Achieving a college degree in prison is rare, but now a select 33 incarcerated people in California can earn their master’s degrees.
California State University, Dominguez Hills, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced a partnership Thursday to launch the state’s first master’s degree program for incarcerated people. Corrections Secretary Jeff Macomber said the partnership furthers the state’s prison system’s goal to expand “grade school to grad school” opportunities.
“These efforts are vital, as education serves as a powerful rehabilitative tool,” Macomber said.
Research shows that prison programs reduce recidivism rates and help formerly incarcerated people find jobs and improve their families’ lives once they are released.Those studies show that incarcerated people are 48% less likely to return to prison within three years than those who didn’t attend a college program in prison.
All 33 of the state’s adult prisons offer the ability for the system’s 95,600 incarcerated people to earn community college degrees; about 13.5% are enrolled in a college course. The state has been expanding its offerings of college in prisons. Eight partnerships with state universitieshave begun since 2016 to offer bachelor’s degrees to incarcerated people. About 230 are enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program for the current semester.
The new Dominguez Hills program will allow all people in all 33 prisons who have already earned a bachelor’s degree and have at least a 2.5 GPA, to earn a Master of Arts in humanities. The students will participate in two years of courses, including urban development, religion, morality and spirituality. The classes will take place over Zoom or through written correspondence.
Tuition for the program is about $10,500 and students or their families will be responsible for covering the costs. However, the corrections department said that it may provide some assistance. The university is also accepting donations to go toward incarcerated students’ tuition. Because these are post-bachelor’s degree courses, the incarcerated students do not qualify for the state’s Cal Grant or federal Pell Grant programs.
“Our mission is firmly anchored in social justice,” said Thomas Parham, president of Cal State Dominguez Hills. “This historic partnership between California State University and CDCR benefits students — and ultimately their families and communities — by distinguishing between what people did and who they are at the core of their being, and recognizing their potential, cultivating their talents and preparing them to thrive in their paths moving forward.”
Parham said it was important for the university to provide advanced learning opportunities in prisons because the campus is focused on “transforming lives.”
The 33 students in the new master’s program reside in 11 different state prisons across the state including Avenal, Chuckawalla Valley and San Quentin state prisons and Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
Parent Raul Zuniga and his daughter Sandy, a senior at La Habra High in Orange County, receive help with financial aid forms from counselor Rosa Sanchez at a “Cash for College” workshop.
FERMIN LEAL/EDSOURCE TODAY
California is better off when more people have education and training to power our economy and support thriving communities. Financial aid that reduces or fully covers the cost of college or job training is an investment that benefits all of us.
About $550 million in federal and state aid goes unused annually when thousands of eligible California students miss out on financial aid. Many are unaware of financial aid, don’t know how to apply or if they qualify, or fear sharing personal information because of their immigration status.
A new law is helping to ensure that financial aid is not left on the table. Schools must help all high school seniors complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or California Dream Act Application unless the student formally opts out. Students submit one of these applications, depending on their residential status, to access the grants, scholarships, work-study opportunities, student loans and other forms of aid available to help finance postsecondary education or training.
Providing support for all students as they complete financial aid applications is an equity-driven game changer. This policy encourages students to plan for and attend college or job training programs and ensures that all students and families can make informed plans and decisions about their life after high school.
Achieving universal participation in this student-centered systemic approach to financial aid requires planning and collaboration among K-12 school leaders, counselors, educators, student groups and community organizations. California’s All in for FAFSA/CA Dream Act campaign supports K-12 education partners as they work to achieve universal FAFSA/CADAA completion. Local progress can be tracked on the state’s Race to Submit dashboard. The data can help target assistance for students who may need extra support and encouragement to complete and submit a financial aid application. It also helps us to identify, learn from and share best practices with schools and districts across the state.
Since universal participation was required, the number of California students applying for financial aid increased significantly. More than 60% of California’s high school seniors submitted financial aid applications by March 2, the deadline for students planning to attend a four-year college. By Sept. 5, the deadline for students heading to community college, the total FAFSA or CADAA completion rate for the class of 2023 climbed to nearly 75%. More than 24,000 financial aid applications were completed this year compared with the same time a year ago.
The progress achieved with California’s universal financial aid requirement is due to the hard work of K-12 district leaders, high school principals, counselors and teachers, California Student Opportunity and Access Program counselors, Cash for College workshop coordinators, community-based organizations, and students and their families. They went all in to help more high school students than ever complete financial aid applications.
In a few months, the U.S. Department of Education will release a revised federal aid application called the Better FAFSA. The good news is that the redesigned application will be easier to complete. The bad news is that the Better FAFSA application window will open two months later than in a typical year. This compressed timeline could most disadvantage students and families who need greater support to complete the aid application — and who have the most to gain from filling out the form.
We will need all hands on deck at the state, district and high school levels to keep making progress and ensure that students don’t lose ground in this inaugural year of the Better FAFSA. The California Student Aid Commission will continue to support K-12 districts and high schools as they work to meet the universal FAFSA or CADAA requirement. We have confidence that with planning, collaboration with partners, clear communication and purpose, California can ensure that all high school seniors complete the FAFSA or CADAA, and California’s vision of increasing access to higher education for all students will become a reality.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
On Oct. 7, Gov. Gavin Newsom boldly vetoed a bill that purported to increase accountability for charter schools in high-needs communities that receive funding from the Charter School Facility Grant Program. The bill’s labor sponsors, the California School Employees Association and Assemblymember Mia Bonta claimed that this bill “will safeguard hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from wasteful and improper spending by charter schools.”
Despite passing through the Democratic party’s supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate, Gov. Newsom thoughtfully centered the needs of students and families in historically underserved communities over party politics and labor endorsements, and vetoed this bill, noting in his veto message of Assembly Bill 1604 that “provisions could have unintended consequences, including increasing facilities costs or limiting financial options for charter schools.”
Unlike school districts, charter schools cannot pass general obligation bonds to finance their facilities. Instead, charter schools that serve a majority low-income student population can access funding through the Charter School Facility Grant Program to invest in facilities in the communities they serve and secure necessary financing to modernize classrooms and make campus safety improvements. Assemblymember Bonta’s bill would have increased their facilities costs and limited their long-term financing capacity — and prevented students from having access to safe and equitable facilities. This was her second failed attempt at legislation against the charter school facilities program alongside her partners at CSEA (AB 2484 in 2022 was a similar bill that died in Senate Appropriations).
Under the current system, thoughtfully and thoroughly managed by the state treasury, charter schools can borrow money through the bond market for their facilities. The report from a 2022 audit of the Charter School Facility Grant Program noted the positive effect of the existing bond program and that the programs are “generally achieving their purpose of increasing charter schools’ access to facility funding” and did not find any improper use of the program. However, Bonta wanted to increase accountability and recoup public facilities funding in the event a charter school were to close.
Had this bill passed, charter schools would have faced the unfair burden of increased borrowing rates for facilities in high-needs communities, or it could have even made access to financing untenable. In Oakland specifically, the district Bonta represents, charter schools, unfortunately, do not have access to high-quality, safe and equitable facilities, and require access to these bonds for long-term community investment. Oakland’s charters already face barriers, often political, to getting Proposition 39 offers (a state law requiring districts to allow charters to share space in their unused facilities or classrooms) or funding under Proposition 51 to improve existing facilities (a grant program that allows for bond-funded improvements at available district facilities for charter schools).
Newsom’s veto should signal to Bonta and her labor partners that they should focus on more pressing educational issues that public school families care about, like increasing literacy rates, aligning investments in community school programming, improving public and school safety, and ensuring college readiness and career pathway completion.
It is not surprising that about half of the students in East Oakland, from the Fruitvale to the San Leandro border, choose charter schools. Over the last three years, Oakland’s charter high schools have had college readiness A-G completion rates of 67% for African American and Latino students, compared with 34% at district high schools. Bonta is well aware of this, given her previous role as CEO of the Oakland Promise, an organization that provides college scholarships to Oakland Unified and charter school graduates. Many in the Oakland community were confused as to why she was attacking charter schools and their access to facilities financing given the positive college readiness rates that charter high schools have shifted locally.
Many charter schools in Oakland exist to counter the systemic challenges of educational redlining — as children attending schools in the affluent hills receive a dramatically different educational experience and set of outcomes than children in the flatlands — and to give students and families quality public school options. A third of Oakland’s families exercise this choice and choose charter schools for their children. According to Oakland Enrolls, a nonprofit that helps families choose the best school for their child, in each of the last three years, there have been an average of 8,000 unique student applications to charter schools in Oakland.
The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the educational inequities that existed before the pandemic. Assemblymember Bonta’s repeated attempts to pass legislation that could harm charter schools are out of touch with the needs of students and families in Oakland and of high needs communities across California. However, the governor’s strong veto of AB 1604 is a welcome sign that he is committed to educational equity and to providing all students with access to high-quality educational opportunities, and recognizes that charter schools are a vital part of the educational landscape in California.
•••
Rich Harrison is CEO of Lighthouse Community Public Schools, which operates two K-12 public charter schools serving more than 1,600 students in East Oakland.
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.
I have been a part of the Daily Titan staff since I was a freshman, and every week, we distribute a new print edition to City Hall, the public library and the police department.
The Fullerton City Council just made that illegal.
I’m in my second semester as editor-in-chief of the Daily Titan, Cal State Fullerton’s editorially independent student newspaper. I previously served on the paper’s editorial staff for two years.
On May 6, the Fullerton City Council voted 3-2 to reaffirm a policy that would ban nongovernmental publications from distribution on city property.
The council also voted to add a “community newspaper rack” to the library — a space that the Daily Titan can share with the community newspaper Fullerton Observer and any other entity that wishes to publish.
The best justification that City Council members provided for their decision-making was the potential for litigation from a local blog that had asked if it could distribute its papers on city property.
As editor-in-chief, I can’t help but interpret this as an attack on press freedom in Fullerton.
The Daily Titan regularly covers important items related to the city of Fullerton in addition to our campus coverage. In the past year, we’ve reported on a City Council candidate’s arrest, a parklet program that the city decided to eliminate despite public outcry, and the nearly $10 million deficit the city is staring down — to name a few.
I run a student paper, but my staff and I recognize the growing trend of news deserts — geographic areas with limited or no access to reliable, diverse and independent news.
Since Fullerton isn’t regularly covered by news outlets that meet that criteria, the Daily Titan steps up to help residents be informed. A growing number of college and high school newspapers across the country are doing the same thing.
And despite this setback with City Hall, we won’t stop doing our job.
The reporting of student journalists is now impacting communities like the local dailies of yesteryear, according to an article published in Poynter in April.
The article details how universities now build their curriculum around the notion that student journalism is more impactful than ever. Student journalists are stepping up and covering cities like paid reporters once did.
And while the Daily Titan doesn’t operate as a newswire service like the other university publications detailed in the article, we’re able to serve many of the same purposes.
The Daily Titan holds Fullerton city leaders accountable for their actions. Those same city leaders are making decisions as if we don’t matter.
At the April 1 council meeting, when the newspaper ban was first discussed, multiple City Council members used the term “free speech area” to describe where a proposed community newspaper rack would be in the library.
Their colloquial terminology for the proposed newspaper rack is laughable.
The mere notion that city property should have free speech restricted to a certain area is anti-democratic, and the lack of clear and just leadership from council members is disappointing. If we don’t like your policies, should we only sit at a certain table to discuss them?
Multiple City Council members — one who is also a professor at Cal State Fullerton — claim to support student journalism after the policy was enacted.
From my perspective, no, they don’t.
Supporting student journalism doesn’t mean breaking the status quo for an unclear reason.
Supporting student journalism doesn’t mean limiting the reach of important, unbiased news coverage.
Many student journalists first joined the Daily Titan to learn how to hold community leaders accountable through reporting and writing. The publication provides a platform for us to learn in a way we can’t in a classroom.
While we’re still doing that — and don’t plan to stop anytime soon — the Fullerton City Council succeeded in teaching us another lesson, a harsher one.
A lesson in how governments can work to suppress diverse voices.
A lesson in how student journalists can fall victim to petty City Council conflicts.
And a lesson that, given the Trump administration’s disdain for the press, is all too familiar.
Take the Associated Press (AP) for example: The wire service had to go to court to reinstate its ability to be admitted to White House press conferences after President Donald Trump didn’t like how AP refused to change a stylebook entry for the Gulf of Mexico.
As journalists, we can continue to fight for our right to exist. It’s a jarring reality that litigation might be the most effective way to accomplish that.
What citizens can do is pay attention to the City Council and think critically about its actions. And remember what’s happened in the past four years the next time they vote.
Remember that journalism needs to be protected and uplifted to support a free and fair democracy.
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.
File photo of a student in the HOPE (Helping Our Parenting Students Excel) program. At varying levels, HOPE is a part of nearly 50 Learn4Life centers in California. Some schools only provide donations for baby supplies and access to support groups while larger schools have separate classrooms for its HOPE students, including the Hanford campus.
Photo courtesy of Learn4Life
Pregnant in high school, 14-year-old first-year high school student Giselle Meza said she feared she’d be judged by her peers. She was one of only two pregnant teens at her school and felt isolated. She missed a lot of classes, falling behind.
The HOPE program and Learn4Life structure empowered her to walk onto the campus without feeling alone. The program provided her with peer support from other pregnant and teen parents, a personalized learning plan, and the ability to bring her daughter to school.
In a designated HOPE room at Kings Valley Academy, shelves stocked with children’s books line the walls. Educational toys, playpens and swings cover the floor.
The room is a home away from home, where Meza could nurse, tend to or play with her daughter, Desirae, while continuing her high school education and gaining skills to better herself.
Teen parents have thrived in that environment, including Nevaeh D. who earned a full scholarship to UCLA after graduating from Learn4Life. “While I did my lessons, she was sleeping or playing alongside me,” Nevaeh said in an April media release announcing her graduation from Learn4Life. For student privacy, the school did not disclose Nevaeh’s last name.
“So many of them think they’re the only ones in this position,” HOPE founder Staci Roth said. HOPE, however, creates an environment where pregnant and parenting teens feel seen, safe and supported, Roth told EdSource.
After more than a year in the program, Meza, now 16, no longer feels isolated, and is comforted by “being surrounded by people going through the same thing.”
“We take away the shame and the stigma,” said Christianna Percell, assistant principal at Kings Valley Academy.
How HOPE started
Seven years ago in 2016, while working at Learn4Life Panorama City in Los Angeles, Roth noticed that pregnant and teen parents struggled to attend class. She started a group with teen moms to learn what obstacles were preventing them from coming to and staying in school.
Schools needed to do more to support them, she said. She designated one classroom for the group of teen parents and brought in swings and bouncers, diapers and wipes.
“Just made it their safe space,” she said.
By 2018, HOPE had grown from eight to 63 students in the Learn4Life schools, as word spread that parenting students could bring their kids to campus.
At varying levels, HOPE is now a part of 48 Learn4Life centers in California. Some schools only provide baby supplies and access to support groups, while larger schools have separate classrooms for its HOPE students, which, to Roth, has been the best way to achieve the organization’s goal of creating a safe space for parenting students to feel supported.
Learn4Life’s Hanford location adopted the program three years ago with about a dozen parenting teens. Today, the program serves almost 60 teen parents, said Lindsey Hoskins, the supervising teacher who oversees the HOPE program in Hanford.
“I was a teen parent,” Hoskins said. “There was no place I could take my baby.” She said she remembers having the choice of dropping off her child while she was at school or staying home to nurse the baby.
As a result of HOPE, Hoskins said student parents aren’t dropping out like they were before the program’s implementation.
Being supported
The HOPE program allows students with children to bring their kids to school, so they can work toward a high school diploma at their own pace while receiving mentorship, supplies and peer support. Students have access to essentials such as diapers, car seats, strollers, cribs, clothes and toys, so the teens don’t feel pressured to work as much or to spend their earnings on baby supplies.
Instead, the student parents can focus on their education and their children, Roth said.
The program provides resources by connecting the teens to community partners, providing transportation when needed or simply offering encouragement.
“We may be providing diapers and formula now while they’re at school,” Roth said, “but at the same time, connecting them to where they can get that in the future if they need it.”
The peer support ensures the parenting teens don’t feel alone and allows them to learn from each other, Roth said.
In the HOPE room, parenting teens often step in and help with a crying baby that has colic, Roth said. Or during a support group meeting, they’ll bounce ideas off of one another to treat a rash. “They’re their best teachers to each other.”
Teen parent Nevaeh earned a scholarship to UCLA after graduating from Learn4Life, which allowed her to continue her studies while bringing her daughter to the Hanford campus. Photo courtesy of Learn4Life
Students also learn life skills, such as financial planning, lessons about child development, health and nutrition, as well as job readiness and career skills.
Over time, HOPE programs have added elective classes to teach parenting skills; Roth said students can learn to be better parents while gaining needed credits to graduate.
Created based on student input, skills classes range from preparing for childbirth and breastfeeding to building healthy relationships and co-parenting. Hoskins said students can pick a topic that’s specific to their life or situation. Some of Hoskins’ students have completed classes for potty training and teething — which has allowed them to gain confidence and address the challenges they currently face as a parents.
“They feel so empowered to take care of their little ones,” Roth said.
According to a 2010 study of women in their early 20s, 53% of women who became moms as teenagers graduated with a high school diploma, in contrast to 90% of women who did not become teen parents.
Such statistics, Roth said, were the driving force behind HOPE’s goals: teaching teens how to parent and to support their family while encouraging and equipping them to go to college or find a career after high school.
Students supported by the HOPE program graduate at a 6% higher rate, according to Learn4Life and HOPE statistics.
Addressing the whole child
Several parenting students said they joined HOPE because they no longer felt comfortable at their traditional schools after becoming pregnant, the Learn4Life staff said.
“We’ve heard the stories from our students (about) how they felt at their school when they found out they were pregnant,” Roth said.
To break that cycle, HOPE staff builds supportive relationships, Roth said.
“We say we’re going to be here, and we are here,” she said. “We say we’re going to support them, and we do support them. It’s life-changing for them to have someone who asks about their day (and) to call your teacher in emergencies.”
HOPE students can be teen mothers or fathers as well as students who help care for their siblings. Kristen Cooper, 17, nearing the completion of her sophomore year, brings her one-year-old brother to the program while her parents work. She said she gained trusting relationships with adults because of the program.
The HOPE and the Learn4Life school model allows staff to build lasting, meaningful relationships with students by addressing all their needs.
The school’s model focuses on one-on-one instruction, flexible scheduling and personalized learning, said Ann Abajian, a spokesperson for Learn4Life. Students, including those in HOPE, have the option to work virtually or spend minimal hours at school.
A “team of teachers” manages students’ action plans and goals as they get “layers of support” through tutoring; one-on-one, small group and traditional class instruction; three school counselors and an onsite therapist; resiliency programs, such as yoga, meditation and classes that teach organizational skills and coping mechanisms; and an alumni support group.
That support helps students navigate their challenges, including not being able to attend a traditional school because they’re dealing with social-emotional trauma, working every day, helping care for a sibling or raising a child.
Staff members are trained to be trauma-resilient education professionals who provide tools to build the resilience to face their past, present and future, said Roth, who is also the school’s coordinator of trauma-resilient education.
Students who take part in the HOPE program, Roth said, come to the Hanford campus for one-on-one instruction with their teachers. The difference for HOPE students is the designated space to bring their children.
Meza, the student who joined HOPE to avoid judgment at her traditional school, spends a lot of time on campus because she feels more comfortable there than in her own home, she said. There’s more room for her one-year-old daughter to play, and she gets the help she needs from staff.
“I’ve been doing better than ever, honestly,” Meza said about now being nearly finished with her first year of high school.
HOPE is ‘different’ from other youth parenting programs
Schools in California have operated youth parenting programs for decades. Currently, programs are under the umbrella of Cal-Learn, a state program designed to encourage pregnant and parenting teens to graduate from high school or gain the equivalent, become independent and form healthy families.
Sixty percent of teenage parents who are currently receiving welfare will depend on government aid for 10 or more years, according to research noted in the legislation that established Cal-Learn to address the “unique educational, vocational, training, health, and other social service needs” of teen parents.
The Youth Parent Program in Clovis Unified, for example, serves parenting teens who are trying to graduate.
With a 91% graduation rate, the parenting program supports students on their journey to finishing high school and helps them gain basic parenting skills, district spokesperson Kelly Avants said.
The program is meant to “come alongside” students who are teen parents, ensuring they have access to transportation, nursing, counseling, academic support, encouragement to “stay in school, pass their classes and ultimately graduate,” and the skills to “parent well,” Avants said.
Through the program, teen parents can learn areas such as basic infant CPR, lessons on childhood development and ways to be engaged parents.
But HOPE is different, Hoskins said, because it’s on Learn4Life campuses, where educators can give students what they need with specific programming, such as personalized learning and the elective classes picked by students.
“We meet them where they are,” Hoskins said.
‘Impacting generations’
The percentage of teen parents who do not finish school contributes to high incidences of their own children not graduating.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the children of teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of high school, give birth as a teenager and face unemployment as a young adult, among other findings.
Generational impact on kids
A child who comes to campus sees their parent studying — something HOPE staff believe will foster a child’s love for school and can break the cycle of dropping out.
Mayra Hernandez, 18, said her 2-year-old son Sebastian loves his preschool and isn’t shy like some of the other kids because he attended HOPE with his mom for the first two years of his life. She said Sebastian eagerly plays with and communicates with his peers.
Parenting teens, Hoskins said, are “bringing their child who is exposed to books (and) exposed to mom reading,” Hoskins said. “They’re exposed to literature, structure, education, other peers and social behavior and norms.”
“(Teen pregnancy) has such a generational impact,” Roth said. “This population has its own obstacles and trauma that go along with (being a teen parent).”
Acknowledging those “high statistics,” Roth and Hoskins said the aspects of the HOPE program — bringing kids to campus, graduating from high school, gaining life and parenting skills and learning about careers — are “impacting generations.”
“I would be struggling still,” 18-year-old Mayra Hernandez said in hindsight. Her mom, also a teenage mother, didn’t graduate from high school. Hernandez, considered an 11th grader, said she is better able to manage her time as a mother and student because of HOPE’s and Learn4Life’s model. She is dual enrolled in high school and the West Hills Community College District and works two jobs to pay her bills.
She considers herself on track to graduate and pursue a career. Hernandez gained nearly 60 credits in just a month at Learn4Life, has completed a semester of college through dual enrollment and plans to either become a traveling nurse, ultrasound technician or a medical professional in the Navy.
Hernandez said it will be “inspiring” for her son to see her graduate.
Meza said she once viewed the military as her only option after graduation, but now after high school, her goal is to become an ultrasound technician — all because HOPE expanded what she viewed as her choices.
“A lot of our students will tell you, ‘I would not graduate high school if it wasn’t for Learn4Life and the HOPE program,’” Hoskins said. “Things that are deemed not possible are happening.”
As I was scrolling through Twitter on Sunday, I read a bunch of anti-Biden tweets, so I added my two cents.
I tweeted:
Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp
I once wrote on this blog that I would never criticize Joe Biden because he was running against a man who was totally unfit for the job. Several Trumpers has since written to complain about that statement, saying that it demonstrated my bias, but time has confirmed my view.
Regardless of his mental state, Biden would never have appointed a crackpot to run the National Institutes of Health. He would never have defunded USAID, NPR, PBS, FEMA, the Voice of America, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Department of Education. Nor would he have let loose Elon Musk’s DOGS to ransack federal agencies, fire thousands of expert career officers, mess with the Social Security Administration, and hoover up all our personal data, for whatever nefarious purposes he chooses. Unlike Trump, Biden would not have terrorized institutions of higher education and threatened academic freedom and freedom of speech. Unlike Trump, Biden respected the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI and did not put political lackeys in charge of them or treat them as his personal attack dogs.
Frankly, I can’t keep track of the many federal programs and agencies that Trump has recklessly destroyed. If anyone knows of such a compilation, please share it. Trump and Musk have vandalized our government, and despite the thousands of injudicious, capricious firings, have not saved any money at all.
Then I came across this post by Julie Roginsky, which appeared shortly after the nation learned that former President Biden has prostate cancer, which has metasticized to his bones. She is writing about the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aims to prove that President Biden was experiencing severe mental and physical decline while he was in office and that his family and staff collaborated to conceal that decline from the public.
She wrote:
Maybe now they’ll leave Joe Biden alone — or, better yet, spend some time assessing his actual presidency, both in isolation and in comparison with what has followed.
Stick it to legacy media, which has consistently beaten up on a decent man.
Was Biden operating at half-capacity throughout his term? Was he operating at 10%? Here are some facts, regardless of the opinions rendered by amateur neurologists all over media these days.
“Biden inherited an economy that was flat on its back because of the pandemic, and he’s bequeathing an economy that’s flying high,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, which just lowered the credit rating of the United States for the first time in history under Donald Trump.
Biden’s economic tenure was marred by the inflation that was a hangover of the Covid pandemic. But the numbers don’t lie about the rest of it. On his watch, the Dow Jones rose by over 40%, while the Nasdaq rose by almost 50%. The economy expanded by 11% during his four years in office (compared with under 9% during Donald Trump’s first term). Despite inflation, retail sales grew by more than 20%. Household net worth was 28% higher when Biden left office than when he took over from Trump. Unemployment was 2% lower at the end of Biden’s tenure than when he entered the White House.
Most importantly, no one was predicting the demise of our 250 year American experiment while Biden was in charge.
Now, Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know that the prognosis is not great.
So maybe now is a good time to reflect not just on Biden’s tenure but on what this obsession with his mental health means for the future of this country. Reporters who have spent the past several weeks on the fainting couch about “the cover up” of his mental condition in the Oval Office have consistently failed to acknowledge the successes of his tenure. They have failed to compare that tenure, both in economic and in governance terms, to what has followed. They have never stopped beating up a man who is no longer in the White House to take stock of the mental health of the current occupant of the White House.
Trump’s mental decline (which is apparent to anyone who has lived in the New York media market for the past four decades) is not happening, you see — because he does not stutter, because he shouts with vigor, because he “truths” at all hours of the night, unlike a septuagenarian who might require more rest.
In short, all this is just “Trump being Trump.” It cannot be that he is stark raving mad.
And Trump’s economic record, the one that is driving inflation ever higher, the one that is destroying consumer sentiment, the one that has driven both the stock and bond markets crazy? Never mind all that. Have you listened to Biden’s conversation with Robert Hur? Now that’s a scandal.
Look, I really don’t care if Biden was confined to a gurney for four years. The facts speak for themselves. The country was more prosperous, the democracy was more stable, the nation was more respected, the people were less terrified, when he was in charge.
Yes, Biden’s staff may have covered up his medical condition while he was in the Oval Office. But the real scandal is the cover up happening now. The media so obsessed with kicking Biden now that’s gone that it is ignoring the very real danger that his successor poses to us all.
I am not a religious person but I hope that whatever higher power exists will look out for Joe Biden. He is a good man, who did well on behalf of the people who entrusted him with the presidency. That is a hell of a lot more than could be said about his successor.
I repeat:
Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp
Tylyn Fields, with some of her fifth-grade students, is now a beloved teacher. But she almost never made it to the classroom.
Courtesy: Tylyn Fields
During California’s most recent teacher shortage, Tylyn Fields, a trained social worker, saw teaching as a calling and a promising career. Smart and motivated to make a difference, she was an excellent candidate for the high-need schools in the community where she lived and worked. Sadly, her research into teacher education revealed an impossible choice. A quality preservice program would require quitting her job for a year of unpaid coursework and student teaching. Taking out more loans was a nonstarter: she already owed thousands for previous student loans.
We desperately need more well-trained teachers across the state. And while there are countless aspiring teachers eager to make a difference in their communities, the financial barriers to entering the profession are pushing promising candidates toward emergency credentials or away from teaching altogether. Teaching is a public service profession. For too many, their future earnings as public school teachers are not enough to pay back the upfront costs of preparation, causing them to enter the profession as an Intern with little or no training so they can earn a salary, or simply give up on the idea of becoming a teacher.
California has made impressive progress in recent years to begin addressing this issue. In 2019, the state began investing in the Golden State Teacher Grant (GSTG) program to offer $20,000 tuition grants for teacher candidates who commit to teaching in high-need schools. And over the past 5 years the program has evolved to prioritize candidates who need the funding most and who seek meaningful teacher preparation before becoming teachers.
The GSTG program has made an extraordinary difference for thousands of teachers, including Tylyn. At the Alder Graduate School of Education, we focus on community-based recruitment of aspiring teachers and saw a significant jump in applications thanks to GSTG. Without the financial support from the state, Tylyn said she would have waited until she could pay off her student loans – about 10 years, she estimated.
To extend allocated funding for longer, GSTG awards were cut in half – to $10,000 – and the funding has run out. The Governor’s revised May budget for 2025-26 includes $64.2 million for the program, which is barely enough to extend GSTG for one more year. By the time the funding could be signed into law, teacher candidates will already be enrolled in programs, having less of a potential impact on recruitment.
We propose three big ideas to better support California’s teacher preparation pipeline.
Establish consistent financial aid for aspiring teachers so that districts and preparation programs can share reliable recruitment offers with candidates. Multi-year funding for the GSTG program is one way to do this and would allow for more reliable messaging to candidates. Another could be a teacher candidate loan program that could draw from Proposition 98 funds that are somewhat more shielded from the volatility of California’s General Fund.
Create a layered system of needs-based financial support, with baseline financial support for those meeting need criteria, and layered support for candidates who commit to a high-need subject, school, or region. This would broaden access for lower-income individuals while giving the state tools for influencing candidates’ choices.
Restructure aid such that pre-service preparation can compete with the financial appeal of emergency pathways. Ideally, candidates could earn pay and benefits while they learn to teach and have their training costs paid for. We wisely do this for Army and police cadets because it’s unthinkable that we’d send them directly to the field without training or have them pay for their own training. Similarly, teacher candidates should be paid for their pursuit of this public service profession.
In these tight budget times, the most helpful short-term action is to increase the proposed GSTG reinvestment to cover at least two or three years of awards, so that it is useful for teacher recruitment.
Ending with some great news: after enrolling in Alder’s pre-service residency program, Tylyn graduated a year later with a teaching credential and master’s degree in Education, and took a job as a elementary school teacher in her local school district. She is about to enter her second year of teaching and she is thriving – her students, principal and colleagues are grateful she was able to become a teacher. As a state, let’s continue to push forward with the good reforms we started six years ago, so that many more candidates like Tylyn can find their way to the classroom.
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Heather Kirkpatrick is CEO and president of Alder Graduate School of Education, a nonprofit, community-based, professional workforce development pathway that partners with public TK-12 school systems across California.
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.
Maya Pettiford posing in front of a San José State University sign.
Credit: Courtesy of Maya Pettiford
Going to college has always been my goal. From a very young age, there was no question in my mind that I would end up attending a four-year university. Throughout my years of schooling, high school specifically, I made sure to work hard. I turned in homework on time, studied late and, most importantly, tried my best to soak up the advice given to me to prepare for college.
I relied heavily on the words of teachers and advisers to learn what I should expect from college, because after all, why would they lie?
Now going into my third year at San Jose State University, it is clear that some of the advice I received did help me. For example, some teachers warned me against taking a gap year because it is extremely easy to lose the academic mindset even with just one year off.
However, I can confidently say that in the long run, a lot of the advice was misguided.
Myth: Cellphones will not be tolerated in college.
Many of my high school teachers treated cellphones like they were worse than the devil. The fear of sending a text to my mom during class or having a reminder notification for my doctor’s appointment go off at the wrong time was torture. Teachers would even take your phone as you entered class to ensure no one was sneaking a text under the tables or behind a laptop.
In high school, teachers are allowed to take your phone. They often told us this was to prepare us for college.
In reality, I have used my cellphone more in the past two years of college than during my entire high school experience. I have yet to meet a professor who has an aversion to cellphones. In most of my classes, my phone is required. Having a cellphone is interchangeable with having a laptop. I have on many occasions taken quizzes on my phone and used it to communicate on group student projects. You go from hiding a phone in your lap during a high school class to being told it is mandatory in college.
Myth: Professors are cold and heartless creatures
In high school, some teachers made it seem as though asking for a deadline extension or understanding of a family situation would be as pointless as pleading with a brick wall. From what I was told, I fully prepared myself to meet professors who couldn’t care less about me or the role they played in my academic future.
This could not be further from the truth. Almost all of my professors thus far have been kind and understanding of the fact that life happens. I have professors from my first semester of college that I still talk to even now. I often drop by during office hours simply to catch up. Plus, I have gotten quite a few extensions with no hassle.
Myth: College will be harder than high school.
I prepared myself for having to study for endless hours, taking tests that would surely be anxiety-inducing and following a schedule that would make a hamster wheel look relaxing. I was terrified that I would crumble under the pressure.
The truth is, the freedom you get in college could not be more different than high school. In high school, you go from waking up at the crack of dawn to be in classes for at least six hours a day, five days a week, to having maybe two or three classes a day in college that are barely more than an hour long. Yes, there are exceptions, and some classes are longer or harder than others, but with a well-thought-out schedule, college can be way less stressful than high school. I have learned that it is all about your perspective and how you choose to spend your time.
High school felt like a never-ending loop, the same thing day in and day out. Going to college is like being handed the control board of your life. Whether you choose to take a part-time job or hang out with friends at football games, it’s up to you because you are in control.
I am happy to report that not everything I was told in high school was bad. Some of it was great.
After two years in college, the best advice I would pass on to any incoming freshman is that a 7 a.m. class at college is NOT the same as a 7 a.m. class in high school. Waking up that early gets harder, especially for classes without mandatory attendance.
Avoid early morning college classes at all costs. Thank me later.
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Maya Pettiford is a third-year journalism student at San Jose State University and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
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Student-run school board candidates’ forum at Fremont High School on Oct. 22, 2024.
Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource
While most attention in the United States is focused on the presidential elections today, I’ll be watching two local school board races that will be historic for a completely different reason.
For the first time, young people aged 16 and 17 in Oakland and nearby Berkeley will be voting in school board elections.
Although some smaller communities in Maryland have extended a limited vote to a similar age group, Oakland, with a total population of over 400,000, is the largest community in the nation to do so by far.
The initiative came about as a result of youth organizing that put pressure on their city councils to place measures on the ballot allowing young people aged 16 and over to vote in their local school board elections. Berkeley voters passed a law approving the change in 2017 and Oakland voters in 2020. It has taken years to bring the idea to fruition.
When I heard about this effort, I was deeply skeptical.
After all, school board meetings are, for the most part, sleepy affairs — unless there is a controversy that rouses parents and students, like school closures or political battles over curricula, book bans and other hot-button issues.
It is hard enough to get parents interested in school board politics. It seemed to me even less likely that teenagers would embrace doing so with enough gusto to justify the effort and expense of giving them the vote.
But after attending a school board candidates’ forum organized by students in Oakland two weeks ago — and speaking to the candidates vying for their votes, I now have a different view.
I’m convinced that having young people involved in school board politics and decision-making is more than just a nice idea.
For one thing, we know that the earlier young people participate in the democratic process, the more likely they are to do so as adults. It is also a powerful way to get young people involved in shaping institutions that affect them profoundly, and which they have intimate knowledge of: the schools where they spend much of their time during their adolescence.
The forum itself was a rousing affair, and ran from 5 to 8 p.m. Six of the seven candidates running for the board showed up for the event. (The seventh was out of the country and sent a representative.) There were 200 students, most of whom stayed until the end of the marathon interrogation. Many wore T-shirts with the slogans, “My Vote Will Make History” on the front and, on the back, “Nothing About Us Without Us.”
Each candidate had one minute to respond to a set of questions students projected on a screen. If candidates went over the time limit, their microphones were shut off, so the candidates mostly obeyed the rules. And they answered the questions seriously without being patronizing.
Oakland school board candidates spoke in front of 200 students at Fremont High School on Oct. 22, 2024.Credit: Louis Freedberg / EdSource
These student voters are arguably going to be a lot more informed than most older ones who may not have been inside a school in years. Many adult voters have only the barest idea about current school concerns or what goes on inside their walls.
Let’s be honest: With rare exceptions, votes for school boards are typically the last thing many, if not most, voters pay attention to.
“A lot of adults are making decisions about our schools when they’re not even the ones in the school,” Edamevoh Ajayi, a senior at Oakland Technical High School who has been a leader in the Oakland youth vote project, told me. “So they wouldn’t even know what to change.”
“At least for students, we haven’t really been welcomed,” she said, referring to district governance in general. “It’s kind of been an adult-led space.”
It would be one thing if things were going well in their district, and adult leaders had proven themselves. But once again, the district is in crisis as it copes with declining enrollment, poor attendance, a massive budget deficit, and the prospect of having to close or merge schools next year. There is a real chance of a state takeover — a repeat of what happened 20 years ago when the district had to get a $100 million loan from the state to bail it out.
Getting students’ voices into the mix certainly can’t hurt, and is more likely to help. That’s in addition to the long-term benefits of getting young people involved in our democracy at an earlier age.
As Patrice Berry, a former teacher running for the Oakland school board, told me after facing students at the candidates’ forum, “They’re going to make us better overall.”
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Louis Freedberg is EdSource’s interim executive director.
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.
Catherine Rampell is an opinion writer for The Washington Post who writes often about economics. She focuses here on the expansion of data collection by the Trump administration, even as it ceases to collect anonymous data about health trends. What worries me is the invasion of privacy by the DOGE team, who scooped up personally identifiable data from the IRS and Social Security about everyone, including you and me. Why did they want it? What will they do to it?
She writes:
It’s rarely comforting to appear on a government “list,” even (or perhaps especially) when compiled in the name of public safety.
It was alarming in the 1940s, when the U.S. government collected the names of Japanese Americans for internment. Likewise in the 1950s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee catalogued communists. And it’s just as troubling now, as the Trump administration assembles registries of Jewish academics and Americans with developmental disabilities.
Yes, these are real things that happened this past week, the latest examples of the White House’s abuse of confidential data.
Last week, faculty and staff at Barnard College received unsolicited texts asking them whether they were Jewish. Employees were stunned by the messages, which many initially dismissed as spam.
Turns out the messages came from the Trump administration. Barnard, which is affiliated with Columbia University, had agreed to share faculty members’ private contact info to aid in President Donald Trump’s pseudo-crusade against antisemitism.
Ah, yes, a far-right president asking Jews to register as Jewish, in the name of protecting the Jews, after he has repeatedly accused Jews of being “disloyal.” What could go wrong?
The same day, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a “disease registry” of people with autism, to be compiled from confidential private and government health records, apparently without its subjects’ awareness or consent. This is part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vendetta against vaccines, which he has said cause autism despite abundant research concluding otherwise.
This, too, is disturbing given authoritarian governments’ history of compiling lists of citizens branded mentally or physically deficient. If that historical analogue seems excessive, note that Bhattacharya’s announcement came just a week after Kennedy delivered inflammatory remarks lamenting that kids with autism will never lead productive lives. They “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job,” he said, adding they’ll never play baseball or go on a date, either.
This all happened during Autism Acceptance Month, established to counter exactly these kinds of stigmatizing stereotypes. Kennedy’s comments and the subsequent “registry” set off a wave of fear in the autism advocacy community and earned condemnation from scientists.
Obviously, advocates want more research and support for those with autism. They have been asking for more help at least since 1965 (when what is now called the Autism Society of America was founded in my grandparents’ living room). But few in this community trust political appointees hostile to scientific research — or a president who has publicly mocked people with disabilities — to use an autism “registry” responsibly.
(An unnamed HHS official later walked back Bhattacharya’s comments, saying the department was not creating a “registry,” per se, just a “real-world data platform” that “will link existing datasets to support research into causes of autism and insights into improved treatment strategies.” Okay.)
These are hardly the administration’s only abuses of federal data. It has been deleting reams of statistical records, including demographic data on transgender Americans. It has also been exploiting other private administrative records for political purposes.
For example, the Internal Revenue Service — in an effort to persuade people to pay their taxes — spent decades assuring people that their records are confidential, regardless of immigration status. The agency is in fact legally prohibited from sharing tax records, even with other government agencies, except under very limited circumstances specified by Congress. Lawmakers set these limits in response to Richard M. Nixon’s abuse of private tax data to target personal enemies.
Trump torched these precedents and promises. After a series of top IRS officials resigned, the agency has now agreed to turn over confidential records to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement locate and deport some 7 million undocumented immigrants.
The move, which also has troubling historical echoes, is being challenged in court. But, in the meantime, tax collections will likely fall. Undocumented immigrant workers had been paying an estimated $66 billion in federal taxes annually, but they now have even more reason to stay off the books.
This and other DOGE infiltrations of confidential records are likely to discourage public cooperation on other sensitive government data collection efforts. Think research on mental health issues or public safety assessments on domestic violence.
But that might be a feature, not a bug, for this administration. Chilling federal survey participation and degrading data quality were arguably deliberate objectives in Trump’s first term, when he tried to cram a question about citizenship into the 2020 Census. The question was expected to depress response rates and help Republicans game the congressional redistricting process.
Courts ultimately blocked Trump’s plans. That’s what it will take to stop ongoing White House abuses, too: not scrapping critical government records, but championing the rule of law.
Ultimately, the government must be able to collect and integrate high-quality data — to administer social programs efficiently, help the economy function and understand the reality we live in so voters can hold public officials accountable. None of this is possible if Americans fear ending up on some vindictive commissar’s “list.”
