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  • One Temecula Valley PAC submits signatures for Joseph Komrosky recall 

    One Temecula Valley PAC submits signatures for Joseph Komrosky recall 


    Temecula Valley Unified School District board member Joseph Komrosky.

    Credit: Temecula Valley Unified

    One Temecula Valley PAC has submitted 5,236 signatures to initiate a recall election against Temecula Valley Unified School District’s school board president, Joseph Komrosky — surpassing the requirement of 4,280 two days before Friday’s deadline. 

    The Registrar of Voters in Riverside County will now formally count and verify the legitimacy of the signatures to determine if the recall campaign will lead to an election. Jeff Pack, co-founder of One Temecula Valley political action committee — which aims to combat “a very real and dangerous threat to local governance posed by political and religious extremist views” — anticipates that the process will take a couple of months. 

    “We’re looking … forward to being this organization that demands good governance, and I think this is a great start,” Pack said. “I’m really proud.” 

    In its initial stages, the recall campaign was also gathering signatures for board members Jennifer Wiersma and Danny Gonzalez, who, with Komrosky, make up the board’s conservative majority. 

    Since their election in November 2022, the three have together banned critical race theory in the classroom, temporarily barred the Social Studies Alive! curriculum because its supplemental material mentioned LGBTQ+ activist Harvey Milk, fired former Superintendent Jodi McClay without cause and passed policies mandating that school officials notify parents if their child indicates they are transgender. 

    However, Pack said the campaign eventually decided to focus on Komrosky because his recall seemed to be the most likely, based on the number of signatures gathered for his recall. And flipping his seat alone would be enough to tip the board’s current majority. 

    Meanwhile, some community members have speculated that Gonzalez plans to leave the state altogether, noting that his house is currently on the market for sale. 

    Neither Komrosky nor Gonzalez responded to EdSource’s request for comment. Wiersma, who stated she may be able to respond, did not provide a comment by EdSource’s deadline. 

    The road to recall

    The effort to recall Komrosky, Wiersma and Gonzalez began early in June when Pack met a group of moms at a local duck pond. 

    The moms, who eventually formed the organization EnACT Temecula-Equity in Action, wanted to initiate a recall against Wiersma.  

    “Well, why don’t we just do all three? he told them “We’ll back you. We have money. We can get all this stuff together, get all the paperwork together and let’s do it.”

    The moms questioned his idea to start a recall for all three. 

    “Which one deserves to stay? Which one do you want to leave there?” Pack said he responded. “And nobody can answer that question.” 

    The recall effort began to gain steam, he said. And in one day, they had gathered the 35 signatures needed to file a notice of intent to recall for each board member. 

    In the months that followed, teachers and community members went door to door, gathering more signatures. They also stationed themselves at the duck pond during weekends. 

    Eventually, the recall effort also garnered support from organizations including the Temecula Valley Educators Association, the League of United Latin American Citizens Inland Empire chapter and the NAACP’s Southwest Riverside branch 1034. 

    “As educators, we’re all just hoping that the focus of the district can return to student performance, supporting learning environments to maximize how teachers can do their jobs,” said Edgar Diaz, the president of the Temecula Valley Educators Association. 

    He added that he’s “glad the community came out and supported” the recall, showing “that this is actually a community issue, not a teacher- or a union-driven issue.” 

    Reactions to the recall

    The recall effort has been met with mixed reactions from members of the community and beyond. 

    While Pack said there has been enthusiastic support for Komrosky’s recall, they were unable to gather the 3,987 signatures needed to get Wiersma’s on the ballot. 

    Pastor Tim Thompson of Evangelical 412 Church Temecula Valley — who has consistently stood by the board’s majority — has said he doubts a recall election will take place. 

    “If they get their way and this goes to an election, what we’re going to find is the same thing we found in the election cycle last period, is that the vast majority of people in the Temecula Valley support these three,” Thompson said. “They’re happy that they’re in there. They’re happy for the changes that they’re making.”

    Thompson also commended the current board for fulfilling their duty to “protect the youth in our community.” 

    Temecula Valley district board member Steven Schwartz, however, disagrees, saying most board decisions have been “political and not educational.” 

    As a member of the board minority, Schwartz said he has received mostly positive feedback from parents and community members who he said feel the same way as he does. 

    Meanwhile, he said many of the speakers who have voiced their support for the conservative majority at meetings do not come from the community. 

    “When you have people coming from outside disrupting meetings … calling people names, what is that supposed to prove?” Schwartz said. “What is that supposed to do for our children and for schools?” 

    Regardless of the outcome, Pack said he is proud of the effort and that the recall’s advocates were able to make history in Temecula. 

    “This is entirely volunteers that are local, and it’s really, really something that I don’t think this community has ever seen,” Pack said. “It’s a big growing-up moment, I think, for the city of Temecula.”

    Editors’ note: This story has been updated to correct a name’s spelling and revise the number of signatures needed to file the notice of intent to recall.





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

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


    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ●●●

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

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





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  • CTA-sponsored legislation would remove one of state’s last required tests for teachers

    CTA-sponsored legislation would remove one of state’s last required tests for teachers


    First grade teacher Sandra Morales discusses sentences with a student.

    Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource

    Newly proposed legislation sponsored by the California Teachers Association would eliminate all performance assessments teachers are required to pass, including one for literacy that it supported three years ago. The result could leave in place an unpopular written test that the literacy performance assessment was designed to replace.

    Senate Bill 1263, authored by state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA, through which teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice. 

    Eliminating the assessment will increase the number of effective teachers in classrooms, as the state continues to contend with a teacher shortage, said Newman, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

    “One key to improving the educator pipeline is removing barriers that may be dissuading otherwise talented and qualified prospective people from pursuing a career as an educator,” Newman said in a statement to EdSource.

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

    The literacy performance assessment is scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. It is meant to replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment set to be scrapped in 2025. 

    New law could leave RICA in place

    The proposed legislation appears to leave in place a requirement that candidates for a preliminary multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a reading instruction competence assessment, said David DeGuire, a director at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

    “At this time, it is unclear what that assessment would look like, but it could be that the state continues to use the current version of the RICA,” he said.

    Newman will present the legislation to the Senate Education Committee in the next few months. Discussions about whether the RICA remains in use are likely to take place during the legislative process.

    Rubio recently became aware of the new legislation and had not yet discussed it with Newman.

    “For three years, I worked arduously and collaboratively with a broad range of education leaders, including parent groups, teacher associations and other stakeholders to modernize a key component of our educational system that in my 17 years as a classroom teacher and school administrator I saw as counterproductive to our students’ learning,” Rubio said of Senate Bill 488.

    Teachers union changes course 

    The California Teachers Association, which originally supported Senate Bill 488, now wants all performance assessments, including the literacy performance assessment, eliminated.

    “We are all scratching our heads,” said Yolie Flores, of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based education advocacy organization. “We were really blindsided by this (legislation), given the momentum around strengthening our teacher prep programs.”

    The results of a survey of almost 1,300 CTA members last year convinced the state teachers union to push for the elimination of the CalTPA, said Leslie Littman, vice president of the union. Teachers who took the survey said the test caused stress, took away time that could have been used to collaborate with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students, she said.

    “I think what we were probably not cognizant of at that time, and it really has become very clear of late, is just how much of a burden these assessments have placed on these teacher candidates,” Littman said. 

    Teacher candidates would be better served if they were observed over longer periods of time, during student teaching, apprenticeships, residencies and mentorship programs, to determine if they were ready to teach, Littman said. This would also allow a mentor to counsel and support the candidate to ensure they have the required skills.

    California joins science of reading movement

    California has joined a national effort to change how reading is being taught in schools. States nationwide are rethinking balanced literacy, which has its roots in whole language instruction or teaching children to recognize words by sight, and replacing it with a method that teaches them to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics. 

    Smarter Balanced test scores, released last fall, show that only 46.6% of the state’s students who were tested met academic standards in English.

    Last week Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, introduced Assembly Bill 2222, which would mandate that schools use evidence-based reading instruction. California, a “local control” state, currently only encourages school districts to incorporate fundamental reading skills, including phonics, into instruction.

     “It (Newman’s SB 1263) goes against not only the movement, but everything we know from best practices, evidence, research, science, of how we need to equip new teachers and existing teachers, frankly, to teach literacy,” Flores said. “And that we would wipe it away at this very moment where we’re finally getting some traction is just very concerning.”

    Lori DePole, co-director of DeCoding Dyslexia California, said the proposed legislation would cut any progress the state has made “off at the knees.” 

    Among her concerns is the elimination of the requirement, also authorized by Senate Bill 488, that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing certify that teacher preparation programs are teaching literacy aligned to state standards and a provision that requires the commission to report to the state Legislature annually on how stakeholders are meeting the requirements of the law.

    “It would be going away,” DePole said. “Everyone agreed with SB 488, all the supporters agreed, this was the direction California needed to go to strengthen teacher prep with respect to literacy. And before it can even be fully implemented, we’re going to do a 180 with this legislation. It makes no sense.”

    Flores said teachers want to be equipped to teach reading using evidence-based techniques, but many don’t know how.

    “We know that reading is the gateway, and if kids can’t read, it’s practically game over, right?” said Flores. “And we are saying with this bill that it doesn’t matter, that we don’t really need to teach and show that teachers know how to teach reading.”

    Teacher tests replaced by coursework, degrees

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

    Littman disagrees with the idea that there will be no accountability for teachers if the legislation passes. “There’s always been, and will continue to be, an evaluation component for all of our teachers in this state,” she said. “It just depends on what your district does and how they implement that. There’s always been a system of accountability for folks.”





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  • LAUSD condemns immigration raids as one unfolds next to a school

    LAUSD condemns immigration raids as one unfolds next to a school


    A rumor spread quickly on Monday morning that Huntington Park High School in southeast Los Angeles might be the site of a raid after federal immigration agents were seen at a Home Depot nearby.

    Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales, EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • LAUSD assures students’ and families’ safety during graduation ceremonies.
    • Huntington Park schools activate emergency protocols amid ICE activity.
    • More summer school locations, plus virtual option, made available to students who fear ICE raids.

    Los Angeles Unified School District’s superintendent and board members condemned the raids and arrests of undocumented immigrants on Monday during a press conference at the district’s headquarters in downtown L.A. Meanwhile, 7 miles away, another raid was unfolding next to a high school, creating new tension and apprehension.

    Around 8:30 a.m., videos posted on social media platforms showed what appeared to be immigration agents chasing and arresting day laborers by the city’s Home Depot, which sits behind and in sight of Huntington Park High School.

    Simultaneously, a graduation ceremony for a local elementary school was taking place in the high school’s auditorium. Many people online began speculating that the ceremony might be the target of an immigration raid. It wasn’t, but the fear was real.

    “These are communities of resilience and hope — places where generations have worked hard to build a better life, and yet our families are now forced to live in fear, looking over their shoulders on the way to school or their child’s graduation,” Rocio Rivas, vice president of L.A. Unified’s school board, said at the press conference. “This is just simply wrong.”

    Huntington Park’s residents are predominantly Latino, immigrant and working class, a demographic that has been the target of many of the known immigration raids in recent days.

    A protest was organized within hours of immigration enforcement activity next to a high school in the city of Huntington Park, commonly known as HP.
    Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales, EdSource

    ‘Perimeters of safety’

    The district’s protocol, which includes offering families the option of remaining on school grounds and notifying the district of immigration enforcement activity so they can determine the appropriate response, kicked into gear. An alternative exit door on the side farthest from Home Depot was opened.

    A Huntington Park High official later confirmed that immigration agents made no attempt to enter the school, though a public statement addressing the rumor was not shared online until hours later. An attendee at the graduation ceremony, who declined to share her name, confirmed via a TikTok message that at the end of the ceremony, a school official announced the presence of immigration agents in the area and confirmed the agents were no longer next door.

    Amid the uncertainty, district officials discussed the importance of centering students’ needs: Graduation ceremonies should continue undisturbed, and families should feel assured their children would be safe attending summer school.

    L.A. Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho stressed that the graduation season, with more than 100 ceremonies taking place Monday and Tuesday, should remain celebratory and joyous. He said the district has directed its police force to establish “perimeters of safety” around graduation sites to help “intervene and interfere” with federal agents if they arrive.

    “Every child has a constitutional right to a public education,” he said. “Therefore, every child and their parent has a right to celebrate the culmination of their educational success.”

    An estimated 1 in 10, or 1 million, children in California have at least one undocumented parent, and about 133,000 children in California public schools are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

    Carvalho also said principals have been instructed to minimize entry lines to limit the risks of waiting on the street. And parents will be allowed to stay at the venue as long as they need if there is immigration enforcement outside.

    District police will also stay on-site for as long as necessary, he added.

    Meanwhile, the possibility of ICE officials storming graduation ceremonies would be a “preposterous condition,” Carvalho said.

    “I hope a situation like that will not occur,” he said. “But then again, I certainly would have hoped that militarized equipment would not be seen on the streets of an American city.”

    And as the district transitions from this year to the next, Carvalho said L.A. Unified will expand the number of campuses offering summer school to shorten travel times; provide transportation, and add virtual learning options for students who do not feel safe attending in person.

    “I want to be very clear to those who may seek to take actions that transcend our beliefs and our policies. We’re not just talking about our schools,” Carvalho said at Monday’s press conference. “We’re talking about our schools, places where kids wait for the buses, the bus itself.”

    When immigration enforcement activity occurs near schools, educators and staff are at times simultaneously communicating the information with the district so they can confirm what response may be needed, and calming their students’ and families’ fears.

    Communication flows the other way too — top-down from district officials to teachers, parents, and students regarding activity, and about any false rumors.

    Rapid response network

    On Monday, educators like Marcela Chagoya, a middle school teacher at L.A. Unified’s Stevenson College & Career Prep, reassured students, many somber and tearful after a weekend of raids and protests, that school remains the safest place for them to be. As she talked with students, her phone lit up with constant notifications from a Rapid Response Network about nearby ICE sightings.

    “Our school district is a sanctuary district, and we’re definitely not going to put any of our students or their families, if they’re on our campus, at risk,” Chagoya said. “We’re going to defend them as much as we can.”

    Chagoya is also one of many teachers who have gone through training by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, and is tasked with reporting any notification of ICE activity to their principal, who would then inform the district. She also carries a bullhorn in her car to alert the community.

    She reminds the students that ICE agents won’t be allowed inside the classroom and quizzes them on what they learned about potential interactions with a federal agent.

    “This is a lesson that we’re learning in real time,” said Chagoya. “And we will all just roll with it and be as proactive as we can.”





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  • Glenn Kessler Fact-Checks Marco Rubio’s Claim that No One Died When Foreign Aid Stopped

    Glenn Kessler Fact-Checks Marco Rubio’s Claim that No One Died When Foreign Aid Stopped


    Glenn Kessler is a professional fact-checker for The Washington Post. He recently reviewed a controversy about the consequences of the Trump administration’s shutdown of USAID. Democrats said that people have died because of the cuts; Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not agree. Kessler reviews the record.

    He writes:

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “No one has died because of USAID —”
    Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California): “The people who have died …”
    Rubio: “That’s a lie.”

    — exchange at a congressional hearing, May 21


    “That question about people dying around the world is an unfair one.”
    — Rubio, at another congressional hearing later that day


    When Rubio testified last week about the State Department budget, Sherman confronted him about numerous anecdotal accounts of people around the world dying because the Trump administration, at the direction of billionaire Elon Musk, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and shut down many of its programs.


    Sherman used his time mainly to pontificate, and Rubio’s attention must have wandered. He asked Sherman to repeat the question after Sherman said: “We next focus on USAID. Musk gutted it. He said no one died as a result. Do you agree no one had died yet as a result of the chainsawing of USAID? Yes or no.”


    Sherman repeated: “Has anyone died in the world because of what Elon Musk did?”


    Rubio stumbled a response — “Uh, listen” — and Sherman cut him off. “Yes or no?” he said. “Reclaiming my time. If you won’t answer, that’s a loud answer.”


    That’s when Rubio said it was “a lie.” As Sherman’s staff held up photos of people alleged to have died because they stopped receiving services from USAID programs, Rubio denounced the claim as “false.”


    Later in the day, at another hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York) gave Rubio an opportunity to clean up his statement. “Do you stand behind that testimony?” she asked. “And has there been any assessment conducted by the department to this point of how many people have died?”

    Rubio said it was “an unfair question.” He tried to reframe the question, arguing that other countries such as Britain and France also have cut back on humanitarian spending, while China has never contributed much.


    “The United States is the largest humanitarian provider on the planet,” he said. “I would argue: How many people die because China hasn’t done it? How many people have died because the U.K. has cut back on spending and so has other countries?”


    There’s a lot to unpack there.


    The facts


    At least until the Trump administration, the United States was the largest provider of humanitarian aid in the world — in raw dollars. In the 2023 fiscal year, the most recent with complete data, USAID’s budget was about $42 billion, while the State Department disbursed about $19 billion in additional aid, and other agencies (such as the Treasury Department) did, as well. Now USAID is all but gone, folded into the State Department. Nonetheless, when the dust settles, the United States might still be the biggest aid donor — again, in raw dollars.


    When measured as a percentage of a country’s economy, even before the Trump administration, the U.S. was far behind nations such as Britain, Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. The United Nations has set a target of contributing 0.7 percent of gross national income in development aid; the U.S. clocks in with less than 0.2 percent, near the bottom of the list of major democracies, according to a 2020 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Most economists would say that a percentage of a nation’s economy is a more accurate way to measure the generosity of a country.

    Rubio is correct that Britain and France have cut back, and that China has not been much of a foreign-aid donor. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for instance, said he would pay for increased defense spending by cutting the foreign-aid budget from roughly 0.5 percent of gross national income to 0.3 percent. (That is still higher than the U.S. share before President Donald Trump began his second term.) China’s aid budget is a bit opaque — numbers have not been published since 2018 — but it appears to be an average of just over $3 billion a year, according to the Brookings Institution.


    But when it comes to whether people have died as a result of the Trump administration’s cuts, we have to look at how the cuts unfolded. Starmer announced his plans in a pending budget proposal. Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 imposing a 90-day freeze on all U.S. foreign aid — and then Musk forced out thousands of employees who worked at USAID, helping to manage and distribute funds. The resulting chaos was devastating, according to numerous news reports.


    Sherman’s staff held up a photo of Pe Kha Lau, 71, a refugee from Myanmar with lung problems. On Feb. 7, Reuters quoted her family as saying she died “after she was discharged from a U.S.-funded hospital on the Myanmar-Thai border that was ordered to close” as a result of Trump’s executive order. The International Rescue Committee said it shut down and locked hospitals in several refugee camps in late January after receiving a “stop-work” order from the State Department.


    Another photo held up as Rubio said the death claims were false was of 5-year-old Evan Anzoo. He was featured in a March article by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof titled: “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.” Kristof focused on South Sudan and the impact that a suspension of HIV drugs — under a George W. Bush program called PEPFAR — had on the poor country ravaged by civil conflict. PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is regarded as a singular success, saving an estimated 26 million lives since it was created in 2003. Kristof focused on individual stories of people who died after they lost access to medicines because of Trump’s order.

    “Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive,” Kristof wrote. “Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son.”


    Anecdotal reports can go only so far. It’s clear that people are dying because U.S. aid was suspended and then reduced. But it’s difficult to come up with a precise death toll that can be tied directly to Trump administration policies. The death certificates, after all, aren’t marked “Due to lack of funding by U.S. government.”


    Kristof cited a study by the Center for Global Development that estimated how many lives are saved each year by American dollars: about 1.7 million HIV/AIDS deaths averted; 550,000 saved because of other humanitarian assistance; 300,000 tuberculosis deaths prevented; and nearly 300,000 malaria deaths forestalled. But that shows the positive impact of U.S. assistance, not what happens when it is withdrawn.


    Brooke Nichols, a Boston University infectious-disease mathematical modeler and health economist, has developed a tracker that attempts to fill this gap. As of Monday, the model shows, about 96,000 adults and 200,000 children have died because of the administration’s cutbacks to funding for aid groups and support organizations. The overall death count grows by 103 people an hour.

    With any calculation like this, a lot depends on the assumptions. The methodology uses a straight-line estimate of program terminations based on 2024 data and published mortality data to estimate the impact of loss of treatment. Nichols said that because it is not entirely clear what aid has been restored, she has not updated the tracker to account for that. But she noted that Rubio claimed on Capitol Hill that “85 percent of recipients are now receiving PEPFAR services.”


    “For HIV, the total mortality estimates reflect either a 3-month complete cessation of PEPFAR, or 12 months of PEPFAR reduced by 25 percent (the total results are the same),” Nichols said in an email. “If what Rubio says is true … and 85 percent of PEPFAR is back up and running, then the numbers here are still very accurate.”
    In a statement to The Fact Checker, the State Department put it differently from Rubio: “85 percent of PEPFAR-funded programs that deliver HIV care and treatment are operational.” We asked for documentation for the “85 percent” figure, because the phrasing might not include funding for drugs that prevent HIV infection. We did not receive a response.


    Nichols acknowledged that the tracker was not adjusted for double counting — a child counted as dying from malnutrition and diarrhea — though she didn’t think it would affect the overall results much. Some of the estimates are based on country-specific information; others are not. Data limitations required her to assume an equal distribution between children treated for pneumonia and diarrhea through USAID.

    “The biggest uncertainties in all of these estimates are: 1) the extent to which countries and organizations have pivoted to mitigate this disaster (likely highly variable), and 2) which programs are actually still funded with funding actually flowing — and which aren’t,” Nichols said.


    A key source document for the tracker is an internal memo written on March 3 by Nicholas Enrich, then USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health, estimating the impact of the funding freeze on global health (including how such diseases might spill over into the United States). Enrich, a civil servant who served under four administrations over 15 years, estimated that a permanent halt in aid would result in at least 12.5 million cases of malaria, with an additional 71,000 to 166,000 deaths annually, a 28 percent to 32 percent increase in tuberculosis globally and an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year.


    As a result of writing the memo — and others — he was placed on administrative leave.


    Nichols said the death toll would not be so high had the administration pursued a deliberate policy to phase out funding over a 12-month period, which would have permitted contingency planning. “It’s true that other countries are cutting back on humanitarian spending. But what makes the U.S. approach so harmful is how the cuts were made: abruptly, without warning, and without a plan for continuity,” she said. “It leads to interruptions in care, broken supply chains, and ultimately, preventable deaths. Also, exactly because the U.S. is the largest provider of humanitarian aid, it makes the approach catastrophic.”

    When we asked the State Department about Rubio’s dismissal of the idea that anyone had died as a result of the suspension of aid — and that it was clearly wrong — we received this statement: “America is the most generous nation in the world, and we urge other nations to dramatically increase their humanitarian efforts.”

    The Pinocchio Test

    Given numerous news reports about people dying because they stopped getting American aid, you would think Rubio’s staff would have prepared him with a better answer than “lie” and “false.” His cleanup response wasn’t much better. The issue is not that other nations are reducing funding — but how the United States suddenly pulled the plug, making it more likely that people would die.
    There is no dispute that people have died because the Trump administration abruptly suspended foreign aid. One might quibble over whether tens of thousands — or hundreds of thousands — have died. But you can’t call it a lie. Rubio earns Four Pinocchios.

    Four Pinocchios


    The Fact Checker is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles

    Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than four decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him or sending a DM on Twitter.



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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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  • Why one California university leader thinks year-round operations will aid enrollment

    Why one California university leader thinks year-round operations will aid enrollment


    Students in a science class at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

    Credit: Arabel Meyer / EdSource

    Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo recently announced that it will become the first public university in the state to shift to year-round operations starting summer 2025. The change would give students the option of starting in the summer and taking their academic break during a different term, and it would allow the university to admit more students per year.

    Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong said other universities have had success with this model. 

    “Secondary to growth (in enrollment), I think we’re going to see student success,” Armstrong said. 

    Taking inspiration from schools that have had year-round operations for years, like Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of Waterloo in Canada, Armstrong said he hopes to put a “Cal Poly twist” on the idea to benefit all students. 

    Beginning next year, students will be able to choose to start either in summer or fall during the application process. Faculty and staff will also be able to choose which terms they will work.

    Armstrong said students and faculty will have enough information to make an informed decision about what their schedule will look like and “they will know what they’re getting into.”

    If a student opts to start in summer, they might have a greater chance of being admitted to Cal Poly, which currently has an admit rate of 28% and is highly impacted with more applications than available spaces, Armstrong said.

    “We’re not changing our standards,” Armstrong said. “What we’re doing is using year-round to open up more spaces so more students can get in.”

    Starting the year in the summer would be different from simply taking summer classes or taking a couple of classes in the last few weeks of summer through summer start programs to help students adjust to college.

    Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo President Jeffrey D. Armstrong
    Credit: Cal Poly SLO

    Students who start their year in the summer would have full course offerings equivalent to what is offered during the other terms, and classes would be for a full term, according to Armstrong.

    When asked about the expected cost of the change to year-round operations, Armstrong said, “Overall, we believe the investments required will not be significantly out of line as what would be required for enrollment growth through traditional non-year-round operations means.”

    Following the year-round model, students, including freshmen, would have more opportunities to participate in “high-impact practices” such as internships, study abroad and undergraduate research, according to Armstrong. 

    “We know when students participate in high-impact practices, it enhances their retention, it enhances their chance to graduate,” he said. 

    A student who chooses to start in summer could then study abroad or do an internship during the fall term and come back for spring term, for example. 

    Armstrong said students could also decide to take classes every term and graduate earlier, though this would not be required.

    It’s about “flexibility for all students, really,” he said. “I think it’ll be very positive, and it’ll expand access to high-impact activities. We want it to be more equitable.”

    Financial aid would still cover a full academic year (three quarters or two semesters) no matter when a student starts, Armstrong added. 

    In an ideal world, Armstrong said about a third of students would start in summer, though starting out, the numbers might be more like 15-20%. 

    “It’s allowing us to grow, [and] it’s taking the number of students in the regular academic year down, so it’s relieving some of the pressure,” Armstrong said.

    Cal Poly began discussing this shift in 2019, but it was delayed because of the to the pandemic. The change was then set to begin summer 2024 but delayed again after Cal Poly met its enrollment goals for the year by increasing course availability, allowing more students to enroll full time. 

    As college enrollment rates increase, universities have been trying to find ways to do so without increasing costs too much. In 1999, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report recommending universities switch to year-round operations. 

    Cal Poly is the only public university in California to make this switch, though other schools are making different efforts to increase their enrollment and expand summer instruction.

    According to Hazel Kelly, CSU spokesperson, other CSU campuses are also considering ways to offer more flexible academic calendars.

    “The Chancellor’s Office is working with those universities as they consider a range of implications of alternative calendars including student enrollment, campus budgets, financial aid, accreditation, labor agreements and facilities, among others,” Kelly said.

    California State University, Long Beach is working on expanding enrollment during the fall and spring semesters, focusing on “underserved majors with available space,” according to CSULB spokesperson Gregory Woods. 

    “To bolster enrollment, our strategy is to enhance retention rates and average-units load for current students, and to expand the class size of the incoming first-time, first-year student level,” Woods said. 

    San Diego State University, which has the second-lowest acceptance rate of all the CSUs and is also highly impacted, does not have a plan to move to year-round operations like Cal Poly but is exploring other ways of increasing enrollment, SDSU spokesperson La Monica Everett-Haynes said.

    “We have, however, implemented efforts toward summer enrollment and, overall, continue to see high levels of enrollment growth during both the academic and summer session periods,” Everett-Haynes said.

    The University of California has similarly been working to expand summer enrollment without moving to the year-round model. 

    “Every UC campus is committed to expanding capacity and enhancing educational equity for California students through overall enrollment growth as well as more nontraditional approaches, including efforts to improve timely graduation and to expand online, summer and off-campus opportunities,” said Ryan King, UC spokesperson. 

    According to the “Building 2030 Capacity Report” issued in 2022, UC has turned to increasing online course offerings and financial aid for summer to help meet their enrollment goals. King noted that the report shows a spike in summer enrollment in 2020, and “UC campuses recognized this surge as an opportunity to increase summer enrollment and capacity over the long term by growing the number and mix of online and impacted fall-winter-spring course offerings.”

    Cal Poly decided that switching to the year-round model, and not just expanding their regular summer offerings, would be the most beneficial. 

    Armstrong said this shift to year-round operations will benefit all students, not just the ones who choose to start in the summer, because classes will be offered more often throughout the year, there will be more opportunities to participate in high-impact activities and the campus community will grow.

    As part of the effort to increase enrollment, Cal Poly is working on building more on-campus housing so that all first- and second-year students can live on campus, a project that “will result in several thousand beds added between now and 2030,” Armstrong said. 

    Armstrong also expects the switch to year-round operations, along with increased financial aid, to help Cal Poly’s efforts to increase diversity. 

    As Cal Poly begins this shift, students will only be able to choose between summer or fall starts, and only incoming students will get this option. Armstrong said he hopes everyone will have this option in the future, and that a spring start will also be available.

    “We think it’s going to be very significant,” Armstrong said. “Our evidence from polling and asking questions of prospective parents and students shows that the interest is very high in the year-round concept.”

    Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism major and French and ethnic studies minor at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • How pro-Palestinian protesters at one UC campus got a deal

    How pro-Palestinian protesters at one UC campus got a deal


    The bell tower and UCR sign on the campus of UC Riverside.

    Credit: UC Riverside / Stan Lim

    Sitting across from UC Riverside Chancellor Kim Wilcox inside a conference room on the campus, Samia Alkam presented him with her Palestinian identification card.

    A doctoral student at Riverside, Alkam’s identification limits her to the West Bank in Palestine. She explained to Wilcox that even though she also has American citizenship, Israel bars West Bank residents like her from traveling to places such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem without a special permit or visa. 

    That was relevant to the matter at hand, as Wilcox and Alkam deliberated over what to do about a summer abroad program offered by Riverside’s School of Business. As part of the program, students visit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. 

    Days earlier, pro-Palestinian student protesters at Riverside erected an encampment and demanded administrators cut ties with Israel. Alkam, the lead negotiator for students, implored Wilcox to discontinue the abroad program, arguing it violated the university’s anti-discrimination policy because not all students could participate regardless of their country of national origin. 

    “They have students who are on campus who can’t participate in that program just because of their birth status,” Alkam told EdSource later. “It was really important for me to illustrate that in a very visual way for them.”

    According to the U.S. State Department, American citizens who are also residents of the West Bank need a visa or permit to enter Israel. Other Americans can use their passport to visit for business or tourism purposes without a visa.  

    Focusing on the study abroad program reflected the students’ strategy to try winning tangible changes at Riverside even if they couldn’t get the campus to divest financially from companies tied to Israel amid its war on Gaza, a key demand of protesters at campuses across the country.

    Aided by their faculty adviser, Christine Victorino, who previously was Wilcox’s chief of staff, the students came to the negotiating table with what they believed were reasonable asks. A spokesperson for Riverside said nobody on Wilcox’s staff was available for an interview, but directed EdSource to Victorino. With an intimate knowledge of how the chancellor’s office operates, she advised the students on making requests that had a chance to be successful.

    On the second night of negotiations, Alkam and other negotiators met with Wilcox for seven hours inside the conference room at Riverside’s Hinderaker Hall. By the next morning, they had their deal, which included terminating the abroad program.

    Rather than single out the program in Israel, Wilcox discontinued all of the business school’s global programs, which also operate in Oxford, Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil, China, Egypt and Jordan. Wilcox’s office declined to comment for this story, but according to his office’s website, officials learned “through our dialogue” during the negotiations that the abroad program was not “consistent with university policies.” 

    As part of the deal, Wilcox also agreed to consider whether campus vendors should be permitted to sell Sabra hummus products. Students at Riverside and other campuses across the country for years have targeted Sabra. One of Sabra’s owners is the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that has long been scrutinized by pro-Palestinian activists over its support for the Israeli Defense Forces.

    While not committing to divestment, Wilcox said he would start a process to review the Riverside campus endowment’s investments. That was the most Wilcox could do because Riverside doesn’t manage its own endowment; instead, UC’s systemwide investments office does. Under the agreement, Riverside will explore the possibility of managing the endowment itself.  

    Wilcox made the concessions after two days of negotiations. In exchange, student protesters agreed to end their encampment just four days after they initially erected it. The campus also avoided the violence between pro-Palistinian protesters and Israeli supporters that had occurred earlier that week at UCLA, which negotiators believed was a motivating factor for Wilcox to get a deal. 

    As college protesters across California have demanded their campuses cut ties with Israel, few have gotten any formal concessions. Across most campuses, negotiations have either stalled or ended altogether. Several campuses have even resorted to calling in police to forcibly disband encampments and arrest students. 

    But at Riverside, the spring quarter is ending with little fanfare. A stark contrast to several other University of California campuses, Riverside has remained peaceful in the weeks since the agreement, which remains one of the few deals reached by campus protesters and administrators across California. Others to make deals include UC Berkeley and Sacramento State.

    Of UC’s seven campuses on the quarter calendar where classes continued into this month, Riverside was also the only one where academic workers did not strike. Graduate assistants and other student workers did strike at the six other campuses, arguing that UC violated union members’ rights by retaliating against them for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.

    “I knew that I would look more revolutionary if we stood firm and we kept our encampment up for longer, and we started getting arrests and getting the same press coverage as other universities,” Alkam said. “But to me, it was more important to get the material changes that we did get.”

    Avoiding violence

    Two nights prior to the main negotiating session at Riverside, counterdemonstrators at UCLA violently attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment there, injuring student protesters and sending some to the hospital. 

    Wilcox, students believed, did not want to risk a similar situation unfolding at his campus, which prides itself on being one of the most ethnically diverse and welcoming universities, including for Middle Eastern students. Riverside was the first in the nation to have a Middle Eastern Student Center, according to its website.

    “Their whole image is centered around them being progressive and them being diverse,” Alkam said. “They felt so much pressure to not look like UCLA.”

    Victorino, the faculty adviser for the students, agreed. She said in an interview that “as a former administrator, the main concern” was the possibility of violence. 

    It was that kind of insight into the chancellor’s office and how it operates that Victorino was able to provide to the students. Before last year, she had spent seven years as Wilcox’s chief of staff. In that role, she helped Wilcox navigate several major controversies and challenges, including the Covid-19 pandemic and a restructuring of the campus police department. 

    Victorino, now a professor of practice in Riverside’s school of education, only got involved in the encampment negotiations after being approached by Alkam. Alkam was previously Victorino’s teaching assistant and asked her to be the students’ adviser. Unsure if she wanted to involve herself in the negotiations, Victorino sought advice from Wilcox. He encouraged her to accept the role, so she did.

    She helped the students understand what would and wouldn’t be possible. Victorino, for example, explained to the students that Riverside’s endowment is managed by the systemwide office, giving Wilcox little control over the campus investments. With that information, the students compromised on their original demand calling for Riverside to immediately divest its endowment funds from any companies related to Israel. 

    Victorino even told them how Wilcox might react to certain requests. “We kind of just role-played what the meeting would be like,” Victorino said.

    Elsewhere, negotiations stall

    More than a month since their deal, Riverside remains one of the few campuses where protesters and officials found common ground. 

    At other campuses, like UC Santa Cruz, negotiations have gone south. About two weeks ago at that campus, after weeks of stalled negotiations, Chancellor Cynthia Larive called in police who disbanded an encampment there and arrested students. Police also have dismantled encampments and arrested protesters at campuses such as UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UCLA, where a second encampment was erected.

    Complicating the negotiations is the governance structure of the 10-campus University of California and 23-campus California State University systems. Both systems are governed by centralized boards and systemwide president’s and chancellor’s offices, limiting the autonomy of campus-level administrators.

    CSU system officials publicly scolded one campus president, Sonoma State President Mike Lee, for agreeing to seek “divestment strategies” and to not engage in study abroad programs in Israel. Lee was placed on administrative leave and, two days later, said he would retire. 

    “The chancellor and presidents have been in constant contact during protest activities on campuses with the intent that decisions at the university level are made in consultation with the Chancellor’s Office,” CSU spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith said in a statement to EdSource. 

    A UC spokesperson declined to comment. But UC said in a statement in April that it “opposes calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel.”

    At Santa Cruz, protesters initially set up their encampment about six weeks ago, but it has been more than a month since administrators have negotiated with them. Student protesters last submitted a set of demands to Larive’s staff on May 10, but “there’s been no official communication between us and the administration since then,” said Jamie Hindery, an undergraduate student at the campus and a spokesperson for the protesters. 

    A Santa Cruz spokesperson did not return a request for comment on this story. 

    Larive in a statement said the encampment was unlawful and a “dangerous blockade from the campus entrance.” She added that the encampment “disrupted campus operations and threatened safety, including delaying access of emergency vehicles.”

    Protesters, however, dispute that. “Copious eyewitness testimony, backed by photos and video evidence, contradict this account,” the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine said in a statement responding to Larive. 

    Hindery said the police activity eliminated any chance of negotiations resuming. It’s a reality he believes is true across most UC campuses, where finals are happening this week and commencement ceremonies are scheduled for this weekend. “People don’t want to attend their own graduations. Students feel betrayed and unsafe,” he said. “I would be very surprised if campus-level negotiations were to restart any time soon.” 

    Meanwhile, at Riverside, Alkam credited administrators for choosing “peace and safety” and compromising with the students.

    “That’s something that the other campuses should have learned from, and they definitely didn’t,” she said.





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  • California’s public universities come through – at least for one family

    California’s public universities come through – at least for one family


    UC Santa Barbara bids farewell to the class of 2024 across eight ceremonies on June 15.

    Credit: Rebecca Caraway / Noozhawk.com

    Last weekend I had the moving experience of attending one of the last of dozens of commencement ceremonies held on various campuses of California’s massive system of public higher education this academic year.

    The one I went to took place at a scenic site at the University of California, Santa Barbara next to the landmark UCSB Lagoon and the glittering Pacific Ocean beyond.

    Over 6,000 undergraduates received their bachelor’s degrees over the weekend — requiring the commencement to be staged in multiple ceremonies over two days to accommodate all of them. 

    The sight of thousands of students walking — or ambling or skipping — across the stage offered a graphic representation of what California has been able to accomplish on a scale not seen anywhere else in the United States, or perhaps the world.

    I was moved not only by the sheer numbers, but also when I reflected that almost all of them had missed out on their high school graduation because of the pandemic, and then had to start their college education by studying remotely from home.  And then this year, until just a few days earlier, even the location of the event had been in doubt against the backdrop of possible protests triggered by the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

    I was also moved because my daughter was among the graduates. 

    She was just one of the over 60,000 undergraduates who received their degrees from the 10-campus University of California system over the last few weeks — and the more than 100,000 who received similar honors at the 23-campus California State University system.

    As the graduates filed by, with names reflecting a dazzling kaleidoscope of different ethnicities and backgrounds, I thought about the great effort it took to get each one of them to the finish line — effort on the part of the students themselves, of their families and of the institutions they attended. 

    I confess that when my daughter enrolled as a freshman four years ago, I worried about the quality of the education she would receive — simply because of the huge numbers of students most UC and CSU campuses have had to take on. I had the same concerns when my son enrolled at UC Irvine a few years earlier. 

    I need not have worried.

    At a celebratory dinner a few hours after her graduation ceremony, I asked my daughter to name the worst class she had taken — and the best.  She easily remembered the worst one, but then, with equal facility, named four courses — psychopharmacology, psychopathology, population health, and the history of architecture in the U.S. — she said were outstanding ones. She enthusiastically described each of them, including the professors who taught them. It was exhilarating to see a young person, and my daughter no less, so excited about learning and scholarship.

    My son had a similar experience at UC Irvine, where he majored in data science, and then, partially as a result of the pandemic, stayed for an extra year to get his master’s degree in statistics. He now has a job at Google.

    Both of them say they got a high-quality education on their campuses. This was achieved despite the huge increases in enrollment in recent decades.

    UC Santa Barbara this year, for example, awarded about 50% more undergraduate degrees than two decades ago. 

    I could easily see the impact these increases had on my daughter and her friends. Before moving to an off-campus apartment, she lived in a three-bedroom campus apartment with six other students, with two students in each of two tiny bedrooms, and three in the small room my daughter was in.  It was tough to get into all the classes she wanted to take.

    But she made it through, pandemic and all.

    Unbeknownst to them, what she and my son benefited from were the fruits of California’s ambitious Master Plan for Higher Education, drawn up in 1960, which aimed to provide postsecondary opportunities to “anyone who could benefit.”

    At the time, only 11% of adults of prime working age had bachelor’s degrees. As researchers from the Public Policy Institute of California point out in a just-issued paper, by 2021, that number had risen to 37%.  The state has now set a goal of 40%, which according to the authors, should be much higher.

    So enrollments are likely to increase, and there obviously is still work to be done to make sure all students are able to take full advantage of what our public universities have to offer. That includes making sure they graduate not only within a reasonable amount of time, but graduate at all.

    The overall four-year graduation rate for UC is 73%, a respectable number, but California can do better — especially among low-income students and those from underrepresented groups who graduate in significantly lower numbers. At the California State University system, which serves an older student body, many of whom are working, graduation rates are even lower.

    But California is at least on the right track. Rather than simply creating degree-granting factories, the state appears to be able to offer a high-quality academic experience to its students — one that they, and California, will benefit from for many decades.

    Louis Freedberg is Interim CEO of EdSource.

    •••

    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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  • Leonie Haimson: How States Can Inspire One Another to Fight for Successful Policies

    Leonie Haimson: How States Can Inspire One Another to Fight for Successful Policies


    Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters in New York City, is a tireless advocate for reform policies that work. She has spent years collecting research about the benefits of class size reduction and prodding legislators to take action.

    She wrote recently about the cross-pollination between New York State and Michigan, where state school board leaders used her research to advocate for lower class sizes.

    She wrote:

    On April 5 and 6, the Network for Public Education, on whose board I sit, held its annual conference in Columbus, Ohio.  More than 400 parents, teachers, advocates, school board members, and other elected officials gathered to learn from each other’s work and be re-energized for the challenges of protecting our public schools from the ravages of budget cuts, right-wing censorship, and privatization.  

    It was a great weekend to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, hear from eloquent education leaders, and participate in eye-opening workshops.  I led a workshop on the risks of using AI in the classroom, along with Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools, and retired teacher/blogger extraordinaire, Peter Greene. You can take a look at our collective power point presentation here.

    At one point, Diane Ravitch, the chair and founder of NPE,introduced each of the board members from the floor.  When she told me to stand, I asked her to inform the attendees about the law we helped pass for class size reduction in NYC.  She responded, you tell it –and so I briefly recounted how smaller class sizes are supposed to be phased in over the next three yearsin our schools, hoping this might lend encouragement to others in the room to advocate for similar measures in their own states and districts.

    Perhaps the personal high point for me was the thrill of meeting Tim Walz, on his birthday no less,  who said to me that indeed class size does matter.  Here are videos  with excerpts from some of the other terrific speeches at the conference. 

    Then, just four days ago, Prof. Julian Heilig Vasquez, another NPE board member, texted me a link to this news story from the Detroit News:

    State Board of Education calls for smaller class sizes after Detroit News investigation

    Lansing — Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution Tuesday calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.

    The proposal, if enacted by state lawmakers, would represent a sea change for Michigan schools as leaders look to boost struggling literacy rates. Across the state, elementary school classes featuring more than 20 students have been widespread.

    Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was “overdue.”

    “Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.

    A months-long Detroit News investigation published in April found 206 elementary classes — ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade — across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them. Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.

    Less than a month after The News’ probe, the Democratic-led State Board of Education, which advises state policymakers on education standards, voted 6-1 on Tuesday in favor of Robinson’s resolution. The resolution said lawmakers should provide funding in the next state budget for school districts with high rates of poverty to lower their student-to-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.

    By the 2030-31 school year, the resolution said, limits should be instituted to cap class sizes at 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade, at 23 students per class in fourth grade through eighth grade, and at 25 students per class in high school.

    “Many studies show that class size reduction leads to better student outcomes in every way that can be measured, including better grades and test scores, fewer behavior problems, greater likelihood to graduate from high school on time and subsequently enroll in college,” the resolution said.

    The resolution added that the Legislature should increase funding to ensure schools are “able to lower class sizes to the mandated levels.”

    In an interview, Pamela Pugh, the president of the state board, labeled the resolution an “urgent call” for action. Pugh said the board hasn’t made a similar request in the decade she’s served on the panel.

    …Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for action on class sizes after the reporting from The News and as Michigan’s reading scores have fallen behind other states.

    During her State of the State address in February, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently. Michigan invests more per student than most states but achieves “bottom 10 results,” the governor said.

    Asked, in April, if she thought having 30 students in a kindergarten class was appropriate, Whitmer, a Democrat, said, “No. Of course, I don’t.”

    “I think the science would tell us that we’ve got to bring down class sizes,” Whitmer said in April.

    On Wednesday, state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, said he was open to a conversation about timelines for implementing class size limits and about how schools could achieve the proposed standards with staffing and physical space.

    He noted the Senate Democrats’ budget proposal for next year features nearly $500 million that could be used by school districts to lower class sizes. “I think it’s going to be a culture change,” Camilleri said.

    As I read the story, I was delighted, of course; and noticed that the class size caps cited in the resolution were identical to those required to be phased in for NYC schools.  I also noted language in the resolution that echoed the words in some of our research summaries. 

    I reached out to Diane to ask her if she knew whether Mitchell Robinson had attended the NPE conference, and she confirmed that indeed he had.  I then emailed him to ask if our New Yorklaw had played any role in his decision to introduce the resolution, and he immediately responded,

    “Leonie, your work in NYC was the direct model and inspiration for this resolution! I was in your session in Columbus, and went home motivated to put together the resolution, using the figures from your bill and the research base on the website.”

    He cautioned me that the proposal still has to be enacted into law, and that it would be “an uphill battle,” as Republicans hadretaken the state House. 

    Then he added: “But that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands for another 2 years—we need to stay on offense and advance good ideas whenever we can.”

    I wholeheartedly agree.  This resolution and what may hopefully follow for Michigan students reveals just how importantgatherings like the NPE conference are to enable the exchangeof ideas and positive examples of what’s occurring elsewhere.  This sort of interaction can be vital to our collective struggle,not just to defend our public schools from the attempts of Trump et.al. to undermine them, but also to push for the sort of positive changes that will allow all our kids to receive the high qualityeducation they deserve.

     



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