Middle school students eagerly swiping paintbrushes across canvases, a group of fifth graders rehearsing lines from their upcoming play, and a first-time high school cello player thrilled to be part of the orchestra — all beaming with confidence, excited to attend school, and developing critical life and career skills.
These are scenes that California voters, who overwhelmingly passed Proposition 28 in 2022, expect in every school. Ensuring every student benefits from the power of the arts is why I joined Create CA, the arts education advocacy organization, as executive director six months ago. I firmly believe, and research has shown, that the arts are critical for a well-rounded education and student success.
Unfortunately, student access to the arts is inequitable and often depends on the unpredictability of local fundraising, community advocacy and school districts prioritizing the arts. Voters passed Proposition 28 to address these challenges.
The promise of Proposition 28 is increased access to the arts for all California public school students by providing dedicated, ongoing funding to expand the number of arts education teachers. Regrettably, we’ve heard that some districts are not complying with the law and the voters’ mandate to use the new funds to supplement (i.e., expand), not supplant (i.e., replace), their existing arts education funding.
Californians voted for more arts education for all students, not the status quo. Create CA has been in touch with school leaders, teachers, parents and students who have shared examples of success, which we celebrate. In contrast, others have disclosed suspected violations in their respective school districts.
Districts meeting the promise of Proposition 28 have several things in common: a dedicated district arts education coordinator, an arts education strategic plan developed with community input, and a Proposition 28 report (mandated by the law) that clearly describes how their school district used the new funds to expand arts education. A great example is San Gabriel Unified, which outlines in its Proposition 28 report the hiring of two new art teachers, more dance and theater instruction at its elementary schools, and other investments that further its arts strategic plan.
Another exemplary model is the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD). The district formed a committee and implemented a plan that included creating job descriptions, arts curriculum planning, coaching and a Proposition 28 communication strategy. The result is that Long Beach hired itinerant teachers from all arts disciplines across its 35 elementary schools and added nine middle school positions and six high school positions. Because of these measures, every student will have access to the arts from K-12th grades, as the proposition intended.
On the other hand, some communities suspect their districts are willfully violating Proposition 28’s intention. Parents, unions and the author of the proposition are suing the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for eliminating existing funding for the arts and replacing it with Proposition 28 funds. We’ve spoken with teachers at Chula Vista Elementary School District who allege that the district intended to fire arts education teachers with the plan of rehiring them with Proposition 28 funds, skirting the law’s intention. In Hayward Unified, one teacher noted that “5.8 positions currently funded from Proposition 28 are being cut.” One of Create CA’s student advocates wrote a story on South Pasadena Unified’s plan to move funding for their elementary visual arts and music teachers from a “temporary funding source to this Prop 28 restricted permanent resource.” These examples demonstrate that school districts statewide may be denying students the right to more arts education as voters demanded.
We know schools face multiple challenges, but students deserve better. Arts education can help schools meet many of their challenges and help save money by reducing dropout rates, increasing attendance, attracting more community support and improving academics and mental health. All school districts should follow the law of Proposition 28 to ensure all their students have access to all the arts, all year. It’s every student’s right.
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Veronica Alvarez, EdD, is Executive director of Create CA, a nonprofit that advocates for high quality arts education for all students.
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.
A high school student contemplates an assignment in math class.
Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education
California, along with many other states and nations, has experienced a dramatic increase of student interest in data and computer science careers. Along with the broader tech industry, these fields have been undergoing exponential growth in recent years that’s expected to continue as artificial intelligence (AI), computing platforms and their applications continue to reach every aspect of society.
It’s the responsibility of our state’s academic systems to educate future data-driven leaders in many areas — tech, finance, business, entertainment, biomedicine and health, climate and sustainability, engineering, law, social welfare, public policy, government and education itself, as well as in innovative approaches to the arts and humanities.
A report recently issued by a work group for the University of California’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) concluded that the three most popular high school data science courses being offered in the state do not “even come close to meeting the required standard to be a ‘more advanced’ course” and “are not appropriate as recommended 4th year mathematics courses.”
We applaud the faculty and staff, across the UC system, who helped develop this report and its recommendations. And we’re delighted by the quick response from the UC Office of the President this month, which shared the message with high school counselors and advisers, summarizing the report and explaining additional steps that UC is taking to implement the BOARS recommendations for the 2025-26 academic year.
This is a noteworthy example of the California educational system working well and listening to expert feedback in order to best serve its students. Hundreds of university professors in the state and beyond came out against the rapid adoption of high school data science classes that were being offered as a supposed substitute for advanced algebraic math, or Algebra II. While these introductory data science courses may whet high school students’ appetites, if they are taken at the exclusion of Algebra II, students will not be adequately prepared for science and technology majors in college. We must make sure that the prerequisites for admission to our colleges and universities adequately prepare students to pursue careers in these fields.
Other Perspectives on this topic
This could leave the impression that we don’t support data science — which is far from the truth! We believe that data science is an important discipline to study and a career path for making important contributions in our communities and world. Data science can be a route to increased data literacy, enabling students to distinguish between real information and misinformation and the skills to pursue data-driven approaches to whatever their passions and wherever their careers may lead.
We know from years of study and practice that learning math is cumulative. In order for California students to be adequately prepared for the science and technology majors they may choose to pursue in college — including data and computer science — the advanced math curriculum in high school is essential. While data science and statistics courses have been rapidly added to high school options and are welcome additions, these courses cannot replace the foundational math content found in Algebra II. We also acknowledge, and encourage, innovative curricula aiming to teach Algebra II via the context of data science, as such courses could be appropriate.
We applaud UC and California decision-makers for their recognition that Algebra II is necessary student preparation for the successful completion of college degrees that require a strong grounding in math, including data and computer science. We welcome opportunities to continue this conversation and promote successful outcomes by ensuring students obtain the math knowledge and skills to pursue careers in science and technology.
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Jennifer Chayes is dean of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, and professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, information, mathematics and statistics.
Jelani Nelson is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
CSU’s Young Males of Color conference in October 2023.
Credit: CSU Dominguez Hills
Last year, Cal State campuses received some sobering details about the growing gaps in graduation rates between students of color and their white counterparts. Instead of decreasing, the graduation equity gaps between Black, Latino and Native or Indigenous students have been increasing.
But some campuses are targeting new dollars and deploying new strategies to specifically target students of color that will help increase graduation, persistence and retention.
CSU’s Young Males of Color Consortium, which is housed at Cal State Dominguez Hills, received $3.2 million from a group of organizations including Ballmer Group, College Futures Foundation, ECMC Foundation and Ichigo Foundation to create new programs that support men of color on Cal State campuses. Sixteen CSU campuses and their neighboring community colleges will deploy those programs with the goal of improving rates of transfer, retention and graduation for up to 800 students. The partnered universities and colleges will start working with up to 40 young men each to pilot the new strategies.
The consortium, which started in 2017, has the goal of working across campuses to share information and data, and find solutions to help CSU’s Black and brown men.
The main challenge the consortium realized it needed to tackle was “institutional complacency” because many campuses failed to have the right data on students of color, or limited their investment in improving their academic performance, said William Franklin, vice president of student affairs for the Dominguez Hills campus.
Last year, during CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025 event, new data revealed the graduation gap between Black, Latino and Native American students and their peers increased by 1 point to a 13% difference. The 2023 six-year graduation rate for Black students, for example, is at 47% but 62% for all students.
The rates on the Dominguez Hills campus, for example, are lower for Black and Latino men. The six-year rate for Black men is 36.4% and 38.9% for Latino men on the campus. Data for Native American and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students was not available.
“We need to hire full-time folks and we need to really give them training,” Franklin said. “We need to begin to connect with our institutional research office and understand our data better. It doesn’t necessarily mean we need more money, but we do need to spend the money that we have differently in order to ensure that those male of color programs get the kind of support they need.”
With the new funding, the campuses will work together to assess and evaluate instructors and staff, while also providing professional development opportunities. The campuses would also work with their community college partners to better assist them in transferring more Black and brown students to the universities.
Members of the consortium have already visited other universities outside of California that have seen success in improving graduation rates for Black and Latino students such as Georgia State University, Urban Prep Academies in Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin, Franklin said.
And while they’re unsure which strategies will work best for Cal State students, figuring it out is part of the funding.
“Our funders have also given us an opportunity to take the funding they’ve given us to provide it as seed money for campuses to put some innovative programs and strategies in place,” Franklin said. “Fail fast or succeed fast, and learn what they need to do in order to scale those things that work.”
Black Honors College
Sacramento State is also trying something new to help not only the Black students on its campuses but across the system.
This fall, the university will debut the country’s first Black Honors College. Sac State has one of the CSU’s largest populations of Black students, and low graduation rates. The six-year rate for all Black students is about 45%.
“We’re the No. 1 institution serving Black students and we’re in the bottom third when it comes to graduation rates,” Sac State President Luke Wood said. “Our 75-year history has shown that what we’re doing is not working. I don’t just speak about that from the perspective of being president here, but I was a student here at Sac State. I got my bachelor’s degree here. I got my master’s degree here, and many of the people who are my contemporaries never graduated because the institution is not designed to support Black students.”
Sac State officials also looked outside of California for solutions, particularly at historically Black colleges and universities where graduation rates are much higher.
“We’re creating an institution within the institution so students have a standalone experience with their own curriculum, their own faculty, their staff, their space,” Wood said.
The college would be open to students of all majors, but the first two years of curriculum would have an African-American focus. For example, political science or statistics classes would have a unique focus on Black politics, issues and community.
Wood said the idea is built on research that shows creating a “family-like environment” and offering a curriculum relevant to students’ lives and experiences improves their academic success.
The new college will have 6,000-square feet of dedicated space with its own faculty, dean, counselors, academic advisers, support staff and outreach. But the ultimate goal is to see more Black Honors Colleges appear statewide and nationally, despite the conservative attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion happening in other states.
But Wood anticipates more Black Honors Colleges appearing on community college campuses, some of which have already contacted Sac State for guidance or information, with the potential to establish a transfer relationship with the university.
“We’re going to grow this Honors College pretty extensively,” he said. “Our goal right now is 500 or 600, but when we can get more resources, our goal is to get to a thousand students.”
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Steve Perez chats with a representative at the Northern Virginia Community College Office of Wellness and Mental Health resource table during the ADVANCE program welcome event at George Mason University on Jan. 31.
Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource
Steve Perez faced a daunting challenge as he considered where to attend college.
The first in his family to pursue a higher education, Perez was “basically all on my own.” Rejected from his top choice, Virginia Tech, he was considering community college near his hometown of Falls Church, Virginia. But he worried whether he would be able to successfully transfer to a four-year university, knowing it would be up to him to take the right courses and successfully apply for admission.
“No one in my family really knows anything about college,” he said. “That was really tough.”
Students start at the community college but are immediately accepted to George Mason before even taking their first community college class. The colleges also provide students up front with the full list of courses they need to earn their bachelor’s degree, a task that in other states is often left to students.
Northern Virginia Community College serves about 70,000 students across its six campuses in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., more than any other community college in the state. Likewise, George Mason is the largest public research university in Virginia with about 40,000 students, most of them commuters. Their main campuses separated by just 5 miles, Northern Virginia historically has sent more students to George Mason than any other community college.
A statue of George Mason on the George Mason University campus in Fairfax. Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource
Officials say the ADVANCE program perfected that transfer partnership. Since launching in 2018, just over 1,500 students in the program have successfully transferred to Mason, including 415 this past fall. More than 90% of students in the program graduate within two years of transferring to Mason.
The program stands out nationally, even earning kudos from the federal Department of Education for solving a widespread problem of a cumbersome transfer process that stymies students in community college.
In California, most community college students who want to get a bachelor’s degree never transfer. Without adequate support, they often struggle to keep track of courses, ending up with too many credits but lacking required classes. One study found that as few as 2.5% of students intending to transfer do so within two years, and only 23% do so within four years.
The Virginia program could serve as a model for California colleges. The state is in the early stages of adopting its own dual admission programs at both of its public university systems, the University of California and California State University. CSU’s program, open to far more students than UC’s, is especially exciting to college access advocates.
Both programs launched this past fall, and officials are hopeful it will make transferring easier for students.
Taking away the guesswork
In Virginia, the idea of ADVANCE is to “take away the guesswork for students,” said Jen Nelson, the community college’s director of university transfer and initiatives.
Upon enrolling, students receive a link to a portal where they select one of 85 academic pathways, such as business, computer science or psychology. Based on their pathway, the portal then shows them all the classes they need to take to transfer and eventually earn a bachelor’s degree.
“It provides that guarantee that if students take these classes, they’re going to transfer,” Nelson said. “It takes away that concern of, am I taking the right thing? Am I spending my time and money in the right way?”
As long as they maintain at least a minimum grade point average — usually a 2.5 — students are automatically admitted to Mason. They don’t even need to fill out an application.
Along the way, students can meet with counselors who are hired specifically for the ADVANCE program. They also have full access to all the resources offered at Mason, including clubs, libraries and even health care.
In Perez’s case, he chose a computer science pathway and this semester started his lower-division classes, which include general education, math and introductory computer science classes. He’s on track to transfer to George Mason within two years.
At a recent resource fair for new students hosted on the Mason campus, Perez walked from table to table, learning about the resources offered by Mason, including club sports, mental health services and tutoring. He can participate in all of it now that he’s in the program.
Steve Perez grabs a informational card at the Northern Virginia Community College Office of Wellness and Mental Health resource table during the ADVANCE program welcome event at George Mason University on Jan. 31. Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource
“I’m really happy I chose this pathway because it gives me a great opportunity,” he said. “And it takes away the stress.”
Not long before ADVANCE launched in 2018, Janette Muir remembers sitting in on an advising session at Northern Virginia for her son, who had recently graduated from high school.
Muir, a professor and George Mason’s associate provost for academic initiatives at the time, was shocked to learn how confusing the transfer process was.
Students received little guidance, and many were taking unnecessary courses.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so confusing for even a student who has professors as his parents,’” she said.
Her son and other students, Muir said, needed more help. Muir started working with the presidents of both institutions to develop ADVANCE.
Janette Muir addresses ADVANCE students and their friends and family during the welcome event at George Mason University in January. Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource
That year, the two colleges launched the program with 21 pathways. It has since grown to 85 pathways, and more than 4,500 students have enrolled since the program’s inception.
Any student can enroll so long as they have not completed more than 30 college credits, and students who do enroll tend to stick around. Among the students in the cohort that entered in fall 2021, 87% returned the following year, far better than the national average retention rate of 61%.
When they transfer to Mason, ADVANCE students on average graduate two semesters faster than non-ADVANCE transfer students. In fact, 92% of them graduate within two years of transferring. Students also finish an associate degree upon transferring, which officials say is important to ensure they have the necessary preparation in their major.
Muir, who now oversees ADVANCE in her role as Mason’s vice provost for academic affairs, said officials have started to expect students to finish the entire program in four years rather than six.
“When you come into this program and you follow the pathways, you do better and you finish sooner,” Muir told new students gathered at a welcome event in January.
For Jaden Todd, a second-year community college student in the program, having access to the pathways portal has been especially helpful.
When Todd first started college, learning certain classes would transfer to some universities but not others was a “big shocker.” He took a Western history class only to learn that it wouldn’t be accepted at another college he was considering,Virginia Commonwealth University, which required a world history course.
“There’s stuff like that where I spent several hundred dollars on a class just to be informed that I would have to retake a class in a similar area,” he said.
When it comes to the courses he needs to transfer to and ultimately graduate from Mason, however, there are no surprises.
If students do have questions, they have access to counselors who have been hired specifically for the ADVANCE program.
Emma Howard, a sophomore who will transfer to Mason this fall, consulted her adviser after learning that one of her courses, which she thought qualified as an elective, wasn’t going to be transferable.
The adviser called the transfer center at Mason and successfully convinced them to count the course, an acting for the camera class.
“They really try to make your time here easier,” Howard said. “They bring a lot of ease and just faith in the matriculation process.”
Eliminating the ‘transfer shock’
When Maria Fruchterman transferred this past fall to Mason, she already had a close circle of friends. That’s because, while she was taking her lower-division community college classes, she was also playing club field hockey at Mason. It was a perk afforded to her because she was in the ADVANCE program.
“It’s been really good for my transition,” Fruchterman said. “I just felt at ease and very comfortable.”
Maria Fruchterman answers questions about the ADVANCE program during a welcome event at George Mason University in Virginia.Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource
The motivation to give Northern Virginia students access to the Mason campus was two-fold, Nelson said. For one, as a community college, Northern Virginia doesn’t offer all the same benefits and resources available at Mason and other four-year institutions, like health insurance and mental health counseling.
Officials also wanted to eliminate the “transfer shock” that transfer students often deal with upon arriving at the four-year university, Nelson said. “They’re going to a new environment. Everything is different,” she added.
By giving students access to those resources up front, it allows them to “hit the ground running,” Nelson said.
That’s what Perez is planning for himself. While visiting Mason’s main Fairfax campus for the welcome event, he felt a different buzz than what he was accustomed to at Northern Virginia’s main campus in nearby Annandale.
“I noticed that there’s so many more people around,” he said. “Especially in Annandale, it seems like everyone leaves campus by 3 p.m.”
As he learned about the different clubs offered at Mason, Perez said he planned to join several: a computer science club, a chess club, maybe even an intramural badminton team.
Can California replicate?
Whether California’s dual admission programs will significantly improve transfer won’t be known for some time. Both programs are in their infancy, just launched last fall.
Between the two, CSU may have a better chance at success, with a far more robust program than what UC offers. About 2,000 students enrolled in CSU’s first cohort, compared to just 182 for UC.
CSU’s program is open to essentially any first-time college freshman entering a California community college. Students can enroll by creating an account on the CSU Transfer Planner portal and selecting from one of the degree programs across CSU’s 23 campuses. Eligible students are guaranteed admission.
UC’s program is limited only to students who applied to UC but weren’t eligible because they didn’t complete their A-G course requirements in high school. That was the minimum required by a state law passed in 2021 creating the dual admission programs.
The law, designed to give students a second chance at attending UC or CSU, asks UC and requires CSU to offer dual admission to students who didn’t “meet freshman admissions eligibility criteria due to limitations in the high school curriculum offered or personal or financial hardship.” CSU’s program 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.
UC may be less incentivized to admit students because several campuses have capacity issues and turn away many qualified applicants each year. UC’s program is limited to only six of its nine undergraduate campuses, with its three most exclusive campuses — Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego — not included.
CSU’s dual admission program is available at every campus, though select programs with capacity issues are excluded, such as some engineering programs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
CSU officials hope the dual admission program will eliminate a problem with the current system: local campuses and their staff aren’t familiar with prospective transfer students until they apply.
“We want this to be an opportunity for us to connect with them way earlier in the process and support them,” said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management.
Similar to the Virginia program, students on CSU’s dual admission pathway get access to an online transfer planner showing them all the classes they need upfront.
Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s higher education center, is hopeful it will make a meaningful difference. In an August 2023 PPIC report, Johnson and other researchers identified dual admission as a “promising approach” to help solve California’s transfer dilemma.
“A lot of the challenge for community college students when they start is knowing what is required to get into UC and CSU,” he said. “By front loading all of that information, we think students would face fewer obstacles and be more efficient.”
In addition, CSU’s dual admission program gives community collegestudents access to programs and services available at the campus closest to their residence, like the ADVANCE program does. One CSU campus, Long Beach, for years has already been offering something similar. As part of the “Long Beach Promise 2.0,” launched in 2018, students at nearby Long Beach City College have the option to receive a “future student” ID card for CSU Long Beach and can access the campus library, athletic events, clubs and more.
“A lot of research in higher education focused on why students complete or why they don’t complete has included this notion of belonging, feeling a part of the campus,” Johnson said. “And I think the more that you can do for community college students can only help that sense of belonging so that when you eventually do transfer, you feel like it’s your school.”
In Virginia, staff at George Mason and the community college are often asked how other colleges can replicate their success.
Jennifer Nelson addresses ADVANCE students and their friends and family during the welcome event at George Mason University.Credit: Taneen Momeni / EdSource
Officials at those colleges point out that the two institutions have several factors working in their favor. The partnership is natural given the geographic proximity and historical relationship between the colleges. There are a number of faculty who have taught at both colleges. The colleges’ presidents work closely and actually spend time with each other, like meeting up for an occasional breakfast.
“How do you do this work? I can tell you it’s not easy. If it was easy, lots of people would be doing it,” Muir said. “It takes a lot of relationship-building, a lot of connection and recognizing the value of a community college education.”
It was the height of distance learning when 16-year-old Aaron Butler took Compton Unified’s first step into data science education by joining the Young Data Scientists League. The next year, 2021, the young African American varsity basketball captain enrolled in Compton’s first high school data science course, thanks to a 2020 decision by UC’s admissions committee allowing such courses to qualify for students’ third or fourth year of high school math. Now a business economics major at UCLA, Aaron said that “before I was closed off to math, but data science made me way more interested in mathematics.”
Because of UC’s decision to count data science toward the math requirement for college admissions, Compton’s Dominguez High counselors recommended that students like Aaron enroll in data science without fear of them losing their competitive edge on university admissions. Ensuring college access is paramount for our student population, who are predominantly Hispanic, Black and Pacific-Islander and 94% of whom are socio-economically disadvantaged. Data science, with its hands-on, real-world applications, is exactly the right gateway for both math-averse and math-inclined students alike to engage with rich mathematics and take the UC-recommended four years of math coursework.
Now UC has retracted that decision, making it much less likely that counselors will recommend data science to our students. Consequently, we’re likely to see a decline in enrollment and retention during the four years of high school mathematics among students of color.
Data Science at Dominguez High School is the only course in Compton Unified that allows students to receive regular in-classroom instruction in relevant topics such as predictive mathematical modeling, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), sensitivity analysis, and programming, which all rely on math concepts taught and reinforced in the data science classroom. This is in addition to a number of other high-level concepts in quantitative reasoning and analysis, such as linear algebra, 3D vector space, conditional probability and more.
As the teacher of Compton’s Data Science course, in partnership with Stanford’s Youcubed, I (Jason) end up teaching content from a range of advanced math standards because, though my students are passing courses like Integrated Math 3, Precalculus and even Calculus, they are not fully grasping the material there. Students report having the opportunity to finally make sense of their traditional math courses by applying concepts as a part of the data science experience. Once they learn to think about math in context, they possess a skill that enables them to learn subsequent math content better.
Another PERSPECTIVE ON THIS TOPIC
This is a defining moment for mathematics education in California. Neural network models, the driving force behind AI tools such as ChatGPT, are one of the hottest subjects in applied mathematics research. By adopting data science in 2020, UC took a proactive step toward reframing mathematics as a relevant discipline that could equip 21st century learners with scientifically valid tools to engage in the rapidly changing information landscape. At the same time, UC recognized alternate pathways to quantitative reasoning courses in college without precluding students from science, tech, engineering and math (STEM) majors. The reversal of that decision will push math back to a position of irrelevance in the eyes of most students, especially those traditionally marginalized in STEM.
Moreover, not allowing data science courses to count for admission doesn’t only sacrifice a hook for attracting students to STEM fields. It also denies students who are not interested in STEM the opportunity to code, exacerbating the digital divide and, consequently, the wealth gap. As UC’s Office of the President wrote after the Berkeley campus created a college of computing, data science and society, “Every undergraduate in any area of study will increasingly need exposure to data science during their time on campus.”
Why should students wait until college to delve into these rich waters of mathematical study?
Narrowing the scope of acceptable mathematics perpetuates exclusivity rather than fostering inclusivity and belief in all learners’ potential. For many Dominguez High students we’ve spoken with who are either enrolled or have graduated from the UC system, success and persistence in STEM, including data science, correlated to growth mindsets, cultural competence, positive identities and supportive communities and structures.
As technology evolves, so must we reevaluate definitions, policies and support systems that address gaps in math achievement, engagement and retention. This comprehensive reassessment requires input from diverse stakeholders, fostering collective understanding and alignment toward common goals. We must put in place a review process that engages school districts, education leaders, classroom educators, faculty from the California State University, and families who can offer crucial insights on the impact of key decisions affecting our most vulnerable populations. This process must be data-driven. It is argued that allowing data science to validate Algebra 2 adversely impacted preparation for STEM degrees for students of color. Where is the data supporting this assertion? On the contrary, we have decades of data that demonstrate that the traditional Algebra 2 pathway disproportionately fails to get students of color college-ready, and falls short of promises to boost post-secondary STEM engagement.
We have seen the power of data science to increase college readiness and STEM engagement for all, particularly underrepresented students of color. As Aaron told us, “Data science was very hands-on because we were applying the math we learned. It made me like the course even more.” Every student like Aaron should have exposure to data science that opens mathematics to them as a highly relevant 21st century discipline where they know they belong.
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Jason Lee Morgan, an 18-year math teacher at Dominguez High School in Compton, instructs the Stanford YouCubed’s data science course.
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.
Students at Copper Island Academy in Michigan engage in unstructured play during frequent outdoor breaks.
Credit: Courtesy of Timothy Walker / Copper Island Academy
A flush of anger had spread across my fifth-grader’s forehead. I had never seen a student more upset in my classroom, and it was all my fault. During my first week of teaching in Finland, I had withheld recess — not just from this one fifth-grader, but from all my students.
Elementary school teachers in Finland typically incorporate a 15-minute break into every hour-long lesson. Many times each day, their students head to the playground and engage in free play after 45 minutes of classroom instruction. Coming from the United States, I questioned this model.
I firmly believed my fifth-graders would thrive on longer stretches in the classroom. Instead of teaching in 45-minute chunks, I taught 90-minute double lessons followed by 30-minute breaks as often as possible. (Finnish law allows for this kind of scheduling, but it is far from the norm.)
On the third day of school, just an hour into a 90-minute lesson, I saw that my go-to strategy of delaying breaks had failed. Miserably.
“I think I’m going to explode!” my fifth-grader had said to me. “I’m not used to this schedule.”
This awkward confrontation became a turning point in my teaching career. Until then, I had paid little attention to the importance of unstructured breaks. Research, however, has demonstrated many benefits of school recess.
Over the last decade, a growing list of U.S. states — including Missouri, Florida and New Jersey — have mandated daily recess. California joined the trend in late 2023.
Starting with the 2024-2025 school year, all K-8 students in Golden State public schools will receive at least 30 minutes of daily outdoor recess (air quality and weather permitting). Not only that, but the recess law also bans the harmful practice of withholding recess for disciplinary reasons.
California’s new law is a welcome change that expands access to daily recess, but there’s a critical omission. The law does not mandate public schools to offer multiple breaks during the school day. Most U.S. elementary schools (83%) provide daily recess, but only a relative few (21%) offer two periods of daily recess. (Arizona requires its schools to give two periods of daily recess to K-5 students, but unlike California, it fails to specify the duration).
“Increasing recess frequency offers a cost-effective, accessible and sustainable opportunity to improve children’s health on a population level,” U.S. researchers wrote in an article published this year.
Under its new recess law, California schools can easily perpetuate the status quo, offering just a single 30-minute daily break. One recess is better than nothing, but I learned firsthand in Finland that keeping kids cooped up in the classroom for hours is a mistake.
After my fifth-grader confronted me, I quickly embraced the Finnish approach to breaks. And it paid off. Following a 15-minute recess, my fifth-graders would return to the classroom looking refreshed. They seemed much more engaged and focused during lessons, too.
At my former U.S. school, many of my students — after spending hours inside our classroom — used to struggle with behavior and attention issues. Especially in the afternoon. Back then, I often turned to energizers (i.e., brief songs, poems and games) in an effort to reinvigorate my students. These teacher-directed breaks could make hours in the classroom feel more tolerable, but they were only minimally effective. More than anything else, my American students needed more opportunities for unstructured play breaks (ideally outdoors).
Decades ago, educational researcher Anthony Pellegrini conducted experiments at a U.S. elementary school and witnessed what I observed at my Finnish school: Students were more focused after a break than before one. When Pellegrini described his research to his 10-year-old daughter, she responded, “Well, duh.”
Delaying recess — what I did initially at my Finnish school — flies in the face of neuroscience. “People who take regular breaks, and naps even, end up being more productive and more creative in their work,” Daniel Levitin, an American-Canadian neuroscientist, said in a public radio interview. “You need to give your brain time to consolidate all the information that’s come in, to toss it and turn it.”
Implementing a Finnish-inspired schedule may seem like a far-fetched idea for American schools, but it’s already happening in the United States. I now work with a Michigan school that borrows best practices from Finland’s educational model, including its approach to scheduling.
Copper Island Academy, a K-8 charter school, provides students with multiple outdoor breaks each day. Teachers supervise the students on the playground while giving them significant autonomy. Students can freely run up the slide, build forts in the woods and climb trees.
It’s a bold strategy, especially in the Wolverine State. Like most states, Michigan does not require recess, and approximately 1 in 5 elementary school students receive less than 20 minutes of it daily (despite a state Board of Education recommendation to incorporate this amount).
When I visited Copper Island, a few teachers told me they were initially skeptical of the unstructured breaks. “I wondered what fifth-graders would do out on the playground,” fifth-grade teacher Leslie Fischer told me, “but I’ve been really amazed and impressed that it’s been so healthy for them.”
Kevin Boyd — the middle school social studies teacher — has observed an increase in student engagement. “Boredom is not an issue at [Copper Island],” he said in an email, “and I attribute this to the Brain Breaks.”
The nationwide movement to mandate recess makes sense, but it’s just the first step. U.S. elementary school students need more than just one play break each day.
It is time for all American schools to align recess frequency with the science of learning. California can help lead the way.
An LAUSD student tries out Ed, the district’s new AI assistant for students.
Credit: Los Angeles Unified / X
Los Angeles Unified School District students will soon have their own individualized AI tool, a “personal assistant,” to help them with everyday tasks and remind them about school work when they forget.
The tool, named Ed, is the first of its kind in the nation and will be able to accommodate students verbally and on screen in 100 languages.
“What we are announcing here today is a vision that was built over years of thinking about it, but only one year in actually bringing the necessary partners together — to give a voice, to give a simple life, to give a color, to give an experience,” said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho during Wednesday’s inaugural event at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. “And what has emerged is Ed.”
Ed includes a number of features. It will, for example, be able to remind students of upcoming tests, inform them of the cafeteria menu, provide updates on school buses and even wake them up in the morning, Carvalho said.
“Ed will tell Maria ‘You’re falling a little behind in reading, but we got you – click here,’” Carvalho said. “Maria will click, and, without the need for an additional sign on … (it will) open the doors to all of the resources to elevate each student’s needs.”
Carvalho said this tool will not replace the many people in LAUSD who teach and support students on a daily basis.
During the pilot period, Ed will be available immediately to 55,000 students in 101 elementary, middle and senior high schools. Once an initial pilot period is over and the program proves successful, Carvalho said it would expand to the whole district.
“Just like humans are not perfect — although sometimes, in certain political circles, some say they are — the technology produced by humans isn’t perfect either,” Carvalho said.
“With all of the protections against the vulnerabilities, there is always a concern. That’s why we are over vigilant.”
Carvalho also tried to dispel potential cybersecurity concerns — emphasizing that the district has had support from local, state and national agencies in monitoring the program’s evolution.
He also said Ed is currently operating at 93% accuracy, several percentage points above the gold standard of 85% to 87% for ChatGPT.
A strong set of filters will also ensure the program is free from any kind of offensive language, Carvalho added.
More than 100 people, including LAUSD school board members, partners from various universities and businesses as well as representatives of local and state government officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, attended Ed’s inauguration.
The event space was decorated with balloon archways and various photo backdrops — along with Lego building tables, face painting, juice stations and food trucks to celebrate the occasion. Students also sat at tables testing out various features provided by Ed, while the parent interface was displayed on iPads.
“It is the power of artificial intelligence that will allow us for real-time understanding of where students are and where they need to go,” Carvalho said.
“It is the power of this technology to ensure that we will meet every one of our students where they are and accelerate them academically and in terms of enrichment towards their full potential.”
A student heads toward the Student Services building at Los Angeles Pierce College
Credit: Delilah Brumer/EdSource
Waiting for college financial aid offers has been worrying for Kamila Juarez, a high school senior at Grace Davis High School in Modesto. The prolonged timeline of this process, caused by a delayed release of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has added to the uncertainty.
“It’s kind of stressful, just because I know that when I do know how much I get, it’s going to be pretty fast,” Juarez said. “So knowing that I have all this waiting time, I can’t really do much about it besides apply for scholarships and wait to hear back from those scholarships. It’s pretty suspenseful.”
With FAFSA’s availability issues, about 5.7 million students have successfully completed the application, compared to the average of 17 million applicants at this point in previous years. The compressed time schedule strained families applying for financial aid.
The Education Department’s deadline for getting student financial aid data to colleges and universities was last week, so schools are only now receiving that information. And on Friday, complications piled up, as the Education Department announced that a miscalculation in “the formula of the FAFSA resulted in incorrect financial need information for several hundred thousand students being sent to colleges and universities.”
The delays led all nine UC campuses to push back their Intent to Register deadline to May 15, while all 23 CSU campuses to no earlier than May 15. Despite the 15-day commitment deadline extension, some students said they are facing difficulties in making a decision without knowing their financial aid package for the 2024-25 academic year.
Juarez said she has received scholarships from Sonoma State University and California State University, Monterey Bay but is waiting until she knows what financial aid she’ll get from every school before making her decision.
“My biggest (factor), I would say, is financial aid, as well as location,” Juarez said.
Juarez said she hopes to be able to go to either Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or UCLA and major in city planning or geography and environmental science.
Finean Hunter-Kenney, a senior from Lowell High School in San Francisco, said the FAFSA delays have also heavily impacted his decision in committing to college.
“I can’t make any decision on where to go to college without all the financial info,” he said. “Right now I’m in the process of committing to Chapman University to play baseball, but I can’t make that decision final until I see how much FAFSA will pay for, because the tuition is really expensive.”
Hunter-Kenney said he feels pressure to say “yes,” because the deadline is May 1, but he can’t accept the offer until FAFSA releases financial aid information. For him, there is “definitely a limit” when it comes to the cost of tuition, and while aid is not “make or break,” it will still affect his college decision.
“I am pretty stressed about where to go,” Hunter-Kenney said. “The financial aspect is stressful as well, because without all the information, I don’t know how much in loans I’m going to have to take out, and that’s something I want to know before I decide to go anywhere.”
For Isabella Gentile, a communication studies major at Pasadena City College, financial aid was one of the main reasons she decided to focus her transfer applications on in-state public universities and avoid the financial uncertainty that can come with private or out-of-state schools.
“I know I would receive more money from (my) grant if I attended a UC school versus if I attended a private school, which impacted my decision to not apply to somewhere like USC,” Gentile said.
However, Gentile also said that the transfer and financial aid process has been “good and easy” overall, because she was able to submit everything she needed to.
Other students filling out this year’s FAFSA have faced technical difficulties, according to Laura Burtness, a college and career adviser at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo. Some of these issues are related to her students’ citizenship status.
“There is difficulty for mixed residency families, or families where not all claim U.S. citizenship,” Burtness said. Error messages and application rejections have been common when parents don’t have social security numbers — classified as “eligible non-citizens” for FAFSA purposes. Families calling the help line have reportedly been met with recordings of outdated information or advice to try to fill out the form again later.
The Education Department announced in late February that students who have at least one parent without a social security number would be able to successfully submit FAFSA forms in the first half of March.
Burtness mentioned the urgency and concern she’s had for the students she has worked with all year.
“I think this is going to be a big deal because we’re running out of time. Hillsdale’s graduation is on May 30, and we’re doing anything we can to help,” she said.
Los Angeles Pierce College political science major Eric Guerrero faced the more common technical difficulties; he said he spent weeks troubleshooting his FAFSA form before he was able to submit it in late January.
Guerrero plans to transfer to a four-year university this fall and has his sights set on UCLA. He said the challenges he faced with FAFSA have made his transfer process harder.
“Every time I tried it, it was crashing or it wouldn’t load,” Guerrero said. “It was so hectic. Trying to get it done was horrible, and I was really nervous. Eventually, one random night at like 2 in the morning, it finally went through.”
Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism student minoring in French and ethnic studies at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science. Kelcie Lee is a first-year student at UC Berkeley majoring in history and sociology. Abbie Phillips is a third-year journalism student minoring in Spanish at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. All are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
Teaching artists lead students through improv exercises during a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.
Top Takeaways
Many school districts are using comedy and improv workshops to teach students social-emotional skills, encourage self-expression and foster social connection.
Through the comedy program Laughing Together, professional comedians and mental health clinicians develop workshops based on exercises that can improve student mental health.
Game-based learning and interactive play can engage students who might have fallen behind academically or socially during the pandemic.
“If you were an object, what object would you be?”
Chris Gethard, a veteran comedian and improv teacher, posed this question to a group of high school students in Northern California at a Laughing Together workshop he was leading. He remembered one who identified as a fruit.
“When I was a kid, I convinced myself that I hated avocados,” Gethard remembered the student saying. “And then I tried one, and I actually love ’em. And that’s been my experience the past few years as I’m learning to love and embrace myself.”
It quickly became obvious to Gethard that the improv wasn’t about avocado or any fruit for that matter. It was a big moment, and the student was taking a big risk to figure out something about themselves — their gender identity in real time.
“Young people right now are living in a world where those experiences are often held up in the spotlight and politicized,” Gethard said. “So to see a kid being able to take a comedy exercise, which feels light and accessible and not too heavy, they can let their guard down and take a big swing like that.”
Many school districts are turning to comedy as a way of supporting student mental health. In 2023, Gethard co-founded Laughing Together, a program based on research that comedy can be an effective tool for students’ social-emotional learning and social connection with their peers.
Nearly 6,500 students and educators across 26 different schools, districts, or youth organizations, have taken part in their workshops since Gethard co-founded the program with Marlon Morgan, CEO of parent nonprofit Wellness Together.
“One of the reasons that we [partnered with Gethard] is that he had already shared about his own mental health through his comedy special on HBO,” said Morgan, who is also a former school counselor. “He can make dark and scary things funny, which really helps students gain insight into their own emotions and become better at connecting with each other.”
‘Taking chances in the spotlight’
Research shows that students who practice social-emotional skills in safe environments with well-defined goals have improved social behavior, emotional regulation and academic performance.
“We have clinical psychologists who go through all the improv exercises,” Gethard said. “They get to say — ‘these ones are about making people funny, and they also prioritize nonverbal communication, strengthening eye contact, being comfortable with failure and taking some chances in the spotlight.’”
Christina Patterson, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School in Stockton, said pandemic shutdowns forced her to spend nearly entire days scrolling through social media, hoping for something new to interact with (“But, there never is anything new,” she added).
For the first time since her school implemented a cellphone ban, Patterson said taking part in the Laughing Together workshop, even for an hour, met the level of engagement she had always been looking for on her phone. Like Patterson, students in recent years report better cognitive, social and academic outcomes through game-basedlearning and interactive play, compared to lecture-based instruction.
“I feel engaged with people who are interactive — they’re not trying to teach at you, but they’re trying to teach with you together,” Patterson said.
Laughing Together workshops are led by one of the program’s teaching artists, including professional comedians, actors and performers, alongside children’s psychologists, drawing on art, play and game therapy research, to develop social-emotional learning and communication skill-building into each exercise. For Gethard, a workshop is successful if he can teach students something without them realizing it.
“We want kids to leave feeling more connected and comfortable with each other, not like they just watched a slide show or that they were just spoon-fed these lessons,” he said. “We want them to feel that they’re allowed to at least throw an idea out there, and no one’s going to judge them, pick them apart, or criticize them.”
Sofia Stewart-Lopez, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School, helped set up a peer-to-peer summit, where she and other student mentors took part in a Laughing Together workshop. She remembered starting the day anxious about a big presentation about mental health resources she had later in the day, but after a few skits and improv games, she felt more confident, relaxed and connected to the people around her.
“I learned that a big part of balancing heavy topics of mental health, like anxiety, depression or substance abuse, is learning how to combat them with things that can help you with those feelings,” Stewart-Lopez said.
Markus Alcantar, a senior and a peer counselor at Lincoln High School, said his favorite part of the workshop was one in which he got to become an apple. He had to think on his feet about why he felt like one, and then he improvised a skit with someone who had decided they were a tree. In another exercise, he said a volunteer started with juggling a ball, after which students added another ball, followed by another, and then another — until they couldn’t keep up anymore.
“It was a fun representation of how you can have a lot of things going on in your head mentally, and that you can learn to unravel those thoughts and organize them for yourself and other people,” Alcantar said.
About 1 in 5 teenagers, and most of Stewart-Lopez’s friends at school, she said, have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression. So the workshop, she said, was particularly helpful in understanding how laughter exactly works in the brain — like how endorphins and serotonin receptors can alleviate some feelings of sadness or anxiety — to be able to have fun and build healthy coping skills with friends at school.
“The [improv exercises] also taught us that thinking on our feet better prepares us to be able to respond in different types of situations,” Stewart-Lopez said. “We learned that different people need different types of support, which betters us as mentors.”
Middle school students attend a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.
Most recently, Gethard completed nine workshops at a high school where over half of the student body are on Individualized Education Plans (IEP), or accommodations for students with learning, developmental, or behavioral disabilities. During the first workshop, he noticed most students reaching for their phones in the middle of an exercise or while on stage. To ease students into the experience, he’d tell them to simply take a breath and try to be present.
“After the first few workshops, a teacher came up to me and said, ‘their ability to lock in and focus on that is leaps and bounds compared to week one,” Gethard said. “She said, ‘they just never got their ability to focus back after Covid, but if we can keep going with this, it’s going to change the game for these kids in the room.’”
Rates of anxiety and depression — which shot up by 70% among California children between 2017 and 2022 — are the top health-related drivers of absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic. Research indicates that reduced social interaction, coupled with overreliance on screen time, also worsened students’ social cognition skills, such as cooperation and communication, and executive functions, such as attention and memory.
Alcantar was in seventh grade when schools shut down, and when he returned to in-person instruction as a high school freshman, he said he found it difficult for him to initiate conversations with people around him. Stewart-Lopez said that after schools lifted mask mandates, she kept hers on for a while because she was worried about meeting social expectations about what she should look like.
“The pandemic had added to my sense of anxiety about, ‘What if I don’t fit in? What if I’m different from everybody else?” she said.
For Stewart-Lopez, laughter feels like home. It’s how she and her sisters got through their parents’ separation and also how she plans to take new risks with new people at college this year.
“We’re creating that safe place for students to get real-time responses to the risks they’re taking — and everyone’s taking risks — which makes it okay,” said Morgan, the CEO of nonprofit Wellness Together.
