California enrolls a far lower percentage of English learners in bilingual education programs than other states, according to a report released in October from The Century Foundation.
The authors also found that California is investing less than other states in bilingual education. They recommend the state significantly expand investment in multilingual instruction, particularly dual-language immersion programs; prioritize enrollment in those programs for English learners; and invest more in recruiting and preparing bilingual teachers.
Prioritizing enrollment for English learners in bilingual and dual-language immersion programs is important, the authors stated, because research has shown these programs help English learners.
“New studies show every year that English learners, and especially young English learners, do best when they’re in some form of bilingual setting,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation and one of the authors of the report. “They do best at everything, they do best at maintaining their home language, of course, they do best at learning English over time, and they do best in academic subjects.”
The Century Foundation is a progressive public policy think tank based in New York City and Washington, D.C.
California has more English learners than any other state. About 40% of students in California schools are now or were once English learners; about half of them are learning English currently while the other half have now mastered the language.
Yet, only 16.4% of English learners in the state were enrolled in bilingual or dual-language immersion programs in 2019-20. That percentage is more than three times lower than the percentage of English learners enrolled in those programs in Wisconsin (55.9%) and more than two times lower than in Texas (36.7%), Illinois (35.9%) and New Jersey (33.4%).
Williams recognized that California is still rebuilding its efforts to expand bilingual instruction, after a voter-approved measure, Proposition 227, significantly limited it from 1997 to 2016. Still, he said, “The efforts to rebuild have not been significant.”
“California is not committing very significant resources for a state of its size,” Williams said. “The investment in new or expanded bilingual education programs is pretty modest. It’s $10 million in a one-time grants competition. Delaware puts in a couple million a year and has been doing it for the past 10 years. Utah spends $7 million a year on dual language.”
The report finds that the funding invested in expanding bilingual education lags far behind the state’s stated goals. “Global California 2030,” written in 2018, for example, recommended expanding the number of dual-language immersion programs to 1,600 and enrolling half of California’s K–12 students by 2030, making at least 75% of graduating students proficient in two or more languages by 2040. There are currently about 750 dual-immersion programs in California, according to the California Basic Educational Data System.
The report’s authors stated it is also crucial for California to expand bilingual education in transitional kindergarten classrooms, where English learners could benefit from it at a younger age. Transitional kindergarten is an extra year of school before kindergarten. The state is gradually expanding access to the grade each year until 2025, when all 4-year-olds will be eligible.
The new report recommended changing credential requirements for transitional kindergarten in order to recruit more preschool teachers, since many more preschool teachers speak Spanish and other languages, compared with K-12 teachers.
Anna Powell, senior research and policy associate at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, said she and many other early education advocates agree that current preschool teachers face an “uphill battle” to become TK teachers.
According to CSCCE, an estimated 17,000 workers in preschool and child care programs have a bachelor’s degree, a teacher’s child development permit and at least six years of teaching experience in early childhood settings. However, Powell said the new credential proposed for pre-K to third grade would only allow work as a preschool teacher to be counted toward part of the required hours.
“Experienced educators would be required to go back to school and/or obtain additional qualifications first — likely while juggling a full-time teaching job,” Powell said. “Meanwhile, a public school teacher in a middle school could potentially teach TK without any new clinical hours or other time-consuming requirements, so long as they have taken 24 units of ECE or child development (or equivalent).”
“There is still time for California to right this wrong,” she added.
Martha Hernandez, executive director of Californians Together, an organization that advocates for English learners statewide, praised the report.
“Our state currently possesses an exemplary policy framework, but what’s lacking is a concrete, systemic plan, adequate, targeted funding for effective implementation and accountability for better educational opportunities and outcomes for English learners,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the California Department of Education should lead a coordinated, statewide effort to implement the English Learner Roadmap, a guide approved by the State Board of Education in 2017 for school districts to support English learners better.
One way to recruit more bilingual teachers both for TK and other grades would be to encourage high school graduates who were awarded the State Seal of Biliteracy to join teacher preparation programs, Hernandez said. To receive the State Seal of Biliteracy, graduates must show proficiency in both English and another language.
“A modest target of 5% from the over 400,000 candidates could significantly reduce the shortage,” Hernandez said. “The time for translating vision into action is now.”
Note: The research discussed in this article was supported by a grant from Sobrato Philanthropies. EdSource receives funding from many foundations, including Sobrato Philanthropies. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.
A recent New York Times investigation revealed OpenAI’s ambition to make artificial intelligence the “core infrastructure” of higher education. In California, that vision is already a reality: The California State University system has committed $16.9 million to provide ChatGPT Edu to 460,000 students across its 23 campuses. But this massive investment misses a crucial opportunity to develop the strategic thinking capabilities that make students genuinely valuable in an AI-augmented workplace.
The irony is striking. OpenAI helped to create the problem of students outsourcing critical thinking to chatbots, and now presents itself as the solution by making that outsourcing even more seamless. Recent research in Psychology Today found a negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical thinking abilities, particularly among younger users. When students delegate decision-making and problem-solving to AI, they bypass the very mental processes that build strategic capabilities.
California State University’s investment in ChatGPT Edu is significant and potentially transformative. But spending almost $17 million on AI tools without a strategic framework is like buying students calculators without teaching them mathematics. The investment is sound; what’s missing is teaching students how to direct these powerful capabilities strategically rather than becoming dependent on them.
Students in the CSU system already possess remarkable strategic thinking skills that traditional academic metrics don’t capture. Here are a few examples. Working multiple jobs while attending school requires sophisticated resource optimization. Supporting families demands stakeholder management and priority balancing. Navigating complex bureaucracies develops systems thinking. Translating between different cultural communities builds pattern recognition across domains.
These aren’t just life experiences — they’re strategic capabilities that, when developed and articulated, become powerful career advantages in an AI-augmented workplace. The goal should be to help students recognize and leverage these skills, not replace them with chatbot dependency.
European business schools are already proving that the strategy-focused approach works. At Essec Business School, outside of Paris, executive education programs focus on developing “strategically fluent leaders” who use AI as a strategic tool rather than a replacement for thinking. Students learn to maintain strategic direction while leveraging AI capabilities — exactly what CSU students need. When executives can apply strategic frameworks to AI integration, they don’t merely use the technology better; they direct it toward genuine business value.
A recent University of Chicago Law School study found that even AI systems trained on specific course materials made “significant legal errors” that could be “harmful for learning.” This isn’t about AI’s current limitations; it’s about the fundamental difference between tactical execution and strategic judgment. AI excels at processing information within defined parameters, but strategic thinking requires the uniquely human ability to see patterns across domains, understand complex motivations, and envision new possibilities.
The democratization of AI tools actually creates unprecedented opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds to translate their strategic insights into career success. But only if we teach strategic frameworks, not just tool usage.
In my courses at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School — spanning advertising, social media, public relations and political communications — I’m developing approaches that emphasize strategic thinking alongside AI capabilities. Rather than just teaching AI literacy, I focus on helping students develop strategic frameworks for directing these tools effectively. The goal isn’t AI literacy — it’s strategic literacy enhanced by AI capabilities.
Rather than criticizing CSU’s AI investment, we should help the system maximize its value. Imagine courses that help students identify their strategic thinking patterns from real-world experience, develop frameworks for human-AI collaboration, and practice directing AI capabilities toward strategic goals. Students would graduate not as AI users, but as strategic directors of AI — exactly what employers need, and exactly what justifies CSU’s significant investment.
This isn’t about rejecting AI in education. It’s about ensuring that as AI handles tactical execution, we develop the strategic thinking capabilities that become more valuable, not less. CSU students bring strategic insights from lived experience that no chatbot can replicate. The question is whether we’ll help them recognize and develop these capabilities, or teach them to depend on tools instead.
We don’t need AI-native universities. We need strategic-thinking native students who can direct AI capabilities toward human purposes. That’s the transformation worth investing in.
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.
Christian Robinson always planned to go to college, but when she graduated from Adelanto High School in California’s High Desert, she felt aimless. Without a plan or preparation for higher education, she decided to go to work instead.
She regrets that now.
“I wish I would have gone straight into college because I would have had everything done, finished and over with,” said Robinson, who at 20 is now enrolling at Victor Valley College.
Currently, Robinson juggles two jobs, working for a security company and serving fast food. She wishes she had received more guidance about attending college from her school.
Robinson’s story was typical for Black students at Adelanto High School, where over 8 out of 10 Black students graduated in 2020 without the college prep courses — known as A-G — required for admission to California’s public universities.
The path has been different for her younger brother MarQuan Thornton, currently a high school senior at Adelanto. Months away from graduation, Thornton is one of a small group of students deciding not whether he will go to college, but which one.
MarQuan Thornton is a senior at Adelanto High in California’s High Desert. He credits the Heritage Program at his school, aimed at Black students, for helping to keep him on track for attending college.Emma Gallegos/EdSource
Thornton has worked hard but recognizes that the key difference between his trajectory and his sister’s is the support he’s getting from school that did not exist during his sister’s time there.
Three years after his sister graduated, his high school began the Heritage Program, which is aimed at ensuring that Black students, like him, are on track to complete their A-G requirements.
Thornton knows he’s on track to meet the requirements that will make him eligible to attend a state university.
“If she (Christian Robinson) had this type of chance when she was in high school, she probably would have been where I am at,” Thornton said. “I can see the difference.”
While the vast majority of students in California — 86% of seniors in 2023 — graduate from high school, most — 56% in 2023 — do not complete their A-G requirements, according to an EdSource analysis of data from the California Department of Education. EdSource’s analysis found that Black and Latino students are the hardest hit.
In 2023, 68% of Black students and 64% of Latino students did not meet A-G requirements, compared with 26% of Asian students and 48% of white students, according to EdSource’s analysis.
The highest non-completion group is foster students at 88%, followed by disabled students at 85% and English learners at 82%.
“These kinds of numbers should be treated as a five-alarm fire,” said Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, director of P-16 research for Ed Trust-West, a nonprofit that advocates for justice in education.
Valenzuela-Stookey said high school graduates are being shut out of affordable four-year public college options, because they are not getting the support they need to complete the A-G coursework.
“Our education systems urgently need to invest more in our students of color,” Valenzuela-Stookey said.
As Robinson neared graduation in the early days of the pandemic, she said everyone, even teachers, seemed to lose track of how to prepare students for college and life after high school.
But long before the pandemic, the district was struggling to prepare Black students to meet their A-G requirements and be ready for higher education, according to Ratmony Yee, assistant superintendent of educational services for Victor Valley Union High.
Robinson’s mother, Crystal Francisco, says that she is proud of how hard her daughter works to earn her own money. But she concurs that if Heritage had been around, Robinson might have gone straight to college.
“She probably would have gone a different way,” said Francisco.
Snapshot of California
Of 1,766 high schools in California, about half graduated more than 56% of students lacking the required college preparatory courses.
Fewer than 2 out of 10 students met A-G rates in 2023 in many northern counties, such as Lake, Del Norte, Plumas, Lassen, Nevada, Tehama, Trinity. Just 3 out of 10 students in Kern, Merced, Tulare and Kings counties met the requirements. That compares to the Bay Area in San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Marin counties where more than 5 out of 10 students met A-G requirements.
Improving low A-G completion rates has been a longtime goal of both educators and state policymakers, but it’s a problem that resists easy answers or quick fixes, said Sherrie Reed, executive director of the California Education Lab at UC Davis and a researcher with Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an independent research nonprofit affiliated with several California universities.
The idea of simply aligning the state’s minimum high school requirements with A-G requirements hasn’t gained steam because of the concern that it would result in fewer students graduating, said Mayra Lara, the director of Southern California partnerships and engagement with Ed Trust-West.
What are A-G requirements?
The details of A-G requirements can be arcane, especially for students and parents who are not familiar with the college admissions process. The state requires students to complete a minimum of 13 courses to receive a high school diploma.
But to attend a UC or CSU requires that a student takes 15 courses in seven areas: history, English, math, science, foreign language, arts and an elective. Each category has its own letter, A-G, which is where the requirements get their name.
These courses overlap with high school requirements, but they are also more rigorous. For instance, three years of English are required to graduate from high school, while A-G eligibility requires four years. Only one of those years can include English as a Second Language or English Language Development — courses that English learners are often enrolled in.
Low grades are a common way students fall off the A-G track. A “D” is considered a passing grade for a high school diploma, but A-G classes require at least a “C” to count as eligible.
The state, instead, has offered carrots for districts working on improving poor A-G rates, especially those that have a large marginalized student population, such as those who are low-income, English learners, homeless or have a disability. In 2021-22, the state set aside over $547 million for the A-G Completion Improvement Grant Program. The state has also pushed dual enrollment and career technical education to the high school curriculum, both of which can help students meet their A-G requirements.
Progress has been slow. The number of students who have met A-G requirements statewide has ticked up just shy of four points over the last six years.
Understanding why any given student may or may not meet A-G requirements requires examining what is happening in a particular region or district, as well as disparities within schools.
“The answer is that it is all of that,” said Reed. “No one factor accounts for it.”
Some students said that graduating without meeting A-G requirements sent them the message that they were not college material.
Brock Wooster-Mills, 20, said he felt “doomed to fail” as a student with a disability attending Liberty High School in Bakersfield, where 49% of students do not meet A-G requirements.
Partial hearing loss had affected Wooster-Mills’ ability to speak and follow lessons in elementary school. But even when his hearing improved, his counselors in the Kern High School District wouldn’t allow him to transfer into required A-G courses such as French and geometry.
He remembers one special education teacher telling his class that they likely wouldn’t even attend a community college, but Wooster-Mills said he always knew he was capable of more. He enrolled in Bakersfield College in 2021, the fall after he graduated.
He’s now in his sixth semester, but his lack of academic confidence and inadequate preparation continue to dog him. In high school, he had never been taught how to write an essay. He had never studied a foreign language, which made Spanish daunting. He failed the first time he took it.
“I feel like I’m still behind,” he said. “I wasn’t taught what I was supposed to be taught.”
Most high schools in the state — 91.4% of traditional district schools, according to PACE — do offer a full slate of A-G coursework that put them on track for college. But the degree of access students get to those courses or support, once they have enrolled, varies greatly, resulting in wide disparities between groups of students.
Interactive Map
View the map to see the percentage of students in each high school who graduate without A-G required courses.
PACE released a series of briefs and reports on the A-G completion rates in summer 2023, noting that access to rigorous coursework — whether dual enrollment, Advanced Placement or other college preparatory courses — can profoundly change the trajectory of a student’s life. These courses not only set students up for admission to college, but make it more likely that a student will pursue college in the first place.
Researchers found that some high schools do not offer the full range of A-G courses. In 2018-19, 2.5% of schools offered no A-G courses, and another 6% only offered some A-G courses. The list also includes small and rural schools that struggle to hire teachers who are qualified to teach A-G required classes in fields such as math, science or foreign language.
But 84% of schools that do not offer a full range of A-G courses are charter schools focused primarily on credit recovery for students at risk of not graduating from high school. Charter schools tend to be outliers in both directions; schools with the highest and lowest A-G rates — where fewer than 40% or greater than 80% of students meet A-G requirement — tend to be charters.
Changes in high school can help
Adelanto High is a part of Victor Valley Union High School District, which serves communities in the High Desert, including Victorville. Cheap, abundant land attracts residents priced out of the Southern California housing market, but there is little economic opportunity. Unemployment is high, and so is the poverty rate.
“The kids get stuck here, because there’s a cycle of poverty,” said Aleka Jackson-Jarrell, the coordinator of the Heritage program at Adelanto High.
Educators in Victor Valley Union High say that beyond ensuring that students have all of their options open to them upon graduation, it is not their role to choose a path for students. Military or trade school are options celebrated at the school, but educators tell students that a bachelor’s degree will be key for most students who aim to earn better wages and escape the cycle of poverty.
“Money talks,” said Yee, assistant superintendent of instructional services for Victor Valley Union High.
District leaders say ensuring that students meet their A-G requirements opens up two key options for students: being eligible to apply for a CSU or UC school, and also having the preparation to succeed at a community college.
Like much of inland California, the rate of students completing their A-G is low in Victor Valley Union High. In 2016-17, 13% of students in the district completed their A-G coursework, but it has been improving: that number rose to 29% last year.
Victor Valley Union High has been making districtwide changes that administrators say are key to putting more students on track for A-G completion.
Scheduling is important, Yee said. Creating a master schedule that prioritizes disabled students or English learners ensures these students aren’t missing A-G coursework because of a scheduling conflict. Some schools also build tutoring into daily schedules for struggling students.
The district studied students’ transcripts to figure out how to improve their chances of meeting A-G requirements. For instance, they found that students who took foreign language classes as freshmen or sophomores were more likely to fulfill this requirement, because they had time to retake classes to make up for any poor grades. Students are now required to begin their foreign language courses by sophomore year.
Victor Valley Union High also rolled out two programs aimed specifically at groups of students that were struggling the most: Black students and long-term English learners.
Homing in on groups who need the most help
The Heritage program, aimed at Black students like MarQuan Thornton, was piloted in 2022-23 at Adelanto High. Beginning sophomore year, every Black student in this High Desert school is automatically enrolled in this program that ensures students are prepared for graduation as well as college and a career.
Thornton said the program has helped him, even ensuring that he made up classes he struggled with his sophomore year. He now boasts a 3.7 GPA.
A-G completion rates for Black students at his high school improved. In 2021-22, 6% of Black students met their A-G. The following year, when Heritage began, that number jumped to 26%.
Because of its early success, the program is not only being rolled out at other campuses in the district, but is being used as a model for Legacy, a program aimed at long-term English learners.
Students in both Heritage and Legacy are sorted in four groups. Level 1 students are on track to graduate from high school with A-G requirements, while Level 4 students may be in danger of not graduating from high school at all. The coordinators hold monthly sessions with each group on topics ranging from how to fill out the FAFSA form or make up failed classes to basic life skills that students approaching adulthood need. Students also visit college campuses.
Parents are invited for workshops to school so that they can understand the importance of A-G classes and learn how to support — and perhaps badger — their children into staying on track.
Heritage coordinator Jackson-Jarrell said that having a background similar to her students’ helps her connect with them. She dropped out of high school when she was younger. She tells students that earning degrees — starting with an associate degree and ultimately obtaining a doctorate — helped her go from making $4.25 an hour to making six figures.
Her counterpart at Silverado High, Jose Velasco, teaches Spanish and runs the Legacy program. Like many of his students, Velasco is a child of immigrants whose first language was Spanish. He checks in to make sure students have access to bilingual aides so that they can understand the content in their college preparatory classes, such as geometry or history.
When Heritage first began, Jackson-Jarrell experienced pushback from non-Black teachers, parents and students questioning the need for a program focused solely on one group of students and pointing to other programs such as AVID, that focused on college and career readiness.
“We were hit with questions like, ‘Why is this program just for Black students? It’s not fair,’” she said.
Jackson-Jarrell would tell them that the data was showing that overwhelmingly, Black students need the most support meeting A-G requirements and that they have unique needs and challenges that Heritage addresses. When students visit college campuses, they try to imagine themselves fitting in. Not seeing Black students on campus can reinforce the idea that they don’t belong on a college campus.
“They’re looking for themselves,” said Jackson-Jarrell. “They feel like they don’t belong.”
So, Heritage will often ensure that when they visit campuses, they can meet directly with students from the Black student resource centers. This upcoming spring, Heritage students are invited on a tour through the American South, visiting historically Black colleges and universities. Legacy makes a point of visiting with Latino student groups on campus for similar purposes.
Jackson-Jarrell said that programs like Heritage and Legacy are important for the economic development of the community and hopes to see more programs like them in other districts in the High Desert.
Superintendent Carl Coles concurs. Increasing the rigor of students’ coursework and preparing them for higher education doesn’t just set students up for success, it improves the prospects of their families and the larger community. The district’s renewed focus on A-G requirements, he said, goes right to the core of why education is so important.
Coles said, “It really is so that every kid can live a life of purpose.”
This post has been updated to clarify a source’s statement
First grade teacher Sandra Morales discusses sentences with a student.
Credit: Zaidee Stavely / EdSource
Newly proposed legislation sponsored by the California Teachers Association would eliminate all performance assessments teachers are required to pass, including one for literacy that it supported three years ago. The result could leave in place an unpopular written test that the literacy performance assessment was designed to replace.
Senate Bill 1263, authored by state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA, through which teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice.
Eliminating the assessment will increase the number of effective teachers in classrooms, as the state continues to contend with a teacher shortage, said Newman, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
“One key to improving the educator pipeline is removing barriers that may be dissuading otherwise talented and qualified prospective people from pursuing a career as an educator,” Newman said in a statement to EdSource.
The bill also would do away with a literacy performance assessment of teachers and oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.
The literacy performance assessment is scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. It is meant to replace the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment set to be scrapped in 2025.
New law could leave RICA in place
The proposed legislation appears to leave in place a requirement that candidates for a preliminary multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a reading instruction competence assessment, said David DeGuire, a director at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
“At this time, it is unclear what that assessment would look like, but it could be that the state continues to use the current version of the RICA,” he said.
Newman will present the legislation to the Senate Education Committee in the next few months. Discussions about whether the RICA remains in use are likely to take place during the legislative process.
Rubio recently became aware of the new legislation and had not yet discussed it with Newman.
“For three years, I worked arduously and collaboratively with a broad range of education leaders, including parent groups, teacher associations and other stakeholders to modernize a key component of our educational system that in my 17 years as a classroom teacher and school administrator I saw as counterproductive to our students’ learning,” Rubio said of Senate Bill 488.
Teachers union changes course
The California Teachers Association, which originally supported Senate Bill 488, now wants all performance assessments, including the literacy performance assessment, eliminated.
“We are all scratching our heads,” said Yolie Flores, of Families in Schools, a Los Angeles-based education advocacy organization. “We were really blindsided by this (legislation), given the momentum around strengthening our teacher prep programs.”
The results of a survey of almost 1,300 CTA members last year convinced the state teachers union to push for the elimination of the CalTPA, said Leslie Littman, vice president of the union. Teachers who took the survey said the test caused stress, took away time that could have been used to collaborate with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students, she said.
“I think what we were probably not cognizant of at that time, and it really has become very clear of late, is just how much of a burden these assessments have placed on these teacher candidates,” Littman said.
Teacher candidates would be better served if they were observed over longer periods of time, during student teaching, apprenticeships, residencies and mentorship programs, to determine if they were ready to teach, Littman said. This would also allow a mentor to counsel and support the candidate to ensure they have the required skills.
California joins science of reading movement
California has joined a national effort to change how reading is being taught in schools. States nationwide are rethinking balanced literacy, which has its roots in whole language instruction or teaching children to recognize words by sight, and replacing it with a method that teaches them to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.
Smarter Balanced test scores, released last fall, show that only 46.6% of the state’s students who were tested met academic standards in English.
Last week Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, introduced Assembly Bill 2222, which would mandate that schools use evidence-based reading instruction. California, a “local control” state, currently only encourages school districts to incorporate fundamental reading skills, including phonics, into instruction.
“It (Newman’s SB 1263) goes against not only the movement, but everything we know from best practices, evidence, research, science, of how we need to equip new teachers and existing teachers, frankly, to teach literacy,” Flores said. “And that we would wipe it away at this very moment where we’re finally getting some traction is just very concerning.”
Lori DePole, co-director of DeCoding Dyslexia California, said the proposed legislation would cut any progress the state has made “off at the knees.”
Among her concerns is the elimination of the requirement, also authorized by Senate Bill 488, that the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing certify that teacher preparation programs are teaching literacy aligned to state standards and a provision that requires the commission to report to the state Legislature annually on how stakeholders are meeting the requirements of the law.
“It would be going away,” DePole said. “Everyone agreed with SB 488, all the supporters agreed, this was the direction California needed to go to strengthen teacher prep with respect to literacy. And before it can even be fully implemented, we’re going to do a 180 with this legislation. It makes no sense.”
Flores said teachers want to be equipped to teach reading using evidence-based techniques, but many don’t know how.
“We know that reading is the gateway, and if kids can’t read, it’s practically game over, right?” said Flores. “And we are saying with this bill that it doesn’t matter, that we don’t really need to teach and show that teachers know how to teach reading.”
Teacher tests replaced by coursework, degrees
California has been moving away from standardized testing for teacher candidates for several years as the teacher shortage worsened. In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.
Littman disagrees with the idea that there will be no accountability for teachers if the legislation passes. “There’s always been, and will continue to be, an evaluation component for all of our teachers in this state,” she said. “It just depends on what your district does and how they implement that. There’s always been a system of accountability for folks.”
From complex general education requirements to early application deadlines, transferring from community college to California State University, Northridge proved to be a confusing process for Vanessa Rivera. Now, as a graduate intern at the Los Angeles Pierce College transfer center, Rivera works to support other students on their paths to the CSU system.
“I was a lost college student, and I was really intimidated to seek help,” Rivera said. “This led me to a career path in counseling, (for the) ability to benefit lost college students like I once was.”
With hopes of helping ease the transfer process for students like Rivera, the CSU system opened its new online CSU Transfer Planner for all California community college students in January.
“A large gap exists between the number of students who intend to transfer, and those who do,” said April Grommo, assistant vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management at the CSU Chancellor’s Office.
A complicating factor has been the lack of standards between systems. For example, the University of California has not had a systemwide transfer guarantee for community college students, and students considering transferring to Cal State have separate and different requirements for that system.
According to an August 2023 report from the Public Policy Institute of California, only 19% of community college students who intended to transfer did so within four years, and only 10% did so within two years. Grommo said she hopes the new transfer portal will help bridge that gap.
“The CSU Transfer Planner was designed to create a more efficient and accessible pathway for students to transfer to the CSU,” Grommo said.
The planner allows students to map out their coursework and general education requirements, enter test scores, view articulation agreements, explore program offerings and check if their GPA meets the requirements at their target campuses.
According to Grommo, the tool is tailored to help students figure out their individual paths so they don’t waste time and money taking unnecessary courses.
“With the CSU Transfer Planner, community college students can directly connect to their future CSU campus of choice early in their educational journey, and ultimately minimize credit-loss and maximize time-to-degree completion,” Grommo said.
As of the end of February — less than three months after the portal launched — more than 9,500 students had created Transfer Planner accounts, according to Grommo.
The planner is a great tool for students but has yet to see widespread use because of how new it is, according to Sunday Salter, the transfer center director at Pierce College and a member of the CSU Transfer Planner implementation committee.
“We want students to have some certainty,” Salter said. “A lot of students feel unsure in the transfer process. Our hope is that this tool will help them feel really confident in what is expected of them.”
Samantha Watanabe, a third-year liberal studies major who recently transferred from Cuesta College to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said a program like this would have really helped her while she was transferring.
“My last semester, I had to take seven classes just to get into Cal Poly because I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t really know that there were other requirements for Cal Poly. So I think a program like (the transfer planner) would have definitely aided me,” Watanabe said.
Navigating transfer requirements is a difficult task for students across the nation. In Virginia, a new dual-admission program is working to address this problem and might ultimately serve as a model for California’s university systems.
The CSU and UC systems also have recently launched dual-admission programs. First-time freshmen entering a community college can apply for the CSU Transfer Success Pathway program through the transfer portal.
Transfer center counselor Ashley Brackett at Allan Hancock College said she is excited about the planner, noting that it provides a huge opportunity for students.
“I’m stoked that they finally have created something similar to what the UC has already had for a really long time,” Brackett said.
The University of California system has a similar online planner for community college students to track their progress and requirements for admission to a UC.
The UC Transfer Admission Planner is connected to the UC application, allowing students to keep track of their progress and apply for their school of choice all in one place, according to the UC admissions page.
The CSU planner will eventually be connected to the CSU application just like the UC planner is connected to its application, according to Grommo.
As the planner continues to develop, Salter said the Pierce transfer center will host events to introduce it to students who apply for the next CSU admission cycle, which will begin in October.
“I’m really excited that the Cal States have done this,” Salter said. “It centralizes communication between the universities and the students, and I’m looking forward to watching it expand.”
Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism student minoring in French and ethnic studies at Cal Poly. Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science. Both are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
Legislation that would remove one of the last tests teachers are required to take to earn a credential in California passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously Wednesday with little opposition.
Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, will now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If ultimately approved by the Legislature, it will do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA.
The assessment requires that teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice.
Eliminating the assessment would encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, author of the bill and chairman of the Senate Education Committee at Wednesday’s hearing.
“Despite its well-intentioned purpose, the demands associated with preparing for the TPA have actually had the perverse impact of reducing the overall quality of teacher preparation by undermining the capacity of teacher candidates to focus on what’s most important, which is their clinical practice,” Newman said.
He said the performance assessments duplicate other requirements teachers must fulfill to earn a credential, including proving subject-matter competency, taking teacher preparation courses, being assessed for reading instruction proficiency and completing 600 hours of clinical experience.
Brian Rivas, senior director at The Education Trust‒West, a nonprofit education research and advocacy organization, spoke in opposition to the legislation.
“We concluded when we reviewed the research that teaching performance assessments are the best available measure of teacher preparedness and whether or not a candidate is prepared to enter a classroom,” Rivas said.
The test offers a common standard to measure how well credentialing programs are preparing teacher candidates and could mean fewer prepared teachers in schools serving low-income students, which are already disproportionately taught by novice teachers, he said.
California moved away from standardized testing for teacher candidates in recent years as the teacher shortage worsened.
In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.
Around the same time, the state also has joined a national effort to change how reading is taught in schools, focusing on a method that teaches students to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.
Last summer, Senate Bill 488 passed the state Legislature. The bill replaced the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, also known as RICA, with a literacy performance assessment based on a new set of literacy standards and Teaching Performance Expectations centered on phonics and other foundational reading skills. The assessment was scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. The CTA supported the bill.
Union leaders later said that a survey of its membership persuaded them to change course and to sponsor SB 1263, which would repeal the performance assessment.
Senate Bill 1263 doesn’t remove the requirement that candidates for a preliminary, multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a test that evaluates their ability to teach reading, meaning the passage of SB 1263 could result in the RICA remaining beyond the 2025 date when it was scheduled to be abandoned.
The RICA has been a major hurdle for teacher candidates for years. About a third of all the teacher candidates who take the test fail the first time, according to state data collected between 2012 and 2017. Critics also have said that the test is outdated, racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.
The California Teachers Association also opposed Assembly Bill 2222, which would have required California teachers to use “science of reading” instruction in their classrooms. Last week the bill died without a hearing.
CTA representative Mandy Redfern spoke in support of Senate Bill 1263 Wednesday, calling the performance assessment a barrier to a diverse teacher workforce.
“Over the past 20 years, the TPA, or the teacher performance assessment, has evolved into a high-stakes, time-consuming costly barrier for aspiring teachers,” Redfern said.
“The current iteration of the TPA has been proven to be ineffective at preparing educators for the realities of the classroom,” she said. “The CTC’s data shows that TPAs disproportionately harm aspiring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) educators.”
The most recent passing rates on the assessment for people of color are not significantly different from others who took the test, said Mary Vixie Sandy, Commission on Teacher Credentialing executive director, at the hearing. For example, Black teacher candidates had a 75% first-time pass rate and a 95% ultimate pass rate, which is right within the norm, on average with the whole population of teachers who took the assessment, Sandy said.
The bill would also do away with oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.
A group of education leaders and experts representing both community colleges and four-year universities agreed during EdSource’s Wednesday roundtable discussion that dual admission might be one of the most promising solutions to California’s broken transfer systems.
“At the end of the day, it’s really important for us to ensure that transfer is as seamless as possible, that students have the information they need upfront, that it’s actionable, that they’re able to take the courses they need and get through to transfer,” said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center.
Panelists at the roundtable — “Is dual admission a solution to California’s broken transfer system?” — agreed that dual admission should be available statewide for all interested students in order to ensure more seamless transfers.
The roundtable included discussion of a state law passed in 2021 that sought to improve transfer rates in California. The postsecondary education trailer bill, or Assembly Bill 132, asked the University of California and required the California State University systems to create such programs for students who didn’t “meet freshman admissions eligibility criteria due to limitations in the high school curriculum offered or personal or financial hardship.”
going deeper
Visit the virtual event page for EdSource’s dual admission roundtable for more information about the speakers and a list of resources.
Dual admission programs offer students guaranteed admission into certain four-year universities after completing a specific list of lower division courses at a community college. This is different from dual enrollment, a process in which students earn college credit while in high school.
This law could potentially transform the state’s higher education pathways, given that California ranks 41st when it comes to high school graduates who enroll in a four-year university but third in its share who enroll in community college, according to Johnson.
“What that means is that transfer students are critical to ensuring that California really provides a meaningful ladder of educational and economic mobility for our population,” Johnson said.
While the state law calls for a pilot program, CSU’s dual admission program is permanent. It’s called the Transfer Success Pathway Program and launched in fall 2023 with an initial cohort of 2,000 students, said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management.
“We purposely are creating a statewide system,” Grommo said. “We also know that students transfer or take courses at multiple community colleges, and we wanted all of that credit to be reflected in the system and for students to be able to accurately track how many units they’ve completed, what their transferable GPA is, and how they fulfill general education and major prerequisites so that they truly understand the courses that they need to transfer.”
CSU’s program includes all campuses, though some of the most impacted majors are excluded, while UC’s program is limited to six of the nine campuses. CSU also goes beyond what’s required by law by offering dual admission to just about any student who was rejected or simply chose not to attend CSU.
“Just for scale, there’s 162 community college students in the dual admission program for UC, and there’s 2,008 students in the dual admission program for CSU currently in the community colleges,” said panelist John Stanskas, vice chancellor for educational services and support at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
Roundtable panelists also discussed existing programs that could be used as a model for more statewide access to dual admission.
A significant benefit of his dual admission program, called ADVANCE, has been the clarity of knowing exactly which classes he’d need to take at his current campus and at George Mason University after transferring. A clear understanding of the courses he’d be required to take was important, he said, as he decided whether to pursue computer science versus computer engineering.
“The fact that I’m able to see not only what classes I need to take here at NOVA (Northern Virginia Community College) but also what it transfers to and what it transfers as, I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of the program,” said Todd, who is on track to transfer to George Mason University in one year.
“I don’t have to worry I’m wasting my money, I don’t have to worry I’m wasting my time. … I don’t have to be a junior taking freshman classes because I didn’t know that this history class was a prereq for this other class.”
Todd said he’s also benefited from having access to a second campus.
“That’s something that I wouldn’t have if this ADVANCE program doesn’t exist because I have access to everything a GMU student has access to because I’m considered a GMU student, even though I’m at NOVA,” Todd said, referring to George Mason University.
Some GMU resources available to Todd are their libraries, a lab with 3D printers, and access to their student clubs.
One of the longstanding challenges that California community college students face when transferring to a CSU or UC is the need to align the courses on their transcripts with the courses they must take after transferring. It’s a challenge that NOVA and GMU avoided by clearly outlining required courses for students enrolled in ADVANCE, but one that students in Long Beach City College’s initial dual admission program often came up against.
In its initial iteration of the program in 2008, Long Beach City College partnered with Long Beach Unified and CSU Long Beach to create the Long Beach College Promise. Understanding which courses students were required to take at each level of their higher education journey, however, “was almost like a maze that they were trying to demystify,” said panelist Nohel C. Corral, executive vice president of student services at Long Beach City College.
In 2019, the college relaunched a revised version called Long Beach College Promise 2.0, Corral said.
“We mapped the courses students would need to take in their first two years here at Long Beach City College and what it would look like in their last two years at California State University Long Beach,” Corral said. “And that required a lot of coordination between the instructional faculty at both Long Beach City College and at Long Beach State, in addition to counselors and advisers in both institutions.”
The relaunched program included 38 students enrolled at Long Beach City College who were also given CSU Long Beach student identification cards with access to the CSU library, sporting events and career services, among other resources. The following year, the cohort included 162 students, which grew to 774 by the fall of 2021.
“We’re still tracking them and collecting data to assess the transfer rates for those cohorts, but for that fall 2019 cohort, we saw significant transfer rates compared to other populations,” he said.
The panelists agreed that geography may become a potential challenge in the development of dual admission programs statewide, given California’s size. They also agreed, however, that regional partnerships become crucial in those areas.
Just last week, for example, Chico State announced a dual admission partnership with seven community colleges. Fresno State and Fresno City College also have a partnership; likewise, CSU Bakersfield has one with Bakersfield College.
Corral suggested “starting off with the data and seeing where the students are transferring to, if you don’t have a local CSU in your direct vicinity, so that you can start those dialogues and start those engagements with those CSUs that your students are going to.”
Stanskas, of the community colleges’ chancellor’s office, said that dual admission can be “especially important for our place-bound students who can’t go a hundred miles or 500 miles to a program. They have family; they have commitments; they have lives that they are unable to move that way.”
Grommo said, “We would love to see every student that’s transitioning from high school and decides that the community college pathway is their pathway that they need to take, really enroll in the Transfer Success Pathway program so we can support them early in their process and help them through this transfer journey.”
This story was updated to accurately reflect Jaden Todd’s name.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, center, stands with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, alongside Lisette Estrella-Henderson, center right, the Solano County Superintendent of Schools, at Disneyland in Anaheim during the California School Recognition Program in 2019.
Credit: Lisette Estrella-Henderson / X
California schools that have significantly improved student achievement will be honored in a ceremony hosted by the California Department of Education at Disneyland on Friday, but the $500 per person ticket price has some superintendents fuming.
Districts pay between $460 and $500 per person to attend the California School Recognition Program Awards Ceremony, depending on when they register. They also pay the cost of employee travel to Anaheim and for their lodging. The Disneyland Hotel is offering a conference rate of $324, plus taxes and fees. Parking is $60 per vehicle.
The price tag is leaving some superintendents conflicted. Do they send teachers and other staff to celebrate their school’s success, or do they use the money to pay for other needs, such as professional development, tutors or supplies?
“The state understands that most districts, a majority of districts right now, are in budget constriction and deficit spending,” said Anne Hubbard, superintendent of the tiny 900-student TK-6 Hope Elementary School District in Santa Barbara. “And it seems just crazy that the CDE would be the host of this event, this honoring, this lifting up of education, with a price tag that just does not make sense to me.”
The event, which has been held at the venue for decades, will cost more than half a million dollars. It is paid for with registration fees and sponsorships.
School may have a nacho party instead
Hubbard was proud and excited when she learned that Vieja Valley Elementary — one of the district’s three schools — had been named a California Distinguished School. She quickly booked a few rooms at the Disneyland Hotel and proceeded to the registration page to see if there was a limit to the number of employees she could send.
“I was completely floored when I got to the checkout and saw the price tag for attending the ceremony — $490, plus a $10 processing fee,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard asked event organizers if her staff could forgo the dinner and be in attendance to receive the award. She said she was told everyone must pay to attend. Hubbard decided it would be less expensive and more inclusive to celebrate with the entire staff and is considering a nacho bar.
Demian Barnett, superintendent/principal of nearby Peabody Charter School, will pick up the award for Vieja Valley Elementary. He and another administrator plan to make the three-hour round trip to avoid room charges. Two teachers from the school will stay overnight.
“We found a way to be able to support four people to go, but I would be using that money to do programming with kids here if I wasn’t doing this,” he said last week.
Funding help available, CDE says
The California Department of Education can not directly fund awards or recognition programs because the Legislature has not authorized it to spend taxpayer funds in this way, said Elizabeth Sanders, director of communications for the CDE.
She says honorees should first look to their district foundation to cover the cost of attending the awards dinner, but can also contact the department for help obtaining a sponsor or a scholarship, if funds are available. Honorees who do not attend will receive their award by mail at no charge, she said.
A check of the registration website last week found no mention of scholarships, and superintendents who spoke to EdSource were not aware that funding could be available.
The only district team that directly requested financial assistance this year has been able to find local support and is registered for the event, Sanders said.
Photos and giant mice
The California School Recognition Program Awards Ceremony will start at 10 a.m. with group photos taken throughout the day, according to the California Department of Education registration webpage.
Guests can also wait in line to take photos with Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, passing sponsor and district booths as they move along. Mickey and Minnie Mouse are on hand for photos as well.
The awards dinner begins at 6 p.m. with entertainment usually provided by student musicians, according to past attendees. It is scheduled to last three hours.
Distance can make travel costs prohibitive
Ferndale Unified in Humboldt County will spend more than $10,000 from its general fund to send Principal/Superintendent Danielle Carmesin and two Ferndale Elementary School teachers to Anaheim.
Because of the school’s distance from the event — 662 miles — the school’s staff will fly to Anaheim and stay two nights.
The cost is steep for a district struggling with budget cuts, but district leaders decided it was important to celebrate the big improvements the school has made in math, English and science scores on the state’s California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests.
“It’s all just a publicity stunt, but if you don’t show up, then that’s not fair for my school,” Carmesin said. “So they have you kind of over a barrel, and it’s like, we haven’t won it in over 10 years; my face is going to be in that picture.”
Live Oak Unified is sending half its teachers
The cost of the event is prohibitive for rural schools, said Yuri Calderon, executive director of the Small Schools Districts’ Association. Calderon said many small districts are struggling to make ends meet, and have staffing shortages that take precedence.
Live Oak Unified in rural Sutter County is sending the principal of Encinal Elementary School and two teachers to the dinner in Anaheim to collect a Distinguished School Award. The school won the award for the first time by improving test scores and suspension rates, said Superintendent Mathew Gulbrandsen.
Gulbrandsen would have sent more staff to the awards ceremony, but the cost limits the number of people who can participate, he said. Additionally, the school would have to pay substitutes $120 each to cover classes because the event is on a Friday.
“I mean that school itself is a small school — 120 students,” he said. “Five teachers, a principal, a secretary. There’s no way all of them could attend on a workday. You’d have to shut the school down. So we can’t do that.”
They want more for their money
Sanders said that a $500 registration fee is pretty standard for a daylong conference, but superintendents interviewed by EdSource said they expected more for the money — possibly some workshops or a keynote speaker.
“So, I thought, OK, is Taylor Swift playing? What’s going on? Hubbard said. “And really to find out that there is nothing, and you have to attend the banquet in order … to just pick up the award. I would have taken a team down there, taken them out to dinner for under $500 by the way.”
Hubbard said she has attended many two- and three-day conferences that include multiple meals that cost less than the awards dinner at Disneyland.
When she previously attended the National Blue Ribbon School Award celebration in Washington, D.C., Hubbard paid for travel and rooms, but no registration fee. The event included three days of speakers and workshops. Every school receives a National Blue Ribbon School flag and plaque at the awards luncheon, according to the website.
The California School Boards Association offers one free ticket to the Golden Bell Awards Ceremony to each school district or county office that wins. Each additional ticket is $150. The event, which will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento on Dec. 4, includes appetizers and dessert. It honors outstanding programs and governance practices of California school boards.
Conference breaks even
With 1,300 attending this year, the registration fees for the California School Recognition Program Awards Ceremony will bring in at least $600,000, plus contributions from corporate sponsors such as Pearson, Garner Holt Education Through Imagination, Smart School, the California State Lottery and the California Association of School Business Officials.
“We’re not accumulating a big pile of money that we kick back to the department or anything like that,” said Ed Honowitz, chief executive officer of Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, the CDE’s nonprofit foundation. “It really is kind of essentially a break-even kind of thing. Sometimes, there’s some carryover from one year to the other, but it’s kind of minimal.”
Registration and sponsorship funds are collected, and bills for the awards event are paid by the Californians Dedication to Education Foundation, but the event is run by CDE staff, Honowitz said.
Rising conference costs are causing challenges for organizations across the state, he said.
The CDE has worked to make the conference as affordable as possible, even considering cutting the visits from Minnie and Mickey Mouse to save money, Sanders said. In the end, it was decided that the cost of the mice — a few hundred dollars, according to Sanders — was worthwhile.
Suites for top CDE executives
According to a former manager who has attended the event within the last five years, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and other high-level CDE staff stayed in suites with access to a VIP area with complimentary food and beverages.
The former manager described the room as a corner suite with a kitchen, living room and bedroom, and large windows that allowed a view of the nightly fireworks at Disneyland. Similar rooms as the one described go for $1,252 at the regular rate, according to the website.
Rooms, travel and meals for volunteers and staff are paid for by sponsors and do not come from registration costs, Sanders said.
Carmesin says the cost of the event shows that CDE leaders are disconnected from the work educators do.
“You know, they think they’re celebrating us, but giving me an invoice didn’t make me feel very celebratory,” she said.
Leonie Haimson, the executive director of Class Size Matters in New York City, is a tireless advocate for reform policies that work. She has spent years collecting research about the benefits of class size reduction and prodding legislators to take action.
She wrote recently about the cross-pollination between New York State and Michigan, where state school board leaders used her research to advocate for lower class sizes.
She wrote:
On April 5 and 6, the Network for Public Education, on whose board I sit, held its annual conference in Columbus, Ohio. More than 400 parents, teachers, advocates, school board members, and other elected officials gathered to learn from each other’s work and be re-energized for the challenges of protecting our public schools from the ravages of budget cuts, right-wing censorship, and privatization.
It was a great weekend to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, hear from eloquent education leaders, and participate in eye-opening workshops. I led a workshop on the risks of using AI in the classroom, along with Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools, and retired teacher/blogger extraordinaire, Peter Greene. You can take a look at our collective power point presentation here.
At one point, Diane Ravitch, the chair and founder of NPE,introduced each of the board members from the floor. When she told me to stand, I asked her to inform the attendees about the law we helped pass for class size reduction in NYC. She responded, you tell it –and so I briefly recounted how smaller class sizes are supposed to be phased in over the next three yearsin our schools, hoping this might lend encouragement to others in the room to advocate for similar measures in their own states and districts.
Perhaps the personal high point for me was the thrill of meeting Tim Walz, on his birthday no less, who said to me that indeed class size does matter. Here are videos with excerpts from some of the other terrific speeches at the conference.
Then, just four days ago, Prof. Julian Heilig Vasquez, another NPE board member, texted me a link to this news story from the Detroit News:
State Board of Education calls for smaller class sizes after Detroit News investigation
Lansing — Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution Tuesday calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.
The proposal, if enacted by state lawmakers, would represent a sea change for Michigan schools as leaders look to boost struggling literacy rates. Across the state, elementary school classes featuring more than 20 students have been widespread.
Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was “overdue.”
“Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.
A months-long Detroit News investigation published in April found 206 elementary classes — ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade — across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them. Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.
Less than a month after The News’ probe, the Democratic-led State Board of Education, which advises state policymakers on education standards, voted 6-1 on Tuesday in favor of Robinson’s resolution. The resolution said lawmakers should provide funding in the next state budget for school districts with high rates of poverty to lower their student-to-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
By the 2030-31 school year, the resolution said, limits should be instituted to cap class sizes at 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade, at 23 students per class in fourth grade through eighth grade, and at 25 students per class in high school.
“Many studies show that class size reduction leads to better student outcomes in every way that can be measured, including better grades and test scores, fewer behavior problems, greater likelihood to graduate from high school on time and subsequently enroll in college,” the resolution said.
The resolution added that the Legislature should increase funding to ensure schools are “able to lower class sizes to the mandated levels.”
In an interview, Pamela Pugh, the president of the state board, labeled the resolution an “urgent call” for action. Pugh said the board hasn’t made a similar request in the decade she’s served on the panel.
…Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have called for action on class sizes after the reporting from The News and as Michigan’s reading scores have fallen behind other states.
During her State of the State address in February, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently. Michigan invests more per student than most states but achieves “bottom 10 results,” the governor said.
“I think the science would tell us that we’ve got to bring down class sizes,” Whitmer said in April.
On Wednesday, state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, said he was open to a conversation about timelines for implementing class size limits and about how schools could achieve the proposed standards with staffing and physical space.
As I read the story, I was delighted, of course; and noticed that the class size caps cited in the resolution were identical to those required to be phased in for NYC schools. I also noted language in the resolution that echoed the words in some of our research summaries.
I reached out to Diane to ask her if she knew whether Mitchell Robinson had attended the NPE conference, and she confirmed that indeed he had. I then emailed him to ask if our New Yorklaw had played any role in his decision to introduce the resolution, and he immediately responded,
“Leonie, your work in NYC was the direct model and inspiration for this resolution! I was in your session in Columbus, and went home motivated to put together the resolution, using the figures from your bill and the research base on the website.”
He cautioned me that the proposal still has to be enacted into law, and that it would be “an uphill battle,” as Republicans hadretaken the state House.
Then he added: “But that doesn’t mean we sit on our hands for another 2 years—we need to stay on offense and advance good ideas whenever we can.”
I wholeheartedly agree. This resolution and what may hopefully follow for Michigan students reveals just how importantgatherings like the NPE conference are to enable the exchangeof ideas and positive examples of what’s occurring elsewhere. This sort of interaction can be vital to our collective struggle,not just to defend our public schools from the attempts of Trump et.al. to undermine them, but also to push for the sort of positive changes that will allow all our kids to receive the high qualityeducation they deserve.
Katharyn Boyer, the interim executive director of San Francisco State University’s Estuary and Ocean Science Center, walks the grounds of the Romberg Tiburon campus on Feb. 13, 2025.
Amy DiPierro, EdSource
Top Takeaways
University says attempts to make the Romberg Tiburon campus financially self-sustaining have fallen short.
The likely closure shows the challenges facing some Cal State campuses amid tepid enrollment, anticipated state budget cuts and a maintenance backlog.
One researcher’s specialty is studying eelgrass, a plant important to sustaining the bay ecosystem.
To the untrained eye, the eelgrass in San Francisco Bay is unremarkable, a slimy marine plant easily mistaken for seaweed. But to the ecologist, it is essential: a natural carbon storage system, a hedge against climate change, and a protector of shorelines threatened by rising seas.
That’s why Katharyn Boyer, a biology professor who leads San Francisco State University’s estuary and ocean science centerin Marin County, has spent much of her career studying how to restore and maintainthe bay’s underwater meadows of ribbon-like eelgrass. It’s an effortgrowing more urgent as climate change nudges sea levels ever higher.
Working for the past two decades at the marine research campus,a 13-mile drivenorth of San Francisco, Boyer and her colleagues have trained the next generation of scientists and conservationists. Budding researchers hone their field skills at the site, where saltwater tanks act asa temporary home for eelgrass plants waiting to be replanted in the bay. “You really have to treat the plants well while you’re doing this restoration work,” Boyer said. “Having this nice, cool, natural supply of water — it’s the perfect kind of condition.”
Seawater tanks at Romberg Tiburon provide a temporary home for eelgrass.
But the 53-acre marine research campus where Boyer works could soon close as the university contends with declining enrollment and a likely cut to state funding.
San Francisco State says it can no longer afford to keep the lights on at the site, a former Navy base now called the Romberg Tiburon campus. Since the university announced plans to close Romberg Tiburon in February, Boyer has redoubled efforts to secure enough outside funding to save it. As of last week, Boyer said, San Francisco State finance officials have indicated that the funds she has raised are not enough. The site would start to wind down over the coming months unless a last-minute solution emerges.
“You can bring in the grant money, but you have trouble with covering your basic operations costs,” Boyer said while walking the property on a blustery day. “I don’t think it’s a unique problem here. It just has gotten to the point where our university is just struggling so much financially that it’s hard to justify the costs of it.
“That’s very hard for us to take because we think that we do — and we know that the community thinks what we do — is really valuable,” Boyer added, as a gust of wind blew her ball cap from her head.
The plan to close Romberg Tiburon is one sign of how lower enrollments are setting off a financial domino effect at some California State University campuses. While some campuses, especially those in Southern California, attract a growing student body, San Francisco State’s enrollment fell 26% between 2015 and 2024. That means San Francisco State will receive less money not only from student tuition but also from the 23-campus Cal State system. All of that could be crunched further by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to reduce funding to CSU and the University of California by almost 8%.
Reductions are surfacing in varied forms at CSU campuses. Sports teams and the geology department are among the cuts proposed at Sonoma State University. Cal State East Bay will close its downtown Oaklandconference and classroomcenter when its lease ends in June. Sacramento State, where enrollment is up 2% year-to-year, plans to cut $24 million from its department of academic affairs over the next two years. Even Cal State San Marcos, among the system’s fastest-growing campuses, is offering retirement incentives to manage a tight budget.
Amy Sueyoshi,San Francisco State’s provost, saidher campus is “scaling back everywhere,” with at least 30 faculty members leaving each year and only a handful joining to replace them.
“At this point, with our limited resources, it’s actually not OK for us to have so much of our resources flowing in a direction that doesn’t serve our undergraduate students directly,” she said.
Romberg Tiburon — named for Paul Romberg, who was president of San Francisco State when the university took over the site — is also an example of the worsening condition of facilities across CSU. San Francisco State estimates the Romberg Tiburon campus needs about $4 million in critical safety repairs.Such expenses barely scratch the surface of the roughly $8 billion maintenance backlog around the Cal State system.
What happens next to the marine campus is uncertain. Boyer continues to seek donors or nonprofits interested in leasing the site. San Francisco State plans to give all estuary and ocean science faculty an opportunity to relocate to the main campus, though lab space is limited. But Boyer says the transition only guarantees lab space to tenured faculty and may leave nontenured faculty, in effect, “homeless,” complicating things for their graduate students.
“There’s a lot of people’s careers and livelihoods that are at stake,” she said.
A marine lab ‘in the middle of gritty San Francisco Bay’
In mid-February, Boyer walked the grounds of the Tiburon campus wearing a parka and baseball cap, a stadium umbrella tucked under one arm in case the scattered drizzle turned into a downpour. To the north, the ghostly outline of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge emerged from the fog like a half-finished sketch leading east to the unseen Chevron refinery on the opposite side of the bay.
Marine laboratories tend to be located in remote places, where scientists study life in pristine ecosystems relatively untainted by human interference. Romberg Tiburon breaks that mold.
“This one is in the middle of the gritty San Francisco Bay, with all of the problems of the large population that we have here, all of the impacts that that creates, all the opportunities for restoration and conservation that that creates,” Boyer said.
Boyer pointed out barracks and other holdovers from the site’s past lives as a Navy base, coaling station and nautical training school. San Francisco State established a research beachhead at Tiburon in 1978, taking over ownership from the federal government.Today, researchers work out of Delta Hall, a converted warehouse from the 1940s.
A former coal trestle frames a barracks building at the Romberg Tiburon campus on Feb. 13, 2025.Amy DiPierro, EdSource
Working along the shoreline makes it possible to offer hands-on classes in wetlands ecology and biological oceanography, including for undergraduates, Boyer said. “It’s an amazing place to do that, because [students] can do experiments here,” she said. “They can develop a hypothesis and test it from start to finish over the course of a semester.”
The marine research campus currently hosts about 30 graduate students, Boyer said, and as many as 100 undergraduates use the Tiburon campus in a typical year. Recent master’s students have landed jobs at places like the Environmental Protection Agency and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Even with those success stories, Sueyoshi said a master’s program through the estuary and ocean science center has already been discontinued due to a lack of students.
The campus is also showing its age and a lack of upkeep. Signs emblazoned “DANGER” and “RESTRICTED AREA” urge visitors to stay away from buildings whose chipped paint exposes wood beneath.
As recently as 2019, San Francisco State sketched blueprints to redevelop and repurpose buildings on the site. One plan suggested a reinvigorated campus could “amplify SF State’s social justice legacy” and proposed building new housing and academic space while refurbishing existing facilities.
Such ambitions would require a private developer to purchase and invest in the campus, Sueyoshi said, adding that San Francisco State has also explored returning the site to the federal government or persuading other universities to take it over.
A view of San Francisco Bay from the Romberg Tiburon campus on Feb. 13, 2025.Amy DiPierro, EdSource
‘You can’t just rebuild it’
As the financial pressures on San Francisco State have grown, many faculty at the Romberg Tiburon campus now raise the money to pay their own salaries through state and federal grants, Boyer said, rather than relying on San Francisco State. The Tiburon campus also earns money by leasing space, including an onsite conference center, to third parties.
Entrepreneurial efforts aside, the Tiburon campus still counts on San Francisco State for some important costs, including the salaries of facilities and administrative staff members as well as tenured faculty, a university statement noted.
A tight budget has not stopped San Francisco State from investing in other campus improvements. The university combined funding from CSU and private donors to build a new 125,000-square-foot science and engineering buildingon its main campus, which opened last year. In April, it unveiled a new student housing project that includes a health center and dining hall, funded in part by a state grant.
But the lack of long-term funding for Romberg Tiburon leaves Boyer’s eelgrass projects in limbo. She expects to continue the work at Tiburon through the fall, “but after this field season, basically, I don’t know,” she said.
A chain of interconnected life relies on eelgrass to thrive. As the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels, it becomes less hospitable to oysters and, in turn, less welcoming to birds like the appropriately-named black oystercatcher. But beds of spindly green eelgrass capture carbon, creating a refuge for native oysters and a marine buffet for birds of prey.
Once lost, it is an ecosystem that can be labor-intensive to restore. It’s the kind of work that Marilyn Latta, a project manager at the California State Coastal Conservancy, said requires “early mornings, wetsuits, boat access, all sorts of hard work that’s best suited for a shoreline, marine science location on the water” like the Romberg Tiburon campus.
“If we were to lose that expertise,” she said, “you can’t just rebuild it.”
