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  • Oklahoma Creating Test for Teachers from CA and NY to Screen Out “Radicals”

    Oklahoma Creating Test for Teachers from CA and NY to Screen Out “Radicals”


    Ryan Walter, the firebrand MAGA Superintendent of Schools in Oklahoma, has hired PragerU, a rightwing organization, to develop a test specifically for teachers from California and New York. The test, now under development, is intended to identify teachers with views about gender and patriotism that are unacceptable in Oklahoma.

    Oklahoma has a shortage of teachers and lower pay than either of the targeted states. I seriously doubt that teachers from California and New York are flooding in to Oklahoma.

    The AP reported:

    Oklahoma will require applicants for teacher jobs coming from California and New York to pass an exam that the Republican-dominated state’s top education official says is designed to safeguard against “radical leftist ideology,” but which opponents decry as a “MAGA loyalty test.”

    Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s public schools superintendent, said Monday that any teacher coming from the two blue states will be required to pass an assessment exam administered by PragerU, an Oklahoma-based conservative nonprofit, before getting a state certification.

    “As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and New York,” Walters said in a statement.

    PragerU, short for Prager University, puts out short videos with a conservative perspective on politics and economics. It promotes itself as “focused on changing minds through the creative use of digital media.”

    Quinton Hitchcock, a spokesperson for the state’s education department, said the Prager test for teacher applicants has been finalized and will be rolling out “very soon.”

    The state did not release the entire 50-question test to The Associated Press but did provide the first five questions, which include asking what the first three words of the U.S. Constitution are and why freedom of religion is “important to America’s identity.”

    Prager didn’t immediately respond to a phone message or email seeking comment. But Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, told CNN that several questions on the assessment relate to “undoing the damage of gender ideology.”

    Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, said Oklahoma’s contract with PragerU to test out-of-state would-be teachers “is a watershed moment.”

    “Instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state system,” he said. “There’s no other way to describe it.”

    Zimmerman said the American Historical Association did a survey last year of 7th- to 12th-grade teachers and found that only a minority were relying on textbooks for day-to-day instruction. He said the upside to that is that most history books are “deadly boring.” But he said that means history teachers are relying on online resources, such as those from Prager.

    “I think what we’re now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future teachers,” Zimmerman said.

    One of the nation’s largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers, has often been at odds with President Donald Trump ‘s administration and the crackdown on teacher autonomy in the classroom.

    “This MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten.

    She was critical of Walters, who pushed for the state’s curriculum standards to be revised to include conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

    “His priority should be educating students, but instead, it’s getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him,” Weingarten said in a statement.

    Tina Ellsworth, president of the nonprofit National Council for the Social Studies, also raised concerns that the test would prevent teachers from applying for jobs.

    “State boards of education should stay true to the values and principles of the U.S. Constitution,” Ellsworth said. “Imposing an ideology test to become a teacher in our great democracy is antithetical to those principles.”



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  • Fresno Unified’s plan for keeping schools open if teachers strike: Pay subs $500 a day

    Fresno Unified’s plan for keeping schools open if teachers strike: Pay subs $500 a day


    Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource

    Back in May, the union representing over 4,000 educators in Fresno Unified gave the school district an ultimatum: Agree on a new contract, which expired the following month in June, or face a strike of thousands of teachers by October.  

    Since November 2022, the Fresno Teachers Association and Fresno Unified School District have negotiated contract terms without avail, even going before the Public Employment Relations Board and declaring an impasse on issues.  

    The union’s proposal includes requests for pay raises, lifetime benefits, better working conditions for teachers, plus multi-million dollar investments for students, such as free laundry service as well as clothes and school supplies for students in need. Such student investments, which also include proposals for free universal after-school programs and district-sponsored food pantries, reflect FTA’s vision of ways to address students’ social-emotional needs. 

    While pay increases may be attainable, the district insists that demands centered around student support do not belong in the contract language, but can be areas for collaboration and implementation with individual schools, notably  the district’s community schools. 

    Now less than a month remains before the union’s Sept. 29 deadline to reach an agreement ahead of an Oct. 18 strike vote. The union and district are still at an impasse following a July 24 state mediation that didn’t reach a breakthrough in negotiations. Informal meetings and fact-finding sessions with a neutral third party are seemingly the last hope for bridging the gap between the two. 

    If there’s no compromise and a strike is called, Fresno Unified has a plan: Pay thousands of substitute teachers $500 each day of the strike. 

    “We are committed to keeping our schools open, safe and entirely available for the critical learning of our kids,” Superintendent Bob Nelson told families in a back-to-school message addressing the possible strike. “After the pandemic school closure, we know our kids can’t afford to lose any more learning time, and we’ll ensure that doesn’t happen.” 

    But is that feasible, considering the costs to the district, the uncertainty of how long a strike will last and the number of subs that are needed? 

    Increased sub pay would be offset by not paying striking teachers 

    A $500 daily pay rate is much more than subs usually make. Currently, substitute teachers within Fresno Unified are paid around $200 a day. The increased pay is necessary to recruit subs to work during a strike, Nelson explained in a late August interview with EdSource. 

    And the costs to the district will balance out because the district won’t be paying teachers while they are on strike.  Many of the Fresno Unified teachers average daily pay of $490, according to district spokesperson Nikki Henry. 

    “That’s not the point,” said Manuel Bonilla, the teachers union president. “The point is, you’re willingly spending $2 million a day (for 4,000 subs) in order to avoid being a leader and coming to the table and actually addressing issues that your teachers feel are important to the sacrifice of students.” 

    Nelson disagrees, stating that Fresno Unified and the Fresno Teachers Association have continued to meet. 

    So even as Nelson said he is doing his “absolute best” to avoid a strike, Fresno Unified must also do “whatever it takes in order to not tell families they can’t send their kids to school again.” 

    “Post-pandemic, we can’t shut our schools to the kids that we serve,” Nelson said.

    The last time Fresno Unified teachers went on strike was in 1978, 45 years ago. Then, the district also offered substitute teachers a higher rate during the strike. But even with increased pay for subs, the district was unable to cover all the classrooms, retired teacher Barbara Mendes recalls. The district placed administrators in the classrooms and sometimes combined classes.

    “We talked to them about that (in 1978): You won’t give us a pay raise, but you’ll give them (substitute teachers) a pay raise?’” Mendes said, echoing the union’s current leadership. “It doesn’t make any sense.” 

    Mendes, 84, was the FTA representative for Lane Elementary and had been teaching for only three years when she and others went on strike in 1978. 

    Still, Mendes said she understands and doesn’t doubt the district’s determination to keep schools open. 

    “So they have to do what they can,” she said. 

    Does Fresno Unified have enough subs if about 4,000 strike?  

    Bonilla said the Fresno Teachers Association hopes that all educators who belong to the union join the picket line if the strike happens. 

    That’s around 4,000 educators who could strike. 

    FTA represents about 90% of the district’s more than 3,900 teachers as well as nurses, social workers and other professionals, totaling about 4,000 educators.

    Other employees across the district could also strike. 

    In 1978, some administrators and employees working in the district office, including Mendes’ husband, Larry Mendes, joined the strike in support of the teachers they’d worked with.  

    In early August, at least 1,000 out of 1,100 FTA members who responded to a poll indicated their willingness to strike.  

    “Just a poll,” Bonilla noted, “but it gives a sense of where people are.” 

    Right now, the district has around 1,600 subs ready to work.

    But having enough subs is a lingering concern for Fresno Unified, Nelson admitted, especially because it’s difficult to estimate the number of subs needed.

    Since the $500-a-day plan went public in August, many retirees have expressed their intent to sub during a strike, Nelson said.

    He also expects the $500 pay rate will draw subs from neighboring school districts, such as Clovis and Sanger, as well as from across the Central San Joaquin Valley. 

    Even if the more than 1,600 current subs, retirees and subs from other districts can’t cover the number of striking educators, the district has a backup plan. 

    In 2017, when Fresno teachers voted to strike but didn’t, then-new Superintendent Nelson worked with the Fresno County Office of Education to get subs certified. He said the district would adopt a similar process this time if the strike happens.

    Subs must still meet district requirements 

    Bonilla questioned the district’s ability to complete the necessary background checks and requirements for possibly thousands of substitute teachers to be in the classroom by the time of a strike.

    In fact, he said he wouldn’t send his own kids, ages 11, 9 and 5, to school during a strike. 

    “I would not feel safe sending my kid into a space where I don’t know who they are,” Bonilla said. “I would do everything in my power, as a parent, prior to a strike and during a strike, to put pressure on district leadership to say, ‘Get this back in order so, that way, my kid can go back to the classroom with their teacher, somebody that I know and trust.’”

    To become a substitute teacher with Fresno Unified, individuals need a teaching credential or substitute teaching permit and must apply for the position, complete an interview, be fingerprinted and participate in mandatory training. 

    Even if the district is able to staff schools with qualified subs, Bonilla said, students will be learning from a packet, assuming that most subs won’t have the credentials to teach in the class they’re assigned to. 

    “It’s not someone who’s been prepared to teach,” he said. “It’s somebody who’s essentially there to babysit kids.” 

    Nelson acknowledged that some families may not send their kids to school because of the strike, but he said the district cannot be unprepared and will not close schools again. 

    “We cannot go to a place where our schools are not open, safe and available for learning,” he said. “That’s not OK. We are just getting back on track.” 

    Prior to the pandemic, the school district was making academic gains faster than the state even though Fresno Unified students were further behind, Nelson said. 

    Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, the percentage of students statewide meeting or exceeding standards increased from 44% to 50.87% in English language arts and from 33.66% to 39.73% in math from 2015 to 2019. 

    The percentage of Fresno Unified students meeting or exceeding standards, from 2015 to 2019, went from 27% to 38% in English and 18% to 29.85% in math. 

    Whereas the state improved by 6.87 points in English and 6.07 in math, Fresno Unified improved more – by 11 points in English and 11.85 in math.

    “We are back on that trajectory two years after the pandemic,” Nelson said. “Any thought of taking that trajectory again in a negative direction by forcing kids out of school is not on the list of available choices for us. It’s just not. So whatever we need to do to keep schools open, we will.” 

    Still, Fresno Unified has not yet reached the state percentages of students meeting standards. And because of the pandemic, students statewide, including those in Fresno Unified, experienced learning loss that dropped test scores, in some cases to lower rates than prior to the pandemic. In 2022, CAASPP tests showed 47.06% and 33.38 % of students statewide met or exceeded English standards and math standards, respectively. In Fresno Unified, tests showed 32.24%  and 20.82% met or exceeded English and math standards, respectively.

    But public data doesn’t yet show whether Fresno Unified’s students are again improving faster, as they were before the pandemic. 

    ‘We’re still trying’

    Even as both sides are hopeful that a strike can be averted, teachers say they are frustrated by the district’s plan.

    Bonilla, the teachers union president, said the district’s plan doesn’t address the issues head-on. 

    “It’s never about facing the reality that there are issues we need to address,” he said. 

    Such frustrations could inevitably lead to the strike and to even more educators striking, Mendes warned. 

    “The more upset teachers get,” Mendes said, “the more likely they are to strike.” 

    District leaders say they are frustrated as well. 

    Nelson said that although the district intends to avoid the strike, it’s difficult to negotiate with FTA’s “last, best and final” offer while still having ongoing talks about issues. 

    “You can either say, ‘This is our plan: Take it or leave it’ or you can say, ‘We want to have informal conversations with you about all that stuff,’” Nelson said. “But you can’t say ‘take it or leave it’ and then insist upon informal conversation.” 

    Nelson’s view of the union’s final offer is “disingenuous,” Bonilla said. 

    “Never once did we say take it or leave it,” he said. “What we said was, ‘These are the ways in which our educators feel we can improve this district. If you have other ideas, then bring those to the table so we can discuss.

    “He’s never negotiated. He’s never brought an idea back to the table.’” 

    Nevertheless, because the union issued its final offer in May, Nelson said it leaves the district to continue to go through the state mediation process.

    “We’re still trying,” he said. “We just don’t see eye-to-eye. It’s just that simple.” 

    So what’s next? 

    Both parties now await the outcome of last week’s fact-finding sessions, in which a recommendation report could either push the union and school district closer to a resolution or further apart. 

    “We started the week with two full days of mediation and had hope that we might be able to reach an agreement, but unfortunately that was unsuccessful,” Nelson informed families in a September 8 message about the sessions. 

    Following the failed mediation attempts of the fact-finding stage, FTA and Fresno Unified made presentations before a neutral third party. 

    Based on the presentations and on discussions during the sessions, the fact finder will make a recommendation in a report. 

    If the union and district still don’t agree on a contract 10 days following the fact-finding report, the district must release that report to the public, leaving the district with the option to impose a contract and allowing the union to vote to strike.

    EdSource reporter Daniel J. Willis contributed to this report.





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  • Teachers can advance educational equity through clear, high expectations

    Teachers can advance educational equity through clear, high expectations


    Lauren Brown teaches seventh grade science at Madison Park Business and Arts Academy in Oakland.

    Credit: Carolyn Jones/EdSource

    More often than not, people perform up to what’s expected of them. It’s why goal setting is such an effective way to self-motivate as well as motivate others. It’s widely called the Pygmalion effect, and it’s been proven in education repeatedly. A Center for American Progress study run from 2002-2012, following students throughout their learning journeys, found that 10th grade students faced with higher goals and expectations from their teachers were three times more likely to graduate from college than peers who had not been challenged with the same expectations.

    In order to set students and classrooms up for success, teachers must empower students by not only showing them what’s possible, but even more important, showing them the steps needed to get there. This second part is essential when creating positive, inclusive learning environments and advancing educational equity.

    GoGuardian’s 2022-2023 State of Engagement Report, which was conducted in collaboration with the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education Center EDGE, found that 94.2% of teachers reported using high expectation setting as an engagement strategy often or very often, laying out stretch goals and holding students to a high classroom standard. Setting high expectations can improve educational equity by showing students what is possible.

    Unfortunately, in the same Center for American Progress study, researchers found that secondary school teachers often had lower expectations of students of disadvantaged backgrounds. In fact, teachers predicted high-poverty students to be 53% less likely to graduate from college, which, when combined with the data proving students’ success is closely tied to the expectations teachers set for them, likely contributes to a cyclical problem.

    Education can be a great equalizer. But it’s common for students who have experienced poverty or who have faced other institutional academic (or non-academic) challenges to have never been told they can achieve great things. Setting clear and high expectations for students can change that. If students haven’t been introduced to the idea of a growth mindset, it can be challenging to suddenly place goals in front of them, But doing so is fundamental to helping students learn to set their own academic goals. If we zoom out, it’s also the first step in building an equitable and inclusive classroom environment.

    Research has shown personalized goal setting — where students track their own goals and determine their own progress — is a huge step in “self-regulated learning.” Setting personalized goals results in students having significant investment in their own learning and personalized goals. A recent study of 5 million K-eight students across the country found students who entered a school year “behind” grade level were more likely to catch up when set up with “aggressive” or “stretch” goals.

    The challenge lies in ensuring students see their goals as growth-oriented rather than unreachable or even punitive. Especially when working with students who come from lower socio-economic environments, it’s essential that educators proactively articulate (and remind) students that what they’re asking is possible. Students also need to understand the why and the how behind the goals. Setting a goal and walking away without providing a road map is not a strong strategy, and will prove especially confusing for students who aren’t used to facing high expectations.

    Humanizing expectations is extremely impactful. Students won’t achieve a goal if they don’t understand why they’re doing something. We must push students to do things that they may not even know they’re capable of, even as we keep in mind the ultimate goal of equipping them to go into the world, enabling them to compete and make the world a better place. That comes by expanding your world, being curious, and being in an environment where intellectual curiosity is supported. That originates with teachers showing each of their students that they are capable, and building equitable environments where all students can thrive.

    Ultimately, teachers, educators and other education professionals need to walk the walk when it comes to goal setting and improving equity. Implicit bias is real and cannot be ignored. Teachers and administrators need to be actively aware of their own biases and actively work to mitigate them on an ongoing basis.

    Setting high expectations also requires that teachers really understand their students, have established and nurtured relationships with them, and have demonstrated they care about all students and the unique challenges they face. Knowing what is going on with students outside of school is a key ingredient to effective goal setting. What do they have going on that may impact their ability to be all-in academically? This is perhaps the most essential step in building an inclusive learning environment.

    Education technology, especially tools built with participation or collaboration at the heart, can aid in this process by helping teachers not only personalize learning, but also help streamline data analysis that can assist in setting goals that make sense, that are achievable, but that also stretch students outside their comfort zones and move learning outcomes forward. Meeting every student’s needs is required for building educational equity. Educational technologies are often developed to do just that, supporting teachers as they work to individualize learning in a time when they are underpaid, overworked and still motivated to meet students where they are.

    Telling students you believe in them is wonderful. But showing them you believe in them — through high expectations and accountability — means you are preparing them for greatness.

    •••

    Dionna Smith is the chief diversity and public affairs officer at GoGuardian, an educational technology company that aims to help all learners feel ready and inspired to solve the world’s greatest challenges by combining the best in learning and science technology across every part of the learning journey.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Fresno Unified teachers very likely to strike. Here are the issues

    Fresno Unified teachers very likely to strike. Here are the issues


    More than a thousand members of the Fresno Teachers Association rallied in late May and vowed to strike if the union and school district fail to agree to a contract by Sept. 29, 2023.

    Credit: Courtesy of Fresno Teachers Association

    The state’s third-largest school district, Fresno Unified, and its teachers union have tried since November to agree on a contract that invests in teachers.

    The Fresno Teachers Association says its proposals are classroom-centered ideas to improve public education, including bettering teachers’ working environment, adding academic and social-emotional student support and increasing pay and benefits.

    FTA President Manuel Bonilla said the school district hasn’t responded in a meaningful way, “really showing they have a lack of vision and honor the status quo.”

    Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson disagrees.

    “One of the things that’s frequently said is, ‘You have no vision,’” said Nelson, regarding FTA’s claims. “Our vision was to sit down and create a new way of bargaining, where we would work collaboratively on the things that really matter.”

    Amid the tug-of-war of negotiations and a looming strike, both sides insist that they want to collaborate but continue to accuse the other side of stalling and impeding progress. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and more than 70,000 students who are still dealing with learning loss from the pandemic will inevitably bear the brunt of the fallout.

    While a compromise may be attainable on some issues, others — notably class size caps, lifetime medical benefits after retirement and ways of supporting students outside of class — are still elusive.

    Perhaps pay is negotiable

    The union argues that to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, Fresno Unified — the Central Valley’s largest employer with a $2.3 billion budget — should set the standard for salary and benefits, starting with raising pay to keep pace with rising inflation and the cost of living.

    Bonilla said that the district has been “defunding teachers” for the past decade.

    He cited a union analysis showing that, despite increased funding and a rising number of teachers, the district has invested a smaller portion of the overall budget on teacher salaries over the years. Ten years ago, for instance, the district allocated 41% of its budget to teacher salaries compared with 27% in the most recent budget.

    The school district’s analysis of salary, inflation and cost-of-living paints a different picture.

    District spokesperson Nikki Henry said that the district’s analysis of its salary increases between 2013-14 and 2022-23 shows that all staff have received 32.7% increases. On top of that, teachers received step increases and longevity stipends, amounting to an additional 40%. The salary increases outpace inflation over the same period, which was 30%, according to the district’s analysis.

    The district estimates that the 11% raises it’s offering would put the average teacher salary at over six figures. Despite teachers being at different levels of the pay schedule, Fresno Unified said teachers earn an average of $90,650, in pay alone, for 185 work days, based on a $490 average daily rate — a number Bonilla said is inflated.

    Based on Fresno Unified’s pay schedule, salary currently ranges from $56,013 for new teachers to about $102,000 for teachers with loads of experience, not including those with professional development.

    The district has also agreed to fund medical costs at 100%, Nelson said. But that action stemmed from a health management board vote about the district health care fund, not from negotiations, Bonilla said.

    One-hundred-percent district-funded health care happened, in part, Bonilla said, because there was enough money in the district’s health care fund to do so. The health care fund has a surplus of money, estimated at $47 million this school year, according to a June 2023 document shared with EdSource. At this level, FTA argues, the health fund can cover the costs of its proposal to restart lifetime medical benefits for retirees.

    No agreement on lifetime benefits

    Nelson maintains that restarting lifetime benefits puts the district’s fiscal solvency in jeopardy.

    “I’m not going to make any decisions that I think would put the district in long-term fiscal danger,” he said.

    Fresno Unified ended the practice in 2005, but 300 or so employees, including Superintendent Nelson, had qualified for lifetime benefits before it ended.

    For the hundreds of current employees still eligible for lifetime benefits, Nelson said, estimated future costs total more than $1 billion. And, if lifetime benefits are restored or based on 2020 hire dates as proposed, the future costs will grow by hundreds of millions of dollars.

    “It creates a fiscal cliff … a world of unknowns, none of which you can financially plan for,” he said.

    Class size average vs. class size cap. Caps can lower class sizes, union says

    Though lifetime retiree benefits are the top issue that the district won’t agree to, it’s not the only one.

    Ninety-three percent of Fresno Unified’s 1,800 teachers who responded to an August and September 2022 union poll either strongly agreed or agreed that lowering class sizes would improve student learning.

    Fresno Unified acknowledges the importance of smaller classes but “draws the line” on capping class size as the union proposed, stating that it forces schools to move students out of a class, or even a school, if a class reaches its cap.

    “I can’t rationalize that in any fair way,” Nelson said. Henry added that such stringent measures would split families who attend their neighborhood school.

    District wants contract to address student underperformance

    Bonilla said that Fresno Unified insists on tying student performance to teacher evaluations, which “unfairly penalizes the teacher” for factors out of their control.

    “The teacher could potentially be negatively impacted by that without having the authority to say, ‘We need to change these working conditions,’” Bonilla said about a teacher’s inability to control class size or students’ adverse experiences.

    District officials say that using students’ outcomes in teachers’ evaluations is not meant to be punitive but to help educators grow.

    Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, most Fresno Unified students did not meet state standards in 2022: 67.76% failed to meet the English language arts standards, and 79.18% didn’t reach the math standards.

    The school board is pressuring the district to address students’ underperformance, Nelson said.

    “If kids are not thriving in a setting, for whatever reason, we have an obligation to go figure out why — and unapologetically,” Nelson said.

    Proposals for student support shouldn’t be in the contract, the district argues

    Also on the negotiation table are the union’s ideas for student support, which the district says go beyond teachers’ working conditions and don’t belong in the teacher contract.

    Bonilla said most of the ideas came straight from educators, who work with students directly and know the factors outside the classroom that are impacting students’ ability to learn.

    With clothing closets at nearly two dozen schools, Henry said, Fresno Unified already practices some of the common-good measures. While the staff at those schools started the ventures themselves, she said, the district will offer $10,000 startup costs for other schools wanting to start the initiative.

    Last school year, Fresno Unified also provided new washers and dryers at each of its middle schools, also spearheaded by teachers.

    Nelson questions some of the other student-support ideas proposed by the union, such as utilizing school parking lots to serve the homeless population. “It’s not our area of expertise,” he said, adding that the district is willing to partner with experts serving that population.

    “Is it the school system’s job to fix everything in regards to societal things? Absolutely not,” Bonilla said. Like other districts with 55% or more of students living in poverty, or are English learners, foster youth or homeless, Fresno Unified receives 65% more of its base funding.

    In fact, 87% of Fresno Unified students fall into at least one of those categories, so on top of the more than $650 million in basic educational costs, the district gets over $249 million for its targeted students, according to the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan executive summary.

    Bonilla said the ideas, such as the parking lot for homeless families to park their cars, are meant to start a conversation with district leaders.

    “There are ideas on how we might do it because nobody else is thinking about these things,” he said. “Instead of coming to the table and designing something with us, they’d rather scrutinize the idea and shut down the conversation. Our ideas are not the end all, be all; they are a starting point. And if they have a better idea, let’s do that. But they don’t even want to have a conversation.”

    Ideas or not, it’s a part of FTA’s last, best and final offer, Nelson and Henry said.

    Nelson said the union has not deviated much from that proposal, even in July and September mediations, which to Nelson is an indicator that the union hasn’t moved toward a shared vision for the school district.

    The union shared a similar sentiment about the district, saying that since contract negotiations started in November, Fresno Unified has focused on defending what it currently does in regard to pay and benefits, class size and student support.

    Awaiting fact-finding report, which both sides have preconceived notions about

    Negotiations have led to a May promise to strike, to both sides declaring impasse in July and to failed mediation attempts in July and during a Sept. 5-7 fact-finding.

    “I’m holding out some hope that the fact-finder’s report will get us to a different state,” Nelson said.

    In the fact-finding stage, FTA and Fresno Unified made presentations to a neutral third party, who will make a recommendation.

    “They don’t come into this process trying to improve school systems,” Bonilla said. “They come into this process trying to settle a contract.”

    The fact finder will most likely focus on salary and benefits, Bonilla said, not lowering class size, for example.

    “That should be the leadership’s position of working with teachers in order to figure out how to design those systems,” Bonilla said, adding that Nelson will most likely propose adopting the findings, as-is, like he did in 2017 when teachers voted to strike but averted it. The teachers union, Bonilla said, will not write a “blank check” from someone who doesn’t know teachers’ day-to-day reality.

    Despite the union attempting to “invalidate” the findings, as Henry described it, district leadership remains confident in the report, which is expected early next week.

    If the union and district still don’t agree on a contract 10 days after the fact-finding report, the district must release that report to the public, leaving them with the option to impose a contract and allowing the union to vote to strike.

    FTA had already imposed a Sept. 29 deadline for the school district to agree on a contract or face an Oct. 18 strike vote, which teachers may feel is the only route left to take.

    Is striking the only option left?

    Many teachers, according to Bonilla, do not feel supported and are disappointed by the district’s response — or lack thereof — to what the union considers solution-based methods.

    “We went through the avenues that one should go through,” Bonilla said, noting how more than 100 teachers attended eight school board meetings. “We communicated with board members. We communicated with the superintendent.

    “We’re here because Superintendent Nelson has failed to give vision (and) direction.”

    Nelson’s vision, he said, was to change how bargaining traditionally happened: to be able to sit down and collaborate without a third party mediator having to step in.

    Thinking long term, Nelson continues to believe that coming to — and staying at — the bargaining table is the best route for Fresno Unified.

    “There’s no scenario — even the scenario by which they take the strike vote and actually strike — where you don’t have to sit down and have a productive discussion,” Nelson said.

    If and when that conversation takes place, Bonilla said, the administration must listen to teachers.

    “In many ways, we’re fighting for the heart and soul of this school district,” he said. “This model that doesn’t give voice to those actually in the classroom needs to end if we really want to be a school district that meets the needs of our students.”





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  • Lessons from the 1978 teachers strike in Fresno: Bonds, trust will suffer

    Lessons from the 1978 teachers strike in Fresno: Bonds, trust will suffer


    Credit: Thomas Galvez/Flickr

    Nearly 45 years ago, in the fall of 1978, teachers across Fresno Unified stood at the gates of their schools, rather than in front of dozens of students in the classroom. They’d made a decision to participate in what is still the district’s only strike in history.

    Students were no longer with the teachers they’d grown to know. They had to contend with substitute teachers or administrators who gave them packets of work in combined classrooms or in the cafeteria.

    As the two-week-long strike continued, some teachers returned to their classrooms, while others, with signs in hand, remained on strike to demand better working conditions.

    “At many schools, it was very traumatic, especially for the younger ones,” retired teacher Barbara Mendes said. Mendes, 84, was the teachers union representative at Lane Elementary and had been teaching for about three years when she and others went on strike in 1978.

    Each day, Mendes and other Lane Elementary teachers, standing at the school’s perimeter, greeted students in the mornings as they entered school and again in the afternoon as they left.

    “Just to smile,” Mendes said. “Just a smile at the students, so they’d know we were OK and that they’d be OK.”

    That smile, a “hey” or a handshake were subtle ways to mitigate the effects of the strike, which was meant to put pressure on the district but affected students as well.

    Fast forward 40 plus years: Thousands of teachers in the over 70,000-student school district must, once again, choose whether to walk away from their students in a standoff with the district, which must decide if not compromising with teachers on contested issues is what is best for Fresno Unified students.

    Both sides must take steps to bridge a widening communication gap before a heated strike makes matters worse, as it did in 1978.

    While the 1978 strike eventually led to better communication between the district and union — a victory, it also damaged relationships among teachers and shattered whatever trust existed between teachers and administrators.

    40 years later, teachers are fighting for the same issue

    Collective bargaining for teachers in California started in the mid-to-late 1970s, and the 1978 contract that resulted from the strike was the first-ever negotiated agreement between Fresno Unified and its teachers union, according to Nancy Richardson, 78, who was first elected to the school board in 1975. Other employee unions, Richardson said, closely monitored contract negotiations and strike actions with plans to come to the district for “me too” clauses on pay and benefits.

    Back then, the school district had also just desegregated staff and schools, Richardson said, so tensions were already high.

    However, class size was the driving force for the 1978 strike, something current teachers know too well.

    “We just wanted our class size lowered,” Mendes said, whose husband was also a teacher. She can’t recall the exact language of the union’s proposal for reducing class size but said that “anything would’ve been better” than what many teachers had to endure each day.

    “My husband had so many children in his high school classroom, he had some of them sitting on the vents that ran along the window,” she said. “He didn’t have enough desks.”

    Now, in 2023, the teachers union wants class sizes capped, in addition to a change in contract language offering parents the choice of moving their children to smaller classes before the cap is exceeded or giving teachers an increased stipend.

    Strike was ‘devastating’ for staff

    The 1978 strike lasted between eight and 10 days. To this day, people’s recollection of the strike differs because some educators crossed the picket line.

    Some teachers can’t afford to go without the pay, Superintendent Bob Nelson said.

    “They have to make very hard decisions about what they intend to do,” he said. “That puts teachers at odds with one another.”

    It was difficult for Mendes and her husband, who started working in the district office later in his career and who joined the strike, to go 10 days without a salary, and just as hard to watch their colleagues return to work because they had no choice.

    “It was hard on them,” Mendes said. “They had bills to pay. They went back for monetary reasons, not because they changed their minds about the reasons for the strike.”

    Those who returned to their class before the strike ended were often chastised by others for that decision, Mendes and Richardson recall. So during and after the 1978 strike, Mendes worked to mend relationships. While she views her reconciliation efforts at her elementary school as somewhat successful, she admitted that many relationships elsewhere never recovered.

    “There are teachers, to this day, who won’t speak to each other because one struck and the other one didn’t,” Mendes said.

    Richardson summed up the lifelong impact of the strike experience in one word: devastating.

    “Nobody gets out without damage,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t scarred.”

    And that went for administrators too.

    Principals, responsible for keeping schools running, were left with angry teachers divided by the strike, she said.

    As school board president, Richardson was the face of the board, and she was bombarded with angry calls about class size, pay and benefits, and even threatening messages.

    The teachers union at the time posted the school board members’ phone numbers. Messages, such as, “You’re going to pay for this,” made Richardson fear for her children’s safety.

    She graphically detailed how members of the union held a candlelight vigil outside her home and walked up and down her street, frightening her fifth-grade daughter. Richardson’s daughter has distinct memories of that moment, but not any of the reasons behind the strike.

    “Things happened that people never forget,” she said.

    This year’s collapsed negotiations may lead to district’s second strike

    Even though the last teachers strike was 45 years ago, the school district and teachers union have been on the brink a few times. In 2017, teachers voted to strike, but a third party stepped in and negotiated a compromise.

    This time is very different from 2017, both Fresno Unified and the Fresno Teachers Association say.

    Manuel Bonilla, union president since July 2018 and a member of its bargaining team before that, said a strike seems more “urgent and real” to address what has become teachers’ daily work: meeting students’ social-emotional needs.

    “I think people are more upset now by the ignoring of the issues — of the disconnect of the reality of what people are going through,” Bonilla said.

    In a way, teachers shouldered the school system’s burden by going above and beyond their duties during and following the pandemic, he said, but now, teachers feel “undervalued.”

    Superintendent Nelson attributes the differences between now and 2017 to Sacramento City, Los Angeles and Oakland school districts pursuing strikes in line with what he considers a California Teachers Association playbook that unions are following.

    “It feels like what has happened in other school districts up and down the state,” he said.

    In 2017, when teachers voted to strike, teachers hadn’t worked under a contract in 18 months, according to Nelson, who’s been superintendent since 2017. This year, teachers are just over three months out of the previous contract, and teachers are even closer to a strike, he said.

    “We’re just in a different place now (from 2017),” Nelson said.

    The school district and teachers union have declared an impasse in negotiations and failed to reach an agreement despite multiple mediation attempts. In late May, upon giving its last offer, the Fresno Teachers Association imposed a Sept. 29 deadline for the school district to agree on a contract or face an Oct. 18 strike vote.

    The district and union did not meet that deadline.

    Mending relationships, rebuilding trust becomes more challenging if strike happens

    At this point, weeks ahead of a possible strike, scant trust exists between FUSD administration and teachers. This has likely worsened over time, Richardson said.

    “I’m sure they (board members and district leaders) know how extremely problematic it is to get to this point — or go further — because of the erosion of trust,” she said. “And I’m sure they know that whenever there is a strike, anywhere, building back trust takes so long and is so difficult.”

    Mendes, the retired teacher, believes the only way for the district and union to avoid a strike is for the district to “really listen” to teachers and for there to be better communication between them.

    “Listen to what their problems are,” she said over and over. “Don’t tell them what they should be thinking. Just listen to what the teachers are complaining about and promise to do something about it.”

    If it takes a strike for that communication to happen, rebuilding trust becomes an even greater challenge.

    The 1978 strike might’ve lasted longer than it had, if not for communication.

    Richardson, according to Mendes, visited various schools to talk to striking educators.

    “Seeing us on the picket line broke her (Richardson’s) heart,” Mendes said.

    Eventually, Richardson, union leaders and the superintendent met to discuss ways to end the strike.

    “We did that sitting down together,” Richardson said.

    She urges teachers and administrators to consider what could be lost if teachers strike.

    “Think about how it’s going to go afterwards,” she said, “and focus on the kindness and respect it will take for people to work together successfully afterwards.”

    But is a strike worth it?

    The teachers’ strike in 1978 didn’t quite lead to lower class size, Mendes said, but teachers had an impact.

    “I think that it was important to let the teachers know that they could do something that would make an impact, as hard as it was on everybody,” she said.

    Still, four decades later, Mendes isn’t sure if that impact outweighed the trauma and broken relationships.

    “Every strike is questionable,” she said. It was rewarding for those who took part, she said, and it opened lines of communication.

    Even so, was the strike worth it?

    “I don’t know; I really am not sure,” Mendes said. “But it does get the attention (of the school district).”





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  • Teachers of recently arrived immigrant students to get help under new law

    Teachers of recently arrived immigrant students to get help under new law


    Oakland International High math teacher David Hansen teaches newcomer immigrant students fractions using the game of checkers.

    Theresa Harrington/EdSource

    As soon as Jenna Hewitt King asked students in her senior English class for newcomers to introduce themselves, she knew she was in over her head.

    “I saw this look of fear in their faces, like, ‘What? I have to talk out loud?’ There was a lot of whispering in their home language,” said King, who also wrote a commentary about the experience for EdSource. “We were both looking at each other like deer in headlights and you could sense this was not something that any of us were prepared for.”

    A bill signed over the weekend by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Bill 714, will begin to provide much-needed guidance and data for teachers like King, who often don’t have training or experience in how to teach newcomer students — defined as students between 3 and 21 years old who were born in other countries and have attended school in the U.S. for fewer than three years.

    King had expected to be able to teach the class in a way similar to how she teaches other senior English classes at San Leandro High School in Alameda County. Those students read three novels over the course of the year and write multiple essays.

    But the students in her newcomer class had recently arrived from other countries and did not know much English. Most of them spoke Spanish, and a few spoke Mandarin or Cantonese.

    King speaks only English and had no experience or training in teaching English language development to students learning English as a second language, let alone students new to the country.

    “I was just ridiculously ill-prepared. Teaching English in high school, we don’t teach phonics, we don’t teach language in the immense detail that elementary or English learner teachers do,” King said. “Most of last school year was me running around like a crazy person asking ELD teachers on campus, ‘What am I doing? What can you share with me?’”

    King’s experience is not an isolated one. Researchers and educators who work with teachers throughout California say it is common for teachers of newcomer students to feel unprepared.

    “What happens is that they’re basically thrown into the classroom and it’s either sink or swim,” said Efraín Tovar, who teaches seventh and eighth grade newcomer students at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma Unified School District in the Central Valley and is also founder and director of the California Newcomer Network.

    Tovar said most school districts, charter schools and county offices of education do not have experts in teaching newcomers.

    Assembly Bill 714 will require the California Department of Education to put together a list of resources on best practices and requirements for teaching newcomer students. In addition, the law requires the state to consider including content on newcomers in the next revision of the English Language Arts and English Language Development curriculum framework and to include resources on newcomer students in any new instructional materials for grades one to eight.

    “As a teacher, I’m excited. It’s historic. It’s a light. It’s hope,” Tovar said. “Finally, newcomers are being brought to the forefront.”

    The bill also requires the state’s Department of Education to report the number of newcomer students enrolled and their countries of origin. There were about 152,000 newcomer students enrolled in California schools in 2020-21, according to data obtained from the state by Californians Together, but this data is not readily available to the public.

    Separating data on newcomers from other English learners is important, said Jeannie Myung, director of policy research at Policy Analysis for California Education, or PACE, an independent research center at Stanford University that focuses on education.

    “We know that what we don’t measure, we don’t really understand, and what we don’t understand, we can’t really improve,” Myung said.

    The bill originally would have also required the department to report newcomers’ scores on standardized tests, to be able to compare them to other groups of English learners. But that requirement was removed from the final version of the legislation.

    In 2021 and 2022, PACE brought together leaders from California’s departments of Education and Social Services, the Legislature, school districts and universities to discuss how to improve newcomer education, resulting in six reports on newcomers in the state.

    Myung said there is expertise and knowledge about how to best teach newcomers, and how it is different from teaching other English learners, but that information is not reaching most teachers.

    “California’s a local control state, and local control is often good in decision-making. But local control shouldn’t mean that every teacher in every classroom is repeating the wheel when it comes to how to educate newcomer students,” Myung said.

    Myung said an example of best practices is materials created for older newcomer students. Most texts available for English learners are created for younger students, but many newcomers are often teenagers, who would find a picture book about playing with a toy too juvenile. They need access to materials that are at their level of English but also deal with content at their age level, she said.

    In addition, teachers need to know how to help students who speak different home languages talk to each other in English.

    In King’s class at San Leandro High, she relied on Google Translate to communicate with her students. After realizing her students would not be able to read the novels she had planned for other seniors, she scrambled to find other materials. She found one novel written in short poetry with pictures, and she had her students watch a movie version of another novel and then read short excerpts of it rather than the whole text. This year, she is using some books in students’ home languages, but she is still struggling to figure out how to facilitate discussion between them.

    “If you can imagine having a group of newcomers where you have three, four, five, maybe up to eight languages represented in your classroom, that requires a special skill set,” Tovar said.

    Newcomer students also need support understanding their new communities in the U.S. and how they fit into them, said Magaly Lavadenz, executive director of the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University.

    “It’s not just about teaching them to learn English better, but how to better integrate into society and be a fully participatory citizen,” Lavadenz said.

    Lavadenz said it is crucial for schools to help newcomer students and families access social services they may need, like food, housing and mental health therapy.

    As a teacher in Glendale Unified in the early 1990s, Lavadenz said she saw many students who had fled war in Central America draw pictures of the violence they had witnessed. She saw that again while conducting a case study of San Juan Unified’s newcomer program, published by PACE. She said children were asked to draw the flags of their countries and one boy from Afghanistan described his drawing by saying, “Red is the color of blood spilling on the streets.”

    “These are things that children should not see, that we should not see as adults. They’re seeing this and they’re experiencing this, and those images stay with them,” Lavadenz said. “That experience opened my eyes about what the effects of trauma are on young children and how schools could be more ready.”

    King said AB 714 is a small but good step forward.

    “I still haven’t received any additional training,” she said. “Each time I ask, I’m told, ‘Yeah, find a training.’ I don’t know where to go or what to do.”





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  • Time to retire the tainted, unfair basic skills test for teachers

    Time to retire the tainted, unfair basic skills test for teachers


    Photo courtesy Woodleywonderworks / Flickr

    One morning, some 20 years ago, I took an anonymous phone call that stunned me. Years had passed since our decadelong federal class action discrimination lawsuit against the CBEST had ended with only partial reforms in 2000. From its origins in 1982, the California Basic Educational Skills Test, which purports to measure the universal reading, writing and math skills needed to perform in all the varied public school jobs requiring credentials, has been controversial for deterring tens of thousands of educators of color from entering the public school workforce. The horrific first-time pass rates — 38% for Blacks; 49% for Latinos, and 53% Asians vs. 80% for whites — improved, but only modestly, after 1995 changes instigated by our lawsuit.

    The caller had personal knowledge that a recently deceased former employee of the defendant Commission on Teacher Credentialing had examined the CBEST for her doctoral dissertation and concluded it was racially and culturally biased. The Commission suppressed the study, including when our lawsuit specifically requested such reports. Instead of producing it or making us and our judge aware of it, the commission’s lawyers quietly procured a protective order from a state judge to keep the study out of the federal case.

    From its inception, the racial and cultural bias undergirding the CBEST — like the phantom study — has been suppressed, lurking, just beneath the surface. The sickening pass rates — rather than spurring reform — have been used to support the worst kind of circular reasoning: If it’s failing that many people, especially Black and brown people who’ve been subjected to inferior public education in California, the state’s lawyer repeatedly told the court, it must be working.

    Federal guidelines dictate that a test and its passing levels should correspond to “normal expectations of proficiency within the workforce.” Yet there has never been evidence that over half of all Black college graduates (or a fifth of whites, for that matter), are graduating lacking basic reading, writing and math skills.

    Rather, the CBEST’s passing scores, and to some extent its math content, have always been set arbitrarily high, bent more on failing many to justify itself politically than on fairly assessing educators on the minimum level of basic skills needed for their jobs.

    The CBEST ran off track from its inception. Rather than being created by employment-testing experts like a civil service exam, it was a high-profile political showpiece, divorced from critical employment testing standards and processes. When employment tests have a substantial adverse impact on diverse candidates, “job-relatedness” requires that assumptions about what skills are needed must be proven by analyzing each job tested. Likewise, untested desires for high performance on partial job elements must be scrutinized. Insisting that all your players sink 90% of their free throws may sound good, but that unexamined standard would fail legions of hall of famers.

    Documents uncovered during the case acknowledged that in 1982, California chose the faster and cheaper development plan from Educational Testing Service that specifically rejected making the test “job-related.” Even so, ETS’s initial validity study undertook the most careful and extensive examination to date of where to establish passing scores, for, as required, “minimally competent” (not high or average-performing) educators. Relying on the professional judgment of some 289 educators and academics, that study recommended relatively modest passing scores. A typical employment exam process would likely have called it a day. Instead, a much smaller, politically appointed advisory board of 11 recommended substantially higher passing scores, which were further one-upped by then-State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig. Spurred on by “campaign promises to raise [teacher] quality,” Honig set yet higher passing scores without regard to job-relatedness. The final effect reduced Black, Latino and Asian first-time pass rates from 63%, 69% and 76% if the 289 ETS panelists had been followed to 38%, 49% and 53%, respectively.

    Enter Public Advocates’ litigation 10 years later. The state defendants were blindsided when the courts held the CBEST is an employment exam for public school educators which must be “job-related.” The pre-litigation validity studies admittedly had never taken the essential first step for employment tests — a job analysis of all those educator jobs. When the commission finally attempted one in 1994, its own expert advised that most of the math test — the algebra and geometry portions used since 1982 — was not job-related, that those items should be removed and the test re-scored to pass unfairly failed candidates.

    Did the state and the commission acknowledge the harm caused and right the wrong? No. They doubled down on protecting the CBEST and its racially discriminatory failure rates.

    The policymakers had their expert “reconsider” and then delete that recommendation. Then, they engineered a revised CBEST that imported the difficulty level and high failure rates for people of color of the prior invalid test by removing much less of the math content than called for, swapping in relatively difficult “lower order” math items and — when test-takers still performed better — raising the math passing score.

    In 2000, six judges on a deeply fractured 11-judge federal appellate panel looked the other way and accepted the “revised” CBEST. But state decision-makers don’t have to continue to do so. At its meeting this week, the commission is examining whether to renew the CBEST contract with its vendor. After 40 years, it’s time to retire the CBEST. In a post-George Floyd era of racial reckoning, we should be working to overturn the harms against people of color caused by unnecessary, biased, standardized tests. In 2015, California dropped another discriminatory, misguided “accountability” measure from a bygone era, the High School Exit Exam. The University of California and California State University have dropped the SAT from their admissions processes, and the state has essentially halted community colleges from using questionable exams to place students from marginalized communities in dead-end remedial classes disproportionately. Oregon, the only other state that used the CBEST, phased out administering it years ago, concerned with its redundancy and adverse impacts.

    There are more than enough entry requirements to ensure credential candidates possess job-related basic skills. These include requiring a bachelor’s degree, subject matter competency, the California Teaching Performance Assessment, the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment or RICA and, since 2000, transcript reviews of basic skills proficiency as an alternative to the CBEST. It’s time for the credentialing commission and the state to drop the tainted CBEST. It’s also time for some reconciliation. The commission can start by releasing that long-suppressed study of the CBEST’s racial and cultural bias.

    •••

    John Affeldt is a managing attorney at Public Advocates, a public-interest law firm in San Francisco, where he focuses on educational equity issues.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • On the heels of Proposition 28, California colleges pave new pathways for arts teachers

    On the heels of Proposition 28, California colleges pave new pathways for arts teachers


    Children visit a gallery to learn about bugs by making art projects in Merryl Goldberg’s class at Cal State San Marcos.

    credit: Merryl Goldberg

    Eric Engdahl once ran away to join the circus. Always one with a flair for the dramatic, he became a ringmaster at Circus Flora, a one-ring boutique circus with a Civil War theme. He says the experience, learning to communicate with gymnasts and clowns, elephants and horses, prepared him well for the challenge of being a teacher.  

    “There was no one common language,” said Engdahl, now professor emeritus in the department of teacher education at Cal State East Bay. “So I learned how to build communication, how to tell stories, and that a common goal is essential.”

    Helping students find their creative voice is a key reason Engdahl spearheaded an online credential program in theater and dance at Cal State East Bay in 2021, making it the first CSU to offer those credentials just as Proposition 28 promises to create thousands of new arts teaching jobs at California schools.  Similarly, Cal State San Marcos will soon become the first CSU to create a pathway specifically for undergraduate art majors who wish to teach. Cal State Northridge is poised to launch a dance credential program next spring. Given the anticipated demand for newly minted arts educators in the wake of Proposition 28, the state’s 2022 groundbreaking initiative to bring arts education back into schools, many expect other campuses to follow their lead.

    “I would like to claim that I was prescient about Prop. 28, and while I did a lot of groundwork to get the credentials going, there is always the unexpected, e.g. Covid,” said Engdahl, who wrote his dissertation on the antebellum circus movement in America. “It turned out to be great timing.”

    Merryl Goldberg, a longtime music professor, has long seen arts education as an equity issue. She believes that all students should have access to the arts, not just the privileged ones, particularly because of the well-established links between arts education, academic achievement and social-emotional learning. That’s what inspired her to launch the state’s first undergraduate pathway to arts education at Cal State San Marcos. 

    credit: Albert Rascon

    Musicians jam during Merryl Goldberg’s arts education class at Cal State San Marcos.

    “We have the most wonderful diverse students at CSUSM, who I know will make incredible arts teachers,” said Goldberg, a saxophonist who spent 13 years on the road with the Klezmer Conservatory Band. “It kills me that so many students in California have had a limited arts background, and I’m thrilled this will finally change. The arts truly matter.”

    Engdahl’s students are now reaping the benefits of his fortuitous planning efforts. They are sitting in the catbird seat as many school districts are clamoring to hire arts educators to teach classes funded by the state’s historic mandate to restore arts and music education to California schools. Last year, an LAUSD official visiting his theater credential class offered jobs to all his students. 

    “I regularly get phone calls and emails from people all over the state wanting to recruit my students,” said Engdahl. “Los Angeles, San Francisco, and to some extent, San Diego, the big districts are all aggressively implementing Prop. 28 and hiring people to fill those jobs.”  

    Goldberg is also hearing from school districts eager to hire arts educators. Some are having to recruit out-of-state teachers to fill the slots, she says.

    “This opens up the world to so many students who want to be an art teacher, a music teacher, a dance or theater teacher,” said Goldberg. “It’s especially important for first-generation college students. The majority of our students are first-generation, and many are low-income. They have to work so hard to go to college, and they are beaming with potential to make a difference. They have so much passion.”

    credit: Albert Rascon

    A student in one of Merryl Godberg’s music education classes at Cal State San Marcos.

    One major concern is how best to widen the arts credential pipeline, which has shriveled amid decades of cutbacks, for the next generation of arts ed teachers. While there are 64 programs in the state that offer a music credential and 57 that offer a visual arts credential, only a few focus on theater and dance. That’s not enough to feed a field that has gone from famine to feast, experts say.

    “We know we’re short about 15,000 arts teachers in the state,” said Goldberg. “Most of the CSUs or UCs or even private colleges haven’t been churning out a lot of art and music and dance and theater teachers because there haven’t been a whole lot of jobs. Now, all of a sudden, there’s so many jobs.”

    Despite this arts teacher crunch, there are various workarounds. For instance, physical education teachers who were credentialed before 2022 already have dance embedded in their credential, experts say. The same goes for some English teachers automatically having a theater credential. Prospective arts educators with sufficient college credits in their discipline can also apply for a supplemental authorization to teach instead of getting a credential. 

    It should be noted, however, that not all districts are anxious to raise the curtain on new arts programs. The myriad complexities of the Proposition 28 rollout may have contributed to many smaller and rural districts proceeding cautiously as they expand their arts offerings. 

    “The rural districts are not as well-resourced due to fewer students,” said Letty Kraus, director of the California County Superintendents’ statewide arts initiative, “and it is harder to staff rural schools with credentialed arts teachers due to shortages.” 

    In the wake of the Covid pandemic, many school administrators are also overwhelmed by pressing matters, experts say, from the dearth of teachers to deep learning loss, marked by falling rates of literacy and numeracy. 

    “Elementary principals don’t have time to deal with this,” said Engdahl. “You’re already struggling to hire teachers. You’re looking to fill classrooms, you’re doing a lot of jobs and there’s not enough administrative support.”

    Some districts, having eliminated their arts classes long ago due to budget cuts, are now starting from scratch with no expertise in the arts. They need help to build out a plan for arts education, and some arts advocates note the California Department of Education, which is administering the program, has not been sufficiently responsive regarding the rules of implementation.

    “Many school districts are taking a go-slow approach,” said Engdahl, who is consulting with several districts on how to flesh out their programs. “They want to wait and see how the money flows. They don’t know quite what to do with it because they don’t have enough administrative staff to figure it out.”

    A slow-and-steady approach might make sense, some say, because schools have three years to use the funds. A little extra time also means that more colleges can get in on the act and develop their own arts credential programs to help fill the burgeoning pipeline.

    “You have to take the long view,” Goldberg said. “It’s not a bad idea to hold off and not rush into things. That gives you time to really look at the language of the law. It also gives colleges time to launch new programs to widen the pipeline. My team feels confident our work is 100% replicable among any of the CSUs, private colleges and UCs.”

    Cal State San Marcos plans to welcome its first arts education cohort next fall. Goldberg says there’s been a lot of demand thus far from both arts-focused undergraduates who want to teach their craft and from seasoned teachers interested in transitioning into arts education.

    “We are reaching out to teaching artists who may wish to come back to get a credential, and to in-service teachers who have already or might soon transition to becoming an arts teacher,” she said. “We want to ensure they have the support and training they need. There is an extreme need for new arts teachers and support for transitioning teachers.”

    She also argues that California offers many career opportunities for graduates with arts expertise, from arts education and the entertainment industry to the exploding cybersecurity sector, which has been known to recruit music majors for their ability to construct complex elements into intricate patterns.

    “The amount of jobs relating directly to the arts is crazy,” said Goldberg. “Arts ain’t fluff, they really are a career opportunity. The importance of arts in preparation for careers is giant.”

    For his part, Engdahl is hopeful that as the new arts mandate rolls out, more districts will see that arts education could also be a powerful tool for healing children traumatized by the pandemic. 

    “The arts and arts education, because of the way it’s taught, could really be a wonderful resource for helping students heal from the pandemic and catch up with the developmental and the social skills that they lost,” he said. “I think probably many administrators know that, but it’s just they’re so overwhelmed with what’s going on in the trenches right now.” 





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  • Fresno teachers union rejects district’s offer of pay increases, expanded medical benefits

    Fresno teachers union rejects district’s offer of pay increases, expanded medical benefits


    More than a thousand members of the Fresno Teachers Association rallied in late May and vowed to strike if the union and school district fail to agree to a contract by Sept. 29, 2023.

    Credit: Courtesy of Fresno Teachers Association

    The Fresno Teachers Association swiftly rejected the latest proposal by Fresno Unified Friday because the offer does not raise teachers’ pay enough to keep pace with inflation and cost-of-living increases, union president Manuel Bonilla said.

    The district’s offer, which Superintendent Bob Nelson said is “above and beyond” educators’ requests, came only days ahead of Wednesday’s teachers union vote on whether to strike.

    “No new investments to reduce class size. No new investments to reduce special education (caseloads). A salary that doesn’t keep up with inflation. They want to cut our healthcare (contribution),” Bonilla said. “Those are the four remaining items we don’t agree on.”

    Both the school district and teachers union admit that they’ve failed to agree on “critical” items, such as salary and class size, but Nelson said there’s been “significant progress” with the district’s proposals, including, 19% pay increases over the next three years, expanded medical benefits for the rest of employees’ lives, even after retirement, and changes to class size overages.

    “I believe this is a historic proposal for… pay increases and health benefits like we’ve never seen before in Fresno Unified.“ Trustee Susan Wittrup said.

    But Bonilla said the Fresno Teachers Association disagrees with the district’s characterization of the offer.

    More pay on the table

    For salary, the district is now proposing 19% salary increases or 14% in raises and 5% in one-time payments — up from its previous offer of 11% raises.

    Over three years, that includes:

    • A 8.5% raise this school year
    • A 3% raise and a 2.5% one-time payment in the 2024-25 school year
    • A 2.5% raise and a 2.5% one-time payment in 2025-26

    The 3% and 2.5% raises for the next two school years are contingent on the school district having an Average Daily Attendance (ADA) of 92%, according to the revised proposal. The district’s ADA currently hovers around 92%, district spokesperson Nikki Henry said.  If the district doesn’t meet that threshold, the district and union would have to negotiate the raises again. If cost-of-living adjustments increase, so would the raises.

    The raises put teachers’ average salary at $103,000, Nelson estimated.

    Despite increases in recent years, teacher pay in Fresno and across California still failed to keep up with rising inflation, according to The Fresno Bee.

    Plus, starting pay and max salary for teachers in other Central Valley school districts outrank the pay of teachers in Fresno Unified, though the district is the largest in the region, Bonilla said.

    Based on Fresno Unified’s pay schedule, salary currently ranges from $56,013 for new teachers to about $102,000 for teachers with loads of experience, not including those with professional development.

    Based on a compensation comparison of 16 districts across the Central Valley, data provided by the union, the $56,013 for new teachers and $102,000 max salary rank at the bottom among the other school districts.

    Fresno Unified’s proposal also still comes with a cut to how much the district contributes to the healthcare fund, Bonilla noted. The health fund, in part, determines employee healthcare benefits.

    The suggested contribution cut saves the district money, which Fresno Unified will use to fund its proposed salary increases, Bonilla asserts.

    “They want to reduce the amount of money that goes into our health fund so that they can use some of it to pay for the salary increases,” Bonilla told EdSource.





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  • Credentialing commission could change the way California tests teachers

    Credentialing commission could change the way California tests teachers


    Credit: iStock_Ryan Balderas

    The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing is considering whether the state should continue to use educator assessments customized for the state, adopt assessments given in other states, use a combination of both, or do something else.

    A $25.6 million Pearson contract, which expires on Oct. 31, 2025, currently provides testing for the California Basic Education Skills Test, the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, the Reading Instruction Competency Assessment and the California Preliminary Administrative Credential Examination.  

    On Friday, commissioners directed staff to begin research on how best to improve teacher assessments in the state and to report back at a future meeting.

    Commissioner Ira Litt called the assessment system “imperfect and overly burdensome.” 

    “We have a real opportunity to sort of influence and shape the ways we speak to the educator workforce and the kinds of ways that we bring folks into the profession,” he said. “I really don’t want us to miss that opportunity.”

    California has been moving away from standardized testing for teacher candidates for several years. 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. 

    The state will retire the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment in June 2025 and will replace it with a Literacy Performance Assessment that allows teachers to demonstrate their competence by submitting evidence of their instructional practice through video clips and written reflections on their practice.

    Despite the added options that teacher candidates have to prove their ability to teach, commission data shows that most are still choosing to prove competency by taking a test. Staff at the commission expect the number of people taking exams to decrease as more candidates learn about the other options available.

    Nearly half of California’s potential teachers have struggled to pass the standardized tests required to earn a credential, according to data from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. 

    The CBEST tests reading, math and writing skills and is usually taken before a student is accepted into a teacher preparation program. The CSET tests a teacher candidate’s proficiency in the subject they will teach. The RICA must be passed before a teacher can earn a credential to teach elementary school or special education.

    The CBEST is a barrier for educators of color, said John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates told EdSource after the meeting. He said the best outcome would be for legislators to eliminate the test.

     Both tests are required by law and would take legislation to eliminate them.

    “We’re urging the commission and the state to drop the test, much like what the state did with the California High School Exit Exam a few years ago,” he said.

    At Friday’s CTC meeting, Commissioner Christopher Davis, a middle school language arts teacher, agreed. Standardized testing causes “disproportionate harm” to people of color, he said. 

    “We continue to struggle with the reality that our state, through these examinations, is systematically discriminating against the very diversity it alleges it wants to track into our workforce,” Davis said. “This can end with this body. We have an opportunity to act. And I think this is the moment in history to innovate and set an example for every other state to follow.”

    Davis also questioned why the state needed to prove teachers have basic skills in reading, mathematics and writing when they have completed a bachelor’s degree.

    Other commissioners also view the sunset of the Pearson contract as an opportunity to take a comprehensive look at the best way to assess teacher candidates, but some stressed urgency because of the state’s teacher shortage.

    “We have to bring teachers into this profession,” said Commissioner Cheryl Cotton, who represents the California Department of Education on the board. “We have to support them as best we can. There is nothing more heartbreaking than to see a teacher who is highly effective with their students but who can’t pass a test.”

    The California Teachers Association supports recent legislation offering alternatives to testing to prove competency, but it wants to ensure that any tests adopted from other states are vetted by California classroom teachers, a union spokesperson said at the meeting.

    Ronald Wicks, a student liaison to the commission who is pursuing a multiple-subject credential at Pepperdine University, said he likes the idea of offering teacher candidates multiple options to qualify. 

    “Ideally, we would love everyone to meet basic skills and subject-matter competence through their coursework, right?” he said. “We would love that, but for some people, it is easier, especially if they want to teach in an area that they didn’t major in, for some people it’s going to be a lot easier to just take that test to show subject-matter competence, then to take all the coursework.”





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