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  • California’s future demands higher-ed coordination now

    California’s future demands higher-ed coordination now


    Credit: Larry Gordon / EdSource

    Despite being the nation’s economic powerhouse with the largest postsecondary system in America, California stands alone among all 50 states without a higher education coordinating entity. This gap has resulted in missed opportunities and unrealized potential — and it’s a systemic failure that leaves real people behind every day.

    Ask Fred P., who applied for unemployment when he lost his job during the pandemic. What California’s systems failed to tell him was that he qualified for the Golden State Education and Training Grant designed to help displaced workers like him. As his savings dwindled and bills mounted, available support remained hidden in bureaucratic silos. Fred only discovered the program months after his unemployment benefits expired — and only because his partner happened to work in state policy and budget.

    Meanwhile, millions of other Californians, without such connections, remain unaware of potential pathways to economic mobility and continue to fall through the cracks of our state’s disconnected education and workforce systems. During the pandemic, over 19 million Californians lost jobs and applied for unemployment, yet very few were informed they qualified for this scholarship program, which should have connected them to training opportunities for career advancement. California allocated $500 million to this program, but two years later, only $20 million had reached just 6,100 individuals. Why? Because the agency administering scholarships couldn’t identify unemployed workers, and the unemployment office couldn’t connect people to the available education funding. Two state systems, both serving Californians, but operating in silos, left resources untapped and communities unsupported.

    This fragmentation creates a maze that widens opportunity gaps, particularly for those without the social capital or resources to guide them through complex systems. At the start of the pandemic, over 5 million Californians intended to enroll in college in the next two years, but many — especially especially Latino, Black, Native American residents, first-generation college students, Californians with children, and those working low-wage jobs — face a gauntlet of barriers that numerous disjointed access programs fail to address. Meanwhile, more than a billion dollars in education and workforce development funding goes unused, while Californians seeking better opportunities have trouble finding quality training opportunities to reach their career goals, and employers struggle to find qualified workers for open positions.

    These disconnected systems don’t just create inconvenience — they perpetuate cycles of poverty. For Californians living on the margins, the cost associated with college —an established path to economic mobility — is a huge barrier and makes it seem out of reach. Meanwhile, over a hundred programs exist that could defray the financial burden and increase college access. But, without coordination, these public benefit programs designed to improve economic stability remain inaccessible to those who need them most. When systems don’t talk to each other, the promise of these programs remains unfulfilled, leaving workers, families and employers struggling in an economy that demands better solutions.

    The solution is clear: coordination. And it’s now within reach. Both Gov. Gavin’s administration and key legislative champion Assemblymember Mike Fong have aligned in their support of establishing the California Education Interagency Council. This council would bridge the divides between our TK-12 education, higher education, workforce development, and social services systems, creating a coherent ecosystem that powers economic growth and resilience for individuals and the state.

    This isn’t about adding bureaucracy — it’s about setting up the needed infrastructure to fulfill the promise of economic mobility and good jobs for Californians — the driving reason so many pursue higher education in the first place. With this council in place:

    • Unemployed workers would be connected to education and training programs that would strengthen their re-entry to the workforce.
    • Residents experiencing financial hardship who receive public benefits would enter into education pathways that lead to living-wage careers, creating intergenerational economic mobility.
    • Students would easily navigate clear paths from high school through college to meaningful employment.
    • Schools and colleges would receive actionable labor market insights to shape programming.
    • Employers would find skilled workers to fill critical positions, strengthening California’s economy.

    Collectively, these outcomes strengthen California by fostering a robust economy and thriving communities built on shared prosperity.

    Finally, the council would enhance accountability by tracking outcomes across systems, identifying what works and what doesn’t, and ensuring programs reach their intended recipients. A coordinated approach is especially critical now, during challenging budget times. California must ensure every dollar works. The proposed council would maximize returns on billions of existing investments by eliminating redundancies, filling workforce gaps, and ensuring that programs help the people they are designed to serve.

    For too long, we’ve relied on spot-fixes and piecemeal solutions. We’ve watched promising initiatives fall short of their potential. The time has come, with alignment between the governor’s office and the Legislature, to build the coordination infrastructure that connects Californians with opportunity. Our state’s promises of prosperity and bright futures depend on it.

    •••

    Su Jin Jez is CEO of California Competes, a nonprofit working to solve California’s higher education and workforce issues through research, advocacy and collective action.

    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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  • Covid recovery funds are gone; what now for California students?

    Covid recovery funds are gone; what now for California students?


    Credit: Pexels / Mikhail Nilov

    California’s most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores revealed troubling trends in student achievement. Despite significant financial investments, student performance continues to struggle to reach full academic recovery. Worse, achievement gaps between the highest- and lowest-performing students widened even further.

    The timing of these results couldn’t be worse. With California districts spending the last of their $23 billion in federal relief funds last year, schools are now facing a critical juncture. With declining enrollment reducing their budgets and only modest new state investments coming this year, it will be tough for districts to dramatically scale up promising initiatives like high-dosage tutoring or extensive summer programming.

    So, what levers do state and local policymakers have at their disposal? By looking at the data and learning from other successful low-cost interventions, the state has an opportunity to reverse its slide and drive student gains.

    First, kids have to be in school to learn. In California, chronic absenteeism rates have come down significantly from their pandemic levels, but they’re still nearly twice as high as they were five years ago. Black students, English learners, students with disabilities, and other marginalized groups are missing too much school. 

    Fortunately, there are low-cost, high-impact strategies that schools can adopt to ensure students are present and engaged. For example, a research study looking at a large California district found that missing a part of the school day — for referrals for in-school discipline or participation in extracurricular activities — predicted short- and long-run outcomes for students. Many school districts are already tracking these measures; the next step is using them to inform and implement interventions such as parent notifications or individualized support.

    Second, once kids are back in school, the next step is ensuring that classroom time is used well. This is especially critical in California, given that it ranks in the bottom 10 states in terms of total instructional hours per school year. Last year’s law to ban or limit the use of cell phones during school hours should help reduce digital distractions, but the research on attention is clear that humans are not good at multitasking and can take a long time to refocus when our thinking is interrupted.

    For schools, that means that every little interruption counts. Students being pulled out of class for special interventions or testing, outdoor noise and intercom announcements are all important in their own way, but they also add up. One study found that a typical classroom might be interrupted 2,000 times per year and that these disruptions can result in the loss of 10 to 20 days of instructional time. School district leaders could conduct attention audits to maximize and better understand how schools are using time and all of their technological tools.

    Last but not least is the question of what students are (and are not) learning. California’s test results suggest that reading is a particular problem area. Since 2019, California’s reading scores on NAEP are down 4 points in fourth grade and 5 points in eighth grade. But those are averages. Last year, just 7% of California’s Black students met the “Proficient” benchmark and 72% fell below “Basic” in fourth grade reading.

    When students lack foundational reading skills, the impact compounds across subjects. All students need and deserve evidence-based literacy instruction, with sustained focus on the relationships between sound and print, exposure to rich text, thought-provoking content, and both general and domain-specific vocabulary that builds knowledge of the world.

    Improving reading scores is hard work, and other states are dealing with similar challenges. But California — unlike many other states — has not yet passed a comprehensive reading bill.

    This is where California could stand to learn from some of the higher-performing states on NAEP, sometimes called “the nation’s report card.” Specifically, it might surprise some readers to learn that Mississippi made the largest reading gains over the last 10 years. Last year, Mississippi ranked seventh overall but third for Black students and first for low-income students. California, in contrast, came in 37th, 33rd and 28th, respectively.

    How did Mississippi make this turnaround? It took a long-term, systematic approach to its literacy efforts. It invested in teacher development and coaching, identified and supported struggling readers as early as possible and equipped teachers with high-quality instructional materials.

    This combination of high-quality instructional materials with diagnostic data and student supports has the potential to improve outcomes for California’s most vulnerable students, and to create a more equitable education system for all. By leveraging data it already tracks and focusing on the delivery of core instruction, California can build a stronger foundation for student success.

    •••

    Lindsay Dworkin is senior vice president of policy and government affairs at NWEA, a K-12 assessment and research organization.

    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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  • Joyce Vance: Do Republicans Care About Trump’s Tyranny? If Not Now, When?

    Joyce Vance: Do Republicans Care About Trump’s Tyranny? If Not Now, When?


    Joyce Vance was US Attorney for Northern Alabama and a steady voice of reason. She wonders in this post what it will take to awaken Republicans to Trump’s erosion of the Constitution and our rights.

    She writes:

    Why doesn’t any of this break through? Why do Republicans still support Trump?

    The reporting in The Atlantic on the Signal chain? The voter suppression executive order Trump issued…? The foul-ups in deporting supposed gang members who turn out not to be? Why aren’t Americans out on the streets protesting in massive numbers like we have seen people in other countries doing—Israel, Georgia, Turkey, South Korea, and others? In part, it’s because a large number of people who are Trump supporters just don’t care. Their guy can do anything, and they don’t care. They’ll believe any lie, and they’ll ignore any horrible; they’re all in for Trump for reasons the rest of us still struggle to understand.

    The question is, how many of the rest of us are there? By that I mean Americans who, regardless of party affiliation, still care about truth and democracy. Those words are no longer just philosophical notions to be bandied about, an elite construct. They are the reality of what we are fighting a rearguard action to try and save.

    Statistics from the last election provide reason for some optimism. Donald Trump won with 49.9% of the popular vote. Although he has claimed he has a mandate for a radical transformation of government, the numbers just don’t back that up. And they don’t suggest there’s a mandate for putting out military information on a Signal chain being used on personal phones, rather than on secured government systems. If there ever truly was a mandate for Trump, the reality is, it’s evaporating day by day as egg prices stay high and people lose their jobs. And now, there’s this, a cavalier disregard for the safety of our troops, lax security with one member of the Signal group apparently in Russia while communications were ongoing, what looks like an effort to do an end run around government records retention procedures.

    Will the Atlantic story break through? It should. Trump’s Vice President, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA director, his DNI, all put American pilots in harm’s way. If that’s not enough for Senate Republicans to break ranks with Trump, especially those on subcommittees that have oversight into military and intelligence community operations, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

    Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…) 

    The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong. 

    As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

    It’s hard to imagine that the Signal chain for the Houthi attack was just a one-off, that they only went to Signal for this moment. Is this how this new government is operating routinely—off the books, in a hidden fashion designed to avoid scrutiny and accountability? 

    It may seem like a minor point with everything else that’s going on, but this is how autocrats work, not how a democracy operates. That’s the danger we are now facing, and this is another marker on the path to tyranny.

    Calls are mounting for Hegseth and others to resign. Anyone who would engage in this kind of behavior and then argue that it was not improper rather than apologizing and promising to do better should leave government, whether voluntarily or not. But they should never have been confirmed in the first place. There is a cancer on the heart of the presidency, to quote from the Watergate era, and it’s infecting all of us.

    We’re in this together,

    Joyce



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