Tag: California

  • California students with disabilities face ‘terrifying’ special ed cuts after Trump changes – The 74

    California students with disabilities face ‘terrifying’ special ed cuts after Trump changes – The 74


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    Sleep is a rare commodity at Lindsay Crain’s house. Most nights, she and her husband are up dozens of times, tending to their daughter’s seizures. The 16-year-old flails her arms, thrashes and kicks — sometimes for hours.

    But these days, that’s not the only thing keeping Crain awake. The Culver City mother worries about how President Donald Trump’s myriad budget cuts could strip their daughter of services she needs to go to school, live at home and enjoy a degree of independence that would have been impossible a generation ago.

    “Every family I know is terrified right now,” Crain said. “We still have to live our everyday lives, which are challenging enough, but now it feels like our kids’ futures are at stake.”

    Trump’s budget includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which funds a wide swath of services to disabled children, including speech, occupational and physical therapy, wheelchairs, in-home aides and medical care. All children with physical, developmental or cognitive disabilities – in California, nearly 1 million – receive at least some services through Medicaid.

    Meanwhile, at the U.S. Department of Education, Trump has gutted the Office of Civil Rights, which is among the agencies that enforce the 50-year-old law granting students with disabilities the right to attend school and receive an education appropriate to their needs. Before that law was enacted, students with disabilities often didn’t attend school at all.

    “We have a delicate web of services that, combined, support a whole child, a whole family,” said Kristin Wright, executive director of inclusive practices and systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education and the former California state director of special education. “So when the basic foundational structure is upended, like Medicaid, for example, it’s not just one cut from a knife. It’s multiple.”

    Republicans have also suggested moving the office of special education out of the Department of Education altogether and moving it to the Department of Health and Human Services. Disability rights advocates say that would bring a medical – rather than a social – lens to special education, which they described as a major reversal of progress.

    Trump has chipped away at other rights protecting people with disabilities, as well. In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it would not enforce a rule that requires airlines to reimburse passengers for damaged or lost wheelchairs. Trump has also repeatedly used the word “retarded,” widely considered a slur, alarming advocates who say it shows a lack of respect and understanding of the historical discrimination against people with disabilities. It’s all left some wondering if the administration plans more cuts to hard-fought rights protecting people with disabilities.

    Fewer therapists, less equipment

    The Medicaid cuts may have the most immediate effect. People with developmental disabilities typically receive therapy, home visits from aides, equipment and other services through regional centers, a network of 21 mostly government-funded nonprofits in California that coordinate services for people with disabilities. The goal of regional centers is to help people with disabilities live as independently as possible.

    More than a third of regional centers’ funding comes from Medicaid, which is facing deep cuts under Trump’s budget. The money runs out at the end of January, and it’s unclear what services will be cut.

    Schools also rely on Medicaid to pay for therapists, equipment, vision and hearing tests and other services that benefit all students, not just those with disabilities. In light of state budget uncertainty, it’s not likely the state could backfill the loss of Medicaid funding, and schools would have to pare down their services. 

    Uncertain futures

    For Lelah Coppedge, whose teenage son has cerebral palsy, the worst part is the uncertainty. She knows cuts are coming, but she doesn’t know when or what they’ll include.

    “I go down this rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios,” said Coppedge, who lives in the Canoga Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. “Before this happened, I felt there was a clear path for my son. Now that path is going away, and it’s terrifying.”

    Coppedge’s son, Jack, is a 16-year-old high school student who excels at algebra and physics. He loves video games and has a wide circle of friends at school. He uses a wheelchair and struggles with speech, communicating mostly through eye movements. He’ll look at his mom’s right hand to indicate “yes,” her left hand for “no.”

    Coppedge and her husband rely on a nurse who comes four days a week to help Jack get dressed, get ready for bed and do other basic activities. Medicaid pays for the nurse, as well as other services like physical therapy. Even though Coppedge and her husband both work and have high-quality private health insurance, they could not afford Jack’s care without help from the government.

    They also rely on the local regional center, which they assumed would help Jack after he graduates from high school, so he can remain at home, continue to hone his skills and generally live as independently as possible. If that funding vanishes, Coppedage worries Jack will someday end up in a facility where people don’t know him, don’t know how to communicate with him and don’t care about him.

    “It feels like we’re going backward,” Coppedge said. “Half the time, I put my head in the sand because I’m just trying to manage the day-to-day. The rest of the time I worry that (the federal government) is looking at people like Jack as medical problems, not as unique people who want to have full, happy lives. It feels like that’s getting lost.”

    The current uncertainty is stressful, but it’s even harder for families who are immigrants, Wright said. Those families are less likely to stand up for services they’re entitled to and are facing the extra fear of deportation. English learners, as well as low-income children, are disproportionately represented among students in special education, according to state data.

    “That’s the other piece to all this — how it’s affecting immigrant families,” Wright said. “It’s a whole other level of anxiety and fear.”

    Decades of progress on the line

    Karma Quick-Panwala, an advocate at the nonprofit Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said she worries about the rollback of decades’ worth of progress that was hard-won by the disability rights community. 

    The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the 1975 law that created special education, actually predates the federal Department of Education. In fact, Congress created the department in part to oversee special education. Removing special ed would be a devastating blow to the disability community — not just because services might be curtailed, but philosophically, as well, Quick-Panwala said. 

    In the Department of Education, special education is under the purview of education experts who promote optimal ways to educate students with disabilities, so they can learn, graduate from high school and ideally go on to productive lives. In the Department of Health and Human Services, special education would no longer be overseen by educators but by those in the medical field, where they’re more likely to “look at disability as something to be cured or segregated and set aside,” Quick-Panwala said.

    “The disability rights community has worked so hard and gave so much to make sure people with disabilities had a right to a meaningful education, so they could have gainful employment opportunities and participate in the world,” Quick-Panwala said. “The idea is that they wouldn’t just be present at school, but they would actually learn and thrive.”

    For the time being, Wright, Quick-Panwala and other advocates are reminding families that federal funding might be shrinking, but the laws remain unchanged. Students are still entitled under federal law to the services outlined in their individual education plans, regardless of whether there’s money to pay for it. The funding will have to come from somewhere, at least for now, even if that means cutting it from another program. And California is unlikely to roll back its own special education protections, regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.

    An imperfect but successful routine

    Those reassurances are scant comfort to Crain, whose daughter Lena will rely on government support her entire life. Born seven weeks prematurely, Lena has cerebral palsy, epilepsy, a cognitive impairment and is on the deaf-blind spectrum. But she has a 100-watt smile and a relentless spirit, Crain said. Even after the whole family has been up all night, Lena insists on going to school and getting the most out of every day.

    From left, Jack Deacy, his daughter Lena Deacy, and Lindsay Crain at their home in Culver City on Dec. 1, 2025. The family fears potential Medicaid cuts because Lena, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other medical conditions, relies on Medicaid-funded services for her daily care and well-being. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for CalMatters

    Funny and assertive, she has a few close friends and, like many teenagers, plenty of opinions about her parents. She loves her English teacher and spends most of her day in regular classrooms with help from an aide. Her favorite book is about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who won a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting for girls’ right to an education.

    Between school and home visits from aides and after-school therapists, Crain feels the family has pieced together an imperfect but mostly successful routine for Lena.

    “Our entire lives are about teaching her self-advocacy, so she can have the most independent life possible,” Crain said. “Just because you need support doesn’t mean you can’t have a say in your life. There’s been so much work around the culture and the laws and the education system to make sure disabled people can make their own choices in life. We’re absolutely terrified of losing that.”

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    When Vevian Nguyen heard the strike of a gong echo for the 10th time, signaling that 10,000 meals had been made, her school cafeteria erupted in applause, and she knew her gloves and hairnet were staying on.

    “Every time we hit the gong, it felt like a little pat on the back, like, ‘Oh, you did something good,’” Vevian said. “Now you can keep doing it.” 

    Within an hour, Vevian and more than 200 students at Laguna Creek High School, a school in the Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento County, packed more than 10,000 meals to be donated during the holidays, exceeding their goal for the night. But Vevian, who is a junior and president of Laguna Creek High’s service-oriented Interact Club, said she wasn’t there to simply check off her service hour requirements. 

    “We want to be involved in our community, which is having to be able to know that you’ve helped a family or at least just one person out there,” the 16-year-old said. “And, I feel like that helps your character, it builds who you are and where you stand within your school and your community.”

    The October food-preparing night was part of an international initiative called Rise Against Hunger, which is run by a coalition of student groups such as the National Honor Society and the Rotary International Club. This was Laguna Creek’s second Rise Against Hunger. During the holidays, their 20,000 meals will reach families in Vietnam that were affected by major floods and landslides this year. 

    Sandi Peterson, a positive behavior intervention support administrator and adviser for the National Honor Society, had helped Vevian prepare for the event throughout the school year. At weekly club meetings, students created infographics and posters, spread the word on social media, and promoted their goal of packing 10,000 meals to every classroom on campus. It was a student-led collaboration and a clear, ambitious objective, Peterson said, that drove hundreds of students to sign up, show up, and lock in. 

    “Not one student was on their phone; they were all talking to each other, chatting, laughing. Once we heard the 10,000 gong, it was this huge celebration, and then it started moving so fast,” Peterson said. “We were having to hit the gong for 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 (more) all at the same time. These kids, in less than two hours, assembled 20,000 meals.” 

    Like most schools in California, Laguna Creek has struggled to recover from high rates of chronic absenteeism after the pandemic’s school closures. Many of those students across the state also report a persistent feeling of loneliness and detachment from their school communities. For Cynthia Dettner, an instructor and supervising teacher for the Interact Club at Laguna Creek High, the night of meal-packing also showcased a rare school connectedness among students. 

    “After the Covid years, where students were often isolated, watching all of these students laugh and smile and build their own character by reaching out to help others, it’s a gift,” Dettner said. “It’s a joy to see them come together and befriend each other.” 

    On each side of a cafeteria table, students sporting red hairnets and plastic gloves measured and assembled nutritionally balanced portions of dried rice, vegetable protein, vitamin packets, dried tofu and protein additives into pre-labeled bags. They then rotated each bag to teams of students who stapled, heat-sealed, and counted each package to be ready for distribution worldwide. 

    “It looks almost like a Hallmark movie where you see the cookie factory in progress,” Dettner said. “It’s all kinds of hands and smiles working together, they’re all engaged and involved, and that lifts the community.”

    Students plan to pack more than 40,000 meals next year for families in need. (Sandi Peterson)

    Although Peterson had spent the year raising sponsorship funds for the event, she said the students who packed the meals soon took ownership of the initiative. 

    “Within two weeks, I had students come up to me and say, ‘Ms. Peterson, maybe if we go around and start collecting money on our own, we could do another one in a couple months,’” Peterson said. “So, now they’re trying to tag-team and do 40,000 meals in our next school year. The ticket to longevity is I know that the kids will always show up.”

    Vevian grew up in a low-income family, and after watching friends and family members struggle financially in recent months, she said she’s felt more compelled to help others. Laguna Creek’s new holiday ritual has further motivated her year-round commitment to community service. 

    “To contain the attributes of a leader, I learned that you have to actually step up and use your voice and really hold yourself accountable,” Vevian said. “If you just make one impact, it can slowly build that momentum for the rest of everyone else to stand behind you.”


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  • Career Guidance Falls Short for California College Students

    Career Guidance Falls Short for California College Students

    Phynart Studio/Getty Images

    A new report found that only one in five California college students were fully satisfied with the career guidance they received, with many saying the help often arrived too late.

    The data, released by California Competes, comes as more than 80 percent of first-year college students say obtaining a better job is a very important reason they enrolled in college.

    “There’s a real opportunity for higher ed to do better because students want more and there’s a lot of room for improvement,” said Su Jin Jez, chief executive officer of California Competes, a nonpartisan organization focused on research and policy to improve the state’s higher education and workforce development.

    “It’s really critical, particularly as more first generation students, more low income students, and more students of color are going to college,” Jez said. “These students are more likely to not have professional networks in their homes and in their families, so they really need guidance from higher ed.”

    The research, conducted in collaboration with the College Futures Foundation and Strada Education Foundation, analyzed data from more than 5,000 California college students and recent graduates who responded to the 2023 Strada-College Pulse survey, which examined employment outcomes, student access to quality coaching and work-based learning, and the alignment between postsecondary education and state job requirements.

    By examining students’ experiences with career guidance and work-based learning, as well as their early career outcomes, the report found that many lack sufficient preparation for meaningful employment.

    The research identified opportunities to strengthen college-to-career pathways and boost economic mobility.

    Career Pathways Guidance

    About 60 percent of students reported receiving some form of career guidance, and 50 percent said they received information about potential earnings in careers related to their academic programs before the end of their first year.

    But only 20 percent reported feeling very satisfied with the career guidance they received.

    When asked where they got their career advice, 66 percent said they received it from college faculty and staff, followed by 59 percent who said they relied on family and friends.

    “Higher ed makes a lot of sense to be the ones to provide career guidance because they know better than other entities what skills students are learning,” Jez said. “They can help them connect to employers, particularly alumni networks, which are really powerful connectors.”

    Work-Based Learning

    About 40 percent of near-graduates participated in work-based learning, with internships being the most common type.

    The report found that internship participation was associated with better early career outcomes for students, greater satisfaction with their education, and a stronger sense of return on their investment, compared with those who did not intern.

    But access to work-based learning remains inequitable, with 50 percent reporting that course loads were too heavy and 48 percent saying they were uncertain about how to find opportunities.

    “Colleges should integrate work-based learning into their programs of study, into majors, so that it becomes a real pathway and not just a privilege,” Jez said.

    “It makes their heavy course load issue not as critical,” Jez said. “And then, similarly, it takes the burden off of students to find the internship because the university will have already identified the internships that make sense for the students based on their major.”

    Jez cited Compton College, El Camino College, and West Los Angeles College as good examples of institutions that place work-based learning at the center of their programs.

    “They approach employers and think together about where a work-based learning opportunity fits well into their programs because it’s not something that has to be unique to every campus,” Jez said, adding that colleges collaborating on such efforts helps streamline the process for employers who are often approached by multiple institutions.

    “Huge kudos to them for tackling this work that’s hard on your own, but even more challenging to do collaboratively,” Jez said.

    Early Career Outcomes

    The report also found that less than half of recent graduates are highly satisfied with their first job or their career progress.

    “This is not a new issue, but I do think that just because it’s not new doesn’t make it not problematic,” Jez said. “I would love for higher ed institutions to really think about this early on.”

    She noted that colleges should consider students’ early career outcomes even before they matriculate.

    “I think a lot of people will say that higher ed isn’t vocational,” Jez said. “[But] it is the reason why people are going to college today and it has to help students make good transitions into work.”

    Jez highlighted California’s recent establishment of the California Education Interagency Council, a statewide coordinating body aimed at breaking down silos between higher education and workforce development efforts.

    “This is something we’ve advocated for,” Jez said, adding that the council will help set a strategic plan and address cross-sector issues.

    “If we’re serious about strengthening the value of higher education, the first step is listening to students’ needs,” Jez said. “They know what they need and they know the struggle they’ve had.”

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  • Hunger Is Squeezing California Students — and it Could Get Worse – The 74

    Hunger Is Squeezing California Students — and it Could Get Worse – The 74


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    This has been an especially challenging year for Rosalba Ortega’s family. 

    It’s been a cold, soggy winter in Bakersfield, and Ortega said her two granddaughters, ages 4 and 7, don’t have warm coats for their walk to school. Rent and food prices have been climbing, and as a farmworker, she’s struggled to find work in the fields. Last month’s delays to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — known in California as CalFresh — hit her grandkids at a time when her family is already struggling to put food on the table.

    “There’s not much food for them,” said Ortega, in Spanish. “We have to look for low prices to buy for them. Sometimes the shelters give us food and that helps us a lot.”

    Ortega said her family never had to rely on shelters and churches for food in the past, but this year has been different.

    She isn’t alone. Disruptions to SNAP amid the government shutdown last month came at a time when California families say they are increasingly struggling to meet basic needs, including putting food on the table. 

    Three in 10 Californians — and half of lower-income residents — say they or someone in their household has reduced meals or cut back on food to save money, according to a survey conducted in October by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

    Experts say that hunger and economic distress can affect students’ academic performance and determine whether they decide to attend — or finish — college.

    “What’s happening out of school can have a huge impact on their ability to learn while they’re in school,” said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, director of TK-12 policy for EdTrust-West, a nonprofit that advocates for justice in education.

    Research shows children struggle to pay attention at school when SNAP benefits run out mid-month, and families turn to ultra-processed foods, according to Martin Caraher, a food policy expert at City University London who has worked with the World Health Organization.

    “You see it in behavior and performance at school,” Caraher said.

    Federal cuts reduce food aid 

    President Donald Trump’s budget and tax bill, passed by Congress in July, made cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in California. California’s low-income students and their families will likely see federally funded food support and health care shrink or vanish under the law.

    This is coming at the same time that the Trump administration says it wants to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education to “break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” a move that conservatives have long advocated since the creation of the Cabinet-level department in 1979.

    Wheatfall-Lum said that the federal government has been making cuts and laying off staff at programs aimed at those who are already hardest hit by hunger and economic distress, such as migrant students, multilingual studentshomeless students, and students of color.

    In its upcoming budget cycle, California should address the needs of families — both in and outside of education, she said. 

    “What the state can do is make sure not to back away from programming in place to support these same students,” Wheatfall-Lum said.

    EdTrust-West is advocating for the state to continue its commitment to a school funding formula that offers extra support to schools to help low-income and vulnerable students. Continuing to fund the community schools model is especially important, she said, because it is more responsive to families’ needs.

    Families with young children hit hard

    The number of struggling California parents with young children is especially alarming, researchers say. Nearly 3 in 4 families in California with children under age 6 report struggling with one or more basic needs, such as utilities, housing, food, health care and child care, according to the RAPID California Voices survey conducted in July.

    The project, conducted by Stanford University, has been surveying parents and caregivers with young children since November 2022. During that time, more than half of families surveyed said they struggled with basic needs, but over the last year, struggles with health care, food and utilities reached 73% — one of the highest levels since the survey began.

    “It’s pretty stark data,” said Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. “Our research shows consistently that economic hardship translates subsequently into parent stress and distress, which then gets passed along to child distress. So if you want to know how kids are doing, these are not great trends.”

    Fisher noted that supports rolled out during the pandemic, such as the expanded Child Tax Credit, increased SNAP and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) benefits, and stimulus checks, resulted in fewer parents of young children experiencing material hardship and emotional distress. As those benefits expired, that trend reversed, he said.

    Researchers at Stanford asked caregivers to explain the biggest current challenges for their family in their own words. They shared those anonymized answers with EdSource.

    “We’re working hard, but it’s not enough anymore,” wrote one caregiver in San Joaquin County. “We need our leaders to understand that even full-time workers can’t afford rent, health care, and food in this state. Wages haven’t kept up.”

    One caregiver in San Bernardino County said they are worried about how the cuts from Trump’s budget will affect their Medi-Cal and CalFresh benefits.

    “They might get cut because the [Big Beautiful Bill] passed,” the caregiver wrote.

    College students struggle with basic needs

    College students are also struggling — and unlike K-12 students who receive breakfast and lunch at school, they don’t have guaranteed meals.

    Typically, students come into Long Beach State’s Basic Needs center because of a specific crisis, such as losing their job, said the center’s director, Danielle Muñoz-Channel. But now, students tend to come in just because they’re getting squeezed all around by rent, utilities and food prices.

    “They can’t pinpoint any one factor,” she said. “We ask what changed, and they say, ‘Nothing, I just can’t afford it anymore.’”

    Muñoz-Channel said she’s monitoring whether federal cuts to CalFresh and Medi-Cal benefits, such as tightened work requirements, could affect students and the future workforce. She said students need to have their basic needs met so that they can focus on school — otherwise they risk not graduating on time or not finishing their degree at all.

    “I’m worried about how it will affect our most needy students who use college to break generational cycles of poverty,” she said.


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  • Modernizing the special education workforce is a national imperative

    Modernizing the special education workforce is a national imperative

    Key points:

    America’s special education system is facing a slow-motion collapse. Nearly 8 million students now receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), but the number of qualified teachers and related service providers continues to shrink. Districts from California to Maine report the same story: unfilled positions, overworked staff, and students missing the services they’re legally entitled to receive.

    “The promise of IDEA means little if there’s no one left to deliver it.”

    The data tell a clear story. Since 2013, the number of children ages 3–21 served under IDEA has grown from 6.4 million to roughly 7.5 million. Yet the teacher pipeline has moved in the opposite direction. According to Title II reports, teacher-preparation enrollments dropped 6 percent over the last decade and program completions plunged 27 percent. At the same time, nearly half of special educators leave the field within their first five years.

    By 2023, 45 percent of public schools were operating without a full teaching staff. Vacancies were most acute in special education. Attrition, burnout, and early retirements outpace new entrants by a wide margin.

    Why the traditional model no longer works

    For decades, schools and staffing firms have fought over the same dwindling pool of licensed providers. Recruiting cycles stretch for months, while students wait for evaluations, therapies, or IEP services.

    Traditional staffing firms focus on long-term contracts lasting six months or more, which makes sense for stability, but ignores an enormous, untapped workforce: thousands of credentialed professionals who could contribute a few extra hours each week if the system made it easy.

    Meanwhile, the process of credentialing, vetting, and matching candidates remains slow and manual, reliant on spreadsheets, email, and recruiters juggling dozens of openings. The result is predictable: delayed assessments, compliance risk, and burned-out staff covering for unfilled roles.

    “Districts and recruiters compete for the same people, when they could be expanding the pool instead.”

    The hidden workforce hiding in plain sight

    Across the country, tens of thousands of licensed professionals–speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, school psychologists, special educators–are under-employed. Many have stepped back from full-time work to care for families or pursue private practice. Others left the classroom but still want to contribute.

    Imagine if districts could tap those “extra hours” through a vetted, AI-powered marketplace. A system that matched real-time school requests with qualified providers in their state. A model like this wouldn’t replace full-time roles; it would expand capacity, reduce burnout, and bring talent back into the system.

    This isn’t theoretical. The same “on-demand” concept has already modernized industries from medicine to media. Education is long overdue for the same reinvention.

    What modernization looks like

    1. AI-driven matching: Districts post specific service needs (evaluations, IEP meetings, therapy hours). Licensed providers choose opportunities that fit their schedule.
    2. Verified credentials and provider profiles: Platforms integrate state licensure databases and background checks to ensure compliance and provide profiles with all candidate information including on-demand, video interviews so schools can make informed hiring decisions immediately.
    3. Smart staffing metrics: Schools track fill-rates, provider utilization, and service delays in real time.
    4. Integrated workflows: The system plugs into existing special education management tools. No new learning curve for administrators.

    A moment of urgency

    The shortage isn’t just inconvenient; it’s systemic. Each unfilled position represents students who lose therapy hours, districts risking due-process complaints, and educators pushed closer to burnout.

    With IDEA students now representing nearly 15 percent of all public school enrollment, the nation can’t afford to let a twentieth-century staffing model dictate twenty-first-century outcomes.

    We have the technology. We have the workforce. What we need is the will to connect them.

    “Modernizing special education staffing isn’t innovation for innovation’s sake, it’s survival.”

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  • California Schools Now Offer Free Preschool for 4-Year-Olds. Here’s What They Learn – The 74

    California Schools Now Offer Free Preschool for 4-Year-Olds. Here’s What They Learn – The 74


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    Every 4-year-old in California can now go to school for free in their local districts. The new grade is called transitional kindergarten — or TK — and it’s part of the state’s effort to expand universal preschool.

    In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature moved to expand transitional kindergarten in a $2.7 billion plan so that all 4-year-olds could attend by the 2025-26 school year. (Prior to this, TK was only available for kids who missed the kindergarten age cutoff by a few months). While it’s not mandatory for students to attend, districts must offer them as an alternative to private preschool.

    As a free option, it can save parents a lot of money. Parents also must weigh how sending their kids into a school-based environment compares to a preschool they might already know and like, as well as other needs like all-day care, and how much play their child does.

    One big question we’ve heard: What do kids actually do and learn in a TK classroom? Educators say it’s intended to emphasize play, but what does that mean?

    A social skill students can learn in transitional kindergarten is how to take turns on the playground. (Mariana Dale/LAist)

    To help parents get a better sense of this new grade as they make their decisions, LAist reporters spent the day in three different classrooms across the Southland. Here are five things we saw children do.

    Get used to the structure and routines of school

    For many students, transitional kindergarten is their first introduction to a formal school preschool setting. Crystal Ramirez sent her 4-year-old to TK at Marguerita Elementary School in Alhambra, so he could get used to the rhythm and rigors of school.

    “I didn’t wanna put him straight into kindergarten when he was five, six, so he at least knows a routine, already,” she said. “Now, as soon as he sees that we’re in school, he loves it.”

    TK students, like other elementary school students, follow a schedule: morning bell, recess, lunch, second recess and dismissal. They’re also learning how to listen to instructions or stand in a line. Some are learning to go to the cafeteria for lunch.

    “ I wanna make sure that their first experience in a public school setting is one that is joyful, where they feel loved, where they feel welcomed, where they get to really transition nicely into like the rigor of the school,” said Lauren Bush, a TK teacher at Lucille Smith Elementary in Lawndale.

    Claudia Ralston, a TK teacher at Marguerita Elementary, said it can be hard for young kids to get up early and leave their moms and dads. But seven weeks in, many of her students have learned their routines already. She helps with the morning transitions by turning on soft instrumental music in the classroom, and allowing them free play until they regroup on the mat to discuss the day.

    “They’re four years old. I want them to feel safe at school, know that this is a special place for learning and that they play,” she said.

    Learn how to socialize and communicate

    In TK, social-emotional learning is a big part of the curriculum. That’s a fancy word, but it just means they’re learning how to be in touch with their emotions

    At Price Elementary in Downey, the teacher has her kids give an affirmation: “I am safe. I am kind. I matter. I make good choices. I can do hard things. All of my problems have solutions!” (They also have these sentences on classroom wall signs.)

    The children also learn how to interact with their peers. In some schools, there are no assigned desks so the kids can learn how to share the space.

    “ They’re able to problem solve. They’re able to use communication to get their needs, regulating their emotions. They do better than students who come in without this experience,” said Cristal Moore, principal at Lucille Smith Elementary.

    On the playground, a student named Ava told teacher assistant Lizbeth Orozco that another student pushed her.

    “How did that make you feel?” Orozco asked.

    “Mad!”

    Orozco encouraged Ava to express her feelings to her classmate.

    “ We give them options of how to solve a problem and then they go in and solve it themselves,” Orozco said. “If they need extra help, they always come back and we can help them.”

    Arguing over toys can be a common occurrence in a TK classroom. At Price Elementary in Downey, educators help kids work through a solution. On a recent morning, one 4-year-old used two tongs to pick up paper shapes in a sensory bin, leaving another kid upset.

    “What’s the rule about sharing?” asked Alexandria Pellegrino, a teacher who gives extra support for one TK classroom.

    The boy handed over a tong to his peer. “Thank you so much for being a good friend,” Pellegrino said.

    “[It’s]  about being kind friends and making friends and using our manners. So we do build that foundation at the beginning of the year,” said Samantha Elliot, the classroom’s lead instructor.

    At the end of the day in Alvarez’s Lawndale TK class, she counts up the stars next to each student’s name earned throughout the day — earned for positive behavior like being kind, solving problems, trying something challenging, or showing effort in other ways. Ten stars earns a small prize from the treasure chest.

    “If we don’t get something today are we going to get mad?” Alvarez asked the class.

    “No!” they responded.

    “I’m not going to cry!” one boy piped up, followed by his classmate and a “Me too!” from another student.

    “That’s [a] positive attitude,” Alvarez said. “Because tomorrow you can get more stars!”

    Get exposed to numbers, shapes, letters

    In Elliot’s TK class, students use their own little lightsabers to trace letters in the air.

    “They’re learning the letter, the sound, and then a little action to go with it. They’re wiggling and moving and they’re also learning those letter sounds and they don’t really realize, so it’s incorporating instruction,” she said.

    There’s no mandated curriculum in TK, but instruction is supposed to align with the state’s Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations. “Kindergarten is basically where the state standards go and kick in. There are standards in TK, but it’s a little bit different,” said Tom Kohout, principal at Marguerita Elementary.

    Students might put playdough into letter molds, or the teacher might pull out toys from a bag that all start with a letter “E.” Kids will play with little plastic toys that connect — or “manipulatives” — that can help them recognize numbers and patterns.

    “It’s play with a purpose,” Ralston said. “They’re just being introduced to the numbers, the colors, writing. But again, we’re not doing worksheets.”

    Build fine motor skills

    Molding pretend cakes with kinetic sand. Connecting small LEGO bricks. Cutting playdough. It might not seem like much, but children this age are still learning how to use their bodies.

    “Tearing paper is really hard and it’s a really amazing fine motor skill for them because the same muscles you use to tear paper are the same muscles that you use to hold a pen or a pencil,” said Lauren Bush, a TK teacher at Lucille Smith Elementary in Lawndale.

    “You see kids playing with dinosaurs. I see kids sorting by color, doing visual, you know, eye hand coordination and visual discrimination. I see them using their fine motor skills,” she said.

    At lunch, kids learn how to open up a milk carton or open a packaged muffin. At PE, they learn to balance on a block or walk in a straight line — learning spatial awareness.

    “They’re learning how to run, stop, things like that and playing because their bodies are so young,” said Principal Kohout.

    Learn independence

    For some kids, it might be the first time where mom and dad aren’t there to help carry their backpacks or help them go to the bathroom. TK is meant to help focus on their independence, though aides can help.

    TK classrooms are also usually set up with play centers, so kids can have the choice to explore on their own.

    “ I want them to be independent, to be able to solve their problems, you know, with assistance,” Ralston said.

    Samantha Elliot, the TK teacher in Downey, says she encourages kids to talk to their teammates first to figure out an activity before going to a teacher.

    “It’s just gaining the confidence and building that independence from basically the start of the school year,” she said.

    Parent Crystal Ramirez has already noticed a change in her 4-year-old this year since starting school. “ [He’s] socializing a little bit more, talking a little bit more, trying to express himself as well.”


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  • Fewer New International Students Enroll at U.S. Colleges Amid Trump Restrictions – The 74

    Fewer New International Students Enroll at U.S. Colleges Amid Trump Restrictions – The 74


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    New international students enrolling at U.S. colleges declined sharply this fall, a concerning development for universities that rely on those students for research, tuition revenue and the diversity they bring to campus culture. It could, however, create more space for U.S. residents at those campuses.

    Enrollments of new international students were down 17% compared to fall 2024, according to a report released Monday by the Institute of International Education, which surveyed more than 800 colleges about their fall 2025 enrollments. The institute, a nonprofit organization based in New York, publishes an annual report that examines the enrollment of international students. 

    The fall data was not broken down by state, so the scale of decline in California is unclear. At USC, which enrolls more international students than any other California college, overall enrollment of international students is down 3% this fall, according to a campus spokesperson. That includes returning and first-time students, so the drop could be much higher for new arrivals. USC this fall enrolls about 12,000 international students, or 26% of its total student population, according to the college. About half of those students are from China. 

    The declines come amid a changing landscape for international students under the Trump administration, which has delayed visa processing, created travel restrictions and pressured some campuses to recruit and admit fewer students from other countries. The colleges surveyed this fall by the institute cited visa application concerns and travel restrictions as top factors in the decline. 

    “We are confronting major headwinds with what I would say are poor policy decisions that the administration is taking. And that is creating a climate for international students that signals that you’re not welcome here,” said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, a nonprofit for international education and exchange.

    President Donald Trump has said that he wants to lower the number of international students at U.S. colleges to leave more room at those campuses for U.S. students. “It’s too much because we have Americans that want to go there and to other places, and they can’t go there,” he said earlier this year, referencing the number of international students at Harvard and other universities.

    For the full 2024-25 academic year, new international student enrollments were down by 7%, driven by a 15% drop among new international graduate students, compared to 2023-24. However, the number of new undergraduates was up by 5%. Trump took office in January, just before the start of the spring semester at most colleges. 

    In the U.S., students from India were the largest group of international students, accounting for 30.8% of all international students, followed by students from China, with 22.6% of enrollments.

    In the 2024-25 academic year in California, the largest share of international students were from China, and they made up 35.4% of enrollments, followed by students from India at 20.9%. Overall enrollment of international students in California was down 1.1% in 2024-25. 

    USC enrolled the most international students of any California university, followed by four University of California campuses: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and Irvine. According to the report, the total number of enrolled international students were: 12,020 at Berkeley, 10,769 at UCLA, 10,545 at San Diego, and 7,638 at Irvine.

    Across the state, international students make up about 7% of enrollments at four-year colleges, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. They make up a large share of graduate students, accounting for 31% of graduate students at UC campuses, 15% at private nonprofit universities, and 12% at California State University campuses. 

    Freya Vijay, 20, a third-year student from Canada studying business administration at USC, said she always planned to come to the United States for college. 

    “In terms of business and just the economy, you have Wall Street, you have New York, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco, all these big cities that dominate what’s going on in the world,” she said. “So immediately, in terms of opportunity, my mind was set on the States.” 

    In addition to visa and travel restrictions, the Trump administration has directly requested — or threatened, as some have called it — California campuses to limit enrollments of international students. The administration’s compact offer to USC last month would have forced the university to cap international enrollment at 15% for undergraduates and limit enrollment from any one country to 5%.

    USC has since rejected the compact, which also would have required the university to make a number of other changes, including committing to “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” 

    Separately, in a settlement proposal to UCLA, the Trump administration calls on the campus to ensure that “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” are not admitted. UCLA is still in negotiations with the administration and has not yet reached a deal. The Trump administration has charged the campus with antisemitism and civil rights violations. 

    Even amid the turmoil, experts say they expect California universities to continue recruiting international students. Julie Posselt, a professor of education at USC’s Rossier School of Education, noted that at research universities, much of the research is being carried out by international graduate students. 

    “Especially in STEM fields, international students are really central to the research functions of universities,” Posselt said. “Enrolling international students is not optional. It is absolutely a part of the fabric of what makes universities great.” 

    On top of that, colleges have financial incentives to enroll international students. That’s especially true at UC campuses, which charge international students and students from other states much higher rates of tuition than California residents. In the 2026-27 academic year, new international and out-of-state undergraduates at UC will pay nearly $52,000 in tuition, more than triple what in-state students will be charged. Nonresidents in graduate programs also generally pay higher rates than residents.

    Facing pressure from the state Legislature to make more room for California residents, UC in 2017 passed a policy to cap nonresident enrollment at 18%, with a higher percentage allowed for campuses that were already above that mark. But the system still gets significant tuition revenue from nonresidents, including international students, which UC says supports the system’s core operations and helps to lower the cost of attendance for California residents.  

    In a Nov. 10 interview with Fox News, Trump seemed to acknowledge the importance of international students, saying colleges might “go out of business” without them.

    “You don’t want to cut half of the people, half of the students from all over the world that are coming into our country — destroy our entire university and college system — I don’t want to do that,” he said. 

    International students also bring diverse perspectives and “a richness to the campus culture,” said Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the University of California system. “That’s something we really appreciate and try to cultivate.”

    At USC, the presence of international students from more than 130 countries means there are “innumerable opportunities at USC to encounter different perspectives” and “experience new cultures,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

    Vijay, the USC student from Canada, said she regularly boasts about USC to friends, adding that she hopes attending remains an option for other international students. 

    “I always think it’s just such a great opportunity and that no international student should ever take it for granted,” she said. “I wish other internationals could experience it.”

    This story was originally published on EdSource.


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  • DOJ Sues California Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    DOJ Sues California Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of California on Thursday, challenging a state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates. The lawsuit also targets the California Dream Act, which offers state financial aid to undocumented students who meet certain requirements.

    The complaint, filed in the Eastern District of California, targets the state, Governor Gavin Newsom, state attorney general Rob Bonta, the University of California Board of Regents, the California State University Board of Trustees and the California Community Colleges’ Board of Governors.

    “California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

    California marks the sixth state the federal government has sued over such policies, but unlike some of the others, California plans to fight back. The state is home to more than 102,000 undocumented students, who have been permitted to pay in-state tuition rates since 2001 if they met certain requirements. Undocumented students have also been allowed to access state financial aid for more than a decade, according to the Higher Education Immigration Portal.

    Newsom has repeatedly pushed back on the Trump administration’s policies, including immigration crackdowns. The DOJ filed another lawsuit against the state on Monday, after Newsom signed a bill banning face coverings for federal immigration agents. The DOJ also recently sued Newsom and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the state’s redistricting plan.

    Bondi said in her statement that the DOJ will “continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”

    But Newsom isn’t backing down.

    “The DOJ has now filed three meritless, politically motivated lawsuits against California in a single week,” Marissa Saldivar, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “Good luck, Trump. We’ll see you in court.”

    By contrast, Texas and Oklahoma, faced with similar lawsuits this summer, swiftly sided with the DOJ, quashing in-state tuition benefits for their undocumented students. The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education also agreed to stop offering in-state tuition to noncitizens in September, a few months after the DOJ sued, but the legal battle is ongoing. A judge recently allowed a group of Kentucky undocumented students, represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to intervene in the case. Legal fights in Minnesota and Illinois have also continued as the states defend their in-state tuition policies against DOJ challenges.

    The government argues that such laws violate a federal statutory provision that says undocumented people can’t receive higher ed benefits unless citizens are also eligible. The DOJ has asserted that states can’t permit undocumented students in a state to pay lower tuition rates while denying out-of-state citizens the same benefit. Proponents of California’s current policy argue it allows any nonresident who meets certain requirements—including spending three years in a California high school—to access in-state tuition, not just undocumented students.

    Rachel Zaentz, a spokesperson for the University of California system, said system leaders believe they’ve acted within the law.

    “For decades, the University of California has followed applicable state and federal laws regarding eligibility for in-state tuition, financial aid, and scholarships,” Zaentz said in a statement sent to Inside Higher Ed. “While we will, of course, comply with the law as determined by the courts, we believe our policies and practices are consistent with current legal standards.”

    California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian said in a similar memo that the system “will follow all legal obligations and fully participate in the judicial process alongside our state partners” but “statutes referenced in the lawsuit have been in place for many years and have been implemented in accordance with long-standing legal guidance.”

    “Although we cannot comment on ongoing litigation, our commitment remains unchanged: we will continue to ensure that all students who qualify under state law have access to an affordable, high-quality education,” Christian said. “We will also continue to comply fully with all current federal and state requirements.”

    Iliana Perez, executive director of the advocacy organization Immigrants Rising, called the latest lawsuit an “an affront to the decades of hard-fought student-led advocacy for equitable access to postsecondary education.” She also noted the challenge comes just a week before college applications are due at public four-year institutions in the state.

    “This challenge is a callous attempt to have students second-guess their dreams,” Perez said in a statement. “We have one message for this Administration; we will not be deterred!”

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  • DOJ sues California over in-state tuition for undocumented students

    DOJ sues California over in-state tuition for undocumented students

    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Justice is suing California over its laws allowing certain undocumented college students to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and receive state-administered scholarships.
    • In a Thursday court filing, the agency argued that in-state tuition rates for undocumented students illegally provide benefits not offered to all U.S. citizens and asked a federal judge to rule California’s laws unconstitutional.
    • The lawsuit, which also names as defendants Gov. Gavin Newsom and the governing boards of California’s three public college systems, marks the sixth the DOJ has brought against states with in-state tuition policies for certain undocumented students.

    Dive Insight:

    California is home to roughly 103,000 undocumented residents enrolled in higher education — accounting for about a fifth of some 510,000 undocumented students in the U.S. — according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

    Since 2001, a California law known as AB 540 has allowed students to pay in-state tuition at its three public higher ed systems if they attended a state high school for at least three years and earned their high school diploma or equivalent in California. Undocumented students must also sign an affidavit saying they have either filed an application to gain legal status or plan to once they are eligible.

    A 2017 law broadened that eligibility and permits students to reach the three-year attendance threshold by combining any time spent at a California high school, community college, adult school or carceral education program.

    It also allows students who completed at least three years full-time high school coursework anywhere to qualify for the waiver if they attended at least three years of their K-12 education in California.

    Leaders from the state’s public college systems — the University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges — supported the expansion of the in-state tuition policy.

    Both laws apply to both U.S. citizens and immigrants without legal status.

    But U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Thursday statement that policies are “illegally discriminating against American students and families” and that California is demonstrating “flagrant disregard for federal law.”

    Since 1998, U.S. law has prohibited immigrants without legal status from receiving any higher education benefit based on their residency, “unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit … without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

    The agency’s lawsuit is not the first time California’s in-state tuition law has faced legal opposition. One challenge to AB 540 that similarly argued the policy violated federal law made it to the California Supreme Court in 2010.

    However, the court upheld AB 540, ruling it did not violate federal law because students seeking in-state tuition status did not need to be California residents.

    The DOJ argued Thursday that this decision was incorrect and that federal courts should reject it. 

    “Allocating lower tuition rates on the basis of high school attendance is a proxy for residence,” running afoul of federal law, the agency said.

    Using the same argument, the DOJ lawsuit also targets a 2011 law permitting AB 540-eligible undocumented students to receive state-administered scholarships and aid and a law passed in 2014 establishing a student loan program for them.

    Gaining an in-state tuition waiver for California can have big cost implications for prospective students, as the state’s public colleges charge some of the highest out-of-state tuition premiums in the U.S., according to the College Board.

    The University of California published tuition and fees for out-of-state students who started in 2025-26 were $37,602 more a year than for their in-state counterparts.

    At the University of California, Berkeley, that means out-of-state, full-time undergraduates who first enrolled this fall would pay $55,080 if they did not receive financial aid or scholarships — more than double the $17,478 their in-state counterparts would pay sans aid.

    Even with aid and institutional scholarships, out-of-state students saw a stark difference. U.S. News & World Report estimated that the average total cost of attendance at UC Berkeley for those receiving need-based aid was $16,636 for in-state students and $66,625 for those from outside of California.

    The Cal State system’s published tuition and fees for out-of-state are also higher than for in-state students. Its 23 campuses charge a base rate of $6,450 for in-state undergraduate tuition and fees for the 2025-26 academic year. This year, out-of-state students pay at least $444 more per credit.

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  • California State University Embraces Direct Admissions

    California State University Embraces Direct Admissions

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | gemenacom, ghoststone, Jose Gonzalez Buenaposada and vi73777/iStock/Getty Images

    The California State University system launched a direct admissions pilot last year, offering qualifying high school seniors at school districts in Riverside County admission to 10 of its institutions. The program turned out to be an unqualified success: The number of graduates from the district who enrolled at a CSU campus this fall jumped 9 percent.

    Now the system is expanding the program, thanks to legislation signed last month that will allow CSU to extend offers to students in every school district in the state starting in the 2026–27 admission cycle. The offers will grant admission to 16 of the 22 CSU campuses; the six most selective institutions will not participate.

    The program ties in with the system’s goal of creating access to higher education for all Californians, said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of strategic enrollment management.

    “Being able to proactively inform students that they are eligible for the CSU has provided a lot of positive results,” she said. “We had a lot of students and families that did not realize they were eligible to go to a four-year university.”

    With this program, California joins a cohort of about 15 states that offer students some form of direct, guaranteed or simplified admissions. The intent is to streamline the admissions process and make students aware of institutions they may not have otherwise considered, as well as to bolster institutions’ enrollment. Such programs have proven broadly successful, according to Taylor Odle, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin.

    “My work, in partnership with states and national nonprofit organizations, shows that direct admissions programs can not only increase students’ early-college going behaviors but also subsequently raise their college enrollment outcomes,” Odle wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “These benefits are particularly large for students of color, those who will be the first in their family to attend college, and those from lower-income communities. States who have implemented direct admissions also consistently report higher enrollment levels following implementation.”

    While different states use the term “direct admissions” slightly differently, Odle defined a true direct admissions program as “guaranteed (students are admitted to college; not an invitation to apply), universal (all students can participate), proactive (students don’t need to do anything to receive a direct admissions offer), simplified (students don’t need to apply; simply ‘claim their spot’ via a streamlined process), and free (no cost).”

    In CSU’s case, qualified students—those who meet the system’s requirements regarding the courses they took in high school and who have a minimum 2.5 grade point average—receive mailers informing them that they have been admitted to all 16 participating campuses.

    In the Riverside County pilot program, about 17,400 graduating seniors received admission offers. The system saw a 15 percent year-over-year increase in students from the county who completed an application for a CSU institution—direct admits don’t complete the full application, just a truncated version of it in order to accept the offer of admission—and led to the subsequent bump in enrollees. The majority ended up at Cal State San Bernardino, the closest campus to Riverside County—across the state, most CSU students attend an institution within 50 miles of their home—but others traveled farther, in some cases to study in specialized programs.

    Along with the direct admissions offers, the system also launched a series of events to expose Riverside County students to CSU’s different campuses and programs. Called Discover CSU Days, the events featured panels of current students from Riverside County.

    “A lot of Riverside County students are first-generation and low-income, so we talked to them about why the CSU is a good option for them,” said Grommo.

    Students could enroll that same day, with some campuses waiving housing and tuition deposits for those who did.

    Odle said that with so many institutions reporting positive outcomes from their direct admissions programs, such initiatives may soon become the “new norm.”

    “More states and systems of higher education should be in the business of identifying challenges, designing and implementing pilot programs to address them, rigorously studying them, and then making expansion decisions (like this) based on evidence,” he wrote. “Given CSU’s access and service mission to the state, it makes sense that it joins a variety of other systems nationally at implementing this evidence-based practice to raise enrollments and reduce gaps in access.”

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