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برچسب: Why

  • Why five superintendents decided to walk away from their jobs

    Why five superintendents decided to walk away from their jobs


    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    California school superintendents have been leaving their jobs in large numbers this year. Many reached retirement age; others, tired of dealing with the aftermath of pandemic school closures, are retiring early or leaving for other jobs or business opportunities. Some are just looking for a change.

    Then there are the superintendents who, having put off plans for retirement to help districts through pandemic closures, now finally feel comfortable enough to leave.

    The result: a turnover of superintendents, with older, more experienced veterans being replaced by new, less experienced leaders.

    EdSource interviewed five California superintendents who either recently left or are leaving their jobs, to better understand what compelled them to step down.

    Covid, threats push Chris Evans to early retirement

    Chris Evans retired as the superintendent of Natomas Unified after the 2022-23 school year.
    Credit: Jeff McPhee

    Former Natomas Unified Superintendent Chris Evans has been the target of multiple personal threats in recent years, but in September 2021, the hateful rhetoric grew so intense that the school board agreed to pay for security for his home.

    A school board meeting in September 2021 was abruptly canceled during public comment because of the raucous behavior of some in the audience.

    Parents and members of the Sacramento community were upset about comments made by an Inderkum High School teacher who was secretly recorded claiming he kept an antifa flag in his classroom and encouraged his students to protest, according to media reports. 

    Evans announced at the meeting that the teacher had been put on paid leave pending an investigation.

    “Following the Sept. 1 meeting, each trustee and Chris received numerous — 150-plus — disturbing emails that were forwarded, I believe, to local and federal law enforcement agencies,” said Susan Heredia, Natomas Unified board president.

    “People would show up in front of my house, take pictures, speak to my children,” Evans said. “They would call the district and say they were headed to my house and would be intercepted going to my house.”

    Last June, Evans stepped down from his position as superintendent at age 52, after 11 years leading the district. He had planned to retire at 55. He blames his early departure on the Covid-19 pandemic.

    “For me, Covid did it,” Evans said. “Covid and everything that came from that — the politics of it. It was exhausting. That took two years off my career.”

    Evans is still working in the district temporarily, helping first-time Superintendent Robyn Castillo transition to her new role. After that, he will focus on his new endeavor at Action-Oriented Leaders, an education consulting firm that focuses on helping superintendents and school boards problem-solve and troubleshoot, he said. 

    Brett McFadden opted for a quieter job closer to home

    Brett McFadden left his job as superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District after the 2021-22 school year.
    Courtesy of the Monterey County Office of Education

    Brett McFadden, 55, left his job as superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High School District in Grass Valley after the 2021-22 school year, primarily to be closer to his home in Aptos with his wife, an administrator at Monterey Peninsula Unified School District. 

    He was superintendent at Nevada Joint Union for four years before accepting a job as a deputy superintendent at the Monterey County Office of Education.

    It was difficult being a school superintendent during the Covid-19 pandemic, McFadden said. Nevada Joint Union High School District, like others in the state, had contentious school board meetings that centered on issues like masking, vaccines and the teaching of critical race theory. 

    “We went from board meetings that were not that well attended to board meetings that would have 300-plus people because of one particular contentious issue,” he said. 

    The community had a long history of treating everyone respectfully before the pandemic, but that changed within months, McFadden said. 

    “We lost empathy and grace,” McFadden said.

    There also was a sharp increase in vitriolic comments from the community, he said.

    “You know you can take those with a grain of salt, but when you hear 30 or 40 of them, and then you’re accused of not caring about kids, or destroying the education of kids or destroying kids’ lives after you’ve committed your entire career and your entire sense of being as a human being, as a professional, to fostering students’ lives and opportunities, that takes a toll on people,” McFadden said.

    Despite the difficulties of the last few years, McFadden misses working at a school district. He expects he’ll return to one in some capacity someday, although he isn’t sure when.

    Normalcy and ‘the sweet spot’ entice Brian Dolan to retire

    Brian Dolan will retire as superintendent of Dixon Unified School District after this school year.
    Credit: Stewart Savage, Abaton Consulting

    Dixon Unified Superintendent Brian Dolan, 62, has reached the “sweet spot” —  the age where superintendents begin to reap the best retirement benefits. He’ll retire after this school year.

    Although Covid-19 took the fun out of the job for a while, Dolan is glad he stayed long enough to see things almost return to normal.

    “If I were at retirement age, just coming out of Covid, I would’ve needed to work another year just to put a little shine back on the apple,” he said. 

    Three of the six districts in Solano County had their superintendents retire in the last three years, Dolan said. 

    “None of us are going out early, but all of us are going out as early as we can,” he said.

    Other than some discontent during Covid-19 school closures, Dixon’s school board meetings haven’t had the drama seen in many other districts, Dolan said. They haven’t been contentious and Dolan hasn’t been threatened. But he acknowledges the jobs of all school employees have become harder.

    Dolan has spent a quarter-century of his 35-year career at Dixon Unified School District — 13 as its superintendent. He still finds delight in talking to students who recognize him on the street or when he answers his door on Halloween. The youngest ones pronounce his name Mr. Donut.

    “Wow. I wouldn’t change a thing for myself, because there are so many good things to come out of this as well, but it’s hard work,” Dolan said.

    He doesn’t plan to sit out for too long — probably just the six months required by the state. Dolan sees himself doing administrative coaching or support, or working with student teachers in the future.

    Cathy Nichols-Washer pushed back retirement until things got better

    Cathy Nichols-Washer was the superintendent of Lodi Unified for 15 years.
    Credit: Ken Sato

    Cathy Nichols-Washer, 60, stayed at the helm of Lodi Unified School District in northern San Joaquin County longer than she thought she would. After 15 years, she was the longest-serving superintendent in the district’s history when she retired at the end of last school year.

    Like many superintendents, Nichols-Washer didn’t have the heart to follow through with plans to retire two years earlier, because the Covid-19 pandemic changed her plans. 

    “I just didn’t feel right leaving the district in the midst of all that,” she said. … “So I stayed, and then, after Covid was over and we kind of got things — I’m not going to say back to normal, but back to a place that felt good and comfortable — you know, on a good track again, then I felt comfortable leaving.” 

    During the pandemic, superintendents had to manage the district and get their job done, while dealing with the negativity directed at them at board meetings, on social media and through emails. Nichols-Washer found it particularly difficult to explain to the community why state Covid regulations were changing weekly, if not daily.

    To make matters worse, everyone had a different opinion about the dangers of Covid, she said. Some staff members were afraid to come to work and some parents were afraid to send their children. Others were fighting every regulation, refusing to wear masks, choosing not to be vaccinated, said Nichols-Washer.

    “And then there was anger, because people felt so strongly about the issue that it came out, in many cases, in a very aggressive manner,” she said. “And so board meetings got very contentious, packed board meetings, people yelling and screaming, unruly.”

    Nichols-Washer understands why so many superintendents leave as soon as they reach retirement age. “You can’t blame them,” she said.

    Gregory Franklin moved from Tustin Unified to professor post at USC

    Gregory Franklin retired as superintendent of Tustin Unified in the middle of the 2021-22 school year.
    Credit: Courtesy of Gregory Franklin

    Gregory Franklin, 61, retired as superintendent of Tustin Unified School District in Orange County in the middle of the 2021-22 school year to be a professor of education at the University of Southern California, a position he says doesn’t come around often. 

    Franklin said he could have started working at the university at the beginning of the school year, but he wanted to allow the school board to find a replacement without having to get an interim superintendent.

    He has nothing but good things to say about the Tustin Unified school board, which he says puts the education of children first. He was superintendent of the school district for 10 years.

    “There was a position that came open, and I applied for it,” Franklin said. “I was pretty close to retirement anyway, so I probably left maybe a year or two earlier than I would have otherwise.”

    Being a superintendent has always been a hard job, but it became much harder after the pandemic school closures and the “really brutal politics at the district level” that followed, he said.

    Anger at school closures morphed into anger at masking and other Covid regulations.

    After the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, school districts took a look at what they were doing to contribute to the inequity, Franklin said. Schools started to diversify the range of novels and authors available in school so that students could see characters in stories that had similar backgrounds and family structures as their own, but that also made some people angry, he said.

    Then LGBTQ+ rights and students’ right to privacy about their gender decisions bumped up against parental rights, making more people angry, he said.

    “And so we had one thing after another, really starting in May 2020, that has spun things up,” Franklin said. “The number of irate speakers who come to school board meetings now to berate the superintendent, the school board, and school leaders — it’s hard for people. “





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  • Anand Girihadaras: Why Trump’s Birthday Parade Failed

    Anand Girihadaras: Why Trump’s Birthday Parade Failed


    The crowds were larger and more animated at the No Kings rallies than on Constitution Avenue, where Trump summoned up a parade in honor of his 79th birthday.

    Yesterday evening, I saw tweets comparing the demeanor of the American service members to their parade counterparts in Russia, North Korea, and China. The soldiers in other countries marched in perfect symmetry, with not an eye or a boot out of place. The Americans seemed to be strolling. The tweets were meant to mock us. Some were posted by someone in another country. I responded, “Those Russian troops in perfect formation have not been able to beat Ukraine in three years. If they engaged American troops, our army would kick them all the way back to Moscow.”

    Anand Girihadaras wrote a wonderful reflection on the same videos:

    The country that invented jazz was never going to be good at putting on a military parade. It was never going to be us.

    In the wake of Donald Trump’s flaccid, chaotic, lightly attended, and generally awkward military parade, a meme began doing the rounds. Its basic format was the juxtaposition of images of the kinds of parades Trump presumably wanted with the parade he actually got.

    Over here, thousands of Chinese soldiers marching in perfectly synchronized lockstep; over there, a lone U.S. soldier holding up a drone. Over here, North Korean legs kicking up and coming back down with astounding precision; over there, a dozen U.S. soldiers walking somewhat purposelessly through Washington.

    Trump’s biggest mistake was wanting a military parade in the first place. The United States military is not a birthday party rental company. Any therapist will tell you that no number of green tanks on the street is enough to heal the deep void left by a father’s withheld love.

    But, setting aside the wisdom of wanting a military parade, there is the issue of execution. Even if you’re going to do the wrong thing, do it well. Do it with flair. With the most powerful military in history at his disposal, Trump couldn’t even pull off a decent parade.

    But I’m here to say it’s not his fault alone. It’s hard to wring a military parade of the kind he dreamed of from a people free in their bones.

    You see, it is a good thing not to be good at some things. The great beauty of his terrible parade is the reminder that Trump is waging a war against the American spirit, and this fight he is struggling to win.

    No matter how much money and effort you throw at the parade, you cannot escape the fact that America is not the country of North Korean unity. We’re the country of Korean tacos.

    The Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho once described those tacos, as made famous by the chef Roy Choi, of similar heritage, thus: “There were so many things happening: The familiarity of the iconic L.A. taco, the Korean tradition of wrapping food, the falling-apart short rib that almost tastes like barbacoa, the complementing sweetness of the corn tortilla.” Korea running into Mexico, running into North Carolina, and beyond. Today on the website of the Kogi food empire that Choi built, these are some of the recipes: a Korean barbecue pizza, a Korean Philly cheesesteak, a kimchi fried chicken sandwich, a Korean gyro, and Korean pulled pork nachos. I may be wrong, but here is my hypothesis: the kinds of places good at putting on parades like North Korea’s will never come up with food like this; and the kinds of places good at making food like this will never rival the give-me-synchronicity-or-give-me-death parades of places like North Korea.

    America is not the country of perfectly synced swinging arms. It’s the country of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” That song, by the legendary Duke Ellington, belongs to a genre of music that could only have been invented in America — jazz. As the documentarian Ken Burns explained, jazz was born in New Orleans when and because people from so many heritages were jammed together — the sounds of Africa and the sounds of Appalachia and the sounds of Germany and the sounds of indigenous people colliding to make something new. It was never scripted, always improvisational. Ellington himself made the connection to democracy:

    Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom…In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.

    I may be wrong, but it seems to me societies that have the thing Trump wanted in his parade don’t got that swing, and societies that got that swing don’t have the thing he craved.

    America is not a country of uniformity, even in its uniforms. It’s a big multicolored mess.

    What is striking in the images of Chinese and North Korean and Iranian parades is the uniformity, right down to the uniforms themselves. The soldiers are often seen wearing the same thing. It gives the kind of picture Trump likes. But the images this weekend were not like that at all. In America, different units wear different uniforms. Images from the parade this weekend showed one uniform after another. The military is not a monolith. It is made up of units with their own histories and traditions and identities and loyalties. There are rivalries and competing slogans.

    I may be wrong, but I would wager that societies that have first-rate matchy-matchy uniform aesthetics may look good but fight wars mediocrely, and societies that allow for variety and diversity may give less pleasant aerial shots during parades but fight wars better.

    Today is ten years to the day since Trump came down the escalator and changed the course of the country and, in so many ways, changed us. It is a moment to think back and think of how much coarser, uglier, crueler the nation has become in the hands of an unwell man. The daily drumbeat of abductions and cuts and eviscerations and illegal actions and sadistic policy ideas slowly corrodes the heart. We are being remade in Trump’s sickness.

    And yet. And yet what the parade reminded me is that Trump, in one regard, at least, faces steep odds. His project depends on turning Americans into something we are deeply not: uniform, cohesive, disciplined, in lockstep.

    But we are more hotsteppers than locksteppers. We are more improvised solo than phalanx. We are more unruly than rule-following. Trump has a lot working in his favor as he seeks to build a dictatorship for his self-enrichment. But what will always push against him is this deep inner nature that has stood through time: the chaotic, colorful spontaneity of the American soul. We don’t march shoulder to shoulder. We shimmy. 



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  • Berkeley schools use a discredited reading curriculum. Why is it still in classrooms?

    Berkeley schools use a discredited reading curriculum. Why is it still in classrooms?


    Eva Levenson, now a sophomore at Berkeley High School, has struggled with dyslexia since childhood but private phonics-based intervention made a difference. “I don’t understand what’s in the way of making a shift when, both in other states and locally, districts are able to help kids now,” she recently told the school board. “How is it possible we aren’t doing it in Berkeley right now?”

    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    This story is a collaboration between EdSource and Berkeleyside, a nonprofit online newsroom covering the city of Berkeley. EdSource Reporter John Fensterwald contributed to this report.

    How kids are taught to read in Berkeley is slowly starting to shift.

    Teachers are studying the science of reading. More students are learning phonics, sounding out words by letters and syllables. And the school district is screening every student to flag those who may have dyslexia, a learning disorder that causes difficulty with reading, writing and spelling.

    But these changes didn’t come easily. They are the result of a federal class-action lawsuit, filed in 2017, by four families of Berkeley students with dyslexia who claimed the district failed to teach them how to read. 

    And though the suit settled in 2021, the district’s method of teaching reading, a balanced literacy curriculum developed by Columbia University Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins called Units of Study, remains in place. 

    Rather than teaching students to sound out letters, the curriculum relies on a method called three-cueing — where students use context clues like pictures to figure out words — that has now been discredited and banned in several states. Some Berkeley teachers still use cueing, while others have dropped the practice.

    Berkeley’s reckoning with how it teaches reading comes as California faces dismal reading scores and amid a push for the state to do more to ensure children are taught to read using evidence-based approaches. Last year, over half of California students and 33% of Berkeley students could not read at grade level. 

    Now, the wheels are just beginning to turn in a district long devoted to Calkins. Advocates hope that aligning with the science of reading will help close one of the largest achievement gaps in the country — last year, 26% of Black students in Berkeley schools met state standards in reading, compared with 83% of white students. 

    “Historically, Berkeley has been — and is — widely known for being a balanced literacy district,” Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel said during a November panel discussion referring to the Calkins teaching method.

    Enikia Ford Morthel, Berkeley schools superintendent, right.
    Credit: Kelly Sullivan / Berkeleyside

    “What we want to be known for is being a district that is disrupting the narrative, disrupting persistent trends and data and really responding to our students,” she said. “This is not just another initiative. This truly is an imperative.”

    Some students and parents aren’t yet convinced. Without a firm commitment to adopt a curriculum rooted in the science of reading, they are skeptical that they will see all the changes they believe are long overdue.

    “At some point, you have to take responsibility,” said Rebecca Levenson, a parent of two children with dyslexia. Levenson wasn’t part of the lawsuit against the district, but she believes “it’s important for parents who see their children suffer to use their voice and power to make a difference for other families that are in that same situation.”

    The Berkeley lawsuit was the second filed in California in 2017 over literacy instruction. In the other suit, the public-interest law firm Public Counsel charged on behalf of students in the lowest-performing schools that California had failed to meet their constitutional right to read. Under a $50 million settlement in 2020, 75 schools received funding and assistance to improve reading instruction. They were encouraged, but not mandated, to select instruction based on the science of reading.

    While a district review of its elementary school literacy curriculum found that Units of Study failed to teach foundational literacy skills like phonics and vocabulary, Ford Morthel has stopped short of calling on the district to drop Lucy Calkins. The district is now beginning the process of adopting a new curriculum for the fall of 2025.

    At a recent school board meeting, George Ellis, the court-appointed monitor, hammered home the importance of changing the Calkins curriculum. Without a “sound, comprehensive” core curriculum, he said, “it doesn’t matter what interventions we’re really providing, because we’re just filling up holes all over the place, and we’re never going to get caught up here.”

    Attorneys and advocates hope the Berkeley lawsuit will spur other school districts to act faster to avoid legal action, accelerating the adoption of the science of reading in California and across the country. But Berkeley’s experience also demonstrates just how many barriers stand in the way of changing reading instruction.

    Berkeley’s reading guru

    When Lucy Calkins developed her approach in the 1990s, the balanced literacy teaching method was heralded as a new philosophy of education. Rather than teaching from rigid phonics textbooks, teachers introduced students to an entire library of independent books with the goal of teaching kids to love reading.

    Calkins was the “guru of reading for people in Berkeley,” said Maggie Riddle, a former teacher and principal at Berkeley’s Jefferson Elementary, now called Ruth Acty. Once Calkins’ approach came to Berkeley, phonics came to be seen as a rote, old-school way of teaching, “dumbing down” instruction. “Berkeley was anti-phonics. One hundred percent,” Riddle said.

    Berkeley wasn’t alone in this. Balanced literacy once enjoyed nearly universal popularity. “It was being used in every single Bay Area district,” said Deborah Jacobson, a special education attorney who brought the suit, a federal class action, against the Berkeley district seven years ago. 

    Special education attorney Deborah Jacobson, photographed at home on this month, brought up the federal class action lawsuit against the Berkeley school district in 2017.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    But the approach has fallen under fire amid a national reckoning over reading instruction, with a consensus growing that balanced literacy goes against what we know about how the brain works when learning to read.

    This understanding anchors the science of reading, an approach backed by decades of exhaustive scientific research that suggests most children need systematic lessons in phonics, or how to sound out words, as well as other fundamentals, such as building knowledge and vocabulary, to learn to read. Teaching foundational reading skills especially benefits English learners. Advocates say reading is a civil right and phonics helps bring social justice to Black students.

    More than half of states have passed laws requiring schools to align with research-based methods or favoring phonics. In September, Columbia University cut ties with the Reading and Writing Project that Calkins led for decades, citing the need to seek out new perspectives. Calkins herself has revised her curriculum to incorporate more explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness.

    A decade ago, California adopted a framework for K-12 literacy that encouraged districts to use evidence-based reading instruction, now commonly called the science of reading. But it wasn’t required, and the state didn’t push districts to adopt it. 

    Over the past two years, the state has taken steps toward a literacy plan but continues to leave to districts what curriculum and textbooks to use under a policy of local control. A new law passed in the summer will require that all children be screened for dyslexia and other reading disorders beginning in 2025. And by July 1, California will require teacher preparation programs to provide literacy training based on the science of reading.

    Still, advocates say these changes don’t go far enough. The California Early Literacy Coalition plans to sponsor legislation that would create a comprehensive state literacy plan, mandating training in the science of reading for all teachers, not just new ones, and requiring the use of textbooks rooted in the approach.

    In Berkeley, lawsuit cast a light

    When Berkeley Unified was sued in 2017, Riddle said she saw it as an opportunity. She had moved up through the ranks to become head of K-8 schools and led legal negotiations for the district for two years. “Nobody ever wants the district to be sued, but it cast a light on the needs of kids in reading, especially kids with dyslexia,” Riddle said.

    Not everyone saw it that way. It took five years to reach a settlement agreement, and the district’s core curriculum was a sticking point in negotiations. “The resistance was serious, but the lawsuit was serious, too,” recalled Riddle. During negotiations, the district implemented Fast Track Phonics to get phonics instruction into classrooms, but advocates criticized the decision as putting a Band-Aid on a broken system, leaving the core Calkins curriculum intact.

    Berkeley signed the settlement agreement in 2021, but due to the pandemic, didn’t start working on implementation until the following year, extending the three-year plan until 2025. Initially, Ellis, the court monitor, criticized the school district and its board for failing to embrace the settlement. And in February, Jacobson said the district had breached the settlement agreement by moving too slowly, but decided not to file a notice in court after district leaders promised action.

    In the last year and a half, the district has started taking steps toward the science of reading. 

    Elementary teachers did a book study of “Shifting the Balance,” an introduction to science of reading practices. The district implemented a universal screening system to flag students who might have dyslexia and started training literacy coaches to implement phonics-based intervention programs like Orton-Gillingham and Heggerty. The district also established a new department of curriculum and instruction, hired a districtwide literacy specialist, and began developing a multi-tiered system of support for struggling readers.

    The district’s new focus has made a huge difference for some teachers, even those with decades of experience.

    Angélica Pérez, a reading specialist at Thousand Oaks Elementary, said though she has known about phonics for years and even taught it, only recently has she received the systematic training she needed to implement it well with struggling readers.

    In my 26 years in education and 15 years in the classroom, I wasn’t so aware of the importance of phonemic awareness.

    Angélica Pérez, a reading specialist at Thousand Oaks Elementary in Berkeley.

    The changes have won over some of the district’s critics, including Jacobson. “There is a new sense of urgency with the new administration and a new level of commitment,” Jacobson said. “Every year the light bulb seems to go on, more and more.”

    Angélica Pérez’s reading room at Thousand Oaks Elementary School allows children to explore leisure reading. A longtime reading specialist, Pérez uses a phonics and phonemics curriculum to help struggling students.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    They have also earned the praise of the teachers union president. “There is a systematic plan to make sure our teachers are getting what they need so they can do their jobs best,” said Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers.

    Cost to students of the lengthy legal fight

    For families whose children struggle with reading, Berkeley’s decades-long commitment to balanced literacy came at a price. Many students with dyslexia have either missed out on learning, or their parents have paid thousands of dollars in private tutoring to catch them up.

    “After a certain point, the research shows that it becomes unrecoverable,” said Eliza Noh, a Berkeley parent who has a child with dyslexia. “The early years for teaching people how to read are critical.”

    Levenson’s two children, Eva Levenson and Wen Dolphin, both have dyslexia and attended Berkeley schools 18 years apart. But Eva received private reading intervention, while Wen did not. The family says their experience shows the difference phonics-based intervention can make.

    Rebecca Levenson and her youngest daughter,Eva, talk in their West Berkeley home. Levenson’s two children, Eva and Wen, who is in his late 20s and lives in Colorado, have struggled with dyslexia throughout their academic careers.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside / CatchLight

    Dolphin dropped out of school at 15, while Eva, now a sophomore at Berkeley High, is taking the same challenging classes as her peers. She began writing for The Jacket, Berkeley High’s student newspaper, and in October, penned an article about the Calkins curriculum.

    “I know that my life trajectory could have been very different if I would have had the support that I needed in those really formative years,” Dolphin told a crowd at a Berkeley school board meeting last year.

    When Lindsay Nofelt’s son was diagnosed with dyslexia, she shelled out thousands of dollars on a phonics-based intensive reading intervention program. Her son’s reading ability improved quickly, but what took Nofelt longer to piece together was Berkeley’s role in her son’s story. 

    Even after listening to Emily Hanford’s podcast “Sold a Story,” which thrust Calkins’ curriculum into the spotlight, she didn’t connect the literacy debate to Berkeley schools.

    “I thought, if Emily Hanford is writing about this and sounds like it’s not serving the needs of the students, then there’s no way that Berkeley Unified school system would use such a discredited curriculum,” Nofelt said.

    Students relax at lunchtime at Willard Middle School in Berkeley in August 2022.
    Credit: Ximena Natera / Berkeleyside/ CatchLight

    But over time, Nofelt realized her son wasn’t the only one in Berkeley struggling with reading. As she learned more about the science of reading and the class-action lawsuit, she realized that the kind of reading instruction Hanford was describing in her podcast was happening in Berkeley. “When I found out they were one and the same, all of the pieces fell into place,” she said.

    Two years ago, Nofelt formed Reading for Berkeley to educate parents about early literacy and give them resources to advocate for their children. It’s now a resource that Nofelt wishes she had when she was trying to help her son — digestible content designed to help families ask questions about their children’s literacy education and support their reading abilities.

    Today, students with dyslexia and their parents are watching Berkeley closely, their hope resting on the district’s commitment to the science of reading.

    At a recent school board meeting in January, Eva Levenson told the Berkeley school board directors and superintendent that she is still waiting to see a plan that addresses the failure of the district’s core curriculum.

    “I don’t understand what’s in the way of making a shift when, both in other states and locally, districts are able to help kids now. How is it possible we aren’t doing it in Berkeley right now?”





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  • Why I love my urban public school

    Why I love my urban public school


    Two San Francisco parents promote the city’s public schools at a city resource fair.

    Credit: SF Department of Children, Youth and Families

    If you live in San Francisco or have been here recently, you may have started seeing window signs or bumper stickers that say “I love my SF public school.” And if you’re not a San Francisco public school parent or student, you might be surprised to see these signs, given the prevailing narrative about the public schools in our fair city and in other urban areas. It turns out there are plenty of satisfied — even enthusiastic — public school parents and students in our big cities. 

    In California, and across the country, there is a pervasive narrative that urban public schools are “bad” and suburban schools are “good.” (Example: The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a small East Bay suburb has “better” schools than San Francisco like it’s an objective fact.) Describing a school, let alone an entire school system, as “good” or “bad” is lazy at best and coded racism at worst. Why? Because we typically rely on test scores and numerical ratings to identify a “good” school, and those ratings are highly correlated with race and income.

    And there is so much more to a school than reading and math test scores.

    Instead, we should talk about “fit” because a school that is a great fit for one kid may be a terrible fit for another. I am a graduate of the vaunted Palo Alto public school system. It was a good fit for me because I thrived (mostly) in a competitive academic environment; it was a terrible fit for one of my relatives, whose special needs were never adequately met in that system.

    To determine a good fit, we parents and caregivers have to get really specific about what we’re looking for in a school and what each of our kids needs. Do we want rigorous academics? Arts education? A focus on social justice? Support for social-emotional development? A diverse student body?

    Next, we need a reliable source of information. You can certainly learn something from looking at numerical data, like the School Accountability Report Cards. But if you really want to know whether a given school has what you’re looking for, the best source of information is current students, parents and caregivers.

    If you ask urban public school parents what they think of their public schools, you will certainly hear both positives and negatives, as you would anywhere, including the suburbs. Since you can find a litany of complaints via a quick Google search, and in the spirit of the “I love my SF public school” campaign, I will focus on the positives. Here are the many things those of us displaying the signs in San Francisco — and sharing similar sentiments across the state — love about our kids’ schools:

    • The rich diversity of our cities is reflected in our schools. San Francisco middle school parent Jessica Franklin appreciates that her kids “are learning to engage with, interact with and learn from so many people who are so different from themselves.” Hanson Li says that, as a first-generation immigrant, he appreciates the district’s “continued commitment to immersive language programs.” His high schoolers are fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese after attending elementary and middle schools with language programs.
    • Our teachers are incredible. They are skilled and experienced: At her kid’s elementary school in San Francisco, Autumn Brown Garibay says five teachers have been at the school for more than 20 years, and many teachers sent their own kids to the school. They are dedicated: Sonia Gandiaga’s eighth grader in San Francisco has an “incredibly committed math teacher” who made her love math and feel confident in her math skills. They are committed to learning the latest, most effective teaching methods: At my son’s school, teachers learned how to teach a research-based phonics program and supported each other to implement the program.
    • Our schools have a strong sense of community that is intentionally cultivated by teachers, school leaders, and families. Oakland middle school parent Monica Purdy appreciates how effectively her son’s school is supporting his transition into sixth grade, with camping trips to build community, weekly mentoring and individual counseling. In Los Angeles, Sara Light appreciates that her kids’ school draws from the surrounding neighborhood, which helps facilitate the feeling of community.
    • Our children have access to enrichment programs and field trips that come with living in a world-class city. At the middle school Franklin’s kids attend, in just one year, students participated in collaborations with six different arts organizations, including the San Francisco Opera, Hip Hop for Change, and Alonzo King LINES Ballet.

    No school or school district is perfect. As public school parents, we are the first to admit that our schools have areas that need improvement. Still, there are many things we love about our urban public schools.

    •••

    Jennie Herriot-Hatfield is a K-12 education consultant, former elementary school teacher, and public school parent in San Francisco. She serves on the board of directors for SF Parent Coalition, which advocates for a thriving, equitable school system.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Why Ukraine Will Win the War

    Why Ukraine Will Win the War


    Bernard-Henri Levy writes in The Wall Strett journal about Ukraine’s remarkable success in destroying about 1/3 of Russia’s long-range strategic bombers. These are planes that have been delivering death and destruction to civilian targets like schools, homes, and hospitals. Ukraine knocked them out with a single, brilliant strike.

    He writes:

    The Ukrainian operation on Sunday was a coordinated attack on four airports in Russia reaching as deep as Siberia. It neutralized 41 “strategic aircraft” and was a brilliant technical performance.

    Over more than 18 months, hundreds of drones were smuggled deep into Russia. They were loaded onto civilian trucks with double-bottomed trailers, where they were concealed inside mobile boxes. The tops of those boxes—remotely controlled by operators in Ukraine but connected to the Russian telephone network—opened at the appointed time, allowing the drones to take off. All 41 targets were carefully studied for months by Ukrainian intelligence, and they exploded simultaneously without civilian casualties…

    This achievement was a slap in the face to Russia—and not the first. At the beginning of the war, there was the Moskva cruiser, the flagship of its fleet, sunk off Odesa by two Ukrainian-made missiles. Then, the double strike on the Kerch Bridge, Vladimir Putin’s pride, the jewel of his cardboard crown and a symbol of the continuity he believed he was establishing between Crimea and Russia. Last year, half of Mr. Putin’s fleet in the Black Sea was destroyed. The other half retreated pitifully to Novorossiysk or the Sea of Azov. Also in 2024, Ukraine staged an offensive in Russia’s Kursk region.

    Sigmund Freud spoke of the three humiliations on Western man—inflicted by Copernicus, Darwin and Freud himself. If Volodymyr Zelensky had the heart to laugh, he could speak of the five humiliations he has inflicted on that enemy of the West: Russia. Mr. Putin and his people stand exposed as braggarts, paper tigers. Ukraine is David to the Goliath of Russia, nearly 30 times its size.

    Sunday’s operation is further proof that the Ukrainian army, through sacrifice and adversity, has forged itself into the boldest, brightest and best in Europe. I witnessed its evolution as I prepared my documentaries on the war.

    I filmed its geeks tinkering, hidden in forest huts, their first makeshift drones. For another film, the drone battalions of Lyman and Kupiansk closed the sky in place of their overly timid allies. This winter, in Pokrovsk and Sumy, high-tech command rooms where battles were fought at a distance. I even heard—at the time without fully understanding—Mr. Zelensky announcing that his engineers were developing a new generation of drones capable of striking Russia up to the Arctic.

    Today, all the cards are turned. Mr. Putin terrorized the world with his nuclear blackmail. There was an army capable of calling his bluff—and it did.

    “Just say thank you,” Vice President JD Vance lectured President Zelensky during their February altercation in the Oval Office. All of us should thank Ukraine, a small nation that has grounded a third of the bombers that promised apocalypse to Warsaw, Berlin or Paris.

    This weekend’s drone operation is a further step on the path to victory. I don’t know what form that victory will take, or whether it will be the front, the rear or its regime that will give in first in Russia. But the balance of power is increasingly clear.

    On one side, a ridiculed general staff, an ultimate weapon that is greatly diminished and discredited, troops so demoralized that they fight only with the support of North Korean, Chinese, Ghanaian, Bangladeshi and Iranian mercenaries.

    On the other side, a patriotic citizen army, motivated and knowing why it combats—an army that has proved its mastery of the most advanced military technologies, its excellence not only in trench warfare but also in the new remote and ghost warfare.



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  • Why Small Colleges Matter—Now More Than Ever – Edu Alliance Journal

    Why Small Colleges Matter—Now More Than Ever – Edu Alliance Journal


    June 2, 2025, by Dean Hoke: In the ongoing debate about the future of higher education, small colleges are often overlooked—yet they are indispensable. On May 21st, Higher Education Digest published my article, “Small Colleges Are Essential to American Higher Education,” in which I make the case for why these institutions remain vital to our national educational fabric.

    Small colleges may not grab headlines, but they provide transformative experiences, especially for first-generation students, rural communities, and those seeking a deeply personal education. As financial pressures mount and demographic shifts continue, it’s easy to underestimate the impact of these campuses—but doing so comes at a cost. These schools are not only educators; they are regional economic engines, community partners, and laboratories for innovation.

    In the article, I outline key reasons why we need to support and strengthen small colleges, including their unique role in economic development, workforce provider, and civic engagement. I also explore the consequences of neglecting this sector and what we can do about it.

    I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the whole piece and share it with your colleagues and networks. Read the article here.

    As always, I welcome your thoughts and reflections.

    Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on small colleges’ challenges and opportunities. Dean is the Executive Producer and co-host for the podcast series Small College America. 



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  • Why knowledge matters for literacy: A Q&A with Natalie Wexler

    Why knowledge matters for literacy: A Q&A with Natalie Wexler


    Credit: Andrew Ebrahim / Unsplash

    Amid a deepening literacy crisis, there’s been a focus on how to close the achievement gap, but Natalie Wexler sees the key problem undermining the American educational system a little differently.

    The education author maintains that we can’t truly reach equity in achievement unless we first close “The Knowledge Gap.” 

    Natalie Wexler, literacy expert and author of “The Knowledge Gap.”
    Courtesy photo

    She also argues that, in the rush to embrace the science of reading, some have focused so intently on the need for phonics in the early years that they have overlooked the need for systematic knowledge-building, which is also a core part of structured literacy, as is vocabulary. There’s more to the science of reading than phonics, experts have long suggested.

    Wexler is best known for her book “The Knowledge Gap,” but she also has a podcast and newsletter on the subject. The frequent Forbes contributor recently made time to discuss with EdSource why background knowledge is so fundamental to reading, why it’s crucial to teach kids about the world, from science to history, if you want them to become deep readers.

    A rich sense of context is key to fueling both vocabulary growth and reading comprehension, the ability to make inferences and connections while reading, paving the way for critical thinking and analysis, cornerstones of higher education. 

    Why do you think there are so many misunderstandings about the science of reading, and why is it often getting boiled down to just phonics? 

    A large part of it is that the phonics issue is more familiar. We’ve been hearing about it for decades. Since the 1950s, if not before, and it’s less complicated than the whole comprehension message. Not to say it’s simple, but it’s easy to grasp. You want kids to be able to read, you have to help them sound out words, and you have to teach that explicitly, and you can see results pretty quickly when you do. Right? Whereas building knowledge is this very gradual process. The way we measure progress is mostly through the standardized reading comprehension test. And it takes a long time, years sometimes, to see the fruits of your labors reflected in standardized test scores. 

    Has the phonics debate overshadowed other aspects of how the brain learns how to read?

    I do think that the focus on just the problems with phonics instruction or decoding instruction has given rise to the assumption that the other aspects of reading instruction are lined up with science, that they accord with what scientific evidence tells us will work. And with comprehension, that’s actually not the case. 

    Why is there so little understanding of cognitive science in the classroom? What do we need to know about working memory, for example?

    I certainly didn’t know about working memory being only able to hold maybe four or five items of new information for about 20 seconds before it starts to become overwhelmed. And that’s the scientific explanation, but I also think once you give people concrete examples, it starts to make sense at a gut level. The goal is for kids to acquire enough general academic vocabulary and familiarity with the complex syntax of written language to enable them to read and understand texts on topics they don’t already know about. 

    At some point you have built up enough understanding of the world to learn through reading, is that right? 

    If you’re a proficient reader, that’s a very efficient way of learning, through reading. That’s the goal. But how do we enable students to acquire that kind of general knowledge? Really the only way is through teaching them about a lot of specific topics, because the vocabulary, the syntax, doesn’t stick in the abstract, it needs a meaningful context. But there are different ways for kids to acquire that general knowledge. 

    Why is background knowledge so important to reading comprehension?

    Vocabulary and background knowledge are inextricably linked. So, if you’ve got baseball vocabulary, you’re going to have a better chance of understanding a text on baseball. If you’re practicing finding the main idea and you’re reading a text about the solar system and you have no idea what the solar system is, your ability to decode the words is probably not going to be enough. You need to have some background knowledge in place in order to acquire more knowledge from that text. To understand a word like “dynasty,” you need to have some idea of monarchies. You can’t just memorize the definition and really understand it, right? But you could acquire that understanding by learning about African dynasties, Asian dynasties, European dynasties, indigenous dynasties. There are lots of different paths to that goal.

    Why is this an equity issue? Is it because we’re not really spending as much time on history and science in the classroom these days but you don’t notice that as much with higher income children because those families are better able to fill in the gaps outside of school?

    That’s right. But I’ve heard from educators and administrators these days that even higher-income kids are coming in with poor oral language skills because people are on their phones so much, and even more-affluent, more highly educated parents are not engaging in that kind of dialogue with kids that leads to rich oral language abilities. This has long been a problem with kids from less highly educated families. I think it really has to do with the level of parental education more than with socioeconomic status or race. If you have a poor kid whose parents both have Ph.D.s, but they’re struggling because they’re adjunct professors, that kid’s probably going to be exposed to a lot of academic language and vocabulary at home. But other kids rely on school for that. I’m not saying that education can completely level the playing field, but it could be doing way more than it is currently doing to give all kids the kind of exposure to academic knowledge and vocabulary that kids from highly educated families acquire more or less naturally.  

    So it’s more related to education than income. Is part of the issue also that schools prefer inquiry-based learning to direct instruction? We let the kids try to figure things out on their own instead of explaining it to them.

    Where this belief in discovery and inquiry has really taken hold is at the elementary level. I do think that this focus on comprehension skills and strategies, whether consciously or not, it’s connected to that idea that we shouldn’t be the ‘sages on the stages’ just pouring information into kids’ brains. If you teach them a skill, like finding the main idea or making inferences, then they can use that skill to discover knowledge on their own, acquire knowledge on their own. That’s the theory. But it often doesn’t work in practice. It’s hard to make an inference if you don’t really understand the subject matter. Some of these skills do need to be taught, but others really are just sort of natural outgrowths of knowledge. I want to make it clear, it’s not like you have to choose between building knowledge and teaching skills and strategies. It’s a question of what you put in the foreground. 

    Why are deep dives into a topic, say dinosaurs or mummies, more compelling for children than randomly chosen abstract passages, to drive comprehension?

    If you get deeply into a topic, it’s much more interesting than if you just skim the surface. … The power of narrative is really important. It doesn’t have to be fiction, it could be a story from history. I’ve seen second graders fascinated by the war of 1812. Teachers are like, how are second graders going to be able to deal with that? Well, if they’ve learned about the American Revolution and they have the background knowledge, they get fascinated by it because they understand what’s going on. They understand the issues, but they don’t know who won. They’re like, oh, no, America’s going to lose!

    Everybody loves a cliffhanger.





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  • Why Global Talent is Turning Away from U.S. Higher Education—and What We’re Losing – Edu Alliance Journal


    In 2025, much of my professional focus has been on small colleges in the United States. But as many of you know, my colleague and Edu Alliance co-founder, Dr. Senthil Nathan, and I also consult extensively in the international higher education space. Senthil, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE—where Edu Alliance was founded was asked by a close friend of ours, Chet Haskell, about how the Middle East and its students are reacting to the recent moves by the Trump Administration. Dr. Nathan shared a troubling May 29th article from The National, a UAE English language paper titled, “It’s not worth the risk”: Middle East students put US dreams on hold amid Trump visa crackdown.

    The article begins with this chilling line:

    “Young people in the Middle East have spoken of their fears after the US government decided to freeze overseas student interviews and plan to begin vetting their social media accounts. The directive signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomatic and consular posts halts interview appointments at US universities.”

    The UAE, home to nearly 10 million people—90% of whom are expatriates—is a global crossroads. Many of their children attend top-tier international high schools and are academically prepared to study anywhere in the world. Historically, the United States has been a top choice for both undergraduate and graduate education.

    But that is changing.

    This new wave of student hesitation, and in many cases fear, represents a broader global shift. Today, even the most qualified international students are asking whether the United States is still a safe, welcoming, or stable destination for higher education. And their concerns are justified.

    At a time when U.S. institutions are grappling with enrollment challenges—including a shrinking pool of domestic high school graduates—we are simultaneously sending signals that dissuade international students from coming. That’s not just bad policy. It’s bad economics.

    According to NAFSA: Association of International Educators, international students contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023–2024 academic year and supported 378,175 jobs across the country. These students fill key seats in STEM programs, support local economies, and enrich our campuses in ways that go far beyond tuition payments.

    And the stakes go beyond higher education.

    A 2024 study found that 101 companies in the S&P 500 are led by foreign-born CEOs. Many of these executives earned their degrees at U.S. universities, underscoring how American higher education is not just a national asset but a global talent incubator that fuels our economy and leadership.

    Here are just a few examples:

    • Jensen Huang: Born in Taiwan (NVIDIA) – B.S. from Oregon State, M.S. from Stanford
    • Elon Musk: Born in South Africa (Tesla, SpaceX) – B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania
    • Sundar Pichai: Born in India (Alphabet/Google) – M.S. from Stanford, MBA from Wharton
    • Mike Krieger: Born in Brazil (Co-founder of Instagram) B.S. and M.S. Symbolic Systems and Human-Computer Interaction, Stanford University
    • Satya Nadella: Born in India (Microsoft) – M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, MBA from the University of Chicago
    • Max Levchin: Born in Ukraine (Co-founder of PayPal, Affirm), Bachelor’s in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    • Arvind Krishna: Born in India (IBM) – Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    • Safra Catz: Born in Israel (Oracle) – Undergraduate & J.D. from University of Pennsylvania
    • Jane Fraser: Born in the United Kingdom (Citigroup) – MBA from Harvard Business School
    • Nikesh Arora: Born in India  (Palo Alto Networks) – MBA from Northeastern
    • Jan Koum: Born in Ukraine (Co-founder of WhatsApp), Studied Computer Science (did not complete degree) at San Jose State University

    These leaders represent just a fraction of the talent pipeline shaped by U.S. universities.

    According to a 2023 American Immigration Council report, 44.8% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, including iconic firms like Apple, Google, and Tesla. Together, these companies generate $8.1 trillion in annual revenue and employ over 14.8 million people globally.

    The Bottom Line

    The American higher education brand still carries immense prestige. But prestige alone won’t carry us forward. If we continue to restrict and politicize student visas, we will lose not only potential students but also future scientists, entrepreneurs, job creators, and community leaders.

    We must ask: Are our current policies serving national interests, or undermining them?

    Our classrooms, campuses, corporations, and communities are stronger when they include the world’s brightest minds. Let’s not close the door on a future we have long helped build.

    Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on international partnerships and market evaluations.



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  • Why one California university leader thinks year-round operations will aid enrollment

    Why one California university leader thinks year-round operations will aid enrollment


    Students in a science class at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

    Credit: Arabel Meyer / EdSource

    Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo recently announced that it will become the first public university in the state to shift to year-round operations starting summer 2025. The change would give students the option of starting in the summer and taking their academic break during a different term, and it would allow the university to admit more students per year.

    Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong said other universities have had success with this model. 

    “Secondary to growth (in enrollment), I think we’re going to see student success,” Armstrong said. 

    Taking inspiration from schools that have had year-round operations for years, like Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of Waterloo in Canada, Armstrong said he hopes to put a “Cal Poly twist” on the idea to benefit all students. 

    Beginning next year, students will be able to choose to start either in summer or fall during the application process. Faculty and staff will also be able to choose which terms they will work.

    Armstrong said students and faculty will have enough information to make an informed decision about what their schedule will look like and “they will know what they’re getting into.”

    If a student opts to start in summer, they might have a greater chance of being admitted to Cal Poly, which currently has an admit rate of 28% and is highly impacted with more applications than available spaces, Armstrong said.

    “We’re not changing our standards,” Armstrong said. “What we’re doing is using year-round to open up more spaces so more students can get in.”

    Starting the year in the summer would be different from simply taking summer classes or taking a couple of classes in the last few weeks of summer through summer start programs to help students adjust to college.

    Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo President Jeffrey D. Armstrong
    Credit: Cal Poly SLO

    Students who start their year in the summer would have full course offerings equivalent to what is offered during the other terms, and classes would be for a full term, according to Armstrong.

    When asked about the expected cost of the change to year-round operations, Armstrong said, “Overall, we believe the investments required will not be significantly out of line as what would be required for enrollment growth through traditional non-year-round operations means.”

    Following the year-round model, students, including freshmen, would have more opportunities to participate in “high-impact practices” such as internships, study abroad and undergraduate research, according to Armstrong. 

    “We know when students participate in high-impact practices, it enhances their retention, it enhances their chance to graduate,” he said. 

    A student who chooses to start in summer could then study abroad or do an internship during the fall term and come back for spring term, for example. 

    Armstrong said students could also decide to take classes every term and graduate earlier, though this would not be required.

    It’s about “flexibility for all students, really,” he said. “I think it’ll be very positive, and it’ll expand access to high-impact activities. We want it to be more equitable.”

    Financial aid would still cover a full academic year (three quarters or two semesters) no matter when a student starts, Armstrong added. 

    In an ideal world, Armstrong said about a third of students would start in summer, though starting out, the numbers might be more like 15-20%. 

    “It’s allowing us to grow, [and] it’s taking the number of students in the regular academic year down, so it’s relieving some of the pressure,” Armstrong said.

    Cal Poly began discussing this shift in 2019, but it was delayed because of the to the pandemic. The change was then set to begin summer 2024 but delayed again after Cal Poly met its enrollment goals for the year by increasing course availability, allowing more students to enroll full time. 

    As college enrollment rates increase, universities have been trying to find ways to do so without increasing costs too much. In 1999, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report recommending universities switch to year-round operations. 

    Cal Poly is the only public university in California to make this switch, though other schools are making different efforts to increase their enrollment and expand summer instruction.

    According to Hazel Kelly, CSU spokesperson, other CSU campuses are also considering ways to offer more flexible academic calendars.

    “The Chancellor’s Office is working with those universities as they consider a range of implications of alternative calendars including student enrollment, campus budgets, financial aid, accreditation, labor agreements and facilities, among others,” Kelly said.

    California State University, Long Beach is working on expanding enrollment during the fall and spring semesters, focusing on “underserved majors with available space,” according to CSULB spokesperson Gregory Woods. 

    “To bolster enrollment, our strategy is to enhance retention rates and average-units load for current students, and to expand the class size of the incoming first-time, first-year student level,” Woods said. 

    San Diego State University, which has the second-lowest acceptance rate of all the CSUs and is also highly impacted, does not have a plan to move to year-round operations like Cal Poly but is exploring other ways of increasing enrollment, SDSU spokesperson La Monica Everett-Haynes said.

    “We have, however, implemented efforts toward summer enrollment and, overall, continue to see high levels of enrollment growth during both the academic and summer session periods,” Everett-Haynes said.

    The University of California has similarly been working to expand summer enrollment without moving to the year-round model. 

    “Every UC campus is committed to expanding capacity and enhancing educational equity for California students through overall enrollment growth as well as more nontraditional approaches, including efforts to improve timely graduation and to expand online, summer and off-campus opportunities,” said Ryan King, UC spokesperson. 

    According to the “Building 2030 Capacity Report” issued in 2022, UC has turned to increasing online course offerings and financial aid for summer to help meet their enrollment goals. King noted that the report shows a spike in summer enrollment in 2020, and “UC campuses recognized this surge as an opportunity to increase summer enrollment and capacity over the long term by growing the number and mix of online and impacted fall-winter-spring course offerings.”

    Cal Poly decided that switching to the year-round model, and not just expanding their regular summer offerings, would be the most beneficial. 

    Armstrong said this shift to year-round operations will benefit all students, not just the ones who choose to start in the summer, because classes will be offered more often throughout the year, there will be more opportunities to participate in high-impact activities and the campus community will grow.

    As part of the effort to increase enrollment, Cal Poly is working on building more on-campus housing so that all first- and second-year students can live on campus, a project that “will result in several thousand beds added between now and 2030,” Armstrong said. 

    Armstrong also expects the switch to year-round operations, along with increased financial aid, to help Cal Poly’s efforts to increase diversity. 

    As Cal Poly begins this shift, students will only be able to choose between summer or fall starts, and only incoming students will get this option. Armstrong said he hopes everyone will have this option in the future, and that a spring start will also be available.

    “We think it’s going to be very significant,” Armstrong said. “Our evidence from polling and asking questions of prospective parents and students shows that the interest is very high in the year-round concept.”

    Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism major and French and ethnic studies minor at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • TK staffing ratios are often unmet, teachers say; why some districts escape fines

    TK staffing ratios are often unmet, teachers say; why some districts escape fines


    A preschool student shows his classmate a spider he made from pipe cleaners and a paper cup.

    Credit: Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

    This is the second in a series of stories on how inadequate staffing may be impeding California’s efforts to offer high-quality instruction to all 4-year-olds by 2025.

    Four-year-olds, many of whom have never attended school or day care, are entering California classrooms in droves following the state’s rapid expansion of transitional kindergarten, a grade preceding kindergarten. 

    In this grade known as TK, young students are exposed to academics and become familiar with letters, sounds and numbers. They also acquire social, emotional and intellectual skills through play and exploration. For example, from having to share toys with their peers in a structured environment, they learn to communicate with each other and handle conflict. 

    Once designed to serve only children who missed the kindergarten age cutoff, TK has evolved and is now projected to reach all the state’s 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year. TK is the first year of a two-year kindergarten program that uses a curriculum modified for the age and developmental level of the participating children. When fully implemented, California will have the largest universal preschool program in the nation, serving nearly 400,000 children.

    Expanding TK: The age cutoff

    According to the California Department of Education, California children who turned 5 between Sept. 2, 2022 and April 2, 2023 were eligible for TK this school year. For the 2024–25 school year, children who turn 5 between Sept. 2 and June 2 will be eligible. Students who turn 4 by Sept. 1 will be eligible during the 2024-25 school year. 

    Some of the state’s largest school districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Fresno Unified, are  ahead of the state’s timeline in offering that access. 

    Fresno Unified operates 116 transitional kindergarten classes. Los Angeles Unified has not released the number of TK classes it offers, but according to district data, they serve nearly 11,000 students. 

    Though imperative for students, the expansion has created a problem: Some districts are not staffing TK classrooms with enough adults to maintain the required 1:12 staff-student ratio, a problem that educators say puts the 4-year-old pupils at risk, hampers learning and violates state legislation. 

    Twenty schools in LAUSD have been cited by the state for understaffing classes and violating the ratio. 

    Teachers told EdSource that 4-year-olds can’t learn if they aren’t safe and properly supervised by adults, and that not having enough adults in the classroom jeopardizes children’s safety. 

    “If you’re one adult and you’re managing so many children that have never been to school before, there isn’t any teaching going on,” said David Hunter, a teacher in Fresno Unified who has taught TK for the last six years of a 17-year career. “You’re just keeping them safe as best as you can, but you’re not actually able to teach.” 

    School districts jeopardize state funding if they fail to meet the state-set TK requirements of the 1:12 staff-student ratio and the average class size of 24 kids.

    Out of the 1,815 audit reports that the California Department of Education reviewed, just seven school districts and 16 charter schools have been fined and will lose thousands of dollars in funding from their Local Control Funding Formula for failing to meet the staffing ratios during the 2022-23 school year.  Teachers and others in the classroom say that many more districts and charters are not meeting the requirements but are managing to avoid punishment.

    Los Angeles Unified, which is facing multimillion dollar fines, considers being fined because the classes do not have one additional adult unfair, district leaders said at a board meeting earlier this year. Many other penalized districts blamed the national shortage of teachers and paraprofessionals while some districts were critical of the California Department of Education for not clearly outlining the requirements. 

    Some teachers, on the other hand, say that what is unfair is that TK classes are not being staffed as outlined by the legislation and to support the young students. 

    According to the Fresno Teachers Association, more than a dozen TK classes were not meeting staffing ratios during the 2022-23 school year, yet Fresno Unified was not fined. Fresno educators told EdSource that school districts that were not in compliance last year, such as Fresno Unified, escaped detection and fines because fiscal penalties are based on sample auditing that did not check every school.

    “This is a systems issue,” Hunter said, “and I want to see the system be better for everyone.” 

    Why do TK classes need extra staffing?

    The California Department of Education (CDE) has outlined numerous benefits to having a lower adult-to-student ratio in TK classes, including opportunities for individualized instruction, additional adult support and attention as well as supervision at all times. 

    Legislation requires district staff such as paraprofessionals to work alongside teachers to meet the ratio requirement and share responsibilities of serving the students. 

    On any given day, a TK student may need to use the restroom or have a potty accident; another may get sick and others will require different types of attention.

    “How do you manage that when there’s one of you and 21 four-year-olds?” Hunter said. “You need another adult to help deal with those situations.”  

    Hunter said he taught a class of 21 TK students without an aide from August to December 2022 during the 2022-23 school year, the first school year after the state added fiscal penalties related to TK requirements. 

    He said a teacher and an aide can split a large class into small groups to foster individualized learning, improve student assessment and evaluation and, ultimately, educate the young students — things that won’t happen in one large group of up to 24 four-year-olds. 

    Verifying compliance is difficult

    Going Deeper

    Compliance with the TK staffing ratio requirement is based on adult counts taken on the last teaching day of each school month prior to April 15, typically from August to March. In evaluating ratio compliance, auditors must consider an aide’s daily or weekly schedule, class rosters and other documentation for each class, according to the audit guide. 

    State compliance with TK requirements is verified in a district’s annual audit at the end of the school year and is based on a representative sample of a district’s schools. 

    Schools that are out of compliance may go unchecked if the sampled schools in the district are compliant. Because the sampled schools meet compliance, even though other schools do not, some districts and charters avoid penalties. 

    Fresno Unified, Hunter’s district, was not one of the school systems fined. District spokesperson AJ Kato told EdSource that Fresno Unified has not had problems with meeting the requirements that other districts may be experiencing. 

    But that’s not what teachers say. 

    At least 13 classes, according to Fresno Teachers Association President Manuel Bonilla, only had one adult for more than 12 students. 

    “The district could have done a better job at hiring additional folks … or in an emergency term, having their administrative staff provide additional support, but that seemingly didn’t happen,” Bonilla said.

    A Fresno Unified TK teacher and union leader surveyed his colleagues. 

    “They were out of compliance with the state, and ultimately the problem is that the students aren’t getting the additional support that’s necessary,” Bonilla added. 

    Hunter said this is the second consecutive school year he’s been teaching out of ratio. 

    This school year, Hunter has a part-time aide but is still out of ratio because he is the only adult for 16 students on days the aide isn’t scheduled to work. 

    Having a full-time aide, or the equivalent, he said, should be baseline and is mandated by law. 

    According to the state Education Department, to be counted in the staffing ratio, the “assigned” adult must be a district employee who is dedicated and available to all TK students the entire school day. Student teachers and volunteers do not count toward it, nor do staff such as a special education aide or speech therapist who are assigned to work with specific students. 

    Part-time aides can satisfy the classroom staffing ratio, but only if the working time equals 100% of the time of a full-time aide, according to the CDE. Because Hunter’s class has 16 students, he needs more than one part-time aide working enough hours to equal the hours of a full-time aide. He has only had one part-time aide this school year. 

    Laton Joint Unified was penalized $30,943 for having a 1:16 ratio last school year. The school had a paraprofessional scheduled for one hour, 45 minutes each day, and that person was not available for all students the entire school day, the audit report detailed. 

    There are also instances of aides being pulled for recess or cafeteria duty or other teaching responsibilities, removing that aide from the instructional minutes with students, teachers told EdSource.

    “Rina,” a former TK teacher who asked to be identified only by her nickname, said that when she took a job at Ballington Academy in San Bernardino City Unified in the 2023-24 school year, the school’s one TK classroom had 18 students. Rina and her aide would align with state compliance for the 18 students. About a week before school started, Rina said the school informed her that the aide, though assigned to her TK students, would be pulled to other elementary classrooms whenever a teacher was absent.

    “It was wrong,” she said. She only stayed in the position for about a week after school started. 

    Some schools and districts, such as Scholarship Prep Charter School in Oceanside, Pomona Unified in eastern Los Angeles County and Culver City Unified in Los Angeles County, said in their audit reports that staffing shortages resulted in their inability to comply with state guidelines. 

    But that’s no excuse, teachers say, because it’s up to district administration to recruit, hire and retain paraprofessionals, instead of making it the teacher’s problem, Rina said.

    Some suggest that the problem with hiring and retaining paraprofessionals is the low compensation.

    A preschool teacher’s aide at Ericson Elementary in Fresno Unified is not in the TK classroom but works with students who are the same age as those entering transitional kindergarten. Speaking with EdSource on condition of anonymity, she said aides, whether in the TK or preschool class, are dealing with the same challenge: subpar pay. 

    Throughout the day, especially when working in groups, she helps the preschoolers with writing their names and learning letters and numbers. At other times during the day, such as during reading time, the aide ensures students keep their hands to themselves and listen to the teacher. As an aide, she sees the impact and importance of her role.

    “We’re like their (teacher’s)  spine,” she said about paraprofessionals. “We’re there to support and help. We do so much for these kids.” 

    She is paid $15.90 an hour and has, over the last two years, questioned whether she should remain in the role.  

    “That’s not helping me,” she said. She’s had to take on side jobs in the district, such as at sporting events, or resorted to borrowing money from friends and family. “I have to buy food, pay bills and then, I have four kids.

    “If they’re still going keep that low (salary), people are not going … to apply for a position as an aide.” 

    Can teachers do anything?

    As a teacher who’s been working out of ratio, Hunter wants districts to be held accountable. 

    “There’s a mechanism there, and I’d like to see that enforced,” Hunter said about the fiscal penalties outlined in legislation.

    While the only way to address the compliance is with fines — which Hunter called “reactive” — he said a tool to report violations throughout the year could push districts to comply sooner and stop teachers from working out of compliance. 

    Currently, there is no such system or tool. 

    And if teachers are providing instruction in classrooms that are out of compliance, they would not report the violation to the state, CDE spokesperson Scott Roark said via email. 

    “Complaints against a district, school, principal, teacher or school personnel are not within the jurisdiction of the CDE unless the complaint falls within the scope of the Uniform Complaint Procedures,” Roark said, explaining that the TK requirements are under local control, with each district’s school board having authority over the complaint process.

    The same reasoning applies to a teachers union hoping to report compliance concerns or violations.  

    But the struggles teachers are experiencing shouldn’t detract from the importance of TK. 

    TK expansion is necessary; schools just need support 

    Patricia Lozano, executive director of the advocacy group Early Edge California and a champion for expanding transitional kindergarten, told EdSource last year about the importance of the program, including how it provides children who were infants during the pandemic with social and intellectual engagement as well as age- and developmentally-appropriate structure and routine to help them thrive. 

    Simply put, TK is imperative for students, said many teachers interviewed by EdSource. 

    Hunter, who has a background in early childhood education, said TK is vital for introducing students to what school is, for teaching socialization and exposing them to academics.

    “Any child who’s been through TK is that much more ready to hit the ground running in kindergarten,” he said. “I just want to see the appropriate support that not only the state promised, but I want to see the districts live up to that support so we can show these learners the best we can.” 





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