs that want a national accreditation can choose to use an outside accreditor, but it is not required for state accreditation, Sandy said.
California should also include data it collects on teacher pass rates on the state reading licensure test as part of the review of teacher preparation programs, Peske said.
California’s changes to teacher preparation and emphasis on the science of reading were taken into consideration by National Council on Teacher Quality’s researchers when evaluating the state, Peske said. The research was also sent to the California Department of Education at least twice for review. No one at the department said the research was in error, according to the council.
The council has provided a guide to help states implement and sustain strong reading instruction.
“Helping all children learn to read is possible when you have teachers who’ve been prepared in the science of reading,” Peske said. “Much like an orchestra needs each section of instruments to come together to successfully create music, states need to implement multiple teacher-focused reading policies that work together to improve student outcomes.”
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that directed President Donald Trump to return control of National Guard troops to California after he deployed them there following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.
The court said it would hold a hearing on the matter on June 17. The ruling came only hours after a federal judge’s order was to take effect at noon Friday.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had asked the judge for an emergency stop to troops helping carry out immigration raids, had praised the earlier ruling.
“Today was really about a test of democracy, and today we passed the test,” Newsom said in a news conference before the appeals court decision.
The White House had called Breyer’s order “unprecedented” and said it “puts our brave federal officials in danger.”
A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The restraining order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which takes effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of an American city, a move has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country.
“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote of Mr. Trump’s orders. But he gave the administration a chance to appeal.
A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to “return control” of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom after the president issued an extraordinary order deploying them to Los Angeles over the weekend.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, presiding over the case, granted California’s request for a temporary restraining order, granting the federal government a stay until Friday to appeal the ruling.
Breyer had expressed skepticism at a hearing Thursday over the matter, questioning whether President Trump had operated within his authority.
“We’re talking about the president exercising his authority, and of course, the president is limited in his authority,” Breyer said. “That’s the difference between the president and King George.”
“We live in response to a monarchy,” the judge continued, adding: “Line drawing is important, because it establishes a system of process.
In the lengthy decision, Breyer wrote that he is “troubled by the implication” inherent in Trump administration’s argument “that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”
The Fresno Unified school board on Friday appointed Misty Her, the district’s deputy superintendent, to lead the district on an interim basis while the board conducts a national search for someone to fill the permanent role.
The decision came after closed-session discussions at a Monday meeting and during special board meetings about the interim position on Wednesday and Friday.
As interim superintendent of California’s third-largest district, Her becomes the nation’s highest-ranking Hmong education leader and brings stability that the district needs, board members said at the news conference after Friday’s meeting.
Her appointment, which becomes effective on Wednesday when her contract is approved, allows Fresno Unified to “maintain momentum” without rushing the search process, board President Susan Wittrup told reporters.
“We need an interim superintendent who will continue to implement the important initiatives that the district is pursuing and who will ensure that we are fully prepared for the first day of school in the fall,” Wittrup said.
The school board said on April 10 that it would consider both internal and external candidates in the search for a new superintendent — a change in the search process that was spurred by weeks of community outrage.
The outrage followed a March 20 closed-session decision to interview internal candidates before deciding how to proceed with the search process. Details of the 4-3 decision were leaked to the media, sparking community anger that pushed the board to reverse course on April 3 and postpone already scheduled interviews.
After the April 10 decision, the search process was supposed to include community participation with the board providing additional updates at other meetings. Although board members met on April 24 for a regularly scheduled meeting, the board president didn’t disclose a timeline in a seemingly stalled process, The Fresno Bee reported.
Superintendent Bob Nelson announced his resignation on Jan. 22; his last day is July 31. The school district confirmed in a media release about Nelson’s resignation that Her would be named interim superintendent, but naming her on Friday is a move that most likely won’t restore community trust, according to Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla.
“The FUSD school board continues to erode community trust with its handling of the superintendent search process,” Bonilla said in an emailed statement following the announcement. “The board’s decision to announce the appointment of Interim Superintendent Misty Her during the Friday News Dump period, following two abnormally scheduled special meetings that effectively sidelined public input, undermines transparency and further erodes community trust in the superintendent selection process.”
So far, the search process has been engulfed in community angst about an alleged lack of transparency and accusations that the process had been tainted by politics, EdSource reported. District employees at the center of the search, including Her, even faced racial harassment and threats.
Reflecting on the last few weeks, board member Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas said on Friday that the board is now where it needs to be — united to find its next superintendent who can advance student achievement. Most Fresno Unified students failed to meet the state standards in 2023.
The district leaders did not answer questions at Friday’s news conference but will host another one Wednesday before the board’s regularly scheduled meeting.
“Moving forward, the board must demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and transparency in its decision-making processes,” Bonilla said. “We urge the board to prioritize meaningful community engagement and input in the selection of the next superintendent to rebuild trust and ensure accountability to all stakeholders.”
Nelson, board members say the appointment is what Fresno Unified needs
The board’s unanimous decision to appoint Her is what the Fresno Unified community needs, district leaders said.
“There is nobody I am more confident in leading our Fresno Unified family through this transitionary period than you,” Nelson said, addressing Her, at the Friday special board meeting. “You have never apologized about your relentless focus on student achievement, and that’s what we really need at this time.”
Her’s entire 30-year career has been in Fresno Unified where she’s held many positions, including a bilingual instructional aide, a school leader and deputy superintendent in 2021.
“Most important to me,” trustee Veva Islas said, “Misty’s lived experience allows her to relate to our disadvantaged students that no other superintendent can.”
Born in a prisoner of war camp in Laos, Her’s family escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand after the end of the Vietnam War before eventually coming to the United States and settling in Fresno when she was a young child, Fresno Unified said in an emailed statement. That firsthand experience and her understanding of the challenges faced by students from diverse backgrounds have shaped her into a passionate and effective leader, the school district stated.
Based on 2022-23 state data, more than 92% of Fresno Unified students are minorities, and according to 2023-24 district data, 88% of students are living in disadvantaged circumstances.
The school board, which has yet to lay out a timeline, share a job description for the next superintendent or select another search firm to lead the search, will update the community about the national search at its May 8 meeting.
The board is “committed and unified” to not only find the next superintendent but to support Her in the meantime, board members said.
“Fresno Unified is my life. From elementary school through more than three decades as an employee and a current Fresno Unified parent, my commitment runs deep,” Her said in the district’s statement.
“I am proud to serve our students and their families as one of their own,” she said. “Our Fresno Unified family deserves a leader who is a successful Fresno Unified graduate, is committed to this community and truly believes in our students and staff.”
