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  • Pandemic recovery in schools will be a ‘long slog,’ says sobering national report

    Pandemic recovery in schools will be a ‘long slog,’ says sobering national report


    Student mental health was declining even before the pandemic, research has shown.

    Alison Yin for EdSource

    Nearly five years after Covid-19 began, a national report released Tuesday shows that recovery from the pandemic for students will be a “long slog.”    

    “The State of the American Student,” a report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) states that the findings are “sobering, daunting, and discouraging,” and that the slow pace of recovery from the pandemic has left an indelible mark on education, with long-term implications for students’ income, racial inequity and social mobility in the United States. 

    “If policymakers and educators do not get serious about ensuring these students have access to proven interventions, then we will continue to see the educational impact of the pandemic reverberate for many years, both in our schools and in our economy,” the report stated.

    For the last three years, CRPE — a research organization out of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University — has released annual reports examining the academic, social, emotional and mental health effects of the pandemic on students. CRPE Executive Director Robin Lake said the reports were an attempt to ensure that schools wouldn’t go back to business as usual before students were “made whole.”

    Fears that the pandemic would widen pre-existing opportunity gaps have come to fruition, according to the report’s summary of a wide span of research. The report focuses extra attention on certain groups: young children, disabled students, English learners and homeless students, and students who still lag far behind from where they would have been if not for the pandemic. Lake added these groups were largely not well served by schools before the pandemic began.

    The report takes a sweeping look at the issues that have been harming students’ recovery since 2020, including chronic absenteeism, staffing shortages, poor teacher morale and student disengagement. These are all signs pointing to a pandemic recovery effort that will require a “long haul.”

    Struggling students need more attention

    Currently, schools are facing “gale-force” headwinds trying to address these challenges, the report states. Pandemic-era funding is drying up, declining school enrollment is stretching district finances, and many educators are facing burnout. But the worst part is that the problem is underappreciated, Lake said.

    “Perhaps the most concerning thing to us is how little discussion there is about these problems,” Lake said. 

    Politicians are not talking about pandemic recovery, especially when it comes to the groups that have been struggling the most, she said. For instance, CRPE pointed out how some states, including California, do a poor job communicating data about how students have fared since the pandemic.

    Additionally, parents do not seem to know just how far behind their children are — thanks in part to grade inflation and some schools’ poor communication, Lake said.

    USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research conducted interviews with the parents of disabled students.

    One parent did not learn from the school that their child was failing two courses, making him ineligible to graduate from high school: “I didn’t know until we were in the process of graduation,” the parent told interviewers.

    The number of students who are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has skyrocketed in recent years. It dipped during the peak of the pandemic when school campuses were closed, but surged again as students returned to the classrooms. It’s not clear why, but different theories have emerged.

    While it states that kindergartners who have not attended preschool are more likely to have academic and social struggles, including a rising number of behavioral issues and speech delays, the report notes that students who start school behind their peers may be being over-identified as having a disability or that the high numbers could be because students who might have simply been treading water in a previous era are now being correctly identified as having a disability.

    The problems faced by disabled students exemplify many of the biggest struggles of pandemic recovery efforts in schools. Disabled students’ academic performance has long lagged behind other students, but that gap has widened in the wake of the pandemic. The teacher shortage is particularly acute among special education teachers, now that they are needed most. Meanwhile, some effective efforts, such as tutoring, are not reaching disabled students. Low expectations for students with disabilities is a crisis that has failed to garner proper attention and resources, Lake said.

    One parent interviewed for the report said that getting help for their disabled students required constant fighting. “Multiple times, they promised in-person, in-school tutoring — which they just were understaffed and were never able to find anyone,” the parent said.

    Another parent said that without speech therapy, their son with epilepsy fell behind in school during the pandemic.

    “He fell further behind because my husband and I tried our best, but we can only do so much if you’re not a teacher, which is very frustrating,” the parent said in an interview.

    Recovery solutions are straightforward

    The strategies that helped schools recover have “not been rocket science,” Lake said. 

    Many schools have been successful with programs such as tutoring, high-quality curricula, extending learning time and improving communication with parents. Some schools are making these strategies a permanent part of the school experience, which is good news: Tutoring and small-group instruction are some of the most powerful tools schools have at their disposal, the report states.

    But scaling can be tricky, and many of the students who need help the most are not getting it, CRPE notes. Fewer than half of students who most needed that help enrolled in summer school, according to a Rand study, and just 1% of eligible students in Louisiana enrolled in a tutoring program for struggling readers.

    The report recommends focusing on the specific needs of struggling students, such as students with a disability or English learners, rather than so-called average students. Addressing the issues that these students are struggling with will pay dividends for the broader student population, Lake said.

    Some schools are demonstrating that recovery is possible, even if it’s not the dominant story right now. Students and educators alike are struggling, but there is a renewed understanding of the crucial role that school plays in a community. That has led to some schools rebuilding and strengthening that institution.

    “During the pandemic, you remember, there was so much talk about more joyful education, more engaging, more flexible,” Lake said. “We think that that has actually taken hold.”





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  • Catherine Rampell: Why Does Trump’s Regime Have Your Data and How Will They Use It?

    Catherine Rampell: Why Does Trump’s Regime Have Your Data and How Will They Use It?


    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.”



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  • Conflict of Interest? No Problem. Trump Family Will Collect Hundreds of Millions

    Conflict of Interest? No Problem. Trump Family Will Collect Hundreds of Millions


    David Yaffe-Bellany of The New York Times reported on a startling development in Dubai that will enrich the Trump family by hundreds of millions of dollars. Is it a conflict of interest? Of course. Will it matter to the Republican leaders in Congress? No. Has there ever been a President who used his office for financial gain so brazenly? No. Trump is #1.

    Gaffe-Bellamy writes:

    Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

    That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s cryptofirm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

    Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, revealed that a so-called stable coin developed by the firm, would be used to complete the transaction between the state-backed Emirati investment firm MGX and Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.

    Virtually every detail of Mr. Witkoff’s announcement, made during a conference panel with Mr. Trump’s second-eldest son, contained a conflict of interest.

    MGX’s use of the World Liberty stablecoin, USD1, brings a Trump family company into business with a venture firm backed by a foreign government. The deal creates a formal link between World Liberty and Binance — a company that has been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.

    And the splashy announcement served as an advertisement to crypto investors worldwide about the potential for forming a partnership with a company tied to President Trump, who is listed as World Liberty’s chief crypto advocate.

    “We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” said Mr. Witkoff, who is the son of the White House envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. “It’s only the beginning.”

    Mr. Witkoff and Eric Trump were speaking on a panel at Token2049, a major crypto conference in the United Arab Emirates, where more than 10,000 digital currency enthusiasts have gathered for a week of networking. It was the latest stop in an international tour by Mr. Witkoff, who visited Pakistan last month with his business partners to meet the prime minister and other government officials. Eric Trump, who runs the family business, has spent the week in Dubai, where he announced plans to back a Trump-branded hotel and tower.

    There is more.

    This is a gift article so you should be able to read it in full even without a subscription.



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  • The clock is ticking, ethnic studies remains an unfunded mandate; what will Newsom do?

    The clock is ticking, ethnic studies remains an unfunded mandate; what will Newsom do?


    A high school student listens to a presentation by her classmate.

    Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education

    The article was updated on Dec., 12 to clarify that the anti-bias protections in AB 101’s “guardrails” were copied from existing state statutes.

    Three years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation mandating that high schools offer ethnic studies “upon appropriation,” starting in 2025-26.

    Now, those two words — upon appropriation — loom large. The deadline to offer a semester of ethnic studies in 2025-26 is only seven months away, and requiring the course for graduation is due to begin with the graduating class of 2029-30. 

    Since 2022, the California Department of Finance has taken the position that there has been no appropriation to implement the course, and some other legislators agree — no money, no requirement to develop or offer classes. As a result, school districts might conclude that the law’s “guardrails” intended to prevent bias, bigotry, and discrimination from seeping into instruction could be ignored. However, the guardrails language was copied from existing state education statutes (Education Code 220), which would still prevail.  

    That lack of funding is creating uncertainty about the future of ethnic studies and suspense about whether Newsom will deliver the money next month when he proposes his 2025-26 budget — and, as importantly, whether he will condition funding on amendments to the law (Assembly Bill 101), including those championed by the Jewish Legislative Caucus.

    “I come at this with a fresh set of eyes. It’s pretty clear that the law only really takes effect if there is funding for this during the budgetary process. There has been no budget allocated for that,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-San Diego, who was elected to the Legislature in 2022 and chairs the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance while serving on the Assembly Budget and Education committees.

    “But that doesn’t mean that that won’t happen in the budget that’s to be released in January, which then funds the 2025-26 school year, which is when this would take effect,” he said. “I would expect it would” be funded.

    Options ‘upon appropriation’

    There is no statutory definition of “upon appropriation,” which is sometimes inserted in bills requiring significant funding. That leaves the governor and Legislature several options, according to legislative staff. One would be a significant one-time investment with dedicated funding in subsequent years. Another would be to eliminate “upon appropriation” by amending the bill — although that wouldn’t eliminate the state’s obligation to fund the mandate. The Legislature could then leave it to the Commission on State Mandates to decide how much should be reimbursed annually. Districts have complained that the commission tends to lowball reimbursements.

    Advisers to and spokespeople for Newsom refused to discuss the unfunded mandate or what to expect in January, and leaders of one of the strongest advocates of ethnic studies, the controversial Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, aren’t answering requests for comment. An administrator of the San Diego County Office of Education, which is coordinating state grants to develop ethnic studies course curriculums, also declined to comment.

    Finance Dept. states its position

    A spokesperson for Newsom referred EdSource to the Department of Finance, which, in turn, pointed to a link to a Feb. 22, 2022, webcast of Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance hearing (watch between 2:57 to 3:07).

    At the hearing, then-Assemblymember Kevin McCarthy, D-Sacramento, a strong proponent of ethnic studies, noted that the 2021-22 state budget included $50 million that would be disbursed to school districts to “launch this work.”

    “Do we think that’s the adequate amount we need to make sure we have a successful ethnic studies requirement for high schools throughout California?” he asked state officials.

    Amber Alexander, representing the Department of Finance, clarified that the $50 million was one-time funding for districts to create, not implement, the graduation mandate. “Nor,” she added, “does the Finance Department believe the $50 million would be sufficient, should the mandate progress.”

    “I know that we have some debate about that, and I’m not sure why you need an appropriation because you’re going to have that class taught in a high school anyway, and you’ll have a teacher teaching that class as opposed to another class,” McCarthy responded. “Just simple mathematics; I don’t get it yet.”

    Turning to Mike Torres, director of the curriculum frameworks division of the California Department of Education, McCarthy asked, “Do we think that we need, uh, any other resources? Um, on the lead-up to, uh, ethnic studies throughout California?”

    Torres answered, “Gearing up for this requirement is likely to be a multi-year process with costs exceeding $50 million statewide (for districts) to make that happen.”

    In an analysis of the financial impact of AB 101, the Finance Department estimated the implementation cost of ethnic studies at $272 million. Alvares said that the 2021 ballpark estimate would need to be recalculated, and he wouldn’t hazard a guess of the cost other than to say it would be well over $100 million annually to reimburse districts.

    Jewish caucus finds an ally in Newsom

    Despite uncertainty over funding, intense work continues on developing ethnic studies curricula and piloting courses throughout the state. This week, the California Department of Education launched a website dedicated to Southeast Asian ethnic studies, including separate K-12 lesson plans exploring Vietnamese, Cambodian and Hmong histories and experiences. Chapters on Native American studies are planned for next fall. 

    The site was developed by the county education offices in Orange, Humboldt and San Diego counties, with $14 million in state funding from the 2021-22 budget. San Diego County has also hosted multiple series of ethnic studies webinars for teachers.  

    Meanwhile, the spread of the liberated ethnic studies curriculum developed as an alternative to the state’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Framework has escalated tensions between its creator and promoter, the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium and the Jewish Legislative Caucus. The “liberated” version has been a focus of several lawsuits (see here, here and here) brought by Jewish families and supportive law firms charging that its one-sided, ideological opposition to the state of Israel and its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza has fostered antisemitism in schools.

    Critics say that “liberated” ethnic studies view race relations in America as a continuing struggle against white supremacy and its oppression of people of color. It stresses the importance for students to challenge capitalism and the forces of imperialism, including Israel, which the curriculum calls a modern outpost of “settler colonialism.”

    At the urging of the Legislative Jewish Caucus, the Legislature wrote into AB 101 that school districts should not use unadopted portions of earlier drafts of the model curriculum — an oblique reference to the elements of the liberated curriculum that were excised from the first draft. Advocates of liberated ethnic studies charged that the clause and other “guardrails” seek to squelch their free speech.

    But the Jewish caucus has found an ally in Newsom. In August 2023, Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and a Newsom adviser, wrote in a memo to school districts, “We have been advised, however, that some vendors are offering materials that may not meet the requirements of AB 101, particularly the second requirement (not reflecting or promoting any bias, bigotry, or discrimination), an important guardrail highlighted when the bill was signed. Accordingly, before any curriculum or instructional materials for ethnic studies courses are selected, we strongly encourage you to closely scrutinize them to ensure that they meet the above requirements.”

    Newsom cites the need to include lessons about Jewish Americans in the ethnic studies curriculum in his 17-page Golden State Plan to Combat Antisemitism, issued in April 2024. It also includes, “The Governor will work with the Jewish Caucus and Legislature to pursue legislation strengthening the guardrails established by AB 101 to ensure all ethnic studies courses are free from bias, bigotry, and discriminatory content.”

    Second attempt at tighter guardrails

    That is the intent of Assembly Bill 2918, authored by Assemblymembers Rick Zbur, D-Los Angeles, and Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay. Introduced late in the last legislative session, it ran aground amid opposition from the liberated consortium and the California Teachers Association as well as criticism that it short-circuited the full legislative process. Addis and Zbur promised to start from scratch and confer with opponents and Latino, Black, and Asian legislative caucuses.

    The bill called for strengthening vague wording of the guardrails as well as requirements that more opportunities for the public to weigh in on the development of local ethnic studies courses be created before a final vote for adoption by school boards. This has not been the case in some districts and is central to a lawsuit against Santa Ana Unified.

    Newsom has not given any sign of whether he would treat funding and amending AB 101 separately or use funding as leverage for added protections. Zbur, a member of the Jewish caucus, said he’s not calling for that approach.

    “I want ethnic studies to move forward. The entire Jewish caucus supported ethnic studies when it came up (for a vote). We (he and Addis) don’t view this in a context of leverage,” he said. “We actually have faith that the education unions and our colleagues want to ensure that we meet the goals of ethnic studies in a manner that’s appropriate for all students, including Jewish students.”

    But Alvarez, who said he is “fully supportive of ensuring that the guardrails exist from the Jewish caucus perspective,” added that it’s appropriate to revise AB 101 while discussing how to fund it.  

    “We have an opportunity to ensure we get this right,” he said. “And so as we go forward and implement, we need to make sure that we do so in the best way possible. It’s germane to the requirement that it needs to be funded.” 





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  • When will Black minds matter in California’s actions, not just words?

    When will Black minds matter in California’s actions, not just words?


    restorative justice

    Alison Yin for EdSource

    During a recent work trip to another state, I ran into an acquaintance I’d met a few times at education conferences. After our initial chit-chat about jet lag, they brought up a sentiment I’ve increasingly heard lately: Surely I must be glad to do education work in California, where equity isn’t a bad word; where diversity is championed, and state leaders are quick to defend the programs, practices and policies that support students of color.

    It’s becoming harder to fix my face when I hear these words. Rhetoric is one thing, actions and data are another. And in a state where the current trajectory won’t have all Black students at grade level in math until at least 2089, I worry that our focus on saying the right words is taking the place of doing the right thing. 

    Before I get written off as too angry, let me be clear that there are absolutely things to celebrate in California’s approach to education. But here is where the conundrum lies for me. Why is it that California pursues so many positive steps forward in education, but continually sidesteps significant action that would lead to tangible results for Black students? 

    EdTrust—West’s report “Black Minds Matter 2025: Building Bright Black Futures,” comes a decade after we originally issued a call to action for California leaders by launching the Black Minds Matter campaign in 2015. We found a big disconnect between the dreams and aspirations of Black students and the opportunities our education systems give them to succeed. Black students are more likely to attend schools with novice teachers. Black students have the lowest high school graduation rate in California. Fewer Black students are going to college after high school than 10 years ago, and Black students are still underrepresented at California State University and the University of California. On nearly every indicator we analyzed, the education systems charged with caring for our students fail to support Black students. Wouldn’t you be angry if these were your kids or family members? 

    Our reports, policy work, and that of other researchers and advocacy organizations show how many efforts proclaimed as supportive to Black students are performative and piecemeal, or watered down or abandoned altogether, like the changes made to the Black Student Achievement Program in Los Angeles and the quashing of 2023’s Assembly Bill 2774. 

    This work, and some of our previous statements about the pace of progress in the state, have pissed people off. It confounds me that some folks in power are more upset about the ways we describe the data on how schools and colleges are doing for Black students than they are about how schools and colleges are doing for Black students. We have to remember that there are real people behind these data points.

    Some folks told us not to share this data and advocate strongly for Black students right now. The political climate is too tenuous to speak up for Black students, they said. We need to fly under the radar rather than speak loudly and boldly, they said. It is not lost on me that the individuals suggesting this quieter path are well-intentioned. However, as professor Shaun Harper points out, now is precisely the time for organizations and educational institutions “to showcase DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) activities to confirm that they are not the racist, divisive, discriminatory and anti-American activities that obstructionists erroneously claim”. 

    California may be in the crosshairs, but we are also at a crossroads.

    The dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education is being framed as returning education to the states. So, let’s take them up on that in ways that not only reaffirm our values verbally, but also through new, bolder actions.

    Many of our recommendations are not new, except one: We need a California Commission on Black Education Transformation. Our current education infrastructure is failing far too many Black students. As we outline in our report and will continue to share in upcoming materials, we are not proposing that this commission act as another task force, but rather that it serves as an entity with power and authority around resources and accountability measures. We need an overhaul, and now —when states are being told they are empowered to lead on education — is the time to do it. 

    What I reminded the colleague I saw at the recent conference is this: The fight for racial justice has always been an uphill battle, even in California. Yet what we have in California — or at least what I am hoping we have — are leaders who will not only not back down, but will embrace the call to be bold.

    I’ve advised college students and been an adjunct professor. I would never tell a student to temper their expectations for themselves. I would never say to a student not to fight for what is right because it is hard. I hope California doesn’t, either. 

    •••

    Christopher J. Nellum, Ph.D., is executive director of EdTrust—West, a nonprofit organization advancing policies and practices to dismantle the racial and economic barriers embedded in the California education system. 

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Will Ron DeSantis Outrun This Scandal?

    Will Ron DeSantis Outrun This Scandal?


    Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter in Florida who has had plenty to investigate during the regime of Ron DeSantis. His blog is called “Seeking Rents.” This is a post you should not miss.

    The governor acts like a dictator, and the Republican-dominated legislature doesn’t stop him. Remember the takeover of New College? It was the only innovative, free-thinking public institution of higher education in the state. It was tiny, only 700 students. But DeSantis took control of the college’s board, hired a new president (a crony) and set about destroying everything that made it unique. He issued one executive order after another for the entire state to crush DEI and assure the only permissible thought mirrored his own. He attacked drag queens and threatened to punish bars and hotels that allowed them to perform. He created a private army, subject only to his control. He selected politicians to run major universities. He imposed thought control on the state. Fascism thrives in Florida.

    Thus far, he has gotten away with his gambits. But Garcia doesn’t think he will get away with this one.

    He writes:

    A simmering scandal erupted Friday afternoon when the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and Politico Florida revealed that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a $10 million payment last fall to a charity founded by the governor’s wife — which then turned around and gave the money to groups that helped finance the governor’s campaign against a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in Florida.

    In a nutshell: The DeSantis administration pressured a major state contractor to make a $10 million donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, the controversial charity spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis. It was part of a settlement negotiated with Centene Corp., after the state’s largest Medicaid contractor overbilled the state by at least $67 million.

    Days later, Hope Florida transferred that $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits. The state-backed charity gave $5 million each to “Save Our Society From Drugs,” an anti-marijuana group founded by a late Republican megadonor, and “Secure Florida’s Future,” a political vehicle controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Big Business lobbying group.

    And days after that, Save Our Society From Drugs and Secure Florida’s Future gave a combined $8.5 million to “Keep Florida Clean,” a political committee — chaired by Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff — created to oppose Amendment 3, the amendment on last year’s ballot that would have allowed Floridians to use marijuana recreationally rather than solely for medicinal reasons.

    It’s a daisy chain that may have transformed $10 million of public money — money meant to pay for health insurance for poor, elderly and disabled Floridians — into funding for anti-marijuana campaign ads.

    DeSantis, of course, has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong while also lashing out in increasingly vitriolic ways at everyone from the Republican speaker of the state House to the newspaper reporters digging into the story.

    But at least one prominent GOP lawmaker — Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who has been presiding over hearings into Hope Florida — told the Times and Herald that the transaction chain “looks like criminal fraud by some of those involved.”

    Clearly, this looks very bad. But it is also by no means an isolated incident. 

    In fact, this is part of a larger pattern of potential abuses that Ron DeSantis committed last fall when he chose to turn the power of state government against two citizen-led constitutional amendments that appeared on the November ballot: Amendment 3 and Amendment 4, which would have ended Florida’s statewide abortion ban.

    Consider what we already know about how DeSantis financed his campaigns against the two amendments using public money taken from taxpayers — and private money taken from donors who got public favors from the governor.

    • Five state agencies directly funded television commercials meant to weaken support for the marijuana and abortion-rights ballot measures. We still don’t know the full extent of their spending, although Seeking Rents has estimated the total taxpayer tab at nearly $20 million. We also know that the DeSantis administration commandeered money for anti-marijuana advertising from Florida’s share of a nationwide legal settlement with the opioid industry — money that was supposed to be spent combatting the opioid addiction crisis.
    • At the same time, another nonprofit funded by Florida taxpayers poured at least $5 million into television ads attempting to soften Florida’s image on women’s healthcare at a time when Florida’s near-total abortion was under intense attack. It was the Florida Pregnancy Care Networks’ first-ever TV ad campaign. And its commercials, which were overseen by DeSantis administration staffers, complemented the state agency ads against the abortion-rights amendment — right down to using the same slogan.
    • Last June, after DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have strictly regulated the state’s hemp industry, CBS News Miami revealedthat industry executives and lobbyists promised to raise $5 million in exchange for the veto for the governor to spend on his campaign against Amendment 3. “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this,” a hemp industry representative wrote in one message that included a bank routing number for the Republican Party of Florida. “We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto,” a hemp executive wrote in another message.
    • In the closing weeks of the campaign, records show that the Big Tobacco giant Philip Morris International gave $500,000 to DeSantis’ personal political committee — which was also chaired by the governor’s then-chief of staff and which DeSantis was using to campaign against both Amendment 3 and Amendment 4. Shortly after the election, the DeSantis administration handed Philip Morris a lucrative tax break, ruling that the company could sell a new line of electronically heated tobacco sticks free of state tobacco taxes.

    There were other abuses of power, too. DeSantis and his team threatened to criminally prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4. They sent state police to the homes of Florida voters who signed Amendment 4 petitions. And they hijacked the ballot-writing process for Amendment 4.

    There’s a reason why the DeSantis administration made sure to extract a promise of legal immunityfrom the organization that sponsored Amendment 4 as part of a legal settlement negotiated after the election.

    DeSantis’ tactics worked. Though Amendments 3 and 4 each won majority support from Florida voters — 55.9 percent for recreational marijuana, 57.2 percent for abortion rights — both fell short of the 60 percent support needed to amend the state constitution.

    But, suddenly, it looks like this may not be over — at least not for Ron DeSantis.

    House Republicans are seeking troves of records from the DeSantis administration, including text messages and emails related to Hope Florida. The chamber has also scheduled another hearing on the Casey DeSantis charity next week.

    What’s more, the House also unveiled a sweeping ethics reform package last week that would, among other things, explicitly expose senior government officials to criminal penalties if they interfere with elections.

    That particular legislation would also prohibit state employees from soliciting money for political campaigns — an idea that emerged after DeSantis aides got caught squeezing lobbyistsfor more donations to their boss’ political committee ahead of a possible Casey DeSantis campaign for governor….

    Ron DeSantis bet his political future on beating the marijuana and abortion-rights amendments. And he won both of those battles.

    But it may turn out that he ultimately lost the war.

    Wishful thinking? I hope not.

    To give you an idea of how far/right the legislature is, Garcia lists some of the bills that are currently moving through the legislative process:

    • House Bill 549: Requires all new public school textbooks to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-29 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor.
    • House Bill 575: Replaces Gulf of Mexico with “Gulf of America” in state law. Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-27 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor….
    • House Bill 1517: Allows someone to file a wrongful death lawsuit seeking lost wages on behalf of an embryo or fetus. Passed the House of Representatives by a 79-32 vote. (See votes)…
    • House Bill 7031: Cuts the state sales tax rate from 6 percent to 5.25 percent. Passed the House of Representatives by a 112-0 vote. (See votes)
    • House Bill 123: Allows a traditional public school to be converted into a charter school without the consent of the teachers who work at the school. Passed the House Education & Employment Committee by an 11-4 vote. (See votes)



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  • Cal Poly Humboldt will cover gap between tuition and aid for eligible students next fall

    Cal Poly Humboldt will cover gap between tuition and aid for eligible students next fall


    A new initiative at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, seeks to allay students’ doubts about whether they can afford to enroll there. If there is a gap remaining after traditional financial aid awards, Humboldt says it will pick up the balance starting in the fall.

    Cal Poly Humboldt’s Green & Gold Guarantee makes it the second among the 23 California State University (CSU) campuses to launch a last-dollar tuition guarantee after California State University, Fresno began one last fall. Based on previous enrollment trends, the Humboldt program could cover as many as 2,000 students a year.

    The average award is expected to fill a gap of roughly $200 on average, not an enormous amount on its own but enough to provide a sense of stability to worried students, officials say. And by attracting and keeping more students, Humboldt hopes to continue its climb back from a drastic enrollment drop in the past decade. 

    Chrissy Holliday, Humboldt’s vice president for enrollment management and student success, said students will learn whether they are eligible for the guarantee soon after submitting financial aid applications, rather than having to wait for their entire aid package to be determined in detail. “It creates just a level of certainty that they wouldn’t have otherwise,” she said. 

    Cal Poly Humboldt’s guarantee program is open initially to new first-year and transfer students who are California residents or otherwise qualify for in-state tuition and meet financial criteria. It can continue for up to four years for full-time students and two for transfers. There is no separate application after filing the usual Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or the California Dream Act Application. The guarantee at the campus of roughly 6,000 students covers tuition and mandatory fees — such as those used to fund health services and the student center — but does not cover other expenses like food and housing.

    Admissions trends suggest the program could benefit hundreds of incoming students, if not more. Cal Poly Humboldt estimates that 300 first-time students per year would have received the guarantee in 2023 and 2024 if the program had existed. The university additionally admitted an average of 1,700 applicants who would have been eligible had they chosen to enroll at Humboldt. 

    “When it comes to programs like this, it’s so, so helpful to students that are low-income, maybe first-generation, whose primary barrier to college access is going to be financial aid,” said Rachel Perry, who assists high school students with financial aid applications through her work with the North Coast California Student Opportunity and Access Program Consortium. “There are so many students who I see at my workshops every week that are discouraged because they feel like, ‘Even if I get some financial aid, is it going to be enough?’”

    California State University, Fresno, launched a similar initiative, Tuition Advantage, in fall 2024. Phong Yang, the interim vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Fresno State, said the program is a response to concerns from students who report in surveys that “the cost of college is always towards the top of their priorities.” Given that reality, university officials were also concerned about how the troubled rollout of the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid might impact prospective students.

    In its first year, Fresno State awarded 111 students between $70 and $3,300 through Tuition Advantage, Yang said, at a total cost of roughly $200,000. It’s hard to gauge whether the new program was a deciding factor for those students in its first year, he added, but enrollment rose 3.6% this fall from 2023.

    Students weighing whether to pursue a college degree may have difficulty estimating how much their education will cost because the sticker price on many academic programs can deviate from students’ actual costs after scholarships, financial aid and loans. Living expenses can also add to students’ overall cost of attendance, adding to unpredictability.

    At Cal Poly Humboldt, a full-time, first-time undergraduate living off campus with family and receiving in-state tuition could expect expenses of $12,316 a year including food, housing and other costs before aid, according to federal data for the 2022-23 school year. An in-state student living on campus faced estimated expenses of $24,856 before aid. 

    But if a student qualifies for financial aid, that won’t be their final price tag. At Cal Poly Humboldt, in-state undergraduates in the lowest income bracket — those with a family income of $30,000 or less — faced an average net price of $8,090 for all costs in the 2022-23 school year after average aid awards, the most recent data available. Those in the next-highest income bracket, which is capped at $48,000, had an average net price of $9,623.

    The Green & Gold Guarantee could reduce tuition and fee costs further for selected students. Eligibility will be based on a measure of financial need called the student aid index, which is calculated when students apply for state or federal assistance to attend college. Manny Rodriguez, the director of policy and advocacy in California for The Institute for College Access & Success, said the program seems like it will support low- to moderate-income students, including those who receive a minimum or partial Pell Grant, a common form of federal aid. It also could support students who do not qualify for a Cal Grant because of factors like age or time out of high school, he said, even though they are Pell-eligible.

    Students who take a break from school or return to Humboldt after transferring to another institution lose eligibility. The guarantee is also not open to students in graduate, credential or extended education programs, nor to students who entered Humboldt before fall 2025.

    To be eligible, students must also be enrolled full time, maintain at least a 2.0 GPA and renew their financial aid application annually.

    Cal Poly Humboldt, formerly Humboldt State, has in recent years transitioned to a polytechnic university, concentrating more on science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs. 

    The university in far Northern California anticipated that its polytechnic status would bring a wave of new students after a period of decline. That prediction has proven at least partially true: The student body grew 5% between 2021, the year before its name change became official, and fall 2024. However, overall enrollment remains more than 30% lower than a decade ago in 2015. While Cal Poly Humboldt’s beautiful location attracts students, others have felt too far away from metro areas around the state. 

    Cal State data shows that another challenge has been retaining students who are already enrolled. Though Cal Poly Humboldt’s first year continuation rate has risen slightly in recent school years, it still lags most of its sister campuses in the CSU system. Across the CSU system, 83% of full-time, first-time freshmen who started in fall 2023 continued to a second year, while a slimmer 76% of Cal Poly Humboldt first-year students returned to the campus for year two. 

    Mary Mangubat, a Cal Poly Humboldt student who participates in the Students for Quality Education internship program, which is funded by the California Faculty Association, said one of her concerns about the Green & Gold Guarantee is that it’s not open to current students. “We as continuing students don’t get a lot of support or outreach from the university,” Mangubat said, “and so people often can’t sustain themselves here on this campus and they transfer out.” 

    The university anticipates that the program will cost about $82,000 annually. In its first year, it will receive one-time funding from the university’s contract with food vendor Chartwells, Humboldt VP Holliday said, and will be funded by tuition revenue going forward.

    This post has been updated with the legal name of California State University, Fresno.





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  • How will changes in federal policy impact California education? Stay up to date here

    How will changes in federal policy impact California education? Stay up to date here


    Despite Congress working through a spending deal to maintain federal grant funding for Head Start over the next six months, staff members at Head Start are starting to fear for the program’s future and the potential impacts on the Bay Area’s preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds, the East Bay Times reported. 

    So far, there aren’t any signs that Head Start will face cuts. But Melanee Cottrill, the executive director of Head Start California told the East Bay Times that “the broad, overarching challenge is all the uncertainty.” 

    “Even in areas as relatively close-knit and compact as the Bay Area, every program is a little different to meet the needs of the community — whatever those are — in the places where they are,” Cottrill told the Times. “Regardless of what kind of organization you are, losing any chunk of your funding would be a challenge.”

    Funding approved on March 14 isn’t enough to help Head Start employees keep up with cost of living increases. And earlier this month, a Head Start program run by the Santa Clara County’s Office of Education had to hand out pink slips. 

    Meanwhile, in February alone, roughly 3,650 children in Contra Costa County received subsidized preschool. 

    Contra Costa County’s Employment and Human Services Department director, Marla Stuart, told the Times said several actions taken by the federal government — including threats to reject grants that support Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — have already impacted the program. 

    She also pointed to Project 2025 and claims that Head Start’s federal office is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and should be cut. 

    “I don’t take the ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia at a board meeting, according to the Times. “We’re not going to know until the end, but if we want to advocate to say, ‘here’s the impact of these cuts,’ no one is stopping me from talking about that.”

    Several legal experts, according to the Times, have said that grant money for Head Start isn’t in jeopardy, unless the program is specifically cut. 

    “I’ve got lists of where possible funding impacts can occur, and I think we have a responsibility to talk about that,” Gioia said, according to the Times. “We’re not creating fear, we’re talking about reality.”

    —EdSource staff





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  • Thomas L. Friedman: After Trump’s Tariff Fiasco, Will Any Other Nation Trust America?

    Thomas L. Friedman: After Trump’s Tariff Fiasco, Will Any Other Nation Trust America?


    Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs opinion writer for The New York Times. In this post, he excoriates Trump for his arrogance and stupidity in handling the tariffs issue, and especially for his arrogance and stupidity in dealing with China. First, he insisted that he would “hang tough” on his plan to impose draconian tariffs. When the stock and bond markets crashed, he decided to put a 90-day pause on tariffs, exempting China.

    He has alienated our allies and outraged China. His arrogance has isolated us in the world as a faithless bully. It seems that Trump’s “art of the deal” consists of bullying, threatening, insulting, and humiliating the other party. It doesn’t work in the international stage. Trump dissipated long-standing alliances and has made us look foolish in the eyes of the world. In less than three months, he has squandered good will, scorned close relationships, and thrown away our reputation as “leader of the free world.” The emperor has no clothes. He stands naked before the world as a stupid and reckless man.

    It’s important to remember that Trump was never a successful businessman. He went bankrupt six times. No American bank would extend loans to him because of his abysmal record. Yet his MAGA cult believes in his business acumen because he played a successful businessman on TV. He is a performer who knows nothing about foreign trade, economics, or history.

    How will we survive four years of Trump’s demented whims?

    Friedman wrote:

    I have many reactions to President Trump’s largely caving on his harebrained plan to tariff the world, but overall, one reaction just keeps coming back to me: If you hire clowns, you should expect a circus. And my fellow Americans, we have hired a group of clowns.

    Think of what Trump; his chief knucklehead, Howard Lutnick (the commerce secretary); his assistant chief knucklehead, Scott Bessent (the Treasury secretary); and his deputy assistant chief knucklehead, Peter Navarro (the top trade adviser), have told us repeatedly for the past weeks: Trump won’t back off on these tariffs because — take your choice — he needs them to keep fentanyl from killing our kids, he needs them to raise revenue to pay for future tax cuts, and he needs them to pressure the world to buy more stuff from us. And he couldn’t care less what his rich pals on Wall Street say about their stock market losses.

    After creating havoc in the markets standing on these steadfast “principles” — undoubtedly prompting many Americans to sell low out of fear — Trump reversed much of it on Wednesday, announcing a 90-day pause on certain tariffs to most countries, excluding China.

    Message to the world — and to the Chinese: “I couldn’t take the heat.” If it were a book it would be called “The Art of the Squeal.”

    But don’t think for a second that all that’s been lost is money. A whole pile of invaluable trust just went up in smoke as well. In the last few weeks, we have told our closest friends in the world — countries that stood shoulder to shoulder with us after Sept. 11, in Iraq and in Afghanistan — that none of them were any different from China or Russia. They were all going to get tariffed under the same formula — no friends-and-family discounts allowed.

    Do you think these former close U.S. allies are ever going to trust getting into a trench with this administration again?

    This was the trade equivalent of the Biden administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan, from which it never quite recovered. But at least Joe Biden got us out of a costly no-win war for which America, in my opinion, is now much better off.

    Trump just put us into a no-win war.

    How so? We do have a trade imbalance with China that does need to be addressed. Trump is right about that. China now controls one-third of global manufacturing and has the industrial engines to pretty much make everything for everyone one day if it is allowed to. That is not good for us, for Europe or for many developing countries. It is not even good for China, given the fact that by putting so many resources into export industries it is ignoring the meager social safety net it offers its people and its even more threadbare public health care system.

    But when you have a country as big as China — 1.4 billion people — with the talent, infrastructure and savings it has, the only way to negotiate is with leverage on our side of the table. And the best way to get leverage would have been for Trump to enlist our allies in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, India, Australia and Indonesia into a united front. Make it a negotiation of the whole world versus China.

    Then you say to Beijing: All of us will gradually raise our tariffs on your exports over the next two years to pressure you to shift from your export economy to a more domestic-oriented one. But we will also invite you to build factories and supply chains in our countries — 50-50 joint ventures — to transfer your expertise back to us the way you compelled us to do for you. We don’t want a bifurcated world. It will be less prosperous for all and less stable.

    But instead of making it the whole industrial world against China, Trump made it America against the whole industrial world and China.

    Now, Beijing knows that Trump not only blinked, but he so alienated our allies, so demonstrated that his word cannot be trusted for a second, that many of them may never align with us against China in the same way. They may, instead, see China as a better, more stable long-term partner than us.

    What a pathetic, shameful performance. Happy Liberation Day.



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  • Harvard Will Not Bow to Trump’s Demands

    Harvard Will Not Bow to Trump’s Demands


    Trump has been waging war against the nation’s top universities, demanding that they accept his orders to stamp out DEI or lose their federal grants. Trump uses the phony claim that he is combatting anti-Semitism, but the reality is that he is silencing academic freedom and free speech. For the record, Trump has accepted the support of American Nazis, so his concern for Jews cannot be taken seriously.

    The first campus to receive Trump’s demands was Columbia University. Trump threatened to withhold $400 million if Columbia did not put several departments (Middle Eastern Studies, African American Studies, and South Asian Studies) into receivership. Sadly, Columbia complied.

    Harvard was threatened with the loss of $9 billion in research grants. Harvard said NO. Harvard will not bend the knee to Trump as he seeks to trample academic freedom of faculty and students.

    Mike Damiano of The Boston Globe reported:

    Lawyers for Harvard University said Monday the school will not comply with a new list of demands sent by the Trump administration on Friday, as part of the government’s purported crackdown on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations at elite universities.

    The new demands expand on a previous list sent to Harvard’s leaders on April 3, which ordered Harvard to close diversity offices and cooperate with federal immigration authorities, among other directives.

    In a message to the campus community Monday, Harvard president Alan Garber vowed that the university will not yield to the government’s pressure campaign. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber said.

    Harvard’s stance is the most forceful pushback yet against the Trump administration’s crackdown on elite universities. It is a sharp contrast to the approach taken by Columbia University’s leaders who acquiesced to a list of demands from the Trump administration last month. Columbia promised to change student disciplinary procedures and place a Middle East studies department under new oversight, among other measures.

    The Harvard demands went further. Two weeks ago, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force placed $9 billion in federal funding under review and followed up with its first list of demands.

    Then, last Friday, the government sent Harvard a much more detailed explanation of its demands, which Harvard released Monday afternoon. Harvard’s lawyers said the university “is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”



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