Anaheim Union High School District student ambassadors in front of City Hall.
Credit: Jason Moon/Anaheim Union High School District
My 16-year-old son, Eli, came into my bedroom the other night to share a story that was upsetting him. He had been on the phone with Everett, one of his closest friends. They were talking about marketing strategies for Eli’s streetwear business. At some point, Eli paused and asked Everett, “What do you plan to do for a career in the future?” Everett replied, “I have no idea.” And then followed with, “Maybe I’ll just continue to work with my uncle.” Eli knew that was a fallback option, and not one driven by a sense of purpose or passion.
For Eli, a kid fortunate enough to inherently have a true sense of purpose and passion, Everett’s comments saddened him. The fact is, the vast majority of young people go through school without a sense of purpose. Our school system does not foster it. The majority of schools and districts remain compliance-focused and attend narrowly to the flawed set of outcomes represented by our state’s accountability system, like test scores, attendance rates, suspensions, etc.
Fortunately, there are exceptions. In California, we have many examples of innovative teachers, schools, and even entire districts that are fostering student purpose exceptionally well. The problem is, these examples sit as islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity.
In Cajon Valley Union School District, their vision is “Happy kids, in healthy relationships, on a path to gainful employment.” The vision is unusual in two ways: First, it’s rare for a K-8 district to focus on employment, and second, it says nothing about academic achievement. Yet, it’s truly visionary because it makes a calculated assumption that, if kids find joy at school and in learning, if they feel a sense of belonging and trust from being in healthy relationships with peers and adults, and if they know themselves well enough to have a purpose and direction for their futures, then they will learn. The vision includes an understanding of psychology and treats students as humans, rather than as parts on an assembly line. Best of all, in Cajon Valley, from Superintendent David Miyashiro on down, they live their vision every day.
At the district’s Bostonia Global high school, students are in advisory with a known and trusted adult for a full eight hours per week, including time at the beginning and end of every day. There, they not only build strong and trusting relationships with their adviser and peers, but also have a forum for exploring their identities, working through social-emotional challenges, setting goals, pursuing their college and career interests, and making plans for the future. Their “classes” are more like workshops with extended periods of time to delve into projects based on their interests and/or in service to their school and community. They feel like learning is relevant and purposeful. For that reason, they show up.
Through their World of Work program, kids come to know their strengths, interests and values. Through their TEDxKids@ElCajon program, students have freedom to pursue and articulate their passion.
In Anaheim Union High School District, Superintendent Mike Matsuda and his team have developed the Career Preparedness Systems Framework that blends three driving forces: giving students voice and purpose; promoting a set of durable skills, called the “5Cs” — collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity and compassion; and teaching students technical skills needed to succeed in the world of work. Students see relevance in many ways. They participate in career pathways aligned to their interests. They pursue projects of personal value and in service to their community. In doing so, about 2,000 AUHSD students per year earn the state’s Seal of Civic Engagement.
In Porterville Unified School District, about 4 of 5 high school students opt to participate in one of 14 open-access “linked learning” pathways across multiple fields, including engineering, hospitality, law and justice, multimedia, environmental science, agriculture, business and finance, and health. Through these pathways, students pursue their interests by doing interdisciplinary projects, participating in internships, running student enterprises and connecting with industry mentors. One of the district’s partners,Climate Action Pathways for Schools, engages students in internships to support the district’s many grants to reduce greenhouse gases (HVAC systems, solar energy, electric buses and more).
It’s no surprise that all three districts are seeing tremendous results. While pursuing distinct approaches, all are organized to foster students’ curiosity, exploration and pathway interests. They honor students’ identities, cultures and languages. They nurture trusting relationships and a sense of belonging. And, they give students a voice in what they learn, a choice in how they learn and demonstrate their competency, and agency to take ownership over their learning journey.
In education, it’s unjust for some students to have access to learning opportunities like these, while others do not; our commitment to equity must be systemic. While some students, like my son Eli, will create their own path driven by their own sense of purpose, we should not assume that all young people have the inclination, capacity and support to do so. Until we shift to a system that is increasingly student-centered, equitable, and competency-based, too many students will lack purpose. In turn, that lack of purpose will continue to feed chronic absenteeism, flat test scores and other challenges that ail the education system.
Ultimately, as educators and society, we have become complicit — valuing what we measure, rather than measuring what we value. Let’s change that.
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Roman Stearns is the executive director of Scaling Student Success, a California partnership dedicated to educating the whole child.
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.
Embattled Chico State biology professor David Stachura is no longer employed by the university, a spokesperson said in a two-sentence statement issued Thursday.
The spokesperson, Andrew Staples, would not say if Stachura, who had been on paid suspension for more than a year, was fired or resigned. He was the subject of two investigations that were nearing conclusions. One was on appeal to the chancellor’s office and the other was scheduled for mediation in April.
Reached later by phone, Staples cited personnel privacy laws in declining further comment.
Stachura’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad, did not return messages Thursday.
The end of Stachura’s tenure at Chico State comes after a contentious court case to ban him from the campus and a failed libel suit he brought against a colleague.
EdSource reported in December 2022 that an investigation found that Stachura had an inappropriate relationship with a student that included sex in his office in 2020 that could be heard through the walls, causing colleagues to report him. Stachura has repeatedly denied the affair.
He received only light punishment for the affair and within months was named the university’s “Outstanding Professor” of the 2020-21 academic year. The award was rescinded after EdSource reported on it.
Stachura’s estranged wife later filed court papers in their ongoing divorce case alleging that he had threatened to shoot the professors who reported him and cooperated in the university’s investigation.
Stachura was a tenured biology professor and was considered an expert in the use of zebra fish for medical research.
A member of the biology department expressed relief Thursday that Stachura is no longer on the faculty.
“It’s about time,” Gordon Wolfe, a semi-retired biology professor, said. The biology department, he said, “is no longer dysfunctional. People are happy again.”
Wolfe had reported to the university the allegations that Stachura’s wife made in court filings. A university investigation of the threats found that Stachura was not a danger, and he was allowed to keep working. The university’s police chief, who was a member of a panel that probed the matter, later testified that he disagreed with that finding.
In November, a report by a San Diego lawyer hired to investigate how Chico State handled the Stachura matter revealed that former campus President Gayle Hutchinson knew about the affair with the student and the alleged threat to shoot colleagues when she approved his promotion to full professor. She retired last year.
The report found that the university violated no existing procedures in how it handled the Stachura matters, including not informing faculty and students that Stachura allegedly threatened gun violence on campus.
The saga did get the attention of state lawmakers. An Assembly committee cited EdSource’s reporting on Stachura multiple times in a report issued earlier this month that concluded that students and faculty members across the state don’t trust how schools deal with matters of sexual misconduct as governed by Title IX of federal education law.
The report’s recommendations included forming a task force to examine whether “a statewide office to provide guidance and to monitor the compliance of post secondary education institutions with sex discrimination laws” can be formed and also having the leaders of the three systems issue annual compliance reports on sexual misconduct cases to lawmakers.
Kindergartners paint a mural at Ellen Ochoa Learning Center in LAUSD.
Credit: Courtesy of Nightflare
Marcos Hernandez lived in a garage for years when he first came to this country from El Salvador as a refugee at age 11. He left his small pueblo of San Gerardo alone, fleeing a country ravaged by war, seeking a better life.
“After you’ve been hungry, after you’ve been bombed and you have survived so many times, you build up this belief that I must be here for a purpose,” said Hernandez, a soft-spoken man with an understated manner that belies his heroic life story. “There must be a reason. And you just try to follow that. I am here to serve my community.”
That’s why he’s devoted his career to lifting the lives of children in Cudahy, a tiny, densely populated, and tightly knit city near the Los Angeles River and the 710 freeway, where roughly a third of the population lives below the poverty line. Hernandez went on to become the principal of a school, the Ellen Ochoa Learning Center, just a few blocks from the garage he once called home.
“This is the poorest city west of the Mississippi River,” says Hernandez, who is candid about his struggles. “I failed most of my classes my first year because I worked the graveyard shift. Almost everyone on my block belonged to a gang. Getting in and out of that community was hard. There was always somebody waiting to jump me because I didn’t want to join the gang.”
Marcos Hernandez, principal, leading an arts education project at Ellen Ochoa Learning Center in LAUSD.Courtesy Marcos Hernandez
Poverty is often generational. Hernandez understands the lingering trauma it leaves behind. He will never forget living in that garage, only being allowed to enter the main house and use the bathroom at certain times of day.
“It was rough, but after a while, you train your body,” he says, matter-of-factly.
Overcoming adversity with grace is in his bones. He doesn’t dwell on his own hardships, which include battling cancer, but he certainly understands the power of resilience. When he works with families in his district, he knows how hard they fight to keep their heads above water. Most of the parents at Ellen Ochoa did not finish high school, but all want better for their children, many of whom are English language learners.
“There are patterns of oppression that our students experience,” says Hernandez, a father of three who radiates patience and calm. “It’s this perpetual cycle where they just don’t have the opportunities that kids in other communities have. I want to raise that bar. The thing that I have always said, that I try to live by every day, is whatever kids in Malibu, kids in Palos Verdes, have access to, I want kids here to have.”
That’s where arts education comes in. He sees the arts as a path to equity, a way to help children heal from the scars left by grinding poverty. That’s the vision of Turnaround Arts: California, an arts education program founded by famed architect Frank Gehry and education advocate Malissa Shriver that transforms the state’s lowest-performing schools through the arts.
“We’re talking about human beings, not data points and test scores,” said Shriver. “People have thought the arts were like a cherry on top. And instead, we’re actually the undergirding of it all. We’re not the extra, we’re the foundation.”
Affiliated with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washngton, D.C., the project has reached 35,000 students in 33 elementary and middle schools across the state in the last 10 years, and hopes are high that Proposition 28, the state’s new arts education mandate, will help fuel expansion.
“It’s a huge driver to ensure more equity so that we’re not relying on parent fundraising to decide who gets the arts in schools,” said Turnaround’s executive director, Barbara Palley. “One thing that we’re excited about is it would open the path for more schools that are interested in Turnaround Arts.”
Hernandez believes the children who are least likely to be exposed to the arts are those who need it the most. Most schools that participate in this program see gains in both reading and math, a finding that tracks with exhaustive evidence that the arts boost academic achievement as well as spark engagement.
“My specialty is supporting students who are struggling,” he says. “They need a second chance or a third chance to get them going. Because that was me. This education thing wasn’t in my mind at all. It wasn’t on my radar. I needed money.”
His childhood was often grueling, working in the fields at the age of 10, becoming a dishwasher at 12, but he has never wavered in his love of people, his desire to make a difference in the world. When his father questioned why he’d give up a solid job as a restaurant manager to go to college, he stuck to his guns.
“You should have seen his face. He was kind of happy for me, but he couldn’t understand why you’d leave a good job,” he recalls. “It clicked for me at that age that the more that we could push ourselves, the more we could have an impact on future generations.”
A mural painted by students at Ellen Ochoa Learning Center in LAUSD.Credit: Courtesy of Nightflare
That’s the level of dedication he has brought to his work at Ellen Ochoa, and he plans to bring the same tenacity to his new assignment as principal of nearby International Studies Learning Center at Legacy High School. While he says it will be hard to walk away from Ellen Ochoa, where he has watched the arts bolster academics and curb misbehavior, he feels certain the work will continue.
“It’s not about me as an individual,” he says with characteristic humility. “It’s a collective project; it belongs to the community. They own it.”
Covid hit the district hard. The school quickly became a community hub, providing thousands of meals, Covid tests and vaccinations for those in need.
Hernandez has used the arts as a tool to help rebuild a sense of community, an appreciation of togetherness, coming out of the pandemic. The students have formed an orchestra, they’ve painted murals, and they’ve even designed buildings with the renowned Gehry.
“This is their land. This is their community,” says Hernandez. “When you walk by with your family and you look at the beautiful murals and you say, you know what? I did that. That creates incredible pride for our students.”
His secret weapon is empathy. He treats everyone like family, taking time to get to know children as people as well as students.
A mural painted by kindergarten students at Ellen Ochoa Learning Center in LAUSD.Credit: Courtesy of Nightflare
“Marcos cares for every family member and every child like his own,” said Alison Yoshimoto-Towery, executive director of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity and Learning. “He’s probably done over 500 home visits to learn about the hopes and dreams of his families, and to build trust with the community.”
Giving back is a way of life for Hernandez. He’s an activist as well as an educator. He often rides his bike to work from Long Beach, and along the way, he gives necessities to those living on the bike path by the river.
“He’s a humble-servant type of leader,” says Shriver. “He’s not climbing over people to get to the next position. … There’s no ego there. He treats everybody with a lot of dignity. That’s why he’s such a tremendous leader and also just effective.”
Education isn’t a job for him — it’s a calling. He works nights, weekends, and even during vacations to engage his students in activities that stimulate hearts as well as minds, from running marathons to painting murals.
“That’s my passion,” he says simply. “That’s my purpose, my purpose is to serve.”
Middle school history teachers discuss their lesson plans for teaching about the Great Depression.
Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education
Twenty-five years ago, when pastor Sweetie Williams asked his 12-year-old son, Eli, why he never had homework, the answer exposed scandalous conditions that would reshape California education forever. Eli’s San Francisco middle school — like many of the 20% of California public schools then serving the greatest number of Black, Latino and low-income students — lacked books, operating bathrooms, proper heating and enough qualified teachers to permanently staff classrooms. The historic litigation that followed in May 2000, Williams v. California, established new laws guaranteeing every student three fundamental rights: permanent, qualified teachers; sufficient instructional materials; and clean, safe facilities.
Today, as Assembly Bill 1224 (Valencia) races toward a Senate hearing, we’re witnessing some of the same staffing chaos that prompted the Williams lawsuit. In the West Contra Costa Unified School District, parent Darrell Washington watched his rising fifth grader endure what he called “a chaotic game of musical chairs” with two or three different teachers in a single year. At Stege Elementary, third grade teacher Sam Cleare saw students arrive in her classroom, where she was often “their first credentialed teacher for the entire year.”
In response to teacher shortages, are legislators rising to meet the challenge? Are they grappling with how to raise teacher compensation and improve working conditions to attract and retain educators? Are they seeking to compel those districts stuck on autopilot to do more to recruit new teachers or to place in the classroom their fully certified staff who aren’t currently teaching before turning to short-term substitutes? No.
The principal response of legislators has been AB 1224, which would double the time untrained substitute teachers can remain in any one classroom — from 30 to 60 days, a full third of the school year. The bill thereby lowers teacher standards for the state’s most disadvantaged students, essentially abandoning our children’s rights to equal educational opportunity to accommodate district requests for administrative convenience.
When a teacher vacancy exists, districts are supposed to prioritize assigning the most qualified candidates: fully credentialed teachers first, then interns who have the subject matter training but are still learning how to teach it, followed by emergency-style permits that allow those with partial subject matter competence and teacher training to teach for the year under close supervision, and finally waivers, which permit individuals to teach for a year by waiving unmet certification requirements with state approval if the district can demonstrate the candidate is the best person available.
Williams requires all classrooms to be staffed by a single, designated permanent teacher who is at least minimally certified to teach the whole year, according to one of these bases. That puts the onus on districts to figure out well before the school year begins how they will staff each classroom with a state-qualified teacher.
Thirty-day substitutes — those affected by AB 1224 — are nowhere in this hierarchy precisely because they are not qualified to serve as the teacher of record for any classroom. They receive zero subject matter training and zero instruction on how to teach a subject, so they have no understanding of lesson planning, classroom management, assessing learning, or differentiating learning for special ed students or English learners. They’re educational placeholders, not teachers.
Teachers represent the single most important school-based factor in learning outcomes. When we park unqualified staff in classrooms for months, we’re not solving teacher shortages; we’re creating educational voids that harm student progress for years to come. Our students need qualified educators who provide continuity, expertise and genuine care, not “continuity” with unqualified caretakers.
Statewide teacher assignment data reveals exactly how this policy will worsen existing inequities. While 84% of California’s teachers are fully trained, this drops to just 76% in districts serving working-class communities like West Contra Costa, but rises to 89% in affluent areas.
Schools serving larger populations of low-income students, English learners and foster children are already twice as likely to rely on emergency-style permits. AB 1224 will systematically widen these gaps, exacerbating a two-tiered system where privileged students get qualified teachers while vulnerable students get warm bodies.
Meanwhile, AB 1224’s “accountability” measures provide legislative lip service. The bill relies on existing legal requirements that districts make “reasonable efforts” to recruit more qualified personnel before turning to long-term substitutes. Yet we know from our experiences with West Contra Costa Unified and elsewhere that districts typically make no particular efforts if an obvious candidate is not already in front of them and there is no outside enforcement of the hiring hierarchy. AB 1224 does nothing to change this. The bill does not define “reasonable,” has no documentation requirements, and has no oversight or accountability measures.
And while this same expanded access to substitutes was temporarily allowed during the pandemic, frankly, the whole system was in chaos then, and many virtual classrooms were providing little more than day care, even with qualified teachers. Yet, AB 1224 provides no sunset date like that exception did. To the contrary, the pending proposal is for a permanentchange in law, a permanent authorized dilution of instructional quality, a permanent permission for districts to avoid the hard work of recruiting and retaining qualified educators — all to be disproportionately visited upon the most disadvantaged students in the state.
The response to teacher shortages must not be to lower standards, but the opposite. As if our collective hair were on fire, the state and districts need to be doubling down on bringing back the fully certified teachers who have left the classroom (more than enough to cover the shortages). Likewise, the state and districts need to work harder to develop the next generation of diverse and fully prepared educators. Since the pandemic, California has invested over $2 billion in evidence-based solutions: the National Board Certification Incentive Program, Golden State Teacher Grant Program, teacher residencies, a grow-your-own program, and Educator Effectiveness grants — all designed to increase supply and retention in high-need schools. The latest annual Teacher Supply Report from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing suggests the state is starting to turn a corner as a result of these efforts. New teaching credentials issued in 2023-24 were up over 18% — the first surge in new credentials since the pandemic in 2020-21.
In the meantime, districts have existing tools: emergency permits for at least provisionally qualified candidates, intern teachers and residents, teachers with permits to cover those on statutory leave, and experienced “career substitutes” who already are allowed to teach in a single classroom for 60 days. And before even turning to these substandard options, districts’ “reasonable efforts” must include returning fully credentialed teachers to a district’s highest priority: classroom instruction. When Superintendent Alberto Carvalho took the helm of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in late 2021, one of his first actions was to fill some 700 vacancies with certified educators who had been serving in the district office and various non-teaching roles.
That’s 700 classrooms and several thousand students’ educational lives that were not sacrificed for administrative convenience. Today’s Eli Williamses deserve no less.
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John Affeldt,who was one of the lead counsels on Williams v. California, is a managing attorney at Public Advocates, a public interest law firm in San Francisco, where he focuses on educational equity issues.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Soon after he was inaugurated, Trump began to inflict punishments on his enemies. That included law firms that had represented his political opponents in the past, such as federal prosecutor Jack Smith and prominent Democrats. He threatened to cancel any contracts those firms held with federal agencies and to bar them from future cases involving the federal government. Several major law firms worried about financial losses and immediately gave in to Trump’s demands. All agreed to provide pro bono services for causes chosen by Trump.
But a few major law firms refused to capitulate to Trump. Instead of agreeing to serve him, they went to court. To date, all the firms that challenged Trump have won in court. It’s a basic principle in American law that every defendant should have access to a lawyer and that lawyers can represent defendants no matter what they are accused of doing.
Veteran lawyers have reached a curious conclusion about President Trump’s deals with big law firms this year: they do not appear to be legally valid.
Trump since coming to office has punished certain firms for their past clients or causes, stripping them of security clearances and government contracts, while trumpeting deals with others, including titans like Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins.
The White House said the nine firms it’s settled with agreed to provide about $1 billion in pro bono services in order to curtail investigations into their hiring practices and maintain access to federal buildings. But the details of those agreements remain murky, even after Democratic lawmakers demanded answers.
“The problem with the law firm deals is … they’re not deals at all,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor and former dean at Yale Law School. “You know, a contract that you make with a gun to your head is not a contract.”
Heather Cox Richardson warns about the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which cuts Medicaid and other vital services while increasing the deficit. Republicans cover up the cruel cuts to vital services by lying about them.
The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government. On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”
The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” she said.
Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.
But, as Linda Qiu noted in the New York Timestoday, most of the bill’s provisions have little to do with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans talk about. They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.
House speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that those losing coverage will be 1.4 million unauthorized immigrants, but this is false. As Qiu notes, although 14 states use their own funds to provide health insurance for undocumented immigrant children, and seven of those states provide some coverage for undocumented pregnant women, in fact, “unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally funded Medicaid, except in emergency situations.” Instead, the bill pressures those fourteen states to drop undocumented coverage by reducing their federal Medicaid funding.
MAGA Republicans claim their “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—that’s its official name—dramatically reduces the deficit, but that, too, is a lie.
On Thursday, May 29, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the measure would carry out “the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.” She echoed forty years of Republican claims that the economic growth unleashed by the measure would lead to higher tax revenues, a claim that hasn’t been true since Ronald Reagan made it in the 1980s.
In fact, the CBO estimates that the tax cuts and additional spending in the measure mean “[a]n increase in the federal deficit of $3.8 trillion.” As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, the CBO has been historically very reliable, but Leavitt and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to discount its scoring by claiming, as Johnson said: “They are historically totally unreliable. It’s run by Democrats.”
The director of the CBO, economist Philip Swagel, worked as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the George W. Bush administration. He was appointed in 2019 with the support of Senate Budget Committee chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) and House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth (D-KY). He was reappointed in 2023 with bipartisan support.
Republican cuts to government programs are a dramatic reworking of America’s traditional evidence-based government that works to improve the lives of a majority of Americans. They are replacing that government with an ideologically driven system that concentrates wealth and power in a few hands and denies that the government has a role to play in protecting Americans.
And yet, those who get their news by watching the Fox News Channel are likely unaware of the Republicans’ planned changes to Medicaid. As Aaron Rupar noted, on this morning’s Fox and Friends, the hosts mentioned Medicaid just once. They mentioned former president Joe Biden 39 times.
That change shows dramatically in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is an agency in the Commerce Department, established under Republican president Richard Nixon in 1970, that monitors weather conditions, storms, and ocean currents. The National Weather Service (NWS), which provides weather, wind, and ocean forecasts, is part of NOAA.
NWS forecasts annually provide the U.S. with an estimated $31.5 billion in benefits as they enable farmers, fishermen, businesspeople, schools, and individuals to plan around weather events.
As soon as he took office, Trump imposed an across-the-board hiring freeze, and billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” fired probationary employees and impounded funds Congress had appropriated. Now, as hurricane season begins, experts in storms and disasters are worried that the NOAA will be unable to function adequately.
Cuts to the NWS have already meant fewer weather balloons and thus less data, leaving gaps in information for a March ice storm in Northern Michigan and for storms and floods in Oklahoma in April. Oliver Milman of The Guardianreported today that 15 NWS offices on the Gulf of Mexico, a region vulnerable to hurricanes, are understaffed after losing more than 600 employees. Miami’s National Hurricane Center is short five specialists. Thirty of the 122 NWS stations no longer have a meteorologist in charge, and as of June 1, seven of those 122 stations will not have enough staff to operate around the clock.
On May 5, the five living former NWS leaders, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote a letter to the American people warning that the cuts threaten to bring “needless loss of life.” They urged Americans to “raise your voice” against the cuts.
Trump’s proposed 2026 budget calls for “terminating a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs” and cutting about 25% more out of NOAA’s funding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also suffered dramatic cuts as Trump has said he intends to push disaster recovery to the states. The lack of expertise is taking a toll there, too. Today staff members there said they were baffled after David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season. (It does, and it stretches from June 1 to the end of November.) Richardson had no experience with disaster response before taking charge of FEMA.
Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are even more draconian. On Friday, in a more detailed budget than the administration published in early May, the administration called for cuts of 43% to the NIH, about $20 billion a year. That includes cuts of nearly 40% to the National Cancer Institute. At the same time, the administration is threatening to end virtually all biomedical research at universities.
On Friday, May 23, the White House issued an executive order called “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” The order cites the COVID-19 guidance about school reopenings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claim that the federal government under President Joe Biden “used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.” (Schools closed in March 2020 under Trump.) The document orders that “[e]mployees shall not engage in scientific misconduct” and, scientists Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann, and Brian Nosek explain in The Guardian, gives political appointees the power to silence any research they oppose “based on their own ‘judgment.’” They also have the power to punish those scientists whose work they find objectionable.
The Guardian authors note that science is “the most important long-term investment for humanity.” They recall the story of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who is a prime example of the terrible danger of replacing fact-based reality with ideology.
As Sam Kean of The Atlantic noted in 2017, Lysenko opposed science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century in favor of the pseudo-scientific idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. This idea reflected communist political thought, and Lysenko gained the favor of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Lysenko claimed that his own agricultural techniques, which included transforming one species into another, would dramatically increase crop yields. Government leaders declared that Lysenko’s ideas were the only correct ones, and anyone who disagreed with him was denounced. About 3,000 biologists whose work contradicted his were fired or sent to jail. Some were executed. Scientific research was effectively banned.
In the 1930s, Soviet leaders set out to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, and when their new state-run farming collectives failed, they turned to Lysenko to fix the problem with his new techniques. Almost everything planted according to his demands died or rotted. In the USSR and in China, which adopted his methods in the 1950s, at least 30 million people died of starvation.
“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released her budget proposal for next year, and it’s as bad as expected.
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, reviewed the budget and concluded that it shows a reckless disregard for the neediest students and schools and outright hostility towards students who want to go to college.
We know that Trump “loves the uneducated.” Secretary McMahon wants more of them.
Burris sent out the following alert:
Linda McMahon, handpicked by Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Education, has just released the most brutal, calculated, and destructive education budget in the Department’s history.
She proposes eliminating $8.5 billion in Congressionally funded programs—28 in total—abolishing 10 outright and shoving the other 18 into a $2 billion block grant. That’s $4.5 billion less than those 18 programs received last year.
And it gets worse: States are banned from using the block grant to support the following programs funded by Congress:
Aid for migrant children whose families move frequently for agricultural work
English Language Acquisition grants for emerging English learners
Community schools offering wraparound services
Grants to improve teacher effectiveness and leadership
Innovation and research for school improvement
Comprehensive Centers, including those serving students with disabilities
Technical assistance for desegregation
The Ready to Learn program for young children
These aren’t just budget cuts—they’re targeted strikes.
McMahon justifies cutting support for migrant children by falsely claiming the program “encourages ineligible non-citizens to access taxpayer dollars.” That is a lie. Most migrant farmworkers are U.S. citizens or have H-2A visas. They feed this nation with their backbreaking labor.
The attack continues for opportunity for higher education:
Pell Grants are slashed by $1,400 on average; the maximum grant drops from $7,395 to $5,710
Federal Work-Study loses $1 billion—an 80% cut
TRIO programs, which support college-readiness and support for low-income students, veterans, and students with disabilities, are eliminated
Campus child care programs for student-parents are defunded
In all, $1.67 billion in student college assistance is gone—wiped out on top of individual Pell grant cuts.
And yet, McMahon increased funding for the federal Charter Schools Program to half a billion dollars for a sector that saw an increase of only eleven schools last year. Meanwhile, her allies in Congress are pushing a $5 billion private school and homeschool voucher scheme through the so-called Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).
And despite reducing Department staff by 50%, she only cuts the personnel budget by 10%.
This is not budgeting. It is a war on public education.
This is a blueprint for privatization, cruelty, and the systematic dismantling of opportunity for America’s children.
San Diego Unified teachers protest pink slips before a school board meeting last year. The district plans to issue 30 preliminary layoff notices this year.
Courtesy of San Diego Education Association
Second-grade teacher Jacob Willis has worked in the San Diego Unified School District in different roles since he graduated from high school in 2016. Now, he is one of hundreds of California teachers waiting to see if they will still have a job when campuses reopen next school year.
Declining enrollment, expiring federal funds for Covid relief, plus a proposed state budget with no new money for education made school leaders in 100 of California’s 1,000 school districts nervous enough about balancing their districts’ budgets to issue layoff notices to 1,900 teachers — 16 times more than the 124 that were issued last spring, according to the California Teachers Association.
State law requires that districts send pink slips by March 15 to any teacher who could potentially be laid off by the end of the school year. Although many of the layoff notices are withdrawn by May 15 — the last day final layoff notices can be given to tenured teachers — the practice is criticized by many for being demoralizing to teachers and disruptive to school systems.
“It creates serious insecurity and stress for teachers, including those who are ultimately asked to stay,” said Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “This will make it harder for districts to hire teachers and leads teachers to leave the profession.”
Holding out hope
Willis, 26, knows that with the state’s enduring teacher shortage he could find a teaching job at another school district, but he’d rather not. His heart is at San Diego Unified, where he started as a noon duty assistant at age 18. He watched over students during recess and lunch for four years while completing his teaching credential.
“I have no intention to stop teaching,” said Willis, who is in his second year as a teacher. “This is what I went to school for. This is what I intended to do for my whole career arc and life.”
The month since the pink slips were issued has been a tough one for Willis and his class at Porter Elementary, who learned of his potential layoff when he appeared on the local news. They are upset that he might not be on campus when they return for third grade, he said.
“There’s so much uncertainty,” Willis said. “There’s a chance that my pink slip might be rescinded. There’s a chance that it might not be rescinded, or I have to go to a different site. … It’s really stressful because I don’t know at all what’s going to happen.”
Almost a quarter of the pink slips issued in California were from Anaheim Union High School District, which issued 226, and San Diego Unified School District, which initially sent out 208 layoff notices. As of Friday, Anaheim had rescinded at least 55 notices and San Diego Unified 30, according to district officials.
San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district, employs 4,290 teachers, while Anaheim Union High School District has about 1,346 teachers, according to 2022-23 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
“We haven’t seen layoffs on this scale in San Diego since 2017,” said Kyle Weinberg, president of the San Diego Education Association, referring to the notices of possible layoffs.
Pink slips don’t necessarily mean job loss
Districts generally send out more notices than the number of positions they might need to eliminate to ensure they meet the state requirement. Some pink slips are rescinded after district officials review credentials, expected retirements and projected enrollment numbers at school sites, and hearings with an administrative law judge are held to determine who stays and who goes.
In San Diego, all the teachers still holding pink slips by the end of last week were probationary employees, said Mike Murad, spokesperson for the district. When the dust settles, Anaheim Union High School District expects to lay off 119 teachers by the end of the school year, while San Diego has said the number will likely be 127.
Teachers are generally considered probationary if they have been with the district two years or less, are working in the district on an emergency-style credential or are hired into a position with restricted funding.
The president of the state’s largest teachers union blamed the pink slips on reduced funding and officials who issue more layoff notices than necessary.“Unfortunately, a lot of districts go to it as if it’s like a playbook,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association.
School districts should look to their reserves to fund these positions next school year, he said.
Teacher layoffs are complicated
Generally, teacher layoffs are based on seniority, although districts can skip more junior teachers if they have special training and experience to teach a specific course that a more senior teacher does not. Pink-slipped teachers, who can prove they have more seniority than another teacher with equal expertise, can also bump that teacher and take that position, resulting in a reshuffling of teachers in multiple schools.
In Anaheim, the district protected 16 categories of teachers from layoffs, leading to layoff notices for more senior staff that included a teacher with 25 years of experience, said Geoff Morganstern, president of the Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association. The teacher has since had the pink slip rescinded, but others with 10 to 16 years of service have still not had layoff notices revoked, he said.
San Diego Unified also is not issuing layoff notices to teachers in some difficult-to-fill positions, and expects to have job openings in some credential areas, including special education, math and science, according to district officials.
Revenue dips prompt layoffs
Potential staff reductions at San Diego Unified are the result of the loss of nearly $540 million in Covid-relief funds, declining enrollment and projections of decreased state revenue, said board President Shana Hazan.
“As a district, we are committed to balancing our budget without significant impacts to students and school sites,” Hazen said. “Over the last year, our team has worked to thoughtfully and strategically build a budget that considers the needs of our children first and foremost.”
The district is trying to maximize attrition to minimize layoffs, she said. “We are hopeful we can continue to reduce the actual number of employees affected before May 15, when reductions are to be finalized.”
The San Diego Education Association has asked district officials to tap reserves to pay teacher salaries and to eliminate positions as teachers retire or leave the district, Weinberg said.
Anaheim Union High School Superintendent Michael Matsuda blamed the layoffs in the district on budget deficits brought on, in part, by the loss of 3,500 students. The district had used one-time state funds to extend a three-year agreement, made during the 2017-18 school year, to temporarily increase teaching staff to address critical needs in core content areas, he said in a video statement to the school community. The funds are running out, according to the district.
Union officials would have liked to have seen the district offer a retirement incentive this year and to manage declining enrollment through attrition and smaller cuts, but district officials didn’t want to spend the money, Morganstern said. The district has many teachers ready to retire, he added.
Layoffs can hurt teacher recruitment
Teacher layoffs during the Great Recession, between 2007 and 2009, are widely considered to be one of the causes of the current teacher shortage because they discouraged people from entering teacher preparation programs.
“It’s a huge risk that the district is taking (by) not rescinding the layoff notices,” Weinberg said. “We are the only large district and the county that’s doing layoff notices, and there are plenty of vacancies in other districts that our educators will apply for, and they will accept jobs. And that’s going to be devastating for our students who have relationships with those educators.”
A Commission on Teacher Credentialing report released last week shows that enrollment at teacher preparation programs declined another 10% in 2022-23, the most recent year data is available, following a 16% decline the previous year.
Issuing layoff notices during a teacher shortage can be particularly tricky for districts that are still trying to find teachers for hard-to-fill positions, like those with special education, math and science credentials.
Local teachers unions have been holding rallies to gain community support and to put pressure on district officials to rescind the pink slips.
“If we are able to win and have all of the layoff notices rescinded, we will have the smaller class sizes that our students need and that we’ve seen with the additional funds during the pandemic,” Weinberg said.
Morganstern expects all classes in Anaheim Union High School District to reach their maximum allowed capacity of students if the pink slips aren’t all recalled, with some classes going over the limit. The union will file grievances in those cases because it’s a contract violation, he said.
“Then they’re going to have to scramble to hire teachers, and then they’re going to have to issue massive schedule changes because every kid’s schedule has to be rearranged because of these couple teachers at each school,” Morganstern said. “It’s going to be a disaster.”
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!
Nine years ago, Analilia Gutierrez gave birth to her son, a micro preemie who needed intensive care.
At the time, Gutierrez, an immigrant from Mexico, spoke and read little English. Filling out health forms and trying to keep up with her son’s care was an overwhelming experience. Interpreters, if available, sometimes created problems with misinterpretation.
“There were so many barriers,” said Gutierrez, a resident of Tulare, in the Central San Joaquin Valley.
In California, an estimated 28% of adults have such poor literacy in English that they struggle to do anything more complicated than filling out a basic form or reading a short text, according to a survey, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). California’s rate is worse than any other state except New Mexico, where the estimated rate is 29%.
The U.S. version of the survey was conducted only in English, and many immigrants, unsurprisingly, tend to struggle more with what is often not their home language: 19% of adults in California say they speak English “less than very well,” according to 2022 American Community Survey data.
Not being able to read English well doesn’t just make life difficult — it can be dangerous.
As the CEO of the Central San Joaquin Valley-based Clinica Sierra Vista, Dr. Olga Meave routinely sees patients who struggle to read in any language. Sometimes it’s a patient who doesn’t know how to sign their name. Other times, patients can’t read the directions. One patient ended up in the emergency room after taking the wrong dose of blood thinners, which caused their stomach to bleed.
Low literacy is particularly acute in heavily agricultural regions, such as the Central San Joaquin Valley and the Central Coast, that rely on a largely immigrant labor force that may have little formal education, even in their home languages. More than 4 out of 10 residents in Imperial, Tulare, Merced, Madera, Kings and Monterey counties struggle with basic English literacy.
But signs of adults who struggle to read are in every community in California: job seekers unable to get jobs or promotions; business owners who cannot complete paperwork for loans and grants; prisons with a disproportionate number of struggling readers and parents who cannot help their children with homework or even read bedtime stories.
No state has more immigrants than California: Over a third of adults over 25 are immigrants, according to 2022 American Community Survey data. Most are from Mexico and other Latin American countries, but an increasing number hail from Asian countries. Nearly half of children in the state have at least one parent who is an immigrant.
Immigrants make up a huge share of workers in key industries in California. While highly educated immigrants bring their in-demand skills to the tech industry, those who work in agriculture may have little or no formal education.
Experts say programs aimed at addressing poor literacy reach only a fraction of those who need help, such as courses that improve English skills, help students get a GED or their citizenship or even a basic education. In California, that is largely adult immigrants. In 2021-22, adult schools served over 480,000 students in California, while the state says more than 10,000 adults were served through library tutoring programs in 2022-23.
Those numbers are dwarfed by the need for adult education from immigrants alone: 5.9 million Californians don’t speak English “very well” and 2.9 million immigrants lack a high school education, according to 2022 American Community Survey data.
Programs that serve adult students are often plagued by long wait lists, a lack of funding or a lack of accessibility. Advocates say that one of the biggest problems is simply that adult education seems to fly under the radar in a way that TK-12 schools and colleges don’t.
“We are the best-kept secret in education,” said Carolyn Zachry, education administrator and state director of the Adult Education Office for the California Department of Education.
As a new immigrant, Gutierrez didn’t have time to take classes while she was focused on raising young children. Now that her children are school-aged, she has been able to attend Tulare Adult School, and her world has opened up.
Gutierrez has since become an American citizen and she has earned a GED. Her newfound English skills recently helped her land a job at Chipotle. She is now able to help her son and daughter with their homework and read to them in the evenings, a ritual she treasures. She thinks about how much easier it would have been to navigate the hospital during her son’s traumatic birth with the education she has now.
“I would now have the knowledge,” Gutierrez said. “It’s so much different.”
‘Their circles are small’
Research has found that an adult’s literacy skills are strongly connected to their income and civic engagement, as well as their health. The effects of low literacy are felt not just by individuals and their families but by local and national economies. That’s why researchers say adult education is a worthy investment.
Going Deeper
Unlike the data measuring students in TK-12 schools or college, surveys of adult skills in reading and math occur only sporadically in the U.S.
The most recent data comes from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of adults’ basic skills of literacy, as well as numeracy and digital problem-solving. In the U.S., the survey was offered only in English, although background questions were offered in Spanish.
Between 2012 and 2017, the National Center for Education Statistics administered the first cycle of the PIAAC survey to 12,330 U.S adults ages 16 to 74 in all 50 states.
The second cycle of PIAAC surveys was conducted in 2022-23, and results are expected later this year.
Level 1 is the lowest literacy level in the PIAAC survey. Adults at this level struggle to understand written material or may be functionally illiterate. Level 2 means that an adult is approaching proficiency in literacy, while Level 3 signals the minimal proficiency an adult needs to function well. It means being able to understand and interpret information across complex written texts. Levels 4 and 5 represent advanced literacy skills.
A 2020 Gallup study, conducted by economist Jonathan Rothwell, estimated that if everyone in the U.S. was minimally proficient in English literacy, according to the standards of the international PIAAC survey, it would increase the gross domestic product by 10%. This study looked at the literacy levels of both immigrants and native residents.
The Gallup study noted that areas with concentrated low literacy would see the biggest financial gains from this kind of improvement. One of those places is the Merced Metro Area, in the Central Valley. It would stand to gain an estimated 26% of its GDP, largely because 72% of its adults are not proficient readers, the report said.
The study estimated that those at the lowest level of literacy made on average $34,127 in 2020 dollars, while those who scored proficient made on average $62,997.
Immigrants tend to earn less than natives, but a Migration Policy Institute analysis of PIAAC survey data found that immigrants and native workers with similar literacy and math skills tend to earn the same amount. This report says that immigrants “need higher levels of English competency to be paid well — and on par with natives — for their work in the U.S. labor market.”
Struggling to read as an adult can be a shameful, lonely experience for those who grew up speaking English. But for immigrants, the experience of not being able to read well can be even more isolating when they cannot speak English or are not a citizen. Christine Spencer, a Tulare Adult School instructor, wishes that many more immigrants in her community were taking advantage of these classes.
“My students tell me that they have no friends,” said Spencer. “Their circles are small.”
Bringing literacy into workplaces is a ‘secret sauce’
When Marcelina Chamu emigrated from Mexico decades ago, she longed to do more than just get by. She hoped to become a citizen, learn English, all while creating a better life for her family in the U.S.
But getting the education to achieve those goals wasn’t easy. Chamu, 58, is part of a vast, largely immigrant, labor force of custodians who begin their work shifts in office buildings just as the sun is going down. For the last 25 years, she has clocked in at 6 every night. Because of her work schedule and raising four children, she put off her own education for decades.
“It is very difficult for someone who works through dawn to get up and start studying,” Chamu said, in Spanish. “But it’s not impossible.”
Advocates say that the best way to target immigrants is by reaching them wherever they are in the community — whether that’s at their child’s school or workplace.
Immigrants with low English literacy skills tend to have jobs — more so than U.S. natives with low literacy and more so than immigrants in other nations, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That means they’re busy, but it also means they are easy to reach at work.
One program in California is doing just that, and it helped Chamu.
A few years ago, Chamu learned that her union, SEIU-United Service Workers West, had a partnership with a nonprofit called the Building Skills Partnership, which aims to improve the lives of property service workers in low-wage jobs along with their families.
Chamu has done her best to take advantage of all the programs she could: citizenship, English courses, free tax preparation and nutrition courses. She has become more confident going to the grocery store and filling out forms in the doctor’s office.
The California-based Building Skills Partnership estimates that it reaches 5,500 workers and community members each year through in-person courses, and another 20,000 through online classes throughout the state.
“Part of the secret sauce of why we’re so effective is that we’re able to take our programming into where workers are at,” said Building Skills Partnership executive director Luis Sandoval.
An instructor with Building Skills Partnership teaches a class of custodians in Orange County.Credit: Courtesy of Building Skills Partnership
Property workers, who tend to be clustered around large metro areas in the Bay Area and Southern California, can take part in programming before they head into work or during their lunch hour, which might be at 10 p.m.
Reaching immigrants at their workplaces isn’t just convenient, it allows these programs to cater to workers’ language and job needs, said Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
She points to the Welcome Back Initiative, which focuses on tapping the talents of internationally trained health care workers who need help with specialized English skills or acclimating to a different type of health system to fill staffing shortages in California’s health care sector.
But work-based programs are rare in the U.S., where employers often view workers in low-skilled positions as easily replaceable. The Migration Policy Institute report says these work-based programs could be expanded through subsidies or other incentives, which exist in Canada and other European countries.
Tulare Adult School instructor Yolanda Sanchez, right, assists her student Mariana Gonzalez.EdSource/Emma Gallegos
Building Skills Partnership offers English paired with vocational training. Many workers in the program take English classes with an eye on switching to a more desirable daytime shift. Custodians who work during the daytime are expected to interact more with office workers, so their English skills matter more.
Rosa Lopez, 55, a custodian in a downtown San Diego building, is taking vocational English classes. That allows her to more easily communicate with security guards, a supervisor who only speaks English or just to direct a guest to the elevator.
Lopez said, “I’m more confident and secure in my position.”
Adult schools run on ‘dust’
Sometimes Beatrice Sanchez, 35, a stay-at-home mother of six, comes home from the store with the wrong items because she can’t read the labels in English. She is eager to take the English courses offered at her local school district, Madera Unified, but the program doesn’t currently offer child care. She said she will have to wait to take the courses until her youngest two children are in kindergarten.
Many of those most in need of adult education, like Sanchez, don’t have the time or resources to attend. Adults find it hard to squeeze in time between raising children and working. Even if they have time, transportation can be tricky — particularly in rural areas that lack an extensive public transportation system.
Some Americans used to view poor literacy as an individual’s failure to study during childhood, said Sarah Cacicio, the director of the Adult Literacy and Learning Impact Network (ALL IN), a national nonprofit focused on adult literacy. Now, she said, there is an increasing understanding that systemic factors — never-addressed learning disabilities, a chaotic home life, obligations to care for family or simply a poor education system here or abroad — may mean reaching adulthood without knowing how to read English well.
Most states rely entirely on skeletal funding from the federal government. In 2021-22, the federal government spent less than $800 per student on adult education classes aimed at English language, civics skills, and basic or high-school level education.
California provides robust additional funding. During the 2021–22 years, the state spent roughly $1,200 on each student who enrolled in adult education classes — primarily adult schools or community colleges. But adult educators say it’s not enough to meet the great needs of its students.
Adult schools, said John Werner, president-elect of the California Council for Adult Education “do it on dust. I don’t know how we pull it off.”
In California, adult education receives a fraction of the funding per pupil that TK-12 schools do. Werner said that more funding would allow programs serving adults to get rid of wait lists, improve their technology and facilities, and increase access by offering the child care so many of its potential students need.
Adult educators see the work of their field as an investment not just in individual adult students but in their families and greater communities.
“If we can pull (adult students) in,” Zachry said, “we can raise the economics of that family.”
Werner, director of the Sequoia Adult Education Consortium, said he’s proud of the work being done by the consortium that serves Tulare and Kings counties, which he calls the “Appalachia of the West.” But he is frustrated to see that adult schools are reaching just an estimated 8% of the adults in the region who need it.
“If we could just invest in this,” Werner said. “The greatness that would come out of this.”
