While 14 Cal State universities notched six-year graduation rate increases over the previous year, nine schools in the system saw their rates decline.
San Jose (+ 4.6 percentage points), East Bay (+ 2.4 percentage points) and Fresno (+ 2.1 percentage points) were among the campuses with the greatest increases in six-year graduation rate. Those figures represent the difference in completion among first-time, full-time freshman students who started in 2018 and those who began in 2017.
But several campuses’ graduation rates slipped year-over-year, with the deepest dips at three of Cal State’s smallest campuses. Cal Maritime posted the biggest downswing, falling 7 percentage points. Stanislaus (- 4.6 percentage points) and Monterey Bay (- 4.1 percentage points) recorded the next-largest decreases. Two of Cal State’s largest campuses — San Diego (- 1.8 percentage points) and Long Beach (- 1 percentage point) — also saw six-year freshman rates go down slightly.
That’s according to campus-level statistics the system unveiled this week, coinciding with Cal State’s November board of trustees meeting. The university system is nearing the end of a decadelong campaign to graduate more students, which will conclude in spring 2025. It has made marked improvement toward hitting top-line goals across the system, but is falling short on some targets. Cal State officials have said that the pandemic set back progress on some graduation metrics. They also cite a need to focus on retaining students entering their second and third years of school, particularly students of color.
Cal State knows “that we have a leak, that in that second to third year we’re losing a significantly high number of our students of color and probably male students of color, quite honestly,” said Dilcie D. Perez, Cal State’s chief student affairs officer. “We’re bringing them in. But if the mechanism doesn’t change, we’re going to lose students.”
Systemwide data presented last month shows that Cal State’s freshman four-year graduation rate across all campuses increased slightly during the 2023-24 school year over the previous year, but that its six-year freshman rate plateaued and four-year transfer rate fell.
Cal Maritime, the university system’s smallest campus, was an outlier in terms of how much graduation rates fell from spring 2023 to spring 2024. The school, which specializes in shipping and oceanography programs, experienced the system’s greatest decrease in four-year graduation rates among students transferring from the California Community Colleges over the past two school years. Flagging enrollment has plunged the school into financial difficulty, which culminated this week in a vote to merge the maritime academy with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in order to keep it afloat.
Eight other campuses including Bakersfield (- 3 percentage points) showeddeclines in four-year transfer graduation rates. Humboldt (+ 5.8 percentage points) and Monterey Bay (+ 4.1 percentage points) gained the most, comparing four-year transfer graduation rates for the 2018 cohort to their peers a year earlier.
Systemwide, Cal State is aiming to have 40% of first-year students graduate in four years and 70% of first-year students graduate in six years by spring 2025. Individual campuses also have their own graduation rate targets, which can be more or less ambitious than those that apply to the system as a whole.
None of the system’s universities met their individual campuses’ graduation rate targets for first-time, six-year graduation rates among students who started in 2018. There has been more success on four-year rates. San Diego, Long Beach, San Jose, Sacramento and Northridge met their four-year target for first-time students who started in 2020.
Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
California’s students have struggled in the five years since the pandemic closed schools across the state. But kids in many schools are bouncing back, returning to pre-Covid achievement levels. What’s working? How have some districts innovated to turn kids’ learning curves upward once again?
After analyzing student-level statewide data and visiting nine districts in each of the past three years, our team has made these discoveries:
Mindful policies make a difference
Nationwide, the pandemic erased nearly two decades of progress in math and reading. In California, average math proficiency decreased by 6.4 percentage points between 2019 and 2022, and reading proficiency dropped by 4 percentage points. Our work shows a modest positive effect of early reopening and federal recovery investments over this period. This highlights the importance of keeping schools open when it is safe to do so and prioritizing high-need students in reopening. Federal stimulus dollars also helped during this period.
Our statewide work further shows that districts blended, braided and sequenced multiple funding sources to extend instructional learning time, strengthen staffing and provide learning supports.
We also studied the impact of recovery investments and specific district recovery programs. We did not find that increased federal Covid funding to schools increased student test scores post-pandemic. However, districts that devoted funds to teacher retention efforts and extended learning time showed more improvement in student attendance, a key to improving academic outcomes.
Cross-sector partnerships advance whole-child development
Prolonged school closure, social isolation, economic anxiety, housing and food insecurity, Covid-19 infection, and the loss of loved ones exacerbated a national mental health crisis already underway before the pandemic. In 2021, 42% of high school students nationwide experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and 32% attempted or seriously considered attempting suicide. As schools reopened, educators found themselves dealing with not just academic learning, but also support for basic needs (such as food and health care), mental health, and life skills (such as relationship skills).
Some districts pivoted to fostering whole-child development. For example, Compton Unified partnered with community health providers to offer health care services (such as vaccinations and check-ups), and Del Norte Unified leveraged Medi-Cal reimbursements to provide mental health counseling and therapy sessions. Educators will still need to deal with the academic, behavioral and life-skills needs for years to come. More cross-sector partnerships with public health, social services and housing would better equip schools to address these challenges.
School innovations foster a rebound in learning
Overall spending infusions have helped students rebound, but the impact has been relatively small. More important is how Covid relief funds were spent by districts. Our longitudinal case study of nine districts revealed some substantial organizational changes — reforms that may stick over time.
One large structural reform was the investment in student well-being. Before the pandemic, student well-being was considered mostly secondary to instruction and academic achievement. However, the pandemic highlighted the need to integrate life skills into instruction. As a result, districts invested in new program materials and moved resources to hire counselors, social workers, psychologists, and increased student access to school-based supports. Some even built new community centers where students and families come together.
A smaller scale, yet key, reform is districts’ investment in career pathways. Districts like Compton and Milpitas Unified offer a wide variety of pathways — from E-sports to computer science to early education — that are tied to on-the-job internships and certificates. These pathways have played an important role in engaging students and connecting them with employment opportunities.
Districts also tried new approaches to the structure of schooling and classroom practices. For example, Glendale Unified shifted to a seven-period block schedule that allowed middle and high school students to add an elective course that sparked their interest. In Poway Unified, small groups of students meet with teachers and classroom aides to focus on specific skill areas.
Digital innovations engage students, but gaps remain
Many districts have turned to digital innovations to motivate kids. In Poway, coaches embedded in the classroom work with teachers to build learning stations, where stronger students work in teams, freeing teachers to provide more direct instruction to kids at risk of falling behind.
Unfortunately, since the pandemic, the digital divide has narrowed, but it has not been eliminated.
In spring 2020, when schools abruptly shifted online, 40% of California households with school-age children did not have reliable internet or devices for distance learning. Over time, the state has made remarkable progress in device access, but not as much progress with internet access. The lack of progress could be attributed to multiple factors, including the absence of pre-existing infrastructure and affordability challenges. Federal and state governments provided unprecedented investments (such as the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and California Senate Bill 356) to address barriers to universal broadband access; however, communities face significant challenges in building out infrastructure and improving affordability.
The pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to rethink and restart public education. Given the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, learning disruptions will become the new norm for many communities throughout the U.S.
By learning from the example of districts that have demonstrated resilience and success in pandemic recovery, we can better prepare for future disruptions and build a more resilient public education that supports all students.
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Niu Gao is a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Julian Betts is a professor at UC San Diego. Jonathan Isler and Piper Stanger are administrators at the California Department of Education.
Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, was part of the research team and contributed to this report.
This collaboration research is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grant R305X230002 to the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Any errors or misinterpretations belong to the authors and do not reflect the views of the institute, the U.S. Department of Education or the California Department of Education.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Students walking on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024.
Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource
Diego Lopez, a student in his last year at Cal State San Marcos, gives the north San Diego County campus high marks. The Army veteran likes his classes, feels the campus is generally well-managed and appreciates that at the school’s current size, “you can just chill, and relax, and not get too overwhelmed.”
But Lopez can tell the student body is expanding, especially at the start of the semester, when he has to navigate crowded parking lots.
“The parking lots are so full, so you have to make sure you get here early. And then just right across the street, you see all the construction being done,” he said. “You can definitely tell: This school is growing a lot, and it’s growing fast.”
The number of students at the suburban Cal State San Marcos campus has mushroomed over the past decade. It’s now home to 14,655 students, an almost 15% jump since 2015, among the sharpest increases of any Cal State campus in that period.
But that is not the case across the 23 campuses of the California State University system. Overall systemenrollment has settled at 2.7% lower than a decade ago after tumbling more deeply during the pandemic.Andbehind that numberis a more complicated picture, with some individual campuses showing double-digit percent increaseseven asothers have experienced big decreases.
While San Marcos students have raced to find parking in the first weeks of recent academic years, Sonoma State students in contrast can usually find dozens of empty spaces in the Bay Area school’s main parking lot. The campus has suffered the worst enrollment loss in the university system, contracting from 9,408 students in 2015 to 5,784 students in 2024. Recent statistics suggest it had the highest dorm vacancy rate in the Cal State system in spring 2023, prompting the university to open some housing to nonstudents.
Falling enrollment has prompted a period of tight finances at the Sonoma State campus. Tess Wilkinson, a fourth-year transfer student studying communications, said she saw fewer courses being offered. She suspects budget cuts are one reason why.
“I even noticed some professors that had regularly taught courses in my major were no longer on the course schedule at all,” she said. “Some courses were thrown together to accommodate abrupt faculty changes — and student engagement in my classes felt like it had decreased.”
The divergence between San Marcos and Sonoma shows how the enrollment challenge facing the nation’slargest university system defies a one-size-fits-all solutionabout how to serve students and where to spend money around the state.
The trend continued this fall, with enrollment up from the year before at 15 campuses and down at eight. That uneven distribution of new students is in part due to regional differences in population, the cost of living and labor markets. It may also reflect whether they cater primarily to commuters or on-campus residents, offer higher- or lower-demand degrees and serve more or fewer students sensitive to last year’s federal financial aid delays.
Even in a year when enrollment across the Cal State system rose a modest 1.5%, some campus leaders enjoyed a banner college acceptance season. Cal State Monterey Bay, whose 16% enrollment bump was the system’s largest 2023-24, sold out on-campus housing for the first time in a decade this fall, according to Ben Corpus, its vice president for enrollment management and student affairs.
At the other extreme, lower-enrolled CSU campuses must contend with the financial fallout from less revenue from tuition and fees. Sonoma State and Cal State Los Angeles, which notched the largest year-to-year enrollment drop in the system, have instituted hiring freezes and cut course sections to bridge funding gaps.
Those stakes have not escaped the notice of campuses at both ends of the enrollment yo-yo. EdSource interviewed students, faculty and administrators at Sonoma State and Cal State San Marcos about how they think course offerings, student clubs, construction and, yes, parking are changing as their schools get bigger or smaller.
Students walk on the campus of Sonoma State University.Credit: Ally Valiente / EdSource
Sonoma State
An hour north of San Francisco, Sonoma State University celebrates its location on the edge of the Russian River Valley by naming its dorms for wine varietals and regions from Beaujolais to Zinfandel.
But wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes in this region of the state since 2017, a shock from which its population and already expensivehousing market are still recovering. That has made it harder to recruit students from other parts of the state, who are a significant part of the student body, officials said. Sonoma State’s enrollment has slid almost 39% since 2015. Cal State’s 2022-23 financial statements put the school’s average residence hall occupancy at just 65%. The university has opened some of its student housing to faculty, staff, students with young children or even people visiting campus for a conference.
Collapsing enrollment over the decade slowed to a 1% dip this year. Still, the smaller student body has prompted a serious cash crunch. Sonoma State, which has a $130 million operating budget this school year, anticipates a $21 million budget deficit going into 2025-26.
“It’s pretty simplistic sort of math: We just don’t have enough students paying the tuition to fully cover all of the expenses we have,” Emily F. Cutrer, the university’s interim president, said at an Oct. 28 town hall to discuss Sonoma State’s budget forecast.
Cutrer said the university would have to add more than 3,000 students — a 52%increase over fall 2024 — to cover its current deficit, a goal she estimated is likely three or four years away. The loss of tuition and fee revenue is compounded by rising employee benefits costs, state funding cuts and an estimated $3.6 million that Cal State is expected to reallocate to other campuses.
Sonoma State is under a hiring freeze and is also pressing pause on some travel. The campus in recent years has offered employees early retirements and buyouts. Part-time and full-time lecturer headcount has fallen almost 25% in the last several years, a spokesperson said. Sonoma State notified the faculty union in October that layoffs could be on the way.
“I would ask people to stop asking us to do more with less. It’s exhausting,” Lauren S. Morimoto, who chairs the university’s department of kinesiology, said at the town hall. “We’re demoralized and we’re burnt out.”
Sonoma State’s struggles are a comedown from a campaign under then-President Ruben Armiñana to bill the university as a “public Ivy” – offering plush new facilities at a state university price – in the 1990s through 2010s. Armiñana’s critics charged that the strategy attracted a wealthier and whiter student body compared with the state’s other public universities.
Judy Sakaki succeeded Armiñana in 2016 with the explicit goal of making Sonoma State more accessible and less elitist. Sakaki’s 2022 resignation ushered in a period of leadership turnover; Cutrer is the third person to lead the university since then.
Tim Wandling, who chairs the English department and serves on the board of the California Faculty Association at Sonoma State, said he’s concerned about leadership instability on campus. He also worries that the university’s top brass “want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing blitzes and new programs, and what they really need to do is just downsize their administrative staff and focus on keeping the good faculty that they have, the good students they have.”
Sonoma State is not alone among Bay Area universities hurting for students. San Francisco State and Cal State East Bay are facing similar declines.
Sonoma State’s relative distance from major population centers has long encouraged admissions staff to look outside their own backyard for prospective students.
Sonoma currently draws 35% of its students from its home county, an additional 63%from elsewhere in California and 1.6%from out of state. University administrators and attendees speaking at the October town hall appeared to favor an all-of-the-above recruitment strategy.
Locally, the campus has struck guaranteed admissions deals with several of the region’s school districts and community colleges. And looking outside Sonoma State’s immediate region, the university is also recruiting in Southern California, looking at ways of retaining students it already has and bringing back students who do not immediately re-enroll each term.
Students work at a library on the campus of Cal State San Marcos on Dec. 3, 2024.Credit: Amy DiPierro / EdSource
Cal State San Marcos
On a mild December afternoon, Cal State San Marcos student Diana Ortega Caballero was reading a book on a terrace overlooking construction cranes. Building sites are among the most visible cues of how the campus is expanding after some pandemic dips.
Ortega Caballero, a transfer student from MiraCosta Community College in nearby Oceanside, said she had “a really easy transition” to San Marcos. Almost a third of San Marcos students start at a California community college.
San Marcos is in good company among Southern California’s CSU campuses that have welcomed more students over the past decade due to regional population growth. San Diego State University is leading the system in enrollment gains since 2015, followed closely by Cal Poly Pomona and San Marcos.
Students interviewed at the campus said they’re largely satisfied with San Marcos. Several noted that the campus feels more accessible than larger CSU campuses. But they conceded experiencing occasional snags as the campus expands, like trouble getting into certain classes or a long wait time to see an academic adviser.
Jackson Puddy, who is studying business administration, was standing outside the library waiting for students to arrive for a pickup chess game. He hoped the school’s growing enrollment would bring more money, more professors and perhaps even more members for the small chess club he runs. The only con? “The parking situation — it’s not going to get any better,” he said, even if students can now reliably find a space in a dirt lot downhill from the main quad.
San Marcos’ growth does not immunize it from the belt-tightening other CSU campuses have begun in anticipation of lower state funding. At a board of trustees meeting in September, President Ellen Neufeldt said a lack of additional faculty could lead to larger class sizes and noted that the school has deferred maintenance on aging electrical systems.
“The challenge we now face is that while we are growing, we are unable to hire the essential employees needed to support our mission of student success,” Neufeldt said. “We urgently require more advisers, success coaches, tutors, financial aid specialists and counselors, and the list goes on and on, to assist our amazing students.”
Ally Valiente, a student at Sonoma State University and a member of the Student Journalism Corps, contributed to this story.
STEM students at California community colleges will be able to enroll in calculus prerequisites like trigonometry if they didn’t take those classes in high school.
California math educators this fall have been locked in a vigorous debate: Will the implementation of a new law help more community college STEM students by skipping prerequisites and placing them directly into calculus, or will it set up the state’s least-prepared students for failure?
This week, critics scored something of a victory. In a move that already faces legal scrutiny, the chancellor’s office for the state’s community colleges issued a memo making clear that, when the law takes effect next fall, students in science, technology, engineering and math majors who haven’t passed courses like trigonometry in high school will still have the option to start college math with up to two semesters of courses that are considered preparation for calculus.
Previous guidance instructed colleges to enroll those students directly into calculus — sometimes with a simultaneous 1- or 2-unit support class — or place them in new semester-long preparatory classes offered on a trial basis.
The changes were made after some math faculty across the state criticized the original guidance, including during an EdSource roundtable on the topic hosted last month. They worried that students without a solid math foundation would struggle if forced to startright away in calculus and said the original guidance went beyond what is required by the law, Assembly Bill 1705.
Other math faculty joined advocacy groups in defending the initial rollout plan, citing research that students perform better when they can go straight into calculus regardless of their high school math preparation. Critics, though, say some of that research is flawed.
The chancellor’s office issued the memo after gathering feedback from faculty, administrators and students about whether the state’s least experienced math students, such as those who didn’t take a class higher than geometry in high school, would be ready for calculus without taking prerequisites, said Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the office.
“We’ve been listening to folks, examining the evidence that colleges are bringing to us, and we got to the point that we needed to make a decision,” added John Hetts, the college system’s executive vice chancellor for the Office of Innovation, Data, Evidence and Analytics. “If we didn’t make a decision now, it would not leave colleges enough time to prepare for fall 2025.”
Calculus is often a required course for many science, technology and engineering majors. In the past, research has shown that some students never get to calculus because they fail to complete necessary prerequisite courses like trigonometry or precalculus, effectively blocking those students from pursuing their degrees.
AB 1705, signed into law in 2022, requires the college system to evaluate the impact of enrolling students in prerequisites to calculus and, if they can’t prove students benefit from those classes, to stop requiring or even recommending them.
Some backers of the law interpret it as mandating a shift as much as possible to enrolling all STEM students directly into calculus. They cite a section that states students “shall be directly placed into” the transfer-level class that satisfies the requirement for their degree.
Chancellor’s office officials, however, maintain that the latest guidance is consistent with the law. “The guidance is fully within the parameters of AB 1705,” Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the system, said in an email.
Under the new guidance, students who didn’t pass Algebra II or its equivalent in high school will be allowed to take two semesters worth of calculus prerequisites, which could include some combination of college algebra, trigonometry or precalculus. Students who did pass that course but not trigonometry or precalculus will be allowed to enroll in a one-semester prerequisite course, typically precalculus.
The new guidance is a compromise, said Pamela Burdman, executive director of Just Equations, a nonprofit organization focused on the role of math in education equity.
“I think the chancellor’s office is trying to strike a balance here,” she added. “I do think there has been a tendency to place students in more prerequisites than they may need, but we don’t know enough from the research exactly what the optimal placement system is and how to identify which students need which levels of support.”
The guidance won’t be the final word on the issue. It could face a future legal challenge. Jetaun Stevens, an attorney with the civil rights law firm Public Advocates, said the chancellor’s new directive urges colleges“to violate the law.” Stevens said the firm is still “assessing what we can do” and did not rule out a lawsuit.
“This guidance gives colleges permission to completely ignore students’ rights to be placed in calculus. It creates exceptions in the law that don’t exist,” Stevens said. “This is illegal and beyond the chancellor’s office’s authority. They don’t get to pick what part of the law they want to enforce.”
Faculty, meanwhile, still plan to pursue legislation next year that would permanently clarify that colleges can offer “standalone foundational pre-transfer courses,” according to a memo being circulated by the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges, a faculty advocacy organization. Wendy Brill-Wynkoop, president of the association, said the draft is being “shared widely with system partners and legislators.”
In the meantime, starting next year, the chancellor’s office plans to collect data from each college and examine how students are accessing calculus. Colleges will have to prove that students are at least as likely to get to and complete calculus when they start in prerequisites as when they start right away in calculus. If the prerequisite path shows worse results, guidance says those prerequisites will need to be eliminated for STEM majorsby 2027.
The updated guidance is “simple and based in common sense,” said Tina Akers-Porter, a math professor at Modesto Junior College and one of the leading critics of the original guidance. “If you’ve taken the preparatory courses, then go into calculus. But if you haven’t, then still offer the preparatory courses. That’s what we wanted.”
Tammi Marshall, dean of math, science and engineering at Cuyamaca College, was disappointed in the chancellor’s office’s new direction. She said the chancellor’s office has previously “done a great job of holding the colleges accountable” to evidence suggesting students perform better when placed directly into calculus witha companion support course than in longer sequencesof preparatory courses. Her college has been highlighted as an early adopter of AB 1705 and has reported improved calculus completion rates across racial groups.
“I felt like they were pressured into making a decision that isn’t completely based on the data,” she said of the new guidance.
Some math faculty said the new guidance leaves departments little time to adapt and may sap energy from attempts to reimagine math courses ahead of next fall. Many departments have designed new classes to prepare students for calculus in anticipation of AB 1705, but it’s unclear whether colleges will choose to offer those courses next fall, as they initially planned, or fall back on older courses.
“We just don’t know where to focus our energy right now,” said Rena Weiss, a math professor at Moorpark College, adding that she’s glad the chancellor’s office listened to faculty members’ concerns and is grateful for the option to place STEM students into courses like trigonometry.
Other faculty are hoping for more information about exactly which students they can now place into precalculus courses.
Forecasts of what the guidance means for access to STEM education varied. Marshall predicted greater inequity at colleges that opt to continue calculus prerequisite sequences with high attrition rates, which she said have a “disproportionate impact on our Black and brown STEM students.”
On the other side, Southwestern College math professor Kimberly Eclar said this week’s guidance gives more options to students whose high schools do not offer higher math classes. James Sullivan, a math professor at Sierra College, said the updated rules will benefit students who transition into a STEM career later in life but haven’t yet learned the concepts they’ll need for calculus.
Hetts, the executive vice chancellor, said the current evidence is simply “not strong enough” to prohibit colleges from offering prerequisites next year. The chancellor’s office, in consultation with the RP Group, a nonprofit that conducts research on behalf of the college system, plans to conduct additional research starting in 2025 “to more thoroughly understand” how students access calculus.
The RP Group is also deciding whether to conduct a follow-up study that would compare the longer-term outcomes of students who enroll directly in calculus to those who do not, according to Alyssa T. Nguyen, the organization’s senior director of research and evaluation. Such a study could examine how often each group of students completes associate degrees or transfers. Nguyen wrote in an email that RP Group will continue to draw from student records in its analysis and may also survey, interview or conduct focus groups with students.
Kindergarten teacher Carla Randazzo watches a student write alphabet letters on a white board at Golden Empire Elementary School in Sacramento.
Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / AP Photo
Insufficient school funding is hurting California teachers and their students, according to “The State of California Public Schools,” a report from the California Teachers Association released Tuesday.
The lack of funding has meant insufficient wages and high health insurance premiums for teachers, crowded classrooms and a lack of support staff, according to the report, which is based on a December survey of almost 2,000 TK-12 educators.
Most of the educators surveyed said that their pay is too low to afford housing near their jobs and that their salaries aren’t keeping up with the rising costs of groceries, childcare and other necessary expenses.
Ninety-one percent of the educators surveyed who rent reported that they can’t afford to buy a home. Only 12% of the teachers surveyed said they were able to save a comfortable amount for the future, while 31% said they are living paycheck to paycheck.
“Many educators are spread thin and frankly aren’t able to make ends meet financially, and are working in a public school system that continues to be underfunded year after year,” said CTA President David Golberg at a press conference Tuesday.
The California Teachers Association represents 310,000 of the state’s educators, including teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians, education support professionals and some higher education faculty and staff. The survey was conducted for the union by GBAO Strategies, a public opinion research and political strategy firm.
Teachers who took part in the survey, which targeted teachers throughout the state to provide a representative demographic, overwhelmingly agreed that California schools don’t pay high enough salaries to teachers or have the resources to meet the needs of the students.
Eighty-four percent said there aren’t enough staff, resources or training to support special education students, and 76% reported that classrooms are overcrowded. Sixty-eight percent said students lack access to mental health support.
California ranked 18th in per pupil spending in 2021-22, the most recent year nationally comparable data is available – slightly above the national average, according to a November report by the Public Policy Institute of California. When the difference in labor costs were taken into account, California dropped to 34th. In the five years between the 2018-19 school year and the 2023-24 school year, education funding increased nearly 34% in California, according to the PPIC.
“We’re not even in the top 10 when we compare ourselves to other states,” Goldberg said. “So, that shows you the real disconnect from the wealth that exists in our state and the resources that are going to students and educators.”
Almost a third of the teachers surveyed have taken second jobs or gig work to make ends meet, 37% have delayed or gone without medical care and 65% have skipped family vacations because of financial constraints, according to the report.
“These are not extra frills,” Goldberg said. “These are things that we consider part of just the everyday life that us, as human beings and as workers, a dignified life would entail. And, you see that a lot of educators are living with a scarcity around even the most basic things.”
Four out of 10 of the educators surveyed said they are considering leaving the profession in the next few years. Nearly 80% of the teachers said that finances were the primary reason they would consider the job change.
Sacramento-area TK teacher Kristina Caswell said a recent increase in the cost of healthcare premiums at her district swallowed up the recent raise she received. She said the affordability tool on the Covered California website rates her healthcare costs for a family of five as unaffordable.
“I will spend money on my students before I will think about going to that doctor’s appointment that I need and spending that money on maybe a prescription that I need if I get sick,” she said. “That’s something I will stop and think about. Whereas when I’m thinking about my students, I don’t (stop to) think about spending the money.”
Despite their concerns, 77% of teachers surveyed said they still find their job rewarding, although 62% are dissatisfied with their overall working conditions.
“I’m really thankful and grateful that I have the job that I have,” Caswell said. “I absolutely love my job. I adore my students, I adore the families that I serve.”
