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  • California ranks bottom third in overall child well-being, per new report

    California ranks bottom third in overall child well-being, per new report


    LAUSD’s Nueva Vista Elementary School in Bell.

    Photo Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales

    California’s children rank in the bottom third of all states in overall well-being, according to a new report released this week.

    The authors of the report, “2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book: State Trends in Child Well-Being,” found that over half of California’s 3- and 4-year-olds are not in school, less than one-fourth of its eighth graders are proficient in math, and a greater number children and teens per 100,000 died than in previous years.

    “One way to think about it is where we see the most progress are the states who are investing in their children — heavily in their children,” said Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who oversaw the compilation of the report.

    Now in its 35th year and published by the foundation, a private philanthropy and research organization, the annual report measures children’s well-being across 16 indicators within the categories of education, economic well-being, health, and family and community.

    Out of all states, California ranked 43rd in economic well-being, 35th in education, 10th in health, and 37th in family and community.

    California’s children fared better than most other states only in the health indicator. Even so, the number of babies with low birth-weight slightly increased from 7.1% in 2019 to 7.4% in 2022, as did the number of child and teen deaths, rising from 18 per 100,000 in 2019 to 22 per 100,000 in 2022.

    “The movement in indicators generally follows investments, and it depends on the particular state of how they’re investing in their children,” Boissiere said.

    This year’s report largely focused on comparisons between 2019 and 2022 data to provide a pre-pandemic and post-pandemic view of how children are faring, Boissiere said. Sources for the data included the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Impact of low well-being on chronic absenteeism

    The authors noted that the report’s findings provide context to the conversation on chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing 10% or more of the school year.

    The percentage of chronically absent students in California skyrocketed from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in the 2018-19 school year to 30% in 2021-22. The reasons for such high absenteeism vary from district to district and even from student to student, but experts agree that the issue is exacerbated when children’s basic needs are not being met.

    “What we know is that it’s critically important that all children arrive in the classroom ready to learn and, in order for them to be ready to learn, their basic needs have to be met,” Boissiere said.

    National data included in the report highlighted the relationship between absences and academic performance. The more students miss school, the lower their reading proficiency.

    In 2022, the percentage of fourth-grade students nationwide scoring proficient at reading was 40% for students with zero absences in the month before they took the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Reading proficiency lowered to 34% with one to two absent days in that month; to 28% with three to four absences; 25% with five to 10 absences, and down to 14% for students who had more than 10 absences in the same one-month time frame prior to taking the NAEP.

    The authors also found that racial inequities play a critical role in nearly all the index measures in the report.

    “As a result of generations-long inequities and discriminatory policies and practices that persist, children of color face high hurdles to success on many indicators,” the authors wrote.

    For example, the authors found “alarming increases” in the rate of child and teen death rates among Black children nationally, and that American Indian or Alaska Native children “were more than twice as likely to lack health insurance.”

    Disaggregating racial demographic data also pointed to notable inequities.

    For example, authors found that Asian and Pacific Islander children experienced one of the lowest rates of poverty nationally at 11%; the rate of poverty among Burmese children was 29%, 24% for Mongolian children, and 23% for Thai children. The national average for child poverty is 16%, per the report, highlighting the stark poverty rates for many Asian children nationwide.

    Looking at distinct racial inequities, the authors found exceptions where children of color were faring better than the national average. For example, Black children were more likely to be in school at ages 3 and 4, to be insured, and to have a head of household with at least a high school diploma. Latino children and teens had lower death rates, and they were also less likely to have low birth-weight.

    “Today, kids of color represent a majority of the children in the country, as well as in 14 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the authors wrote. “The future success of our nation depends on our ability to ensure all children have the chance to be successful.”





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  • California School Dashboard lacks pandemic focus, earns a D grade in report

    California School Dashboard lacks pandemic focus, earns a D grade in report


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    National surveys have determined that parents significantly understate how far behind children are academically because of pandemic learning setbacks. The A’s and B’s  that their kids have been getting on their report cards don’t tell the full story, concluded a survey of 2,000 parents .

    “To hear parents tell it, the pandemic’s effects on education were transitory. Are they right to be so sanguine? The latest evidence suggests otherwise,” wrote education professors Sean Reardon of Stanford and Tom Kane of Harvard.

    States’ websites that annually report the scores on standardized tests and other valuable data, like chronic absenteeism, could provide a reality check by clearly and easily displaying performance results over time. However, the California School Dashboard, the public’s primary source for school and district performance data, has failed to do that. The Center on Reinventing Public Education concluded this in the report State Secrets: How Transparent Are State School Report Cards About the Effects of COVID? issued Thursday. California was one of eight states to receive a D grade on an A-F scale, behind the 29 states that did better, including 16 states with an A or B.  

    The report focused on how states handled longitudinal data — showing changes in results over multiple years — from pre-Covid 2018-19 or earlier to now. In most states, that multiyear look would show a sharp drop on the first testing after the pandemic, followed by a slow recovery that has not made up for lost ground. For California, the decline in 2021-22, following two years of suspended testing, wiped out gradual gains since the first dashboard in 2014-15.

    “The (California) dashboard makes it hard to identify longitudinal results,” said Morgan Polikoff, professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education and the lead author of the report. “Because the dashboard never puts yearly data next to each other; you have to pull up multiple years, download the data, and put the data in Excel or something like that if you want to look at longitudinal trends.”

    By contrast, one of seven states to receive an A, Connecticut shows five years of results in bar charts and line graphs for 11 measures.

    Connecticut’s dashboard, praised in the report, shows changes over time for multiple performance measures.
    Source: Connecticut’s Next Generation Accountability Report

    “If we had rated states on something else (e.g., how clearly they presented data for the given year), we would have arrived at different ratings,” the report said.

    Researchers examined longitudinal data for seven metrics: achievement levels in English language arts, math, science and social studies, achievement growth in English language arts and math, chronic absenteeism, high school graduation rates and English learner proficiency and growth. Teams of evaluators from the center, which is based at Arizona State University, used a point system for each metric based on whether it was easy, somewhat difficult, much too difficult or impossible to find longitudinal data.

    “It’s not about having the data — it’s about presenting the data to the public in a way that’s usable,” Polikoff said of California’s dashboard.

    California collects the data for five of the seven metrics. It no longer administers a statewide social studies test. It also doesn’t compile achievement growth using students’ specific scores over time, although the state has been considering this approach for more than six years. Instead, it compares scores of this year’s students with different students’ scores in the same grade a year earlier.  

    Some other states also don’t give a social studies test; California could still have gotten an A grade without it, Polikoff said.

    The California Department of Education said that the dashboard undergoes an annual review for refinements to make sure it is “genuinely accessible and useful to our families.”

    “We always remain open to the feedback and needs of our families, and we look forward to understanding more about the approach taken by the Center for Reinventing Public Education,” Liz Sanders, director of communications for the department, said in a statement.

    She added that School Accountability Report Cards and DataQuest supplement the dashboard and can readily answer questions raised by the Center for Reinventing Public Education. “The dashboard serves a specific purpose to help California’s families understand year-over-year progress at their students’ schools, and the user interface is simplified based on feedback from diverse and representative focus groups of California families,” Sanders said.

    Not a priority

    At the direction of the State School Board, the California Department of Education chose to focus on disparities in achievement as its top priority for the dashboard. For every school and district, it has made it easy to see how 13 student groups, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, and various racial and ethnic groups performed on multiple measures.  

    The state developed a rating system using five colors (blue marking the highest performance and red the lowest). Each color reflects the result for the current year combined with the growth or decline from the previous year. The colors send a signal of progress or concern. 

    However, without reporting longitudinal results for context, the color coding can prove problematic. The statewide chronic absence rate in 2022 was a record high of 30%. Declining 5.7 percentage points in 2023 to 24.3% earned a middle color, yellow signifying neither good nor bad. Yet the chronic absence rate was still at an alarmingly high level. Viewers would have to look closely at the numerical components behind the color to understand that.

    No ability to compare schools and districts

    Unlike some other states’ dashboards, the California School Dashboard also does not permit comparisons of schools and districts. That was by design. Reflecting the view of former Gov. Jerry Brown, the state board focused on districts’ self-improvement and discouraged facile comparisons that didn’t consider the data behind the colors. 

    However, both EdSource’s annual alternative dashboard and Ed-Data, a data partnership of the California Department of Education, EdSource, and the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team/California School Information Services, encourage multi-school and district comparisons.

    Ed-Data has a five-year comparison of test scores and other metrics. Although this year it no longer starts with 2018-19, the pre-Covid base year for comparisons, viewers can use the year slider above the charts to view data for earlier years.

    EdSource has created graphics showing longitudinal statewide results in math and English language arts, including breakouts for student groups, dating to the first year of the Smarter Balanced testing.

    “If California had reported all of the outcomes in a format like that, it would’ve gotten an A because that’s exactly the kind of comparison we are looking for,” Polikoff said.

    The report separately analyzed the usability of states’ dashboards to determine whether they are easy to use and well-organized. California is one of 16 states rated “fair,” with 23 states rated “great” or “good,” and 11 states, mainly small states like Vermont, but also Texas and New York, rated “poor.”

    “We were struck by how difficult it was to navigate some state report card websites,” the report said. “We found many common pitfalls, ranging from the relatively mundane to the massive and structural.”

    Kansas, for example, lacked a landing page with overall performance data, while Texas school report cards “offer a wealth of data broken down by every student group imaginable” in massive data tables but no visualizations.

    The five states with “great” usability are Illinois, Indiana, Oklahoma, Idaho and New Mexico, the last two of which got an F for longitudinal data.

    “California’s dashboard is far from the worst out there,” said Polikoff. “The reality is little tweaks are not going to cut it. That probably means a pretty substantial overhaul to be usable for longitudinal comparisons. Now, the state might say, ‘We don’t care about longitudinal trends’ and that’s their prerogative, but what purpose is the dashboard trying to serve, and who’s it trying to serve?”

    Answer those questions, he continued, “and then design the dashboard accordingly.”





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  • Pandemic recovery in schools will be a ‘long slog,’ says sobering national report

    Pandemic recovery in schools will be a ‘long slog,’ says sobering national report


    Student mental health was declining even before the pandemic, research has shown.

    Alison Yin for EdSource

    Nearly five years after Covid-19 began, a national report released Tuesday shows that recovery from the pandemic for students will be a “long slog.”    

    “The State of the American Student,” a report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) states that the findings are “sobering, daunting, and discouraging,” and that the slow pace of recovery from the pandemic has left an indelible mark on education, with long-term implications for students’ income, racial inequity and social mobility in the United States. 

    “If policymakers and educators do not get serious about ensuring these students have access to proven interventions, then we will continue to see the educational impact of the pandemic reverberate for many years, both in our schools and in our economy,” the report stated.

    For the last three years, CRPE — a research organization out of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University — has released annual reports examining the academic, social, emotional and mental health effects of the pandemic on students. CRPE Executive Director Robin Lake said the reports were an attempt to ensure that schools wouldn’t go back to business as usual before students were “made whole.”

    Fears that the pandemic would widen pre-existing opportunity gaps have come to fruition, according to the report’s summary of a wide span of research. The report focuses extra attention on certain groups: young children, disabled students, English learners and homeless students, and students who still lag far behind from where they would have been if not for the pandemic. Lake added these groups were largely not well served by schools before the pandemic began.

    The report takes a sweeping look at the issues that have been harming students’ recovery since 2020, including chronic absenteeism, staffing shortages, poor teacher morale and student disengagement. These are all signs pointing to a pandemic recovery effort that will require a “long haul.”

    Struggling students need more attention

    Currently, schools are facing “gale-force” headwinds trying to address these challenges, the report states. Pandemic-era funding is drying up, declining school enrollment is stretching district finances, and many educators are facing burnout. But the worst part is that the problem is underappreciated, Lake said.

    “Perhaps the most concerning thing to us is how little discussion there is about these problems,” Lake said. 

    Politicians are not talking about pandemic recovery, especially when it comes to the groups that have been struggling the most, she said. For instance, CRPE pointed out how some states, including California, do a poor job communicating data about how students have fared since the pandemic.

    Additionally, parents do not seem to know just how far behind their children are — thanks in part to grade inflation and some schools’ poor communication, Lake said.

    USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research conducted interviews with the parents of disabled students.

    One parent did not learn from the school that their child was failing two courses, making him ineligible to graduate from high school: “I didn’t know until we were in the process of graduation,” the parent told interviewers.

    The number of students who are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has skyrocketed in recent years. It dipped during the peak of the pandemic when school campuses were closed, but surged again as students returned to the classrooms. It’s not clear why, but different theories have emerged.

    While it states that kindergartners who have not attended preschool are more likely to have academic and social struggles, including a rising number of behavioral issues and speech delays, the report notes that students who start school behind their peers may be being over-identified as having a disability or that the high numbers could be because students who might have simply been treading water in a previous era are now being correctly identified as having a disability.

    The problems faced by disabled students exemplify many of the biggest struggles of pandemic recovery efforts in schools. Disabled students’ academic performance has long lagged behind other students, but that gap has widened in the wake of the pandemic. The teacher shortage is particularly acute among special education teachers, now that they are needed most. Meanwhile, some effective efforts, such as tutoring, are not reaching disabled students. Low expectations for students with disabilities is a crisis that has failed to garner proper attention and resources, Lake said.

    One parent interviewed for the report said that getting help for their disabled students required constant fighting. “Multiple times, they promised in-person, in-school tutoring — which they just were understaffed and were never able to find anyone,” the parent said.

    Another parent said that without speech therapy, their son with epilepsy fell behind in school during the pandemic.

    “He fell further behind because my husband and I tried our best, but we can only do so much if you’re not a teacher, which is very frustrating,” the parent said in an interview.

    Recovery solutions are straightforward

    The strategies that helped schools recover have “not been rocket science,” Lake said. 

    Many schools have been successful with programs such as tutoring, high-quality curricula, extending learning time and improving communication with parents. Some schools are making these strategies a permanent part of the school experience, which is good news: Tutoring and small-group instruction are some of the most powerful tools schools have at their disposal, the report states.

    But scaling can be tricky, and many of the students who need help the most are not getting it, CRPE notes. Fewer than half of students who most needed that help enrolled in summer school, according to a Rand study, and just 1% of eligible students in Louisiana enrolled in a tutoring program for struggling readers.

    The report recommends focusing on the specific needs of struggling students, such as students with a disability or English learners, rather than so-called average students. Addressing the issues that these students are struggling with will pay dividends for the broader student population, Lake said.

    Some schools are demonstrating that recovery is possible, even if it’s not the dominant story right now. Students and educators alike are struggling, but there is a renewed understanding of the crucial role that school plays in a community. That has led to some schools rebuilding and strengthening that institution.

    “During the pandemic, you remember, there was so much talk about more joyful education, more engaging, more flexible,” Lake said. “We think that that has actually taken hold.”





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  • College is one of life’s ‘biggest investments.’ A new report asks — is it worth it?

    College is one of life’s ‘biggest investments.’ A new report asks — is it worth it?


    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    A new report released by the College Futures Foundation finds that while a large majority of California college programs allow graduates to recoup the costs of their postsecondary education in five years or less, a handful leave recent graduates earning less than the typical Californian with only a high school education. 

    The report by researcher Michael Itzkowitz of the HEA Group finds programs that did not result in recent graduates earning more than people with a high school diploma were concentrated at private, for-profit colleges. The paper flags such programs as having no economic return on investment.  

    By contrast, all programs analyzed at the California State University and the University of California had a positive return on investment, measured as the difference between the median graduate’s earnings five years after graduation and the median earnings among Californians aged 25 to 34 with no college education. Less than 1% of programs at both university systems were expected to take more than 10 years to pay off.

    Eloy Ortiz Oakley
    Credit: College Futures Foundation

    Eloy Ortiz Oakley, the president and CEO of the College Futures Foundation and a former chancellor of California Community Colleges, said the report is a response to survey data highlighting increasing skepticism about the value of higher education amid its rising costs. 

    “Paying for a higher education is, in many ways, one of the biggest investments that a student or their family is going to make in their life, second probably only to a mortgage,” he said. “If you think about it, people get a lot more information about other investments that they’re going to make, or other indebtedness they’re getting into, than they do when they invest in an institution of higher education. So we want to make sure that there’s greater transparency and more information for the student and their families when they’re investing in higher education.”

    Oakley said the report is not a judgment on whether a particular academic program should be offered as a result of its economic payoff. Rather, he said the report aims to help Californians to think of a college or university’s value less in terms of its acceptance rate and more in terms of its potential for increasing graduates’ economic mobility.

    Defining ‘return on investment’ 

    The report, “California College Programs That Pay,” analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard to understand the earnings of roughly 260,000 people who graduated from undergraduate certificate, associate and bachelor’s degree programs in California with support from a federal loan or grant.

    Looking at 2,695 programs across 324 institutions, Itzkowitz compared students’ out-of-pocket costs for a credential to the additional money they earn as a result of completing it.

    To judge how much a postsecondary program costs, the study uses colleges’ self-reported data on how much students are responsible for paying after deducting grants and scholarships. That figure includes not just tuition, but also fees, books, supplies and other living costs. This net cost is used to calculate a price-to-earnings premium, a measure of how many years it will take to recoup the cost of a credential. 

    The study makes a couple of simplifying assumptions to calculate that premium. 

    The first is that students will take one year to earn a certificate, two for an associate degree and four for a bachelor’s degree. Those assumptions are not true for many students in practice. For example, only about 36% of Cal State first-year students who started in 2019 completed their degrees in four years. In cases where finishing a program over an extended period of time would be more expensive, the study could underestimate students’ actual costs.

    A second assumption is that every program offered by a given institution cost the same, since cost breakdowns for given fields of study were not available. 

    Finally, the study universe is limited to students who graduated, not those who started a program but didn’t finish it. Previous research suggests students who start a college program but don’t receive a credential tend to earn less than graduates, Itzkowitz said, and are more likely to struggle to pay down debt.

    Report highlights

    Across all programs included in the study, Itzkowitz calculated that 88% prepared graduates to earn back the costs of their credential in five years or less. Median earnings five years after graduation were at least $10,000 more than those of a typical high school graduate for the vast majority of programs, too.

    But 12% of programs left graduates taking five years or longer to recover out-of-pocket costs and, of those, 112 were flagged as having no economic return on investment.

    The report also notes differences across education sectors. Itzkowitz found that 17% of programs offered by for-profit schools had no return on investment, compared with only 1.2% and 1.3% of majors and credentials at nonprofit and public institutions, respectively. 

    One way for-profit institutions differed from their nonprofit and public peers is that the for-profit institutions offered the most undergraduate certificates in the state — and a larger share of those programs resulted in no economic payoff. Two fields, cosmetology and somatic bodywork, stood out as having the most programs with no measured return on investment.

    Still, many programs showed returns even at a one-year time horizon. The report calculated that almost half of programs at public institutions allowed graduates to recoup the costs of their credential within a year. Among private, nonprofit institutions, 7% of programs positioned graduates to earn back their costs within that period. Thirteen percent of for-profit institutions met the same criteria.

    Oakley said that he hopes the report inspires more research into whether higher-earning programs are attracting students of color, where high-return programs are located regionally and how to replicate programs giving the best economic payoff.

    “There are a lot of programs within our public institutions that provide a good return on investment,” he said. “What surprises me is that when we ask those institutions why, they don’t necessarily know why.”

    Other approaches to measuring the value of college

    While the College Futures Foundation report focuses on graduates’ earnings in the five years after they graduate, other recent research has sought to project college-goers’ earnings over a longer time horizon.

    For example, a 2019 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce ranked 4,500 colleges by calculating their projected returns 40 years after enrollment. That analysis estimates the net present value of a student’s potential future earnings — that is, it balances the costs of paying for a college education today against the potential for higher earnings over time.

    The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity in May released a study framing return on investment in terms of how much college increases a student’s lifetime earnings after subtracting the costs of college. Rather than compare college-goers to the median high school graduate, that study estimates what college-goers would have earned had they not pursued higher education. It also takes into account colleges’ actual completion rates, a step that acknowledges the risk to students that start a program but don’t finish it. 

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





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  • Report: How dual enrollment in California compares with other states

    Report: How dual enrollment in California compares with other states


    Students attend Sociology 101 at Aspire Ollin University Preparatory Academy, one of several dual enrollment classes offered at the school in partnership with East Los Angeles College this semester.

    Credit: Kate Sequeira / EdSource

    A national report finds that dual enrollment can be a powerful strategy for addressing equity gaps in college enrollment and completion rates, but that the students who most need dual enrollment — Black, Latino and low-income students — still struggle to access it.

    The problem of limited access to dual enrollment is true in California, as well as the rest of the nation, according to a report released Monday night by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University.

    The study followed students who began taking dual enrollment courses in 2015, typically high school juniors or seniors, through 2021 using data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Researchers say this report is the first look at college outcomes for dual enrollment students after they graduate from high school with results broken down by race, income and gender — at both the state and national level.

    This report demonstrates how California’s dual enrollment students fare in college compared with other states through a data dashboard.

    For instance, it shows that California students earning college credit in high school are about as likely to enroll in college in the year after high school as other dually enrolled students across the country: 80% compared with 81% nationally. However, dual enrollment students in California are less likely to complete any kind of college degree in the four years after high school: 34% compared to 42% nationally.

    According to John Fink, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center who is one of the report’s authors, the report raises questions about why some states have much stronger outcomes or better access than others.

    The report shows that some dual enrollment programs have great outcomes but may not have much access, while others have great access but not great outcomes. The best programs, Fink said, have both — the ability to open the doors widely and offer support to ensure students are successful. 

    That’s the best way to “fully realize the potential of dual enrollment to broaden college access and attainment and equity,” Fink said.

    Caliifornia’s Black, Latino and low-income students in dual enrollment lag behind their counterparts on metrics such as college-going rates or college completion, according to the report. However, these same students are much more likely to do better after high school than those students who are not in dual enrollment.

    In California, 25% of Black students in dual enrollment courses were able to attain a bachelor’s degree, compared to 17% of those who had no dual enrollment. Likewise, 20% of Hispanic students in dual enrollment received a bachelor’s degree four years after graduating high school compared to 13% who were never dual enrolled.

    Black students tend to be underrepresented in dual enrollment nationally, but nationally the students that do enroll are more likely to attend four-year colleges, enroll in more selective colleges and major in STEM fields, which have high-earning potential.

    “The implication is that we need to address the issues around access to dual enrollment for Black students and increase the supports, because we see here what the potential is for increasing postsecondary access and attainment,” Fink said.

    The report does not have specific data on why one state might perform better than another, but Fink noted that policies such as charging for classes, requiring certain test scores and other administrative hoops can limit access to dual enrollment for groups who could most benefit.

    California was notable in that it relied much more heavily on community colleges for dual enrollment: 87% of its dually enrolled students are taking classes through community colleges compared with 72% nationally.

    Students who took dual enrollment courses in California were more likely to continue at a community college after high school, 41% compared to 30% for the rest of the country.

    The report found that dual enrollment programs offered by four-year universities tended to have better outcomes, but these institutions under-enrolled Black, Latino or low income students. These programs were more likely to be restrictive and have barriers, such as having more eligibility requirements and not offering transportation.

    The year that the study began following students — 2015– was an important one for dual enrollment in California. That was the year the state passed the College and Career Pathways Act, which made it easier for colleges and K-12 schools to work together to expand access to college courses for high school students. The legislation specifically named dual enrollment as a strategy to improve outcomes for students who struggle with academics or are at risk of dropping out.

    Dual enrollment more than doubled between 2015 and 2021 in California. Though California is the most populous state, its dual enrollment numbers in 2015 were just a fraction of Texas’. Other states with better developed dual enrollment programs in 2015 include Florida and Ohio.

    Fink noted that while a lot has changed in dual enrollment since 2015, research has demonstrated that many of the problems highlighted by this study remain, such as persistent gaps in access for students who are Black, Latino and low-income.

    An analysis of data by EdSource in 2022 found that Black and Latino students were disproportionately underrepresented in dual enrollment classes.





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  • California should emulate states posting gains on ‘nation’s report card’

    California should emulate states posting gains on ‘nation’s report card’


    Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource

    Once again, California’s scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress — often called the ‘nation’s report card’ — were disappointing across the board.

    Most news coverage, locally and nationally, focused on the stagnant post-Covid recovery nationwide. But this discouraging coverage overlooks a more positive development: Some states are continuing to see growth in student learning. And it’s happening because of focused, visionary state leadership — something California’s leaders would do well to learn from.

    A recent analysis by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University identified states that successfully leveraged federal Covid recovery funds to fuel academic improvement. It’s no accident that states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky are on the list of places where students have made gains over the past two years. These are all states that set a clear vision for how to improve curriculum and instruction in schools, are giving schools the necessary tools and resources, and are tracking outcomes to fuel continuous improvement.

    For example, in Louisiana, the state Department of Education first set a high bar for curriculum and instruction. Then it identified curricula that met that high bar; incentivized districts to adopt those curricula; identified effective curriculum implementation partners and provided funding for districts to hire them. While this may sound like a top-down reform effort, it was anything but: It included input from teacher leaders from the start, leading to changes like providing each district a single contact person for all state programs and working with teachers to develop Louisiana’s own literacy curriculum. Now, Louisiana is one of only two states where students’ scores have exceeded pre-pandemic results.

    Source: Edunomics (red arrows pointing out CA added by Jennie Herriot-Hatfield)

    California, unfortunately, has set no such vision for curriculum and instruction. The state creates lots of frameworks, but it’s unclear how those massive documents affect what’s happening in classrooms. (In my five years of teaching, I never heard about or used any state framework documents.) The state spent billions of dollars in Covid recovery funds, but didn’t use the funds to pursue any particular instructional improvement strategy, and failed to systematically track outcomes from different spending strategies.

    The states that have pursued instructional improvement with positive results seem to have two common characteristics: a visionary state education leader who makes this work a priority over the long term; and a willingness to learn from other states that have done this work. California hasn’t had either recently, but perhaps that could change, if parents, teachers, and other advocacy groups work together to influence current leadership or find new leaders willing to prioritize this work.

    California is a leader in so many fields — but not in education. Hopefully, that will change soon, with statewide elections less than two years away. With more purposeful state leadership, future NAEP score releases could someday highlight better results for California’s students too.

    •••

    Jennie Herriot-Hatfield is a K-12 education consultant, former elementary school teacher and public school parent in San Francisco.

    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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  • Academic gaps ‘allowed to linger’ among California’s Black students over past decade, report says

    Academic gaps ‘allowed to linger’ among California’s Black students over past decade, report says


    Aleka Jackson-Jarrell, coordinator of the Heritage Program at Adelanto High in California’s High Desert, regularly meets with Black students to make sure they stay on track to graduate and meet A-G requirements that enable them to apply to a public university.

    Emma Gallegos/EdSource

    In the areas of chronic absenteeism, suspension and reading proficiency, the rates for Black students in California remain largely the same as they were a decade ago. That is the focus of a new report, Black Minds Matter 2025, which provides new insight and recommendations on education for Black students in California a decade after the first iteration of the report was published by Education Trust-West.

    “This report really meets the moment that we’re in when we’re seeing so many cuts to education funding and programs that are inevitably going to impact Black students,” said Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, director of research at the prominent nonprofit behind the report that advocates for equity in education.

    Ten years ago, Black students were nearly three times more likely than white students to be suspended, and while suspension rates among Black students have since declined from 14% to 9%, the rate is still three times higher than white students, according to data from the California Department of Education included in the report. The chronic absenteeism rates are similar: in 2016-17, Black students had the second-highest rate of chronic absenteeism of any student group, just under Native American students — a statistic that remained the same in 2023-24.

    “None of the opportunity gaps or outcome gaps explored in this report are new — all have been allowed to linger over the past decade,” concluded the report authors.

    Black students represent about 5% of California’s student population from transitional kindergarten to 12th grade. That totals about 287,400 students, with about a third of them living in Los Angeles County, per 2023-24 state data. About 150,000 Black students are enrolled at institutions of higher education, both public and private.

    “We constantly have in the front of our minds that there are students and families and communities behind every single data point,” said Valenzuela-Stookey. “For that reason, it felt really important to not mince words and just bring to bear the information that we have about what conditions students and families are facing and are up against; despite the fact that they enter those systems with really ambitious aspirations, something is pushing against them, and that something is systemic.”

    The “ambitious aspirations” Valenzuela-Stookey mentioned refers to a finding by The United Negro College Fund in which 9 in 10 Black students agreed that earning a college degree is important, plus additional studies that found Black parents “are highly engaged and invested in their children’s educations, particularly in the early years,” per the report.

    The report, published Thursday, highlights multiple key findings, including:

    • The percentage of Black students in California at grade level in math increased from 16% to 18% in the decade since 2015-16 but has remained the lowest of all student groups
    • The gap between California’s Black and white students who have met or exceeded the state’s reading proficiency exams, known as California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, has not changed significantly since 1998
    • Three in 4 Black students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, which is 13 percentage points higher than the statewide average
    • The rate of Black students completing A-G course sequences in high school, which are required to attend the University of California and California State University systems, has increased by just 4 percentage points in the last decade
    • While the number of Black children enrolled in transitional kindergarten more than doubled from 2021 to 2023-24, the rate still makes up less than half of the number of Black 4-year-olds who are eligible to enroll
    • Black elementary school students report feeling sadness more frequently than any other student group
    • The number of Black teachers remained disproportionately lower than the share of Black students statewide; just over a quarter of school districts employ Black teachers at a rate proportionate to their Black student population
    • The rate at which Black students participate in dual enrollment increased by only 6 percentage points in the last seven school years, from about 11% to nearly 17%, while other student groups increased between 8 and 14 percentage points
    • Black college students in California face the highest rates of food and housing insecurity

    “This status quo is not an accident — it is the consequence of systems designed to produce unequal outcomes operating largely unchecked for centuries,” the report’s authors wrote. “It is also the consequence of incremental changes made in place of what’s called for: much more fundamental transformation.”

    A deeper look into some of the data cited in the report reveals alarming trends. For example, dual enrollment rates increased among all student racial groups between 2015-16 and 2021-22, per an analysis of state data by Policy Analysis for California Education, but Black students recorded the lowest rate of growth — at nearly 17% in 2021-22, just under the rate of dual enrollment participation for Asian students in 2015-16.

    Also, according to data from the California Community Colleges, within their first year in community college, Black students were completing and passing transfer-level coursework at a rate lower than their peers, with a difference of 30 percentage points between Asian students at 77% and Black students at 47%.

    While the report’s authors acknowledged the pandemic exacerbated some of the academic gaps, many existed long before Covid lockdowns began, and the data included in the report reflected that longevity. “It was really important for us to make sure that people had a long view of how entrenched these systemic inequities are because the solutions to them should follow from how long they’ve been baked into our systems,” said Valenzuela-Stookey.

    In addition to sharing the stark disparities, the report’s authors highlighted a handful of programs and initiatives they believe are working to close the gaps.

    These include a teacher residency program called The Village Initiative and created in collaboration with the Watts of Power Foundation; Los Angeles Unified School District; and California State University, Dominguez Hills. Fifteen Black male teachers were part of the program in 2023, and the partnership estimates they will place 113 fully credentialed, Black teachers in school over the next decade.

    Farther north, at Berkeley High School, the campus’ African American Studies Department is credited for the high rate of graduating within four years among the Black student population, at nearly 95% in the latest school year, compared to the statewide average of just over 86%.

    One of the overarching recommendations proposed by the authors was the creation of a Commission on Black Education Transformation, made up in part by Black students, parents and educators. This would be a standing state commission with the authority to make actionable decisions, including the allocation of resources to ensure follow-through from state and local agencies on policies related to academic progress for Black students.

    Other recommendations include:

    • Mandating that all high schools incorporate the 15-course A-G curriculum required for eligibility to the UC and CSU systems
    • Increasing award amounts for the existing Cal Grant program to aid students with non-tuition costs
    • Prioritizing the hiring and retention of Black educators in both TK-12 and higher education
    • Expanding pandemic-era supports, such as before- and after-school programming and academic tutoring
    • Requiring that all school staff receive training to end the disproportionate impact on Black students of punitive disciplinary practices
    • Modifying the state’s Local Control Funding Formula to target funds based on an index of metrics such as levels of adult educational attainment and homeownership rates
    • Instructing school districts to report “evidence-based strategies” aimed at supporting Black students in their Local Control and Accountability Plans

    Valenzuela-Stookey noted that her team sees both the progress and persistent gaps over the last decade “as a reminder that policy change is just the first step in closing a lot of these opportunity gaps that are highlighted in the report, and implementation and on-the-ground practice work is really the necessary next step if any of that is to come to fruition.”





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  • California colleges report no financial aid delays so far but fear federal upheaval

    California colleges report no financial aid delays so far but fear federal upheaval


    A 2025-26 FAFSA form.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Financial aid staff at California’s colleges and universities have a cautiously optimistic message to share this spring — but are weighing contingencies in case massive restructuring and cuts at the U.S. Department of Education upend federal aid this summer and fall. 

    First, the good news. Federal aid for this spring term — like Pell Grants and work-study aid — has already been disbursed. Universities are processing files from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, for next fall on schedule. And in turn, colleges are sending prospective students preview offers of grants and other support they are eligible to receive if they enroll.

    But trepidation is building about what’s ahead for the hundreds of thousands of California college students receiving Pell Grants and federal loans. Layoffs that have roughly halved the U.S. Department of Education’s workforce “raise serious concerns about the near future, particularly potential delays to the upcoming FAFSA cycle and the federal government’s capacity to accurately distribute billions in student aid,” said Toni DeBoni, the associate vice president for enrollment management at CSU Channel Islands.

    Those worries come following President Donald Trump’s executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all lawful steps” to close the Department of Education. The White House wants to potentially shift the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and even transfer Pell Grants to another department.

    Trump administration officials have pledged not to interrupt services as they wind down the Education Department, which would require congressional action to be formally eliminated. Trump says student loan servicing has “been a mess” and that it would improve under the SBA. But critics charge that dismantling Education parceling out its workload could hamper the distribution of aid to millions of students and harm student borrowers.

    If those dire predictions prove true, the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems would face disruption to a major funding source. Cal State received almost $2.3 billion and UC about $1.7 billion in federal student aid in the 2022-23 school year, much of it for Pell Grants and student loans. Any delay would also be felt at California community colleges, where 24% of students received a Pell Grant in the 2023-24 school year.

    Both university systems are reassuring prospective students and saying they think federal student aid will continue uninterrupted, despite fears of possible cutbacks.

    A UC spokesperson said in a statement that the system of 10 campuses does “not expect recent news about the U.S. Department of Education to impact our ability to award and disburse financial aid to our students” and that federal grants and loans remain available “with no anticipated changes to availability in the foreseeable future.”

    A CSU spokesperson said the 23-campus university system does not anticipate any delay or stop to federal student aid in the 2025-26 school year, adding that “the number of [student and parent] concerns regarding recent federal actions haven’t been widespread.” Systemwide, almost 42% of CSU students receive a Pell Grant, a form of aid for students from low-income families that can provide up to $7,395 for the 2025-26 award year. 

    However, Cal State officials addressed the uncertainty about federal changes more directly at the March meeting of the system’s board of trustees.

    “We know that there have been some (departures) of employees in the Department of Education,” Chancellor Mildred García said. “We are concerned about the process it will take to really go through the FAFSA, and that’s the most that we have heard.”

    “We don’t know who’s going to be processing our FAFSA applications, who is the people in charge, etc.,” she added.

    Nathan Evans, the CSU system’s chief academic officer, said that students and families seeking help with their federal student aid “are having difficulty in connecting and engaging with folks that support the FAFSA process at the federal level. So our teams at our universities are working as hard as possible, but sometimes those answers can only come from the folks that are helping support that directly.”

    Meanwhile, the California Student Aid Commission reported in late February that the number of high school seniors completing financial aid applications was down 25% compared with the same point two years ago, before the rocky rollout of the 2024-25 FAFSA. State officials attributed the decline in part to a nearly two-month delay in the opening last fall of the current federal financial aid cycle.

    Aiming to boost applications, the California Student Aid Commission extended the state’s priority deadline — the date by which students planning to attend four-year schools must apply for most state aid programs — until April 2. The latest commission data shows that as of April 1, about 55% of current high school seniors have completed a FAFSA or the California Dream Act Application, a form of state financial aid aimed at undocumented students. An aid commission spokesperson said the commission plans to soon compare applications through early April to previous years.

    So far, there are promising signs that aid applications are increasing. An analysis by the National College Attainment Network found that FAFSA submissions in California have risen 11% year-over-year. Financial aid staff at Cal Poly Pomona, CSU Bakersfield and UC Riverside said they have observed more FAFSA applications than in the previous year or two, suggesting a return to normal after complications with the new FAFSA.  

    But financial aid officials said Trump’s call to close the Department of Education has led some families to mistakenly conclude that federal student aid is no longer available, discouraging them from applying. Officials are working to counter that misinformation.

    Chad Morris, the director of financial aid and scholarships at CSU Bakersfield, has a simple message to families questioning whether federal aid will be reduced or delayed: Apply anyway. “Take the steps as if there won’t be any disruption,” he said. 

    Cal Poly Pomona is also trying to keep students focused on the here-and-now basics: The Department of Education is still operational; Pell Grants and federal student loans are protected by the law and are still available; students should apply as usual.

    “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Jessica Wagoner, the university’s senior associate vice president for enrollment management and services, “but what we can do is tell (students) what’s going on now.”

    Those soothing messages could be muddied by the loaded choice facing students who are eligible for federal aid as U.S. citizens or permanent residents, but who have spouses or parents who are undocumented immigrants. Students from such mixed-status families may have particular apprehension about whether data submitted through the FAFSA could be used for immigration enforcement purposes, though federal law prevents the U.S. Department of Education from using information students enter into the FAFSA for a purpose other than determining a student’s aid.

    University of California students have sued the Education Department, accusing it of turning over sensitive federal student aid data to members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. A federal judge in March blocked DOGE from accessing private data housed at the Education Department. 

    “When students are completing the FAFSA, they need to really look at the risk factor that they may take, especially mixed-status families,” said Jose Aguilar, the executive director of UC Riverside’s financial aid office. “But at the end of the day, if they are eligible for these federal grants and programs, I would encourage them to apply through the FAFSA.”

    UC Riverside has already started sending new students preliminary aid award letters. Its students receive about $79 million in Pell Grants, another $3 million from federal work study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant combined, and an additional $70 million in federal direct subsidized student loans, Aguilar said.

    Given the swings in federal education policy this spring, some university officials are starting to think about how they might respond if federal aid is delayed. DeBoni of CSU Channel Islands said her campus is “actively preparing contingency measures.” The university could extend internal deadlines for students to accept admissions offers or apply for scholarships, she said, and institutional scholarships could help to fund students’ expenses.

    At Cal Poly Pomona, Wagoner said the university could give students waiting for aid similar leeway. But the university, where almost 44% of students receive a Pell Grant, would face “a very big challenge” in the unlikely event of an abrupt drop in Pell dollars, Wagoner added. “I don’t know if we — if any institution — could supplement that loss.”





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  • Districts should target funds to foster youth to improve progress, report says

    Districts should target funds to foster youth to improve progress, report says


    As California expands services needed to grow the number of foster youth enrolling in college, more work is needed to help those students graduate.

    Julie Leopo/ EdSource

    California’s foster care students have improved their high school graduation rates since 2013, but have barely improved, or even lost ground, in rates of suspension, attendance and prompt college enrollment, according to a new report.

    And, in the 10 districts with the most foster students, only a fraction of 1% of the targeted money was directly spent on that group. The report, by WestEd, a nonpartisan education research agency, attributed the discrepancy to a disconnect between the administrators who drew up the spending plans and the staff who work directly with students, the report found.

    Published this week and titled “Revisiting Californiaʼs Invisible Achievement Gap: Trends in Education Outcomes of Students in Foster Care in the Context of the Local Control Funding Formula,” the report details how state policies have affected outcomes for foster youth over the past decade, at times positively, but often in ways that limit their ability to succeed.

    The authors conclude that while those changes facilitate school stabilization and other educational supports, challenges remain, including ensuring that planned school expenditures dedicate some funds to foster students’ unique needs.

    “The report suggests that the implementation of foster care supports remains difficult and that funding for tailored interventions to the unique situations and challenges of students in foster care is not yet a common rule even for districts with large numbers of students in foster care,” said Vanessa Ximenes Barrat, WestEd senior research associate and co-author of the report.

    Tailoring support to specific student populations

    The report’s authors noted that tailoring support to each student group is critical given their varying needs.

    For instance, in the school year immediately preceding the pandemic, which erupted in March 2020, foster students’ chronic absenteeism rate was 28% versus 12% for the overall student population across California. The rates sharply rose during the pandemic and have since steadily decreased. But data from 2022-23, the most recent school year included in the report, shows that discrepancies remain: 25% of all students were chronically absent versus 39% of foster students.

    The wide gaps indicate to school staff that foster youth might need stronger interventions than other student groups in addressing why they are missing so much instructional time.

    Similarly, suspension data shows continuing disparities, despite policy changes in recent years. Whereas suspension rates for all students have largely lingered between 3% and 4% since 2014-15 and through the pandemic, the rate for foster youth was between 13% and 15%.

    “All the things that make students in foster care have all the worst outcomes across the board — their instability, their trauma, etc. — means that they need more of the interventions than everyone else, and they need different interventions based on their unique needs,” said a child welfare and education professional who was interviewed for the report.

    Improved graduation rates, but concerns remain

    One area where foster students have slowly made strides is with graduation rates. Rates have steadily increased for high-needs students, including foster youth, since the 2016-17 school year. That year, 51% of foster students graduated from high school in four years. By 2022-23, 61% were graduating.

    A possible reason for the improvement, according to the report’s authors, is the passage in 2013 of Assembly Bill 216 which allowed some foster students to graduate after completing the state’s minimum requirements.

    School staff who were interviewed for the report said that the law prevented some students from dropping out as they were moved from one placement to another, and encouraged them to complete high school even if they had fallen behind in some courses.

    Other staff noted that the extension of foster care services to age 21 occurred during the same period in which graduation rates improved. The extension, they said, probably prevented students from leaving school because they were receiving added support to avert homelessness and other instabilities common among youth leaving foster care.

    But even with that improvement, school staff interviewed for this report saw areas of concern. Of those foster students who graduated, for example, less than one-fifth had completed the A-G coursework required to qualify for admission to one of the state’s public four-year universities.

    Other takeaways from the report include:

    • While dropout rates among foster youth remain higher than their peers’, they have lowered by 5 percentage points since 2016-17.
    • More foster youth are attending only one school each year, rather than moving between schools, which advocates say causes personal and academic instability — 66% in 2022-23, up from 62% in 2017-18.
    • More foster students are attending high-poverty schools — up from 56% in 2014-15 to 59% in 2022-23.

    As California’s general student population has dwindled, so has the state’s foster student population. State data shows that nearly 45,000 foster students were enrolled in the K-12 grades during the 2014-15 school year on census day, the first Wednesday in October. Eight years later, the state enrolled about 31,700 foster students.

    About a quarter of the state’s foster care students attend school across just 10 districts: Los Angeles Unified, Fresno Unified, Lancaster Elementary, Long Beach Unified, Antelope Valley Union High, Palmdale Elementary, San Bernardino City Unified, Moreno Valley Unified, Kern High, and Hesperia Unified.

    Local-control dollars rarely targeted solely to foster students

    The dip in enrollment of foster students in K-12 coincided with the state’s overhaul of the school finance system and the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula, commonly referred to as LCFF. One of the changes under LCFF was that districts receive supplemental grants based on the number of high-needs students, which includes foster youth, English learners and low-income students.

    Each district must also complete a Local Control Accountability Plan, known as an LCAP, and provide details on how it intends to help students succeed, including actions and expenditures related to the three groups of high-needs students.

    Equity across the state’s student population was part of the intent of implementing LCFF.

    But the report showed that of WestEd’s review of the 10 LCAPs, only 10 of 482 anticipated actions to support overall student populations were specific to foster students. Over half of the actions referenced foster students in some way, but mostly lumped all high-needs students together.

    Foster youth, for example, have alarmingly high rates of chronic absences and increased school mobility. If a service offered by a school requires students to be present in class, foster students may not always benefit; they might instead need greater access to transportation to help them travel to school regularly.

    The question of whether to target more funds specifically to each student group, rather than combining them, persists, given changes at the federal Department of Education and how they may impact foster students.

    Ximenes Barrat said, “As a relatively small and highly vulnerable population with distinct needs, there is a real risk that their concerns could be overlooked amid broader policy shifts.”

    WestEd CEO Jannelle Kubinec is president of the EdSource Board of Directors. EdSource’s editorial team maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.





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