California State University’s four-year graduation rates remain flat for the 23-campus system just two years before the end of a 10-year deadline to dramatically improve them.
The system announced Monday during its Graduation Initiative 2025 symposium in San Diego that rates remain unchanged from last year for first-time students. Preliminary data shows the four-year graduation rate remains unchanged from last year at 35%. The system’s 2025 goal is 40%. The six-year graduation rate for first-time students also remains the same as last year at 62%. The 2025 goal is 70%.
Graduation rates for transfers also remain flat this year, although the two-year transfer rate increased by 1 percentage point from last year to 41%. The 2025 two-year transfer goal is 45%. However, four-year transfer rates slightly decreased from 80% last year to 79% this year. The 2025 four-year transfer goal is 85%.
Despite the stall, Cal State has doubled its four-year graduation rates from 19%, when the 2025 graduation initiative was created in 2015. And since 2016, the CSU has contributed to an additional 150,000 bachelor’s degrees earned.
“We have no shortages of challenges ahead,” CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia said during the symposium. “Persistent opportunity gaps continue to shortchange our students and our state. There is a greater need now, more than ever, to expand access and affordability, to proactively recruit and serve students of all ages and stages. Not only to elevate lives but to power California’s economic and social vitality.”
However, graduation equity gaps persist throughout the system. The gap between Black, Latino and Native American students and their peers increased by 1 point this year to a 13% difference. The graduation rate for Black students is at 47%. And the socioeconomic gap in graduation rates between low-income and higher-income students increased to 12%, said Jeff Gold, assistant vice chancellor for student success in the chancellor’s office.
“Graduation rates, although they are at all-time highs, have stagnated,” Gold said, adding that the system has been stuck at a 62% six-year graduation rate since 2020.
Jennifer Baszile, Cal State’s associate vice chancellor of student success and inclusive excellence, said the system is proud of its work to increase rates since 2015, but “we still know there is more work ahead.”
“Across the country, institutions have seen a growth in equity gaps,” Baszile said, adding that much of that is due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the pressure on students to work or take care of their families.
But the chancellor’s office is also working on strategies to understand and intervene where it can to improve the college experience for low-income and students of color, she said. For example, former interim Chancellor Jolene Koester assembled a strategic workgroup on Black student success to study trends and improve education for that group of students.
Cal State will release more data, including graduation rates by campus and race, over the next several weeks.
“While the CSU’s collective focus on our ambitious goals has resulted in graduation rates at or near all-time highs, there is still much to accomplish in the coming years,” Chancellor Garcia said. “We will boldly re-imagine our work to remove barriers and close equity gaps for our historically marginalized students — America’s new majority — as we continue to serve as the nation’s most powerful driver of socioeconomic mobility.”
As California pushes schools to adopt research-based approaches to teaching children how to read, often called the “science of reading,” some teachers and advocates for English learners have expressed concerns that techniques used to teach reading in English to native speakers may not work for students who are learning English as a second language.
But an in-depth look at the science behind how language is developed reveals an interesting parallel between the science of reading and second language learning. In fact, the science of reading can actually provide support when it comes to teaching students whose native language is not English.
The science of reading and the science of language learning both require an explicit and structured approach to literacy that can actually help answer the longstanding question of: How can I teach English academic skills to a student who has no English oral ones?
A key strength of the science of reading approach is its focus on the development on both language (speaking) and literacy (reading) within the same instructional space. Gone are the days of encouraging separate subject blocks within English language arts, where literacy and oral fluency are taught as separate entities. Science-based approaches encourage teaching language and literacy hand-in-hand, complementing and building off one another based on each child’s development and progression. This focus is effective for all students, but especially for English learners who must learn oral skills at the same time as they are learning academic ones. As they are sounding out the word, they are also learning what that word means.
The traditional separation of oral language and literacy skills in English leads to an increase of “scaffolding” support for native English speakers — and even more so for non-native English speakers. Already pressed for time, teachers often find themselves supporting needed oral skills within literacy instruction, only to turn around and add needed literacy skills within oral language instruction. By teaching the two skills separately, teachers end up taking more time for each skill that is developmentally intertwined with the other.
The science of reading approaches these skills as interwoven, giving equal importance to both oral language and literacy instruction within the same space. This immediately reduces the need for scaffolds and emphasizes looking at language and literacy through a lens of cognition and development, instead of repetition and memorization.
Teaching oral, comprehension and vocabulary skills alongside language structure and syntax is something that has been much-needed for teaching English learners. Take Marco, an English learner, for example. Marco might sound out the word “net” correctly and might recognize a sight word (a commonly used word such as “she,” “be” or “had”) when reading. But does he know what those words mean, or how to apply them in context? Is he even given the opportunity to find out? Too often, Marco has no idea. He simply gets a “high five” for decoding one word correctly and recognizing another with no comprehension because that was the skill focus for that lesson. Marco continues in his learning process, only learning certain skills in a limited sense and not a fully comprehensive and applicable one.
This not only limits Marco’s literacy skills in the other language, but his language proficiency skills as well. He misses out on the opportunity for comprehension, vocabulary expansion, and active skill application of the language being learned because of this compartmentalized approach.
Marco needs both the functional application and the comprehensive skills to be taught purposefully and in combination. He also needs this done within the same learning period while the concepts are still fresh and relatable.
It’s an important step forward that this combined approach of language and literacy is now encouraged in whole-group and small-group instructional settings through the science of reading.
Looking at reading and the science behind it from a cognitive standpoint can provide us with a more equitable approach to teaching because it is based on what constitutes — and makes sense functionally — in the brain’s processing of information, something that is universal. How vocabulary is developed, alongside its symbols and sounds in reading and writing, is simultaneously developed in all language and literacy learning.
The science of reading challenges teachers to look beyond the surface of the language spoken and more deeply into how it functions. On the surface, it is easy for teachers to fear they cannot help or support English learners if they do not speak the student’s language. However, by applying the science of reading’s explicit language and literacy approach, teachers will be reminded of how they themselves made meaning and developed English literacy. Yes, they spoke English, but they still had to learn the structure and written form and how to read English in the classroom, just as their English learner students will. A key difference is that the English learner may not have any pre-existing English oral skills, but these skills, now more than ever, are encouraged and can be taught as they are developed, alongside literacy instruction.
Simply applying the science of reading won’t provide all the solutions to the complexities of teaching English learners, but it can provide teachers with a purposeful starting point through its explicit focus on, and the equal importance given, to both language and literacy development.
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Rachel Hawthorne has a background in linguistics and taught for several years as a bilingual teacher for grades preK-5. She now works as an English learner product developer for Really Great Reading, a company that provides literacy instruction support to educators.
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The most stressful time in most people’s academic careers is their first year of college. The transition from the routine of high school is suddenly over.
An entirely new level of freedom is afforded to us, and quite frankly, even that can be overwhelming. You might suddenly miss a class or two and no one will phone your home, and it’s enticing to view college as a chance to catch up on socializing. All this can cause students — especially those in community colleges where material isn’t always as rigorous — to make the mistake of not putting adequate effort into education the way they should.
So, what happens when students hit a snag in the road during their collegiate start?
For myself, there was something else that affected my ability to put my best foot forward in classes. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis just as I began my next chapter in my educational journey. I couldn’t help but feel like my world was crashing down.
This illness can create frustrating pain at times we cannot predict. Attending classes, much less focusing on the material, sometimes felt impossible. My grades faltered as I tried to manage my social life, treat my illness and balance a full load of classes.
My first few semesters in community college featured the dreaded W, or withdrawal, and even a pair of F’s. I immediately knew transferring was unlikely, so I decided to take some time off. Maybe college wasn’t for me. I was forced to put dreams aside and try to find work; and given the price of medication and doctor visits, it wasn’t a bad idea. So I dropped out, and for a time I thought I’d never have a chance to earn a degree.
Then came the Covid pandemic, and with it, work and school from home.
The opportunity to take online courses was enticing, even though I assumed transferring was out of the question given my academic record.
I decided to email an adviser at my local community college, just to see what could be done to transfer despite my less-than-stellar transcripts.
To my surprise, I learned about the little-known academic renewal policy. It allows community college students who have taken two years off to apply to have a limited number of units cleared from their GPA. It will remain on their records to give potential four-year universities a fuller picture of their efforts, but if you can return to classes and start hitting the ball out of the park, there is a chance to rebuild your academic career.
According to the California Community Colleges, academic renewal was first introduced in 2008.
It gives students a chance to petition to have D’s and F’s removed from their GPAs, but they must first earn a certain level of passing grades to start the process.
Ultimately, the work still must be done by the student. You are not guaranteed success by wiping a few W’s and F’s from your GPA, but the opportunity to have a second chance in education can uplift those who face illnesses, economic hardships or other unforeseen circumstances.
Your first semester in college should not follow you forever. And thankfully, the state’s community college system understands this.
When I filled out the academic renewal application with my adviser, I didn’t expect much. But to my surprise, they were very helpful in ensuring that my plan to take the appropriate courses to transfer to colleges of my choice was possible.
What followed were four semesters of the hardest work I have ever put in. I came back as a student on a mission to attend class as often as possible, ask questions to professors, get involved in study groups and even be a teaching assistant. My illness had thankfully gone into remission, and for once I felt like I could be a student.
Thanks to my advisers, professors and fellow students, I transferred to my dream university.
However, I do wish this renewal process were more widely advertised because not all students who have initial struggles in their academic careers will reach out to advisers. Community colleges can and should find better ways to ensure students understand there are second chances through what appears to be a little-known process.
Students across the state should know about academic renewal. It can be the difference between giving up on getting a degree or achieving your goals.
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Rubicon Landscape Group, which has a community beautification program in the city of Richmond, hires California Volunteers’ Youth Job Corps service members.
Credit: Courtesy of Ebony Richardson/Rubicon Landscape Group
One of Kaelyn Carter’s ongoing challenges these days is working early hours as a landscaper through the cold, often rainy San Francisco Bay Area weather — a world away from the stagnation he remembers feeling when he first arrived in California less than two years ago.
Then, Carter had just been released from prison after three years of incarceration in Virginia, where he was born. He had made his way to California, which he heard might have more job opportunities.
He’d tried working, but he’d run into more trouble and once again had a warrant out for his arrest. So he turned himself in.
That decision led to significant changes in his life, he said, because his probation officer connected him with his current workplace, which is part job and part rehabilitation program.
The job is with Rubicon Landscape Group, a landscaping company in the city of Richmond that has multiple branches, including a Reentry Success Center which offers a structured 18-week vocational training program where young adults under age 30 who’ve been impacted by the justice system learn about horticulture and landscaping.
Working at Rubicon, Carter said, offered him a community and the means to provide for himself and rebuild his life.
Kaelyn Carter, right, works is part of a community beautification program in the city of Richmond as a service member with California Volunteers’ Youth Job Corps.Credit: Courtesy of Ebony Richardson/Rubicon Landscape Group
“It feels comfortable to be able to provide, to buy stuff that you need, (like) hygiene products. You don’t have to go and ask someone to do it for you. You can just go and get it yourself,” he said, and “being able to go to work every day and see a check or some kind of payment at the end of the week, it’s comfortable.”
Job placements for service members range from a few months to about a year, a timeline that’s set by each participating city or county depending on the region’s needs. The idea is to create a pathway to careers that may have been previously out of reach for them.
Priority consideration is offered to youth who are in, or transitioning from, foster care, or have been justice system-involved, or in the mental health or substance abuse system. Participants must also be low-income, unemployed and not enrolled in school. They must also not have participated in an AmeriCorps program.
Out of over 8,000 total service members to date, about 400 were either in foster care or transitioning out of it, and 702 have identified as justice-involved.
The #CaliforniansForAll project includes other service programs, such as College Corps, which in its first year included 3,250 students from 46 California community colleges and state universities.
While the Youth Job Corps prioritizes young people who may not be on a college track, it encourages them to pursue higher education.
“That’s a goal of the program, and it’s why we focused on those populations,” said Josh Fryday, chief service officer of California Volunteers. “The idea here is creating an opportunity for our young people to serve their community, to make a difference, stabilize them, and then get them on the path to a successful career, which we hope higher education is part of for many of them.”
Service members are paid at least the state hourly minimum wage, now $16, but their city or county of residence can increase their wages.
The corps launched in 2022 with $185 million in state funding, with $78.1 million in ongoing funding approved in the 2023-24 state budget.
Since then, about 8,000 young people have worked in nearly 30 cities and counties that applied to join the list of participating locations, which range from Nevada County to the city of South Gate in Los Angeles County to the city of San Bernardino and more in between.
Each location either hires the service member directly or works with local community-based organizations that provide connections to careers in city government, climate efforts such as fire mitigation, community beautification by way of landscaping, and more.
“We really wanted to provide a lot of flexibility for local communities to decide how they were going to engage young people, depending on the needs of the community and what was appropriate for that area,” said Fryday.
For example, most of the service members in the Los Angeles County city of Maywood were high school seniors or in their early college years, and one was a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
These participants were given the flexibility to choose placement in a career they were interested in pursuing. Their interests ranged from working at City Hall — which is where the college graduate was placed — to the local YMCA. Even some neighboring cities benefited from this flexibility: a service member worked at a technology center in the next-door city of Bell, which is not on the list of participating locations.
Maywood, one of the most densely populated cities in the state, is home to a predominantly low-income and immigrant population that most often commutes to work in other regions of Los Angeles County. But at the end of their Youth Job Corps service time, many of the city’s service members were offered full-time jobs in their community.
“The pay is helpful, the exposure they appreciate, but what I hear that, just to me, is so incredible and inspiring is when they say, ‘I just never thought I had something positive to contribute to my community. I never thought that I had something of value where I could give back, and I could lift up the community I love while also supporting my family at the same time,’” Fryday said. “I remember hearing that specifically in Maywood.”
It’s a sentiment also shared by Carter in Richmond.
“It might sound crazy, but Rubicon has been basically a safe haven for me because it helped me with dealing with … I want to say poverty, if that makes sense,” said Carter, now 29. His job also helps him address his depression. Rubicon’s wraparound services — such as mental health support, resume workshops — help with housing and transportation, and working with plants helps him feel more grounded, Carter said.
All Youth Job Corps service members at Carter’s job with Rubicon are justice-impacted, which has given him a community of others with similar life experiences.
“This cohort, they just really lean on each other a lot,” said Ebony Richardson, a reentry coach with Rubicon. “I feel like they look out for each other as a whole, and it shows in the work they are doing.”
This community and support is part of what has kept Carter working at Rubicon, rather than returning to the life that led to his incarceration.
“It helped me build structure as far as my character, as far as my work skills,” he said. “It’s really a rehabilitation program basically for those who need a second chance.”
The second Trump administration may well go down in history as the most corrupt presidency in our history. We learned yesterday that the Trump family crytocurrency just received an investment of $2 billion from a fund in Abu Dhabi; this is a sure way to gain access to the patriarch in the White House. Not only is he enriching himself and his family, but has also allowed Elon Musk to violate every ethical rule in the federal government while shackling his competitors.
Steven Rattner, a columnist for The New York Times, details some of the ways that Trump enriches himself during his Presidency. We should not be surprised. Throughout his adult life, Trump has been a hustler, a con man, a performer, and a man who loves money.
No presidential administration is completely free from questionable ethics practices, but Donald Trump has pushed us to a new low. He has accomplished that by breaking every norm of good government, often while enriching himself, whether by pardoning a felon who, together with his wife, donated $1.8 million to the Trump campaign; promoting Teslas on the White House driveway; or holding a private dinner for speculators who purchase his new cryptocurrency.
Mr. Trump’s blatant transgressions have swamped those of any modern president and even those of his first term. Remember the outrage when he refused to divest his financial holdings or when he used a Washington hotel he owned as a kind of White House waiting room? Those moves seem quaint in comparison.
In his trampling of historically appropriate behavior, Mr. Trump appears to be pursuing several agendas. Personal enrichment stands out: Imagine any other president collecting a cut of sales from a cryptocurrency marketed with his likeness. There is the way he is expanding his powers: He has ignored or eliminated large swaths of rules that would have inhibited his freedom of action and his ability to put trusted acolytes in key roles. And then there’s rewarding donors, whether through pardons or favors for their clients.
I was working in the Washington bureau of The Times when Richard Nixon resigned, and even he — taken down by his efforts to cover up his misdeeds — did not engage in such a vast array of sordid practices.
The corruption of Trump 2.0 has not gotten the attention it deserves amid the barrage of news about Mr. Trump’s tariff wars, his attack on scientific research and his senior appointees’ Signal text chains. But self-dealing is such a defining theme of this administration that it needs to be called out. Like much that Mr. Trump has done in other areas, it announces to the world that America’s leaders can no longer be trusted to follow its laws and that influence is up for sale.
Just as in the post-Nixon era, when guardrails were established to prevent transgressions, the next president could decide to restore some of the sound government practices that Mr. Trump has trampled on. But the damage he has inflicted by, say, pardoning his donors or lining his own pockets is irreversible.
The below represents just a sampling of what’s transpired these past 100 days.
He Eliminated Guardrails
He turned a legitimate federal employee designation into a loophole. By giving senior officials such as Elon Musk the title “special government employee,” Mr. Trump avoided requirements that they publicly disclose their financial holdings and divest any that present conflicts before taking jobs in the administration.
He ended bans that stopped executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists or seeking lobbying jobs themselves for at least two years.
He loosened the enforcement of laws that curb foreign lobbying and bribery.
He Fired Potential Resisters
He dismissed the head of the office that polices conflicts of interest among senior officials.
He jettisoned the head of the office that, among other things, protects whistle-blowers and ensures political neutrality in federal workplaces.
He purged nearly 20 nonpartisan inspectors general who were entrusted with rooting out corruption within the government.
He Rewarded His Wealthiest Donors
Rewarding donors is part of any presidential administration. Every president in my memory appointed supporters to ambassadorships. But again, Mr. Trump has gone much further.
Jared Isaacman, a billionaire with deep tentacles into SpaceX, gave $2 million to the inaugural committee and was nominated to head NASA — SpaceX’s largest customer.
The convicted felon Trevor Milton and his wife donated $1.8 million to the campaign and Mr. Milton received a pardon, which also spared him from paying restitution.
The lobbyist Brian Ballard raised over $50 million for Mr. Trump’s campaign, and Mr. Trump handed major victories to two Ballard clients. He delayed a U.S. ban on China-owned TikTok his first day in office and killed an effort to ban menthol cigarettes, a major priority of tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, on his second.
Mr. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire who spent $277 million to back Mr. Trump and other Republican candidates, requires his own category.
As a special government employee, Mr. Musk is supposed to perform limited services to the government for no more than 130 days a year. By law, no government official — even a special government employee — can participate in any government matter that has a direct effect on his or her financial interests. That criminal statute hasn’t stopped Mr. Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency from interacting with at least 10 of the agencies that oversee his business interests.
He installed a SpaceX engineer at the Federal Aviation Administration to review its air traffic control system. The F.A.A. is reportedly considering canceling Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract to update its aging telecommunications infrastructure in favor of a SpaceX’s Starlink product. (SpaceX has denied it is taking over the contract.)
SpaceX is a leading contender to secure a large share of Mr. Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense project, an effort that could involve billions of revenue for the winner.
X, Mr. Musk’s social media outlet, has become an official source of government news. The White House welcomed a reporter from the platform at a recent briefing, and at least a dozen government agencies started DOGE-focused X accounts.
As Mr. Musk’s political activities started to repel many potential customers of Tesla, his electric vehicle company, Mr. Trump lined Tesla vehicles up on the White House driveway and extolled their benefits. Then Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox News viewers to buy Tesla shares.
DOGE nearly halved the team at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates autonomous vehicles. The agency has been investigating whether Tesla’s self-driving technology played a role in the death of a pedestrian in Arizona.
He Went All In on Cryptocurrency
Critics of crypto argue that it has demonstrated little value beyond enabling criminal activity. Despite this, Mr. Trump has wasted no time eliminating regulatory oversight of the industry at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, even as his family grows ever more invested in it.
By enabling money to be delivered anonymously and without any bank participation, crypto offers the possibility for any individual or foreign state to funnel money to Mr. Trump and his family secretly. Moreover, Bloomberg News recently estimated that the Trump family crypto fortune is nearing $1 billion.
On the eve of his inauguration he released $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins — a type of crypto derived from internet jokes or mascots. Next, the S.E.C. announced it would not regulate memecoins. Then last week, Mr. Trump offered a private dinner at his golf club and a separate “Special VIP Tour” to the top 25 investors in $TRUMP, causing the price of the currency to surge and enriching the family. (That tour was initially advertised as being at the White House. Then the words “White House” disappeared, but the rest of that prize remained.)
The S.E.C. eliminated its crypto-enforcement program, ending or pausing nearly every crypto-related lawsuit, appeal and investigation. That includes the civil suit against Justin Sun, a crypto entrepreneur who had separately purchased $75 million worth of tokens tied to Mr. Trump’s family after the election.
The S.E.C. also suspended its civil fraud case against Binance, the huge crypto exchange that pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations and allowed terrorist financing, hacking and drug trafficking to proliferate on its platform. Soon after, the company met with Treasury officials to seek looser oversight while also negotiating a business deal with Mr. Trump’s family.
World Liberty Financial, a crypto company that Mr. Trump and his sons helped launch, said it had sold $550 million worth of digital coins. A business entity linked to him gets 75 percent of the sales.
The Trump family has said it will partner with the Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com to introduce a series of funds comprising crypto and securities with a made-in-America focus.
The federal government’s “crypto czar,” David Sacks, Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Musk all have connections to the market. (Mr. Musk named DOGE after a memecoin.)
He Is Always Closing
Mr. Trump is reportedly on his way to raising $500 million for his political action committees — highly unusual for a president who cannot run for re-election.
A new Trump Tower is underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second largest city, with plans for two more projects for the kingdom announced after Mr. Trump’s November election victory, all in partnership with a Saudi company with close ties to the Saudi government.
Mr. Trump’s team asked about bringing the signature British Open golf tournament to his Turnberry resort in Scotland during a visit of the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to the White House.
He posts news-making announcements on Truth Social, the company in which his family owns a significant stake.
It’s all a sorry and sordid picture, a president who had already set a new standard for egregious and potentially illegal behavior hitting new lows with metronomic regularity.
