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  • Central Valley struggles to produce college grads; key programs are turning that around

    Central Valley struggles to produce college grads; key programs are turning that around


    Daylarlyn Gonzalez organizes a class project among freshmen at Arvin High taking a dual enrollment course through Bakersfield College.

    Credit: Emma Gallegos/EdSource

    A new report delivers bad and good news for the Central Valley.

    The bad news: The vast majority of parents, 79%, want their children to get a bachelor’s degree, but just 26% of students in the region are on pace to achieve that.

    The good news: Central Valley educators in both K-12 and higher education are pioneering strategies that could transform the region’s low college attainment rates. That includes broadly expanding dual enrollment opportunities; increasing the number of students meeting requirements to graduate from high school; and creating regional partnerships to smooth key transitions between high school, community college and four-year universities.

    A sweeping new report, “Pathways to College Completion in the San Joaquin Valley,” by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found a multitude of factors contributing to lower college attainment rate in the region, compared to the rest of the state, including a lack of preparation in high school, low university application rates (especially to the UC system), financial constraints, campus proximity, and a perception of less access. That’s a problem for the state, as well as the region.

    “When we look to the state’s future, the San Joaquin Valley is especially important,” said Hans Johnson, one of the report’s authors.

    That’s because the Central Valley is populous, young and growing rapidly — 4 million and counting — compared with other parts of the state. But it is also a region that requires attention, because, over the last 50 years, it has fallen behind the rest of the state economically. In 1974, residents in the Central Valley made 90% of the state’s per capita income. In 2020, that number had fallen to 68%.

    “When you increase the educational attainment rate here in the Central Valley, it lifts the entire region socioeconomically and culturally as well,” said Benjamin Duran, executive director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium.

    He said that too few students obtaining any kind of degree — associate, bachelor’s or advanced — means the valley will continue to have too few people in critical professions, such as nursing, medicine and teaching.

    “It’s way below what our economy in general demands,” said Johnson, a senior fellow with PPIC. “We know the value of a college degree statewide is incredibly strong — and in the Valley as well. So, not everybody has to go (to college), but more people and more students should be going than are going right now.”

    The report finds that students in the Central Valley tend to graduate from high school at nearly the same rate as other students in the state, but show a sharp decline during the critical juncture of transitioning from high school to college and, for students who register at community colleges, which a majority of Valley college students do, transferring to a four-year university or college.

    High school students lack preparation

    According to the PPIC report, students in the Valley have wildly different experiences based simply on which school districts they attend. 

    “That’s both encouraging and kind of discouraging that we have such a wide variation that where you go to school, to not a small extent, is going to determine what kind of possibilities you have for going on to college,” Johnson said.

    School districts that do a good job preparing socioeconomically disadvantaged students tend to also prepare their wealthier peers well, the report shows.

    Two of the Valley’s largest districts, for example, demonstrate this. The college-going rate for Fresno Unified’s socioeconomically disadvantaged students is 64%, compared with 67% of their more advantaged peers. Those same rates for the Kern High School District are 48% and 53% respectively.

    The problem is that many Central Valley students are not graduating from high school with the preparation that they need to succeed in college, according to Olga Rodriguez, one of the report’s authors. 

    One important metric is how many students have taken the full college preparatory sequence — known as A-G — required for admission to California’s public universities. In the Central Valley, 4 out of 10 high school graduates met the A-G requirements, compared with 6 out of 10 for Los Angeles and Bay Area students. 

    “If you want to increase the number of college graduates, that’s where we have so much potential,” said Rodriguez, director of the PPIC Higher Education Center.

    Students who do not meet A-G requirements are not able to begin their college career at a CSU or UC school. Additionally, this lack of preparation makes it more challenging for students at community colleges to successfully transfer to a four-year university, Rodriguez said.

    To improve their rates, some school districts have shifted to mandating that students graduate with A-G requirements; others have simply dropped classes that are not A-G eligible. However, many other districts are not prioritizing A-G classes.

    “A-G policies often seemed centered on politics and local industry needs — as opposed to being focused on students’ needs and aspirations,” the report states.

    An analysis by EdSource found that 56% of high school seniors do not complete the A-G requirements. EdSource found that the problem is particularly dire among Black and Latino students, as well as in certain regions, such as Northern California and the Central Valley.

    For many communities in the Central Valley, higher education is considered more “aspirational” than realistic, Duran said, adding that it’s the job of all educators across the spectrum to educate both students and parents about how to make college a reality.

    The default choice for many Central Valley students is to stay at home and attend a local community college, rather than attend a CSU or UC — even for students who have the grades. The perception is that it ends up being cheaper and maybe a safer option, but that’s not always the case.

    “When you look at the net price, it’s actually more affordable to go to a CSU than it is to stay at a community college,” said Rodriguez. “Especially when you think about the likelihood of completion and how long it’s going to take you.”

    Partnerships make the difference

    Because the transitions between institutions is where students tend to fail, the report says that partnerships between high schools, community colleges, CSU campuses and the region’s only UC campus, in Merced, are important for Central Valley students.

    In this area, the region is “ahead of the game,” said Rodriguez.

    The Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) is a program that guarantees community college students who meet certain requirements a spot at a CSU campus, but the UC system has not joined in. However, UC Merced — the only UC in the Central Valley — is unique in having its own version of an ADT guarantee for regional community colleges, Johnson notes. The university also has a similar guarantee program aimed at high school students in regional districts. 

    There are similar partnerships throughout the Valley that are trying to ease those transitions. For instance, Fresno State has a new Bulldog Bound Program that guarantees admission to high school students in over 40 school districts who meet requirements — and also gives them support during their high school career.

    The region has three K-16 collaboratives that focus on making sure that schools are able to prepare students for college at a young age — whether that is through educating parents or helping high school teachers, particularly in English and math, get master’s degrees so they can teach dual enrollment courses.

    Dual enrollment has thrived in the Central Valley, thanks to partnerships largely between community colleges and K-12 schools in the region. Dual enrollment allows students to take college credit courses during high school, which makes them more likely to continue on to college after high school.

    The work being done in the Central Valley serves as an incubator for what can happen in the rest of the state, said Duran.

    “The work we do is collaborative,” said Duran. “We try to bring projects and initiatives that can not only be replicated here, but in the rest of the state.”

    If these changes lead to a swell of enrollment, the report notes that there is plenty of higher education infrastructure in the region. Few colleges or universities have programs that are impacted — unlike in other parts of the state. Both CSU and UC are banking on growth in this region.





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  • Michael Tomasky: Why No One Cares that Trump Is Raking in $1 Billion a Month

    Michael Tomasky: Why No One Cares that Trump Is Raking in $1 Billion a Month


    Why did Trump run for President in 2024?

    1. To stay out of jail.
    2. To destroy our government.
    3. To make money.

    All three answers are correct. Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, recounts the latest financial scandal associated with Trump–the sale of Trump crytocurrency that is pulling billions into family pockets. And he tries to figure out why the story appears to have faded, instead of blowing up as a mind-boggling violation of the emoluments clause. That’s the part of the Constitution that says Presidents are not supposed to be getting rich by being President, especially by any sort of gift from foreign powers. Trump evaded that restriction in his first term, when he owned the hotel closest to the White Hiuse, and visiting potentates rented the most lavish suites. That was small potatoes. An investment firm in Abu Dhabi just put $2 billion into Trump cryptocurrency. Tomasky asks: does anyone care?

    He writes:

    Nicolle Wallace had Scott Galloway on her MSNBC show Thursday. She began by asking him what he makes of this moment in which we find ourselves. Galloway, a business professor and popular podcaster, could have zigged in any number of directions with that open-ended question, so I was interested to see the direction he settled on: “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”

    Stop and think about that. A presidency lasts, of course, 48 months (at most, we hope). Trump has been enriching himself at an unprecedented scale since day one of his second term—actually, since just before, given that he announced the $Trump meme coin a few days before swearing to protect and defend the Constitution.

    And now, we know that he’s having a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in two weeks for his top $Trump investors, whose identities we may never know. How might these people influence his decisions? This whole arrangement is blatantly corrupt. And The New York Times had a terrific report this week about Don Jr. and Eric going around the world (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) making deals from which their father will profit.

    I read these stories, as I’m sure you do, and I think to myself: How on earth is he getting away with this? It’s the right question, but we usually concentrate on the wrong answer.

    For most people, they think first of the Democrats, because they’re the opposition, and by the traditions of our system they’re the ones who are supposed to stop this, or at least raise hell about it. Second, we might think about congressional Republicans, who, if they were actually upholding their own oaths to the Constitution, would be expressing alarm about this.

    They both shoulder some blame, but neither of those is really the answer. Every time I ask myself how he gets away with this, I remember: Oh, right. It’s the right-wing media. Duh.

    After the election, I wrote a column that went viral about how the right-wing media made Trump’s election possible. Fox News, most conspicuously, but also Newsmax, One America News Network, Sinclair, and the rest, along with the swarm of right-wing podcasters and TikTokers, created a media environment in which Trump could do no wrong and Kamala Harris no right.

    Think back—I know you’ve repressed it—to that horror-clown-show Madison Square Garden rally Trump held the week before the election. It was, as the Times put it, a “carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.” A generation or two ago, that would have finished off his campaign. Last year? It made no difference. No—it helped. And it helped because a vast propaganda network—armed with press passes and First Amendment protections—spent a week gabbing about how cool and manly it was.

    Newsflash: They’re still at it.

    First of all, Fox News is basically the megaphone of the Trump administration. In Trump’s first 100 days in office, key administration officials, reports Media Matters for America, appeared on Fox 536 times. That, obviously, is 5.36 times per day; in other words, assuming that a cable news “day” runs from 6 a.m. to midnight, that’s one administration official about every three hours. I’ve seen occasional clips where the odd host challenges them on this point or that, but in essence, this is a propaganda parade.

    I tried to do some googling to see how Fox is covering the meme coin scandal. Admitting that Google doesn’t catch everything, the answer seems to be that it’s not. On the network’s website, there was a bland January 18 article reporting that he’d launched it; an actually interesting January 22 piece summarizing a critical column by The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, who charged that it was an invitation to bribery; and finally, an April 24 report that the coin surged in value after Trump announced the upcoming dinner—“critics” were given two paragraphs, deep in the article. (Interesting side note: Predictably, other figures on the far right have aped Trump by launching their own coins, among them former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.)

    But it’s not just Fox, and it’s not just on corruption. It’s all of them, and it’s on everything. You think any of them are mentioning Trump’s campaign promise to bring prices down on day one, or pointing out that all “persons” in the United States have a right to due process? Or criticizing his shambolic tariffs policies? I’m not saying there’s never criticism. There is. But the thrust of the coverage is protective and defensive: “Expert Failure & the Trump Boom” was the theme of one recent Laura Ingraham segment.

    So sure, blame Democrats to some extent. A number of them are increasingly trying to bring attention to the corruption story, but there’s always more they could be doing. (By the way, new DNC Chair Ken Martin announced the creation one month ago of a new “People’s Cabinet” to push back hard against Trump. Anybody heard of it since?)

    And of course, blame congressional Republicans. Their constitutional, ethical, and moral failures are beyond the pale, and they’re all cowards.

    But neither of those groups is the reason Trump can throw a meme coin party and nothing happens; can send legal U.S. residents to brutal El Salvador prisons; can detain students for weeks because they wrote one pro-Palestinian op-ed; can shake down universities and law firms; can roil the markets with his idiotic about-faces on tariffs; can whine that bringing down prices is harder than he thought; can empower his largest donor, the richest man in the world, to take a meat-ax to the bureaucracy in a way that makes no sense to anyone, and so much more.

    It’s all because Trump and his team operate within the protective cocoon of a media-disinformation environment that allows just enough criticism to retain “credibility” but essentially functions as a Ministry of Truth for the administration that would have shocked Orwell himself.

    And just remember—a billion dollars a month.

    Don’t be surprised to see Trump-branded stuff on the White House website any day now. Trump Bibles, Trump sneakers, MAGA hats, Trump watches, Trump trading cards, etc. why not?



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  • How can We Find a “Sweet Spot” that Challenges Our Learners?

    How can We Find a “Sweet Spot” that Challenges Our Learners?


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxf5iOQP0J0

    Introduction

    Rigor is often discussed among educators, but can be misunderstood. While rigor involves high standards for every student, it is essential to pair these standards with the right support. Creating an environment that encourages both challenges and understanding can lead to students’ success. It is all about fostering productive struggle, where students are pushed to think critically, but are also supported just enough to make progress.

    What is the Productive Struggle?

    In their article, How Do We Find the Right Level of Challenge for Our Learners?, authors John Almarode, Douglass Fisher, and Nancy Frey explain that productive struggle happens when a task is hard enough to make learners think hard. It is important that learners receive the right help to stay motivated and not feel overwhelmed. Research, such as the Visible Learning MetaX, shows that productive struggle can lead to an average growth of 0.74 standard deviations. This significant improvement shows how effective it is to challenge students in their learning zones. Barbara Blackburn describes productive struggle as the perfect balance between giving help and letting learners work on their own.

    A productive struggle refers to different things for different students. Almarode, Fisher, and Frey stated that what is hard for one student might not be hard for another. Some students find things more difficult than others do. Therefore, the first step in finding the correct level of challenge is to understand what makes something complex or difficult.

    Complexity refers to the difficulty level of a learning task. For example, finding a figurative language is easier than comparing how different authors use it to help readers understand it. This is particularly true if the text is new to the reader. Similarly, understanding a historical document’s purpose, message, and audience is harder than simply listing the traits of a historical event, as noted by Almarode, Fisher, and Frey.

    Almarode, Fisher, and Frey stated that difficulty indicates how much effort is needed to complete a learning task, reach a goal, and meet success standards. For example, solving 25 math problems is more difficult than solving just two different math questions. This also involves the use of different strategies. Doing a complex lab experiment might be easier than performing the experiment and writing a detailed laboratory report. However, if I have already mastered the 25 math problems, they might not seem difficult for me. This shows how hard it is to find the right level of difficulty where a good challenge occurs. Ultimately, the effort is definitely worth it.

    Productive struggles encourage students to try different methods and learn from their mistakes instead of looking for quick answers. It values the learning process as much as the final result, indicating that facing challenges is important for growth.

    Once we understand what productive struggle is and how it affects students differently, it is important to know why encouraging this struggle helps students to learn deeply and believe in themselves.

    The Importance of Productive Struggle

    Lee Ann Jung, author of Thriving in the Zone of Productive Struggle, says that productive struggle is working hard on tough tasks. This is important for deep learning and confidence building. She explained this idea using Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). Knowing this helps to create challenges that help people grow.

    Jung discusses two ideas: mastery experiences and the zone of proximal development. Mastery experiences occur when we succeed in a struggle. The zone of proximal development is about giving students opportunities to push their limits, learn from mistakes, and succeed through hard work. Jung says it’s important to make learning fun and help students succeed, but we shouldn’t remove all challenges. Easy tasks might feel good but can stop students from understanding deeply and improving their skills. Jung cites “Without challenges, students might not grow up in important areas, such as thinking about their own thinking and perseverance” (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007).

    Jung says it’s important to know that even good things can have limits. When students face difficult challenges, they may feel that they cannot succeed. This struggle can make them feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or motivated. While challenges can help them grow, if they are too hard, students may start doubting themselves. This can lead to loss of confidence and avoidance of tasks. When problems seem too big, students might think they do not have the skills to succeed, affecting not just one task or subject but their overall confidence in school.

    What Struggle Qualifies as Productive?

    According to Barbara Blackburn, author of Productive Struggle is a Learner’s Sweet Spot, productive struggle occurs when students are challenged just enough to think hard but still get help to avoid frustration. It is not about giving students difficult tasks or leaving them alone. Instead, it means creating tasks that are slightly harder than what students can now do. This makes them try hard, make mistakes, and solve their problems. Students should work through challenges on their own before receiving help. This helps them to become more resilient, confident, and better at thinking critically. Teachers help only when students are stuck, often by asking questions instead of providing answers. This keeps students interested and motivated, without overwhelming them. In the end, productive struggle helps students learn more deeply, become more independent, and see challenges as opportunities to grow, not as things to avoid.

    See Productive Struggle in Action

    Barbara Blackburn suggests several specific activities to promote productive struggle in the classroom. One key activity is the use of the “Bump in the Road” metacognitive guide, where students read a less challenging text on a topic and identified two to four points where they encounter confusion or difficulty. They first attempt to resolve these struggles independently, then collaborate with a partner and only seek teacher assistance if needed. This process helps students build background knowledge and vocabulary, and prepare them for more complex texts and tasks.

    Another activity involves metacognitive guides that prompt students to write down their predictions or thoughts about a text, and then search for the author’s points and supporting evidence as they read. Some guides provided structured statements for students to agree or disagree with, encouraging them to locate information in the text and engage in group discussions by comparing their opinions with the content of the text.

    Blackburn also emphasizes the importance of using facilitating questions instead of giving direct answers when students struggle, such as asking if there is something in a previous paragraph that could help them or reminding them of similar problems they had solved before. This approach encourages critical thinking, persistence, and independence, allowing students to make multiple attempts, seek help from peers, and use other resources before teacher intervention

    Through these activities, Blackburn demonstrates how productive struggle can be intentionally built into lessons, supporting students as they develop resilience, a deeper understanding, and the ability to learn from challenges.

    How can a productive struggle be created in a classroom?

    From the Goyen Foundation, a blog on EMBRACING PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE: WHY IT’s ESSENTIAL FOR LITERACY LEARNING by Jami Witherell provided answers in creating a productive struggle in the classroom. They are as follows:

    1. Create Challenges That Are Just Right: The goal is to strike a balance in which the challenge is demanding yet manageable. In literacy, this could involve selecting a reading selection that is slightly above a student’s current level or encouraging them to construct more intricate sentences. It is not about making tasks insurmountable but about finding the right level of difficulty to motivate.
    2. Normalize Making Mistakes: It is essential for students to understand that making mistakes is part of learning. This is where true growth occurs. Foster a classroom environment in which errors are viewed positively rather than negatively. In literacy, this could mean applying the editing process in writing or acknowledging a student’s ability to self-correct while reading.
    3. Pose Thought-Provoking Questions: Instead of providing immediate answers, the students were encouraged to think critically by asking open-ended questions. Queries like “What might you try next?” or “Which part of the word stands out to you?” inspires them to process information, which is their ultimate goal.
    4. Demonstrate Resilience: Finally, we illustrate to the students what it means to persist. Whether you are tackling a challenging text with them or sharing your own experiences of struggling through a literacy task, modeling resilience can significantly motivate students to persevere.
    Encouraging Learners Productive Struggle Image

    The photographs shown above were obtained from the Jackie Gerstein EdD. Gerstein wrote Letting Your Learners Experience Productive Struggle and she shows how to assist learners with their Productive Struggles.

    First, Gerstein allowed students to struggle.

    Second, Gerstein says to her learners, who struggle and want her to fix it – do it for them:

    • I know you can figure this out.
    • I will not do it for you. I have faith that you can do this.
    • You got this.
    • Take as much time as you need. There is no time limit.
    • Why do you not try _ minutes? If you do not get it by then, I will help you.
    • What steps can you take to achieve success?
    • Why do you not ask your classmates how they worked on the problem?
    • You might want to try something different.

    Conclusion

    Struggling was not something that was afraid of. This is the key aspect of learning. This helps students improve their reading, writing, thinking, and problem-solving skills. So, when you hear the word “struggle,” do not avoid it. Embrace it. This is where the real learning begins.



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  • ‘Academic probation’ sends message to students that college isn’t for them, research says

    ‘Academic probation’ sends message to students that college isn’t for them, research says


    Students at Fresno City College

    Credit: Ashleigh Panoo/EdSource

    When a college student’s GPA dips below 2.0 — lower than a C average — schools often send a notice meant to serve as a wake-up call: Improve your grades or risk losing financial aid and being kicked out of college.

    But the way that universities and colleges deliver this wake-up call could be backfiring and pushing students to give up on higher education altogether, according to new research. 

    That’s what California Competes, a nonpartisan policy and research organization, concluded in a recent report on “academic probation.” The policy report was born out of a study that relied on interviews with over 50 “comebackers — students who returned to higher education years after stopping out — from Shasta College and Sacramento State.

    Academic probation wasn’t on the radar of researchers until the comebackers, brought on to co-design the study, raised academic probation as a serious issue that led many students to give up on their studies. 

    Su Jin Gatlin Jez

    “I was very surprised that this came up from the students, but this is why we center students in our work,” said Su Jin Jez, California Competes CEO, in an interview with EdSource.

    Jez said students perceived being put on academic probation as a message that they aren’t cut out for higher education, not as a wake-up call. This was especially true when an automated notice did not offer clear next steps for a student to begin to turn their academic career around.

    This is an issue that affects a lot of students. One national study by the Center for Analysis and Postsecondary Education and Employment found that 1 in 5 first-year students on Pell Grants were at risk of losing their grants due to low GPAs. But there’s no California-specific data about these students — something California Competes would like to see changed.

    Laura Bernhard

    The organization calls on the state to create a task force to examine academic probation policies at California public universities and promote practices that will help students. It also calls on each of the state’s higher education segments — community colleges, the CSUs and the UCs — to address this issue. That is happening already. 

    “There is interest. There’s growing recognition of the need to make these changes,” said California Competes senior researcher Laura Bernhard. “I think that’s exciting.”

    Bernhard acknowledges it can be tough to roll out sweeping policy changes in a higher education system as decentralized as California’s, but there are signs of progress. During the study, the University of California announced that it would be following one of the study’s recommendations: calling it “academic notice” rather than academic probation, a phrase that makes getting D’s or F’s sound like a crime.

    In this Q&A, Jez and Bernhard detail what they have learned in their research and, specifically, what they want to see happen in California. It has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

    What typically happens when a student’s GPA drops below 2.0?

    Bernhard: Most schools use an automated system where a student will receive a form email notifying them of this status. Campus policies vary. California Community Colleges are required to notify students when their GPA falls under this threshold.

    There is not a systemwide process, which is one of the things we wanted to flag. So the student experience varies pretty widely. It’s also going to vary based on if they’re in a targeted program that receives specialized advising, such as student athletes or people who are in an honors college, but in a lot of ways it’s left to the student. I don’t think we do a lot.

    What is the problem with telling a student they are on academic probation?

    Bernhard: The first, perhaps the most obvious one, would be the link to the carceral system. That can be very triggering for many people.

    One of our institutional partners was reviewing their website about academic probation, and she was taken aback by the language. After they are given notice, the first image students see is a cop holding a stop sign saying, “You’re on probation.” She was horrified. Then she remembered 20 years ago, she was one of the people who helped write that policy. It was just a real moment of, “Oh goodness, what have we done?”

    Jez: I think previously there wasn’t a lot of concern about a letter with that kind of language because people assume students were on academic probation because they couldn’t hack it. Because they truly weren’t college material. They couldn’t handle the coursework. 

    Fast-forward to today, there’s a growing understanding that students can be academically capable and excellent — and still not be getting good grades. There are all of these factors in students’ lives that impact their academic performance. Institutions want to figure out how they can help students navigate those sorts of life circumstances, so that they can succeed in the classroom. For that reason, institutions are really wanting to make sure they have the right tone in these letters.

    So are some of these assumptions based on an outdated vision of who a college student is?

    Jez: Traditionally, we’ve had a student who is full-time focused on academic studies. You wouldn’t think of life outside of school being a major factor for them. So if they weren’t performing academically, it was because there was some academic shortcoming. 

    But now most students have heavy workloads, particularly at community colleges and the CSUs. Over 400,000 students in California have children. It’s just a very different student. I think we’re beginning to tackle our policies one by one as we look back and sort of realize they don’t work anymore. 

    Besides that phrase “academic probation,” what are some other problems with those automated notices sent to students when their GPA dips?

    Bernhard: Usually just the length. It’s long, it’s verbose, it’s wordy, it’s complex. There’s jargon. It’s not clear what steps I need to take. It’s not clear who I need to reach out to. It’s not personal. It can tend to use deficit-minded language: “You’ve done something bad; you are on probation; you are in trouble.”

    Instead, things can really be flipped. It can be short; it can be clear. It can be: ‘This is temporary. This is a setback. This happens to a lot of people. We all struggle sometimes.” We can normalize this behavior. ‘These things happen sometimes. It’s out of our control and here are the steps you can take. We care about you as our person. Please talk to us. Reach out.”

    I think a lot of colleges have also realized that, in addition to sending an email, we can text, we can call, we can have tables on campus. We can have an academic event with more personal outreach, which we realize is bandwidth-heavy. But sometimes that makes a huge difference for people. 

    This policy analysis mentions that nationally, 1 out of 5 first-time college students receiving Pell Grants end up with a GPA below a 2.0. Is there any statewide data on that?

    Bernhard: I think that’s one of the biggest issues. It’s not a publicly shared data point in most cases. It’s usually within an institution. It’s hard to get good, comprehensive, systemwide statewide information about students who have a certain GPA. We obviously believe in the power of data, so that is something we would love to be able to collect and analyze.

    Jez: I would love to see that, as the launch of the Cradle-to-Career data system happens, we have students’ GPA information.

    Is there any kind of pushback to these changes you’re suggesting? What’s the attitude among campus leaders?

    Jez: Across the three systems, I will say that there’s a growing recognition that this is a really critical issue that needs improvement. And so we’re seeing attention to this at the systemwide level. 

    At the campus level, there are a number of campuses that are just picking it up and sprinting with it. In many ways, our work has been thinking about how we get a more consistent, comprehensive approach, so we can pick up on campuses leading the way, learn from what they’re doing, and then sort of broaden it across the system. So the systems are all in and then the campuses are in. 

    You’re calling for a statewide task force. Why would that be helpful?

    Jez: Unlike literally every other state in our country, we don’t have a coordinating entity that would be thinking about these issues statewide, centering the student and the students who are attending multiple institutions. It’s critical, then, that we pull it together — in these more ad hoc ways, sadly — to be able to address this. 

    We are hopeful that there will be a proposal in the next 12 months, maybe even the next two or three months, that will tackle this.

    Was there anything that surprised you as you researched this issue?

    Bernhard: I think we could have named 17 other things that we think would have led people to stop out and make returning to complete their degree more difficult. I don’t think academic probation would necessarily have been on that list. 

    The other thing I just really wanted to tout is that this feels, to me, like a relatively easy win. It’s essentially free. It feels small, but it could be incredibly impactful for students. There really hasn’t been pushback, because it just feels very common-sense. Now it’s just like, “Great, how do we get momentum, take action and make this change statewide?” I feel like in a year when we’re sort of feeling financially constrained, I think we should take the win. 

    A lot of what you’re talking about and pushing for is systemic change, but I want to close by asking you what your message would be to students on academic notice or probation right now.

    Jez: When we’ve done previous research and we’ve talked about academic probation, what we hear from faculty and staff is they really saw it as an early warning sign, like “Hey, pay attention.” And then what we heard from students was the opposite. It was more like “You don’t belong, you’re not college material.” 

    So I think that a student should know that this status doesn’t mean you’re not college material and you don’t belong and you can’t do it. I think of it more like a wake-up call. Obviously, there are some students where some sort of crisis happens in their life, and they need to get through that moment and then get back on track. And when they hit that crisis, it’s really important to reach out to their institution because they can take incompletes or withdraw or there are other strategies that make it so that this doesn’t have an impact on their GPA.

    If it’s something that’s sort of like a bigger issue where they’re having to work full time and trying to figure out how they balance their studies, reach out to your institution. There are also a number of community-based organizations that can support students. Also, many struggles aren’t visible, but students are far from alone in grappling with this. In many ways, it is a very normal experience. Students can successfully, absolutely make it out of this temporary status. 

    It’s really like the institution’s obligation to help the student. It is not like, “Go figure it out, student.” The institution needs to help figure out with the student, “How do we support you to success?

    My last recommendation is a general customer service one. If you call customer service and the person’s not helpful, I wouldn’t try to convince that person how they should help you. Sometimes, you just hang up and find someone else. Our institutions are pretty big, so there are lots of people. Find a person that can get to your issue and that’s willing to help.





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  • A district practice that breaks hearts and squashes teacher morale

    A district practice that breaks hearts and squashes teacher morale


    You’re being excessed.

    Those three little words uttered by my principal at the first staff meeting, my first day back at work, three days before the start of the school year. Excessed. Numbly, I stumble out of the meeting and make my way back to my classroom. I sit in the new green chair I had just purchased to match the decor for my universal transitional kindergarten class. I sit and stare at my classroom, trying to process what has just happened. Excessed. I have to pack my personal belongings and supplies. Excessed. I have to take everything off the walls. Excessed. Where am I going to put all these boxes? What school and grade will I be moving to, and when? Excessed.

    Excessing, also known as involuntary transfer, occurs when schools have a lower number of enrolled students than were projected, and now there are too many teachers at one site. Districts move teachers between schools to fill vacancies that can open, partially due to higher/lower than expected enrollment, funding shifts, teacher retirement, etc. Excessing a teacher from their site usually happens in the spring, at the end of the school year.

    Fall excessing, or being transferred to a new school/grade in the time after the new school year has begun, is rarely voluntary. It is a heartbreaker and destroys a teacher’s spirit due to the emotional investment that teachers put into their classrooms and their future students at the start of each new school year.

    I explained fall excessing to my husband, a retired school bus driver, like this: “Imagine someone tells you that they have too many bus drivers and they need you to now drive a dump truck in a brand-new city. You know how to drive, you’ve been doing it for ages, and you are well trained to drive vehicles. However, you’ve never driven a dump truck before, and you’ve never driven in this new city. There is no new training for driving a dump truck, and you are expected to master the new vehicle, new city and its rules within two days.”

    Sounds great, right?

    In the spring of 2024 my union, San Diego Education Association, and my district came to an agreement to “minimize fall staffing movement.” This signed and approved contract agreement is supposed to encourage the district to sort out their enrollment numbers well before the start of the school year. The idea behind the agreement is to reduce the chances of a teacher being moved after school has already started. But it wasn’t enough to keep me from being excessed.

    So I call for reinforcements. A teacher friend whose district hasn’t started yet gets busy packing up my old classroom. My husband loads my new green chair into his truck and takes it home. Eight hours later, my personal classroom items are making their way onto two pallets, headed to the school’s multipurpose room, while a stunned teacher who has been moved down two grade levels is making his way into the classroom to now teach transitional kindergarten.

    My former classroom looks like it’s been pillaged, with leftover boxes, rolls of tape and a steady stream of boxes from the new teacher. The once sunny and bright room looks sad and forlorn, like she’s having trouble letting me go, as I am struggling to let her go as well.

    I grapple with the hopes and dreams I had for these new students, whose names were already written on their tables, and etched on my heart. The students will be fine, they will only know one teacher, the one taking my place, three days before the official start of school. But I will always know that they were mine first.

    The next few days are a blur of packing the last few boxes, crying, showing the new teacher the curriculum, crying and talking to union reps and the human resources department at my district. I feel crushed, unimportant, deflated. I am dismayed to hear that I have to stay on my campus for, a minimum of three weeks, but likely more like six or seven weeks. As a newly excessed teacher, I have to wait until the official fall excess date, typically the third or fourth Friday of September, before I know where the district will place me. In the meantime, I will remain on my campus as a support teacher. It is a painful reminder of who I am to the school district. A body, an ID number. A bus driver who can be told to drive a dump truck.

    In an ironic plot twist, only half of the district’s excessed teachers were moved to new school sites. The other half, myself included, were allowed to stay at our current schools. To reduce the number of combo classes, I was directed to teach a newly created first grade class. At this point, I felt like a pawn in a mysterious chess game, with the rules only known to the upper administration.

    I’m just a teacher who was excited to get ready for going back to school, but instead was delivered a big dose of fall excessing. I took my green chair with me to my new classroom, but it wasn’t the same. I left a little piece of me in that former classroom and with those students who were supposed to be mine.

    •••

     Kelly Gonzales is a primary grade teacher at a Title 1 school in San Diego, and a teacher leader with the California Reading and Literature Project.

    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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  • How three teachers and a little kid taught me that phonics and meaning complement each other

    How three teachers and a little kid taught me that phonics and meaning complement each other


    A kindergarten student raises her hand in a dual-language immersion class.

    Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

    My post doc after finishing my degree in 1984 was teaching first grade at the bilingual elementary where I had done dissertation research. As I headed out into the real world, a widely admired literacy professor advised, “Just make sure everything you have them read is deeply meaningful.” Sounded about right.

    It took me nearly three years to realize how not right that was. 

    The first hint

    I had seen in my research that kindergarten classrooms at the school were almost devoid of children’s direct experiences with print. It was all about “readiness” and “developmental appropriateness.” 

    So, one of my teacher colleagues and I did a small study using photocopied booklets (“libritos”) we wrote and illustrated for kindergartners in Spanish reading. We thought using engaging little booklets, with opportunities for kids to memorize, “pretend-read,” enjoy, and talk about the little books would help “prepare the ground” for learning to read.

    The study went well, and there was great enthusiasm. But we found no differences on any measure of pre-reading or emergent reading between the kindergartners using the libritos and the overall performance of the four comparison classrooms.

    A dive into the data, however, showed that not all comparison classrooms were alike. 

    While scores were low in two of them, the other two, taught by teachers new to the school, had scores that were off our charts. Many of those kindergartners were actually … reading.

    I had to visit. What I saw was shocking: classes like well-oiled machines. Kids in small groups rotating efficiently as a bell signaled the end of each 15-minute block. 

    One group with the teacher doing directed fast-paced instruction on letters, sounds and combining them to read syllables, then words (for the Spanish readers) or cvc words (like “dad” or “pal,” for the English readers), then short phrases or sentences. 

    Another group on the rug playing literacy games or looking at books. Another engaged in an aide-directed activity, such as dictation. Another working independently, copying then illustrating words or phrases posted on an easel. 

    This did not fit the child-centered conception of kindergarten I brought with me from graduate school. But children were productively engaged. And those darned study results. 

    We re-ran the study the following year, using new and better stories and illustrations (upgraded to “Libros”) and involving only Libros classrooms and the two classrooms that did so well the year before. We basically got the same results. In fact, testers commented that children from the two teachers I’d visited were really “into it,” eager to show what they could do with print. Children in the Libros classrooms were more wary.

    The second hint

    I was teaching first grade while doing this study, and students who had been in these teachers’ classes came into my class the following year. These kids could read. Their reading was syllable by syllable and robotic—e.g., “Pe. pe. da. la. pe. lo. ta.” (“Pepe gives the ball”) but I was able to fix this by using a prompt I’d learned when observing Reading Recovery in New Zealand: “Read it like you’re talking” (“Léelo como si estuvieras hablando”), pointing out the words meant something, and they should read that way. 

    (I gave the feedback about robotic reading to the two kindergarten teachers. The following year, their kids came in reading like champs.)

    These kids had a firm grip on the “alphabetic principle” and decoding. Moving them quickly to more challenging and interesting reading material was pure joy. Students from other kindergarten classrooms … not so much.

    The third hint

    I had a small, diverse group learning to read in English. They had very little in the way of literacy foundations, so it was up to me to lay them. Still working on the “make sure everything they read is meaningful” premise, I struggled. So did they.

    One of my English readers was a diminutive boy who had trouble “getting it.” He tried and was conscientious, but letters and words remained mysteries. One day he was not in class. His family had moved to a nearby district. I was sorry to see him go; he was bright and inquisitive. But I admit (embarrassedly) to being relieved.

    A month later, he reappeared. “Ohhh,” I thought, but put on a happy face and welcomed him. “Hey, how you doing? Where you been?” I asked. He told me he had gone to another school, but his family had decided to move back. He didn’t seem to mind. But neither was he particularly enthused.

    When reading time came around for the English reading group, he got the reading book he’d been using, opened it, and started reading. I did a double take. “Where’d you learn to read?” I asked. 

    “My teacher taught me at the other school,” he answered. My teacher taught me at the other school. Daggers to the heart. 

    “So, what did you do at your other school?” I asked, trying to be as nonchalant as he. “I practiced my spelling words.”  “And what else?” I asked. “And learned my letters and read in my book.” He was reading. And better than anyone else in the group.

    Fourth — and nailed it

    In the last two years of my brief first-grade teaching career, I got a post-doctoral fellowship to pursue my research while continuing to teach half-time. This required finding another teacher to share a classroom. 

    Our first meeting was not auspicious. She was dedicated to phonics first, while I was still — albeit now a bit wobbly — in the “make it meaningful” camp. 

    She took Monday, Tuesday and alternating Wednesdays; I had the other Wednesday, then finished the week. 

    She would handle letters, sounds, phonics, and decoding; I would focus on comprehension, generally trying to make the best of what I was sure would be meager literacy gruel she served up. 

    Despite our mutual suspicions, we made it work. 

    I soon saw her foundational focus early in the week helped kids get the foothold needed to read accurately and with confidence. She likewise saw when she returned on Mondays that our students were reading and writing in ways qualitatively different from what she had seen when she taught her own classroom in prior years. Our kids were moving ahead at a fast, but unforced, pace. 

    Many landed in that happy place I later came to know as “self-teaching”, what teachers sometimes refer to as “the light goes on.” Children suddenly understand the rules of the reading road, and they progress rapidly as new letters, sounds and spelling patterns become absorbed into a growing understanding of how to read. By the end of that year and the next one with our second crop of first graders, we had our kids get further than either of us had ever accomplished individually. I told this story to someone a few years back who said we had created a demonstration site for Scarborough’s rope, a reading-education metaphor that visually depicts the interconnected strands needed for skilled reading.

    Whatever it was, we had each learned some lessons.

    •••

    Claude Goldenberg is Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education, emeritus, in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and a former first grade and junior high teacher.

     This commentary is adapted from an essay originally published on his Substack, We must end the reading wars … now.

    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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  • What Los Angeles schools can learn from Northern California districts that survived wildfires

    What Los Angeles schools can learn from Northern California districts that survived wildfires


    Paradise Elementary in Butte County was one of nearly 19,000 structures destroyed in the November 2018 Camp fire.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    Diann Kitamura was superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools in 2017 when the Tubbs fire became the most destructive fire in state history, burning through nearly 37,000 acres and destroying two school structures, plus the homes of about 800 students and 100 staff.

    That record was broken the following year, when the Camp fire tore through Butte County, including the town of Paradise, where eight of nine school structures were damaged or destroyed; more than 50,000 people were displaced, and 85 people were killed. Meagan Meloy heads the homeless and foster youth services department at the Butte County Office of Education, which stepped in to support the thousands of students who were suddenly homeless from one day to the next.

    Now, more than seven years for Kitamura and six years for Meloy after leading their Northern California school districts through the fire recovery efforts, they discuss lessons they learned and offer tips to the districts dealing with the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County on how they could ease the suffering of their communities.

    At the time of the Tubbs fire, there had been no recent fires impacting schools on that scale, and Kitamura had no model to guide her and her team. She now extends support to other districts going through their own recovery process.

    Both Kitamura and Meloy say they believe their experiences can help school leaders across Los Angeles County as they deal with the widespread devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

    Former State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, center, and former Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura, right, at the Hidden Valley Satellite school, Santa Rosa, after the school was destroyed in the Tubbs fire in 2017.
    Credit: Diann Kitamura

    Kitamura said it’s important to understand that the impact of fires goes beyond the people whose homes burned down: “Even if their school didn’t burn, their home might have burned; even if their home might not have burned, their school had burned.”

    She added that despite the complex tasks involved, leaders should stay focused on what most matters. “It was really my own common sense and my deep, deep, deep care and love for my students, my staff and my families that guided the decisions every step of the way of how I was going to operate,” Kitamura said.

    To ensure the physical and emotional well-being of their school communities, Kitamura said, leaders must think of a wide range of tasks, including making sure the business department is creating budget codes specific to disaster-related expenses, determining what instructional materials were destroyed and need replacing, identifying what resources the Federal Emergency Management Agency can offer, beefing up air quality monitoring across the areas that burned, figuring out if the insurance policies are adequate, and more.

    “It’s going to be a long process, and it’ll come in waves,” said Meloy of fire recovery efforts in Butte County.

    ‘Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible’

    Meloy said the immediate need after a fire is to ensure the safety of all students and staff, and she highlighted the importance of finding a place and time for the greater school community to gather, given the impact of such a crisis.

    “It maybe can’t happen immediately, but as soon as possible, when it’s safe and feasible, provide opportunities for the school community to just come together, support one another socially, emotionally,” she said. “Create some kind of normality for students as soon as possible.”

    Meagan Meloy working at the Local Assistance Center after the Park fire in Butte County during the summer of 2024.
    Credit: Meagan Meloy

    Use systems that are already in place to help as many families as possible. For instance, students whose families lose their homes to fires are likely to qualify for resources available to students experiencing homelessness. That’s because homelessness among children and youth is defined broadly under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which mandates that every school district, county office of education and charter school hire a local liaison to ensure that homeless youth are identified and education services are coordinated to increase these students’ chances of succeeding academically.

    This federal law defines homeless students, in part, as “children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; or are abandoned in hospitals.”

    Districts typically already have systems in place for this student group to ensure students have stability across three basic needs: shelter, food, and gas — the same needs that Kitamura noted are most urgent for students displaced by fires.

    But Meloy, who has worked with the county education office for 21 years, offers a warning about the language used when communicating with families about their children’s education rights while they search for stable, permanent housing.

    “A lot of the families that lost their homes in the Camp fire had never experienced homelessness before and weren’t comfortable with self-identifying. (Consider) using terms like ‘displaced,’ ‘temporary,’ ‘not stable’ rather than that label of homeless or homelessness that can be kind of off-putting to people. They may not want to even think of themselves as fitting under that category,” Meloy said.

    While students displaced by fires may be eligible for student homelessness resources, schools and districts are often limited in the amount of funding available for this student group and in how funding can be used.

    For example, homeless liaisons cannot typically purchase gas gift cards to hand out to families who need help transporting their children to school.

    To meet some of the needs that education funding typically cannot be applied to, Meloy and her team relied on funding from a local foundation, North Valley Community Foundation, which received donations from a wide range of sources.

    “Without that, I don’t know how we would have met the need for transportation,” she said.

    Schools in Los Angeles County can also tap into the network of partners that liaisons and other school staff often work with. Both Meloy and Kitamura noted that their schools faced difficulties managing an influx of physical donations after fires.

    Meloy said while some donations such as school supplies were helpful for her team of liaisons, they were not “really best equipped to” sort through donations like food and clothing.

    It’s best for liaisons to work with “partner agencies who already have storage and systems for disbursing other items” so that they and other school staff can “stay focused on the school stuff,” she said.

    It can also be helpful to communicate to the public that cash donations are most helpful in recovery efforts.

    “I know that sounds maybe not appropriate … but in Santa Rosa City Schools, I had to haul out nine truck and trailer loads of stuff, and people who are displaced, they have no place to hold stuff,” said Kitamura, who is now the deputy superintendent of equitable education services with the Sonoma County Office of Education. “What they need is food, shelter and gasoline in most cases right now.”

    Meloy also underscored what she called “secondary homelessness.”

    For example, a family with sufficient home insurance might be able to purchase another home that had previously been a rental, which might then cause a group of renters to go on the search for housing.

    “It’s families who maybe were not directly impacted in the sense that they lost their home in the fire, but it ripples out into the housing market and pushes people out,” Meloy said.

    Addressing both physical and emotional needs

    With the majority of Paradise Unified schools destroyed, enrolling students at neighboring schools became a primary task for Meloy and her staff.

    To streamline the process, Meloy’s department asked every school district to identify an enrollment point of contact for families displaced by the Camp fire. Families were asked to text or call 211, the state’s local community services number, to be connected with a district point of contact, who worked with each family to help them decide where to enroll their children.

    As student enrollment was handled in Butte County, Meloy noticed that the trauma that students had experienced became clearer and that the wide range of support, from mental health counseling to transportation to tutoring, might become difficult to track over time.

    Meloy’s recommendation to L.A. County education staff is to create a filter in the district’s student information system that can be applied to students who were affected by fires. With this filter, school staff can have “some kind of a system where those students can then be flagged for extra support” over several years.

    That filter can become particularly helpful when students’ trauma around fires is triggered by conditions similar to those that can spark fires. For example, Kitamura’s students dealt with power shut-offs during strong winds, poor air quality, and smoke traveling from other regional fires for years following the Tubbs fire. “The trauma from the fires is exacerbated” each time, said Kitamura.

    Meloy said staff should be “prepared to see behaviors that would be consistent with someone who has experienced trauma.” In her case, she saw some students begin acting out in class by fighting or throwing things, while some other students became more shut down, dissociating while in class, and being extra quiet.

    “Understand that it’s a trauma response,” said Meloy. “If it’s a windy day, it’s probably going to be, years from now, a tough day at school.”

    To support Los Angeles County schools with mental health counseling, Kitamura is currently recruiting a group of counselors from across several Northern California schools who are prepared to offer counseling for students.

    “I only learned after experience with the fire to do these kinds of things for other districts,” said Kitamura, who is in contact with the LA County Office of Education regarding this effort.

    Meloy offered a reminder to not underestimate the trauma that staff membrs have also experienced: “In a classroom with students who have experienced this trauma, when you’ve experienced it yourself, it can be really overwhelming, so don’t forget about the staff and the support they need.”

    Kitamura also recommended that the LA education office “beef up” on air quality monitoring; “make sure they are ready to go; make sure they are accurate, and make sure that the places you’re measuring are close to the places where the most burn happens.”

    Lessons in preparation

    Kitamura and Meloy also noted that once the emergency was over, they moved to planning for future fires.

    Kitamura’s district, for example, established a redundant server in a separate location so officials could still communicate with their school community in the event that their primary servers went down or were burned.

    Meloy noted the lack of dedicated, ongoing funding for the work that homeless liaisons do — and how it undermines all planning. Both Kitamura and Meloy called on legislators to provide funding support for students displaced by fires, given that the issue now surges regularly across the state.

    “It is no longer, sadly, an isolated, once-in-a-decade event. It is continuing to happen. I had been thinking about, from the homeless liaison perspective, wildfires being a rural issue,” Meloy said. “But it’s really everywhere. I would love to see some dedicated funding for that.”

    As Kitamura put it: “There will be more wildfires. There will be more crises. So … we better plan accordingly.”





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  • Trump Plans to Harass More NonProfits that Help Poor People: His Easter Message

    Trump Plans to Harass More NonProfits that Help Poor People: His Easter Message


    Politico reports that Trump plans to go after the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations he doesn’t like or send in DOGE to destroy them. Should we refer to him as King Donald? He also intends to wipe out the career civil service, replacing civil servants with appointees who are committed to his agenda, not to the U.S. government.

    His second term is not about making America “great again” but about vengeance, retribution, and cruelty, as well as complete power over the federal government. Trump is now intent on punishing anyone who ever criticized him or stood in his way. It doesn’t matter to him that federal law prohibits the President from influencing IRS decisions. When has a law ever stopped him? Emoluments clause? Forget about it. Due process? No way. A nonpartisan civil service? No way.

    Politico reported:

    LATEST: President DONALD TRUMP announced this afternoon that he plans to invoke “Schedule F,” which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. The change would make it easier for Trump to fire career government employees he believes are not in line with his agenda. The move comes three months after a Day One executive order which reinstalled Schedule F from his first term.

    “If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the President, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job,” Trump said in his post. “This is common sense, and will allow the federal government to finally be ‘run like a business.’”

    NONPROFITS FEEL THE HEAT: The Trump administration is mounting a sweeping offensive on America’s nonprofit sector, deploying a blend of funding cuts, the elimination of tax benefits, bureaucratic paralysis and even installing a small DOGE team to target organizations that challenge the president’s agenda.

    The tactics include indirect measures, like hollowing out entire grant-making agencies like AmeriCorps and USAID, and making federal personnel or contract cuts at other agencies so deep that groups can no longer access grants or loans. But there are also more direct efforts, like visits from DOGE or the USDA halting $500 million in deliveries to food banks.

    DOGE staffers have attempted to install their own operatives inside major nonprofits like NeighborWorks, a community development group, and the Vera Institute, which advocates for lower incarceration rates.

    It’s a campaign that’s hitting a sector that’s already struggling. “You’re cutting or eliminating government funding at the same time when donations are going down, at the same time that costs are going up for the nonprofits and the demand for their services is going up,” said RICK COHEN, chief communications officer at the National Council of Nonprofits.

    In just over two months, at least 10,000 nonprofit workers have lost their jobs, according to an estimate from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And groups providing essential services including housing, education and domestic violence support — and who are already scrambling in an uncertain economic environment — could now face an even steeper funding drought.

    “Non profits have been running wild off of the drunken unchecked spending of the federal government and that stopped on Jan 20. We are no longer going to support organizations that stand in stark contrast to the mission of the president of the United States,” White House spokesperson HARRISON FIELDS said in a statement.

    The Trump White House is considering a budget proposal that would completely eliminate funding for Head Start, a federal program providing early childhood education administered by 1,700 nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the Associated Press reported. It’s unclear if Congress, as it did during Trump’s first term, will keep funding for groups that Trump’s proposed budgets stripped.

    Meanwhile, other groups such as NeighborWorks and the Vera Institute are being pressured from the inside. DOGE staffers met with senior leadership at NeighborWorks on Tuesday and requested that a DOGE operative be embedded in the organization’s staff, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting granted anonymity to avoid retribution.

    “NeighborWorks America is a congressionally chartered nonprofit corporation,” not a government agency, said NeighborWorks spokesperson DOUGLAS ROBINSON, emphasizing that the group is aligned with the administration’s housing goals.

    NeighborWorks, which provides grants and training to 250 community development groups, is usually governed by a five-person board composed of senior leaders from five different federal agencies.

    “There’s concern they’re going to load the board up, get rid of officers, and install someone else to implode the organization,” one of the people said. “Slashing that organization during a housing crisis really goes against the president’s platform of creating additional homes and the ticket to the American dream.”

    At the same time, Trump is escalating rhetoric against nonprofits that don’t receive federal dollars but have challenged his administration, including good governance groups.

    Asked this week about whether he’d consider revoking tax-exempt status from groups beyond Harvard, Trump singled out Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit ethics watchdog group. “They’re supposed to be a charitable organization,” Trump said. “The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump.”

    “For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” said CREW spokesperson JORDAN LIBOWITZ.

    Meanwhile, White House officials are finalizing a set of executive orders that would revoke the tax-exempt status of environmental nonprofits, particularly those opposing oil, gas and coal development, Bloomberg reported. The move could be unveiled as early as Earth Day on Tuesday, symbolically reinforcing the administration’s fossil-fuel priorities.

    Meanwhile the AP reported that DOGE contacted the Vera Institute of Justice, which tries to reduce incarceration rates, and said that DOGE planned to embed a team at Vera and all other nonprofits that receive federal funding. Vera told them they had already lost their federal funding so DOGE staffers were not welcome.

    Vera, which has an annual budget of around $45 million that mostly comes from private funders, advocates for reducing the number of people imprisoned in the U.S. They consult with law enforcement and public agencies to design alternative programs to respond to mental health crises or traffic violations, and also support access to lawyers for all immigrants facing deportation.

    Nonprofits told the AP that the Trump administration was eroding civil society by its efforts to undermine their work.



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  • Job hunting is awful. California believes its ‘Career Passport’ can change that

    Job hunting is awful. California believes its ‘Career Passport’ can change that


    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Travon Reed is currently a housing navigator in South Los Angeles who helps those who live on the street to find housing through the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (HOPICS). He credits the classes he took at East Los Angeles College for preparing him for his career in social work.

    He described his classes at East L.A. as “the gifts that keep on giving.” 

    But when he was job hunting after graduating in 2022, employers didn’t seem to value what he had learned in his college courses. He settled for an entry-level social work position, repeating most of the training he had already received in college.

    “I had to get here, and then kind of prove that I wasn’t brand-spanking new to the concept of social work,” Reed said. “I could have been given a little more recognition.”

    Career education is something that happens in school, college, in an apprenticeship, on the job, through the military or even volunteering. But this valuable experience isn’t always reflected in the records of prospective employees like Reed. 

    That’s why California is embarking on a years-long effort to build infrastructure for a new virtual platform called the Career Passport. Its goal is to bring all these experiences into a digital portfolio — somewhat like a resume — called a “learning employment record.” This record, available to every Californian, would automatically update as a person gains skills and credentials with information validated by schools and employers.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom described his vision for the Career Passport in a news conference in December.

    “They take all your life experiences, take all of those skills you developed and create a passport where those skills can be utilized in the private sector and advance your opportunities as it relates to your career and your future,” Newsom said.

    The concept of a learning employment record can sound deceptively simple, even obvious, but advocates for these records say that actually making this work isn’t easy.

    “If this was easy to do, people would’ve done it a long time ago,” said Wilson Finch, vice president of initiatives at the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), a national nonprofit that supports the creation of education-to-career pathways.

    The idea of learning and employment records has been embraced by employers, colleges, workforce boards and political leaders around the country to resolve deep frustration among both job seekers and employers. The idea could have powerful ramifications for local and state economies, its backers contend, as long as potential issues such as fraud and fair representation of skills are solved.

    “Any employer will tell you they’re not happy with the candidates they’re getting. They’re getting too many people, many of whom are not anywhere aligned to what they need,” Finch said. “And then you talk to the job seekers, and they’re applying for jobs all over the place and not hearing anything back.”

    California won’t have to ‘figure out the potholes’

    California’s Career Passport embodies many of the goals of the state’s Master Plan for Career Education, which aims to ease Californians’ sometimes fraught transitions between school, college, vocational training and, ultimately, a career.

    Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget earmarks $100 million in one-time funding to begin building the infrastructure for the Career Passport and to expand Credit for Prior Learning, which allows students to receive college credit for training they get in the workplace, military service, a hobby or even volunteering.

    The California Community Colleges system is leading the effort to build out the Career Passport. It will be a multiyear process, according to Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives. 

    He said the effort is “focused on colleges to start, but designed in a way that allows for other entities to ultimately use it and participate as well.” 

    Finch said he’s excited to see that the Career Passport’s scope is the entire state, not just one group, like unemployed Californians. 

    “I’ve been working in this space long enough to know that when you only target a specific area, the impact is very limited,” Finch said.

    There is a big push for learning and employment records all around the country. Some are happening in metro areas, like Pittsburgh or Dallas-Fort Worth. In Colorado, community colleges have taken the lead. Alabama piloted its version, called Talent Triad, in specific industries, such as health and advanced manufacturing, where the need was particularly great. California could learn from other states’ efforts.

    “California shouldn’t have to figure out the potholes, so to speak,” said Mike Simmons, the associate executive director of business development and strategic partnerships for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

    What could be tricky is the sheer size and diversity of the state, whose workforce in Fresno looks really different from Silicon Valley, Simmons said.

    Over the last year, the state’s Office of Cradle to Career Data hosted wide-ranging conversations about what its Career Passport will look like through a special task force. That group included employers, the California Department of Education, teachers, all three state higher education systems and many state agencies, including the Labor & Workforce Development, Rehabilitation and California Volunteers.

    Reed represented the student perspective on the task force.

    “I was so stoked to hear that there would be some linkage between schools and employers, and that everything would be cohesive,” he said.

    A flowchart that shows the information that would be a part of the career passport. It would include academic credentials through eTranscript as well as verified skills through employers and other educators.Credit: California Cradle2Career Data System

    The problem goes beyond technology

    To apply for a job, an applicant may need to request school transcripts, submit copies of professional licenses and put together a resume that distills their work experience and training. This requires time, fees and energy to ensure that a lot of different organizations are swiftly communicating with each other.

    “We heard from students that it’s really hard to request transcripts from different institutions,” said Mary Ann Bates, executive director for the Office of Cradle to Career Data.

    That’s why the task force is focused on a related effort to improve and expand the state’s eTranscript system, making sharing student transcripts seamless and free.

    But the problem goes beyond technology. Those promoting learning and employment records — or career education, in general — say that K-12 schools, colleges, state agencies, community organizations and employers aren’t working together the way they should. 

    It can feel like educators and employers are speaking different languages. There’s an emphasis on grades and credit for college transcripts, while employers are more interested in whether a prospective employee has certain skills, Finch said.

    One problem is that employers don’t always accept that the training and experience are authentic, because anyone can exaggerate or outright lie on their resume. Reed believes that if his colleges had vouched for classes that provided specific skills, such as trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing, it might have saved him from unnecessary training.

    The current employment system favors those who have a college degree. Some human resources departments will simply filter out applicants without a bachelor’s degree. A student who is only a few credits short of a degree looks the same on paper as someone with no college experience.

    “It’s an all-or-nothing system,” Finch said.

    Those who attended college but never received a degree — which describes roughly 1 out of 5 Californians over 25 years old — would benefit from a new system. A learning and employment record could demonstrate that an applicant has the skills needed for a job through specific college courses, job training and maybe a boot camp, Finch said.

    Ultimately, the success of the Career Passport depends on buy-in. Employers will go wherever they can find potential employees, and job seekers will go wherever they can find jobs. Making it work requires a critical mass of both.

    Reed said his biggest worry about the Career Passport is: “In the land of the free, will we get everyone to uniformly accept it?”





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  • California Department of Education and California Department of Public
    Health issue

    joint guidance

    on the coronavirus to school districts.



  • Colleges in California and nationally

    move to

    online instruction in response to the coronavirus. The California
    Department of Education

    receives

    a USDA waiver that enables districts to feed students during
    coronavirus-related closures.



  • Newsom signs

    executive order

    assuring closed schools remain funded as schools throughout the state

    announce
    closures and distance learning

    begins
    .



  • State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond

    advises districts

    to plan for providing distance learning through the end of the school
    year.







  • Colleges

    begin to announce

    plans not to resume classes in person. CSU, UC later
    announce
    decision to keep most fall classes online.



  • EdSource analysis
    shows wide disparities in how much school districts will receive
    through federal CARES Act.





  • Newsom projects a $54 billion deficit and $19 billion less in
    Proposition 98 funding over two years for schools and community
    colleges. Proposed budget

    slashes
    funding for preschool and child care plans, teacher development
    programs.





  • Superintendents of urban California districts pen
    open letter to lawmakers saying proposed budget cuts will
    set back restarting school.



  • In historic action, UC

    moves to drop

    SAT/ACT and develop a replacement exam for admissions.





  • College graduates forced to abandon the traditional celebrations and
    ceremonies associated with graduation
    turn to
    families or even video games to mark their accomplishments.



  • In Los Angeles,
    Oakland, West Contra Costa County
    , Sacramento and San Francisco, K-12 officials
    reconsider
    whether police should be in schools and activists urge for their
    removal in the wake of the George Floyd killing.







  • A spike in Covid-19 cases
    prompts
    more districts to plan for online education for the beginning of the
    2020-2021 school year.



  • State
    imposes
    strict regulations for school opening and closing based on counties on
    state’s monitoring list. Establishes
    waiver process
    to allow some elementary schools to reopen.



  • In response to new regulations, many school districts
    abandon plans
    for fall hybrid learning and in-person classes.



  • Los Angeles Unified
    reaches deal
    with teachers over distance learning while other districts struggle to
    finalize plans.



  • State health officials release first health and safety
    guidance
    for how colleges and universities can reopen, but most classes must be
    offered remotely and have other restrictions in place.



  • State-issued
    guidance
    permitting limited openings will apply to districts in counties on the
    coronavirus watch list, where schools are shut down, followed by
    guidance
    allowing small cohorts of 14 students and two adults for special
    education, homeless and foster students.



  • Los Angeles Unified announces
    plan
    to offer coronavirus testing to all students, staff.
    Power outages
    due to a heat wave hit California as school resumes virtually across
    the state.



  • Almost all colleges and universities
    open
    with few in-person classes, but dorms still house students and some
    campuses plan for testing and contact tracing.



  • Newsom
    introduces
    four-tiered color coded county tracking system to replace the previous
    monitoring list for counties. The “Blueprint for a Safer Economy”
    tracks counties by the number of Covid-19 cases recorded each day and
    the percentage of positive cases out of the total number of tests
    administered, both averaged over seven days. The system has had a
    major impact on a school’s ability to reopen for in-person
    instruction.



  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture

    reverses

    earlier plans, allows schools to continue offering free grab-and-go
    meals to any student, regardless of eligibility, as they did over the
    summer.



  • Lucerne Valley Elementary in San Bernardino County is one of the first
    public schools in the state to get approval to

    reopen

    under state’s waiver program.



  • California community colleges see

    drops

    in fall enrollment with some showing double-digit losses.



  • UCLA researchers announce

    research

    showing big jump in homeless students.



  • “Leading school superintendents

    call on Newsom

    to impose a “common standard” for reopening schools in California.”



  • Joe Biden is elected 46th president of the United States, with
    arguably the most ambitious education agenda of any president.
    California voters

    reject

    Proposition 16 to restore affirmative action as well as

    Proposition 15

    to raise commercial property taxes denying schools more revenue from
    this source in the future.



  • As Newsom “sounds the alarm,”

    pandemic surge

    puts 28 more counties in the “purple” tier, putting opening of regular
    classrooms on hold for millions of California students.




  • Impatient with Newsom’s policies on school reopening, California
    Assembly leaders

    press

    for all districts to resume in-school teaching in the spring.



  • Congress

    approves

    $900 billion Covid-19 relief package, including $82 billion for K-12
    and colleges, plus $22 billion for Covid-19 testing that could help to
    reopen schools. Of the $82 billion, $6.5 billion went to California
    for K-12 schools.



  • Newsom announces

    “Safe Schools For All” plan

    , which allowed in-person instruction in counties in “purple” tier
    with daily case rate of less than 25, and a $2 billion

    incentive program

    to bring back in-person instruction for elementary grades and students
    with special needs in prioritized categories by mid-February.



  • Supporters of former President Donald Trump storm the United States
    Capitol in a riot. California educators

    condemn and reflect

    on what many call an “insurrection.”



  • Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes a new state budget increasing funding to
    California colleges to stabilize tuition rates, provide emergency aid,
    and “re-engage” students who have dropped out due to the Covid-19
    pandemic. The budget also proposes $4.6 billion for summer school
    programs.



  • Teachers and other school employees in Mariposa County are among the
    first in the state to be vaccinated against Covid-19.


  • West Contra Costa Unified

    announces plans

    to create a permanent, virtual K-12 academy, citing concerns about the
    pandemic’s impact.



  • Newsom announces the creation of Safe Schools for All Hub, a site
    providing resources to school districts regarding California’s Covid-19
    strategies.


  • Covid-19 death toll passes 400,000 in the U.S., CDC announces.



  • In a news conference, Newsom announces streamlined vaccination efforts,
    including an age-based eligibility system and putting teachers high on
    the state’s priority vaccination list.



  • The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing extends a waiver
    allowing those in preparation programs to continue teaching as they
    finish their credentials, the latest move to combat a teacher shortage
    during the pandemic.



  • Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. surpasses 500,000, CDC announces.



  • The Biden administration confirms all schools must resume annual
    standardized testing, with modifications to protect against Covid. The
    requirement had been suspended in March 2020.



  • The California Department of Public Health reports that infection rates
    have fallen significantly, allowing many elementary schools to begin
    reopening.



  • The California Legislature approves a plan providing $2 billion in
    incentives for districts that reopen for in-person learning beginning
    April 1, starting with the earliest grades first.



  • President Joe Biden signs the $2 trillion

    American Rescue Plan

    allocating about $15 billion to K-12 schools in California to combat the
    pandemic and related recession.



  • One-year anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring
    Covid-19 a global pandemic.



  • The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updates
    guidelines on distancing in schools in elementary schools. Elementary
    schoolers can safely distance from 3 feet, while middle and high schools
    should maintain a distance of 6 feet.



  • U.S. Department of Education announces California is behind on returning
    to in-person instruction.



  • CDC announces that about 80% of K-12 staff, teachers, staff and child
    care workers have received at least their first dose of the Covid
    vaccine.



  • Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest school
    district in the nation,

    reopens for in-person learning

    after facing lawsuits and criticism from a group of parents for not
    reopening sooner.



  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture announces that it will continue
    reimbursing schools and child care centers for free meals, a move
    serving food insecure families during the pandemic.



  • The University of California system announces it will no longer consider
    SAT or ACT scores in scholarship or admissions decisions.



  • California announces a plan to spend $6 billion to expand broadband
    internet access to thousands of students underserved by private internet
    service providers during distance learning.



  • State rescinds mandate requiring schools to send home children who
    refuse to wear a mask, announcing that it will allow schools to decide
    what to do.



  • The University of California system announces that it will require
    students, faculty and staff to show proof of vaccination against Covid.



  • The California State University System announces that all faculty,
    students and staff will be required to show proof of vaccination.



  • CDC updates masking guidance, recommending masking indoors and in high
    transmission areas, amid a surge in the Covid virus’s new delta variant.



  • Several California community colleges, including ones in the Los Angeles
    Community College District and Los Rios Community College District,
    implement vaccine mandates amid surging cases.



  • California becomes the first state in the nation to

    require school staff

    to be vaccinated against Covid or undergo weekly testing.



  • Culver City Unified, in west Los Angeles, announces that it will require
    all students to be vaccinated against and undergo weekly testing,
    becoming the first school district in California to do so.



  • Several rural districts in California close schools, following an
    increase in cases of the delta variant of Covid-19.



  • The Los Angeles Unified school board votes to require all students 12
    and older to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19, becoming the largest
    public school district to do so.



  • The chancellor of the California Community College system announces
    student enrollment has dropped below 2 million students for the first
    time in over 30 years due to the pandemic.



  • A judge rules that California students with disabilities can resume
    independent study after Assembly Bill 130 was passed, requiring all
    schools to provide in-person classes. The bill made an exception for
    those who qualified for independent study, but shut out several students
    who had various disabilities preventing them from wearing a mask or
    making them susceptible to Covid.



  • The UC system announces it will stick with test-free admissions and will
    not replace the SAT and ACT with a new exam.


  • CDC announces the death toll in the U.S. has surpassed 800,000.



  • Several school districts, including Los Angeles Unified and West Contra
    Costa Unified, announce plans to delay vaccine mandate deadlines.



  • CDC updates quarantine and isolation guidelines, and California
    announces the state will follow them.



  • CDC reports 1 million active Covid cases in the U.S, the highest daily
    total of any country.



  • About 900 teachers and aides stage a “sickout” to protest the lack of
    Covid-19 protections in San Francisco public schools in the midst of a
    surge of cases.



  • Gov. Gavin Newsom announces that funding for schools and community
    colleges will increase to over $100 million in the midst of a pandemic
    affecting state revenue.



  • Newsom signs an executive order loosening state regulations for
    substitute teachers to combat staffing shortages.


  • Following a

    “sickout”

    protest by several teachers at a West Contra Costa Unified middle
    school, over half of Stege Elementary school’s teachers call out to
    protest Covid-19 policies.



  • Oakland-based research group Children Now releases report card detailing
    the effects of the pandemic, wildfires and racial injustice on
    children’s education and mental health.



  • Several CSU and UC campuses suspend in-person classes following a surge
    of cases.



  • San Diego State University sees a record number of fall 2022 applicants,
    indicating a bounce back to pre-pandemic levels.



  • The chancellor of the CSU system announces tuition will not increase for
    the 2022-23 school year as many students continue to face financial
    struggles due to the pandemic.



  • A panel for the CSU system recommends eliminating SAT and ACT exams for
    admission, following several colleges across the nation during the
    pandemic.



  • EdSource reports that graduation rates held steady during the pandemic.



  • CDC issues new rating system allowing most students in K-12 schools to
    remove masks indoors.




  • Covid-19 deaths worldwide surpass 6 million.



  • Two year anniversary of when the World Health Organization declared the
    coronavirus a global pandemic.



  • California ends school mask mandate.



  • President Joe Biden proposes $88.3 billion dollars in new discretionary
    funds for American colleges, a 16% increase from the previous year.


  • Almost 1 million Covid deaths have been reported in the U.S.



  • The National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers announces
    state-based preschool programs suffered from massive pandemic-related
    losses, including enrollment decline and loss of state funding.



  • Biden and the Department of Education announce an extension of the
    student loan payment pause until Aug. 31. The pandemic-era policy
    assisted millions of borrowers nationwide.



  • College students introduce a bill to add a 24-hour mental health hotline
    number on student ID cards due to the growing mental health crisis
    associated with the pandemic and other social justice issues.


  • U.S. Covid deaths top 1 million.



  • Newsom announces a revised state budget allocating $128 billion to
    schools and community colleges in the state, $20 billion more than
    initially proposed. The new budget is slated to provide $3.3 billion for
    districts affected by inconsistent attendance due to new Covid variants.



  • The Public Policy Institute of California reveals that science
    instruction decreased in K-12 schools across the state during the
    pandemic. More than 200 districts were surveyed, citing teacher burnout
    related to the pandemic and a lack of funding for science, technology,
    engineering and math programs.



  • California to provide free lunch to all K-12 students, expanding on the
    USDA’s pandemic-era universal meal program.



  • Several public universities and colleges begin in-person instructions
    with few Covid restrictions.





  • As educators worry about the pandemic’s effect on students, the state
    Department of Education announces it will delay release of standardized
    test scores from the previous year, prompting a public outcry.



  • California Department of Education

    announces it will release

    standardized test scores projected to show declines related to global
    pandemic. This is a contrast from the initial announcement indicating a
    delay.



  • EdSource reports that California students have performed significantly
    worse on state standardized states, highlighting another one of the
    pandemic’s impacts on education.



  • CSU board of trustees abandons a plan to require a fourth year of math
    for admission, citing pandemic-related concerns.





  • Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes a budget decrease for California Community
    Colleges and K-12 schools, while continuing to allocate funding for
    “learning recovery from Covid.”



  • Officials from the Department of Public Health announce plans to end the
    Covid vaccine mandate for school children.



  • Several elementary schools in Marin County institute a temporary mask
    mandate following an uptick in cases.



  • CDC adds Covid-19 vaccine to recommended immunization schedule for
    children ages 6-17.



  • CalFresh announces it will end two temporary exceptions allowing more
    students to qualify for CalFresh during the pandemic.



  • Despite hopes of return to a “pre-pandemic normalcy,” state data reports
    a decline in TK-12 enrollment.



  • Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers,
    testifies in front of Congress regarding Covid-related closures at
    schools.



  • World Health Organization announces that Covid-19 is no longer
    considered a global pandemic.



  • CalMatters reports that the Golden State Education and Training Grant
    Program, which allows those affected by job loss due to Covid to enroll
    in a college program, is set to end by June 15 in order to combat
    ongoing budget deficit.



  • School officials and union leaders for Los Angeles Unified reach
    agreement to extend winter breaks. If ratified, the measure will extend
    the school year in hopes of combating Covid-related learning loss.



  • State Legislature mandates a change in literacy standards, hoping to
    combat reading loss.



  • In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules President Joe Biden
    lacked the authority to implement a plan erasing $400 billion in college
    student debt, leaving millions of people affected by financial woes
    during the pandemic in a limbo.



  • The Legislature announces two bills to combat a teacher shortage
    exacerbated by the pandemic, including one set to pay student teachers
    for their required 600 hours of instruction.


  • The state Department of Education

    plans to sue Stanford researchers

    to prevent them from testifying in a suit alleging that the state failed
    to prevent learning loss for low-income and other high-risk groups. Some
    professors from the university planned to testify regarding the effects
    of the pandemic on chronic absenteeism and student engagement/enrollment
    measures.



  • Reversing course, the department announces it will not pursue a lawsuit
    against the Stanford researchers.



  • Chancellor for California Community Colleges announces enrollment has
    increased, bouncing back after years of pandemic-related declines.



  • Los Angeles Unified School District announces it will no longer require
    employees be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The mandate was under
    controversy as many claimed it was discriminatory.



  • CAASPP Smarter Balanced assessments reveal that districts have done
    little to reverse learning loss due to the pandemic. The learning loss
    disproportionately affected Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged
    students.



  • Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes a rainy day fund to protect California
    colleges from expected budget shortfalls.



  • Los Angeles Unified loosens Covid restrictions, allowing children and
    school to return to school if symptoms are mild.



  • A study published by the New England Journal of Medicine finds that long
    Covid will have lasting effects on IQ levels and cognitive ability of
    schoolchildren.



  • California Community Colleges reports that the system has lost more than
    $5 million due to fraudulent registrations, a trend that has seen an
    increase since the pandemic.



  • Trump-appointed judge in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules
    that Los Angeles Unified employees can sue the district over expired
    Covid policies. The suit had been thrown out by a lower court as the
    rules were no longer in effect.



  • The New York Times reports that $190 billion given to schools to help
    students recover from pandemic-related learning loss did little to
    improve test scores.



  • Toddlers and babies born during the pandemic suffered from significant
    developmental delays due to its effects, the New York Times reports.



  • Los Angeles Unified superintendent announces that the district has
    recovered from some learning loss during the pandemic, with reading
    scores showing English proficiency increasing from 41% to 43%. Math
    scores also rose by 2 percentage points.



  • Study by Northwest Evaluation Association reports that a significant
    number of eighth graders are approximately a year behind in learning
    progress due to the pandemic.



  • EdWeek reports that district administrators have until Sept. 30 to claim
    share of Covid-related federal aid set aside to assist homeless
    students.



  • CSU system announces 461,000 enrolled students, the largest number since
    the beginning of the pandemic.



  • State data indicates improving scores on standardized tests, but not to
    pre-pandemic levels. Government officials say the scores show that
    districts are making up for learning loss.



  • The Center on Reinventing Public Education gives California a D grade on
    its reporting of the effects of Covid on students.



  • EdSource reports that several schools and colleges around California
    will receive over $45 billion in bonds for construction in a “post-Covid
    vote of confidence.”



  • West Contra Costa district announces it will cut several administrative
    and staff positions due to a budget deficit, citing declining enrollment
    and expiration of Covid-relief grants as causes.





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