In 2020 and 2021, the state’s public schools ditched their students, shutting down K-12 campuses for over a year and providing irregular and ineffective online lessons. Since then, educational leaders have often failed to acknowledge, and done too little to compensate for, all the learning loss—which is why average California eighth graders now do math at a fifth-grade level.

And with public schools just trying to survive chronic absenteeism, teacher resignations, political controversy, and historic enrollment declines (270,000 kids statewide since March 2020), there’s little chance of restoring the system and its standards anytime soon.

Rather than confront this historic educational failure, the state of California has sought to cover it up—by eliminating testing, turning Ds and Fs into passing grades, and reducing graduation requirements, which were already among the most meager in the country (we only require two years of math).

Add it all up (if you have the math skills), and California high school diplomas no longer mean that much.

Which is why our state university systems should stop requiring them for admission.

You read that right. The University of California and California State University systems should immediately drop their admission requirement that students graduate from high school—for at least the rest of this decade.

Anyone who attended school in California during the pandemic and who wants a seat in one of those systems should get one, regardless of high school completion.

The notion may seem crazy but it is not novel. You already can attend California community colleges without a diploma or GED. And some elite colleges, including Harvard, will admit students without high school degrees.

But California’s four-year public universities still require a high school degree—maintaining a status quo that wasn’t working all that well before the pandemic.

Now, unfortunately, UC and CSU are putting more emphasis than ever on the grades and work students do in the state’s failing high schools. CSU is considering adding a required quantitative course and raising their standards to 16 required high school courses, while 11 of the 13 factors UC considers in reviewing applications are entirely tied to high school performance.

And they are unapologetic about it. Indeed, these institutions are bragging about their new high-school-heavy admissions policies, because it is part of California’s self-righteous rush to eliminate standardized testing in education.

The UC and CSU systems, by getting rid of the SAT and ACT, and the state, in eliminating the high school exit exam, have claimed to be promoting inclusion, since standardized test results often are biased by race and class. But this shift away from testing has a dark side. It means that high schools—the same high schools that have lost track of as many of the one in 10 kids who have departed their rolls—become even more important.

You don’t have to be a cynic to see the cynicism in this test-free, high-school-centric approach. By eliminating tests that might show how poorly schools and students are performing, the educational system is avoiding accountability, protecting itself, and shifting the costs of its failures onto pandemic-era students.

Worse still, the whole thing is being justified by a supposed commitment to equity, and by educational officials who have denied the full reality of the current crisis.

So, what is that reality? Part of the scandal in pandemic-era education is that the schools and the state have made that question impossible to answer. The education establishment, which has struggled to build a robust and effective student data system, hasn’t kept close enough tabs on students to provide a full and accurate picture

But one near-certain truth is that the most vulnerable students—homeless students, students with disabilities, and students who are children of immigrants, or of color, or from poorer places—have been the most likely to be left behind these past two years. So, if equity is to mean anything in California education, those students deserve the right to walk into a public university, regardless of how they did in high school.

Giving those students a real chance to stick in our universities will be hard. It will demand new ways of assessing high school dropouts to see if they would fit better at UC or CSU. It will require more kinds of support, more counseling, and more resources to keep them there. (CSU’s Graduation Initiative 2025, which has had some success in keeping students in college, offers the beginnings of such a model.)

It also may require the federal government to step in and exempt California from requirements that tie federal financial aid to high school degrees. And it will force the state to shift fiscal priorities, forgoing one-time giveaways like gas tax rebates and embracing the type of longer-term educational investments that are challenging under our complicated budget system.

But if more students whose educations were disrupted by the pandemic can get to college, and get through college, they won’t be the only winners. Colleges, suffering declines in enrollment during the pandemic, will see more students. And California as a whole will be better off.

Indeed, decoupling high school graduation from college attendance could prove to be more than a short-term experiment. California has been producing far fewer college graduates than its economy requires. If California wanted to be more ambitious, it could combine a “no high school degree, no problem” policy with a larger program to help the millions of adults who have dropped out of college to return and get their degrees.

This approach is what real fairness would look like—especially for the young Californians our education system has left in the lurch.

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Californians may think we have a system of public education. But what we really have is a state system for rationing public education.

I got a personal taste of this in the spring, when I took my five-year-old son to our local school district offices to determine his educational future. This being California, the determination was made not by a test of his abilities or an assessment of his educational needs. Instead, it was a lottery. A school administrator pulled names out of the hat to determine whether he would get one of 24 coveted spots in our elementary school’s new Mandarin language program.

The month of September, early in a fresh academic calendar, is the time of year when we hear fine speeches and noble promises about how our state and its school districts are committed to doing the very best for every child. School superintendents and politicians often point to our state constitution’s commitment to universal education, which includes a funding requirement to deliver on that commitment. But when you experience how our schools operate, you learn quickly that such lofty, sweet sentiments and guarantees are so much Fang pi (a Mandarin approximation for cow dung).

In California, when it comes down to who gets precious educational resources, schools as a matter of policy and law leave much to chance.

We do this for two reasons: scarcity and avoidance. Educational resources here are scarce—there is simply more demand for schooling than the state’s wobbly budget system can accommodate. And so we’ve come to use lotteries and formulas, so that our officials can avoid the work of deciding who deserves resources, and so that the rest of us Californians can avoid reckoning with our collective failure to support public education.

Yes, it’s true that K-12 (and community college) education is the top spending item in the state budget, but there is no area in which our school spending—which remains below the national average despite recent increases—meets education needs.

By all reliable accounts, there aren’t nearly enough good, experienced teachers in our schools. The state offers only 180 days of instruction (when research suggests there should be more than 200 days and more hours of instruction), and only provides half-day kindergarten. And the inadequacy of newer programs and schools offered by some districts in the name of educational choice only underscore the ongoing scarcity. There are simply not enough Advanced Placement classes, career-readiness programs, charters, magnets, or language immersions to meet the demand for high-quality options.

There’s little hope of trying to do more to meet those needs. California long ago decoupled school funding from educational needs. Our school funding formulas, known collectively as Prop 98, are baked into the state constitution, and are driven by tax revenues, the budget, and income growth, not academic needs. Effectively, Prop 98 guarantees only a portion—you might say a ration—of the state budget to schools. (Tellingly, that money is supplemented by a small amount—usually $1 billion or less than 2 percent of annual education funding—from the state lottery).

So in the absence of funds to meet all our students’ needs, we turn to education’s version of lotteries to allot scarce resources. State law (mirroring federal guidance) directs school districts to use a lottery system for charter school admissions once the number of pupils who want to enroll exceeds the number of spaces. Districts with magnet programs do the same. Many of these lotteries have complicated rules and exclusions, often to help kids go to schools in their own neighborhoods, keep siblings together in the same school, or to make sure campuses are diverse. L.A. Unified has a system of points to govern its lottery for magnet school placement so complicated that a cottage industry (check out “Ask a Magnet Yenta” ) has sprung up to help parents navigate it.

Of course, such lotteries are not all that fair. The winners in lotteries are more likely to be the children of parents who have the time and resources to investigate their local educational possibilities, sign their children up for the lotteries and, in some cases, write letters or pursue strategies to help their chances.

And the lotteries raise a bigger question, now being debated in California’s courts. Does “random” allocation of educational resources really represent justice?

Earlier this summer, the California Supreme Court showed itself to be divided on the question. A 4-3 majority of justices refused to hear challenges to the state’s systems of hiring and firing public schoolteachers and funding schools. The challengers said that those systems were violating the rights of students, because they didn’t produce enough money and qualified teachers to meet the state constitution’s guarantees of education for all. But the Supreme Court majority, in declining to hear the challenges, endorsed the position that while there might be problems with funding and teachers, these weren’t constitutional problems—because the impact of bad policies was random and arbitrary, and not felt by any particular group of students.

Mariano-Florentino “Tino” Cuellar, a young associate justice of the Supreme Court, dissented powerfully from that logic. Curtailing access to educational opportunity, the justice argued, doesn’t become justifiable simply because it’s done arbitrarily.

“Arbitrary selection has at times been considered a means of rendering a governmental decision legitimate,” he wrote. “But where an appreciable burden results—thereby infringing a fundamental right [like the right to an education]—arbitrariness seems a poor foundation on which to buttress the argument that the resulting situation is one that should not substantially concern us.”

The brilliantly cynical filmmaker Orson Welles once said, “Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.” He wasn’t wrong—our parents, where and when we were born, the people we happen to meet, all influence the direction our lives take, through no fault or deed of our own.

My own son was lucky. His name was pulled 16th out of the hat, giving him a place he now enjoys in that Mandarin immersion kindergarten. His own luck will transfer to his younger brother, who is automatically eligible to join the program when he reaches kindergarten age.

But California is not as fortunate in leaning its educational system so heavily on luck. Our schools are supposed to be equalizers, helping counter the lottery of life. Instead, they are emulating it.

The post California’s Bad Bet on School Finance Leaves Too Much to Chance appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This year, that work has passed a milestone as our first charter school, USC Hybrid High School, graduated its first senior class. All of the students graduated on time and all of them have been accepted into at least one four-year college or university. Many will join the California State University and the University of California networks, and four students have chosen to enroll in the University of Southern California.

The road to these successes, however, has not been straight or easy. Indeed, it’s been humbling and instructive to watch how our ideas and research bumped up against competing visions and political realities. We’ve learned through the process how to make adjustments.

For me, the task of helping strong communities build strong children is personal. A devoted mother, a strong church, and a committed school helped push me toward becoming the first member of my family to attend—and graduate from—college. My work at Rossier and with the Ednovate charter management organization (which oversees USC Hybrid High), shares the common thread of trying to improve the quality of education for students, especially for those who need it the most.

Many of the students of Hybrid High—about two-thirds hail from South L.A.—don’t have anything resembling a privileged upbringing. Eighty-five percent of this year’s graduating class qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. Eighty-one percent of them will, like me, be the first members of their immediate families to go to college.

USC Hybrid High has made progress because students, teachers, administrators, and the community have created a shared vision of making all students college-ready and helping them thrive once they enroll in college. But a unified vision is not easy to achieve, especially in school districts the size of Los Angeles, where each neighborhood has its own identity and its own needs. We learned this early on in our work in South L.A., and it continues to inform our thinking.

Back in 2007, USC Rossier joined the Urban League and the Tom and Ethel Bradley Foundation to form the Greater Crenshaw Educational Partnership. The partnership was part of a broader effort underway to improve the standard of living within a neighborhood of South L.A., and our partnership would focus on the anchor of that area, Crenshaw High School.

At the time, Crenshaw High School experienced problems with student achievement, graduation, and attendance. In the years prior to the partnership, Crenshaw had struggled to keep administrators and improve teaching, and almost 60 percent of students were failing classes.

The L.A. Unified School District saw the partnership as a way to apply outside resources and guidance to a struggling school. As part of our efforts, we enlisted two USC stalwarts: Sylvia Rousseau, a former teacher, principal, and school superintendent who helped lead the school’s administration, including as an interim principal; and Sandra Kaplan, a professor and education consultant. Our USC colleagues in social work, communications, engineering, and business agreed to contribute efforts as well.

LAUSD prioritized student achievement because of the school’s inability to meet the measures of accountability required by federal law. Getting students to show up and stay in school was another priority. But the partnership, while acknowledging those goals, had a larger vision, as did the community around Crenshaw. To change a school requires an understanding of that school, a sustained effort and, above all, stability and consistency. All of those things require time. We recognized that when administrators try to restructure a school around a short-term agenda, like increasing test scores, they risk undermining a school’s culture rather than building it.

The basic problem was this: Just because everyone wants change doesn’t mean they all want the same change. The partnership had thoughtful support and guidance from the school community, including many active parents and teachers. Attendance improved, as did graduation rates. But ultimately, after five years, the district and the partnership didn’t share the same vision and how to get there. And it was too hard to change an existing school without that shared vision.

With that in mind, we worked on building our own school. As USC Rossier began its work establishing USC Hybrid High in 2012, we had the benefit of our experience at Crenshaw, which had allowed us to better understand some themes of school improvement. First, the common purpose of a school must be clear. With USC Hybrid High, we had that: All our graduates will be accepted into college, and at least 90 percent of those who choose to attend won’t drop out.

Second, no school is an island. The community cannot be a passive witness to school improvement. Moving children from kindergarten all the way through to the end of senior year will not guarantee future success if the world they enter has no care, concern, or opportunity for them, so we needed to engage the community, government, and businesses in our work.

Third, equity is important. Years of disaggregating student achievement data shows what many already knew: Opportunity gaps have caused low-income students and students of color to struggle academically. It’s no longer enough to point the problem out—it needs to be addressed, whether the issue involves economic disparities, shortcomings within teaching or administration, or the lack of access to classified school staff members like counselors and nurses.

But even understanding these three essentials, we struggled, and had to make adjustments.

Some issues were more technical than others. We wanted to base the school immediately near our campus, but the cost and availability of space made that impossible, so we ended up downtown in the World Trade Center.

Academically, our model was about using research and technology and great teaching to create individual paths for students, and we planned to be open from 7 in the morning until 7 at night. That didn’t last. Students didn’t need our campuses open for 12 hours—they needed, and their parents wanted, a much more intensive focus on essential curriculum and academics during school hours. And we ended up having to make staffing and teaching changes for this different emphasis.

We also confronted a real problem with disrespectful interactions between students and faculty. And when we tightened up behavioral standards, some members of our first class left by the end of the first year.

There were enough adjustments that we decided we had to go before the L.A. Unified school board and modify our original plan. We had been following the research in our original plans, but we had to make the choices that were right for these kids and for our shared vision. I didn’t like asking, and our changes took some school board members by surprise, but they approved.

Now at Ednovate, our model still combines teaching and technology to tailor experiences to the needs of individual students, with a focus on college prep. Students do the work necessary to be college eligible. As they progress through grades, they receive more autonomy and more chances for self-directed learning, while teachers use data to figure out where students need help.

We’re also determined to make sure that as students choose higher education, they are able to stay. College completion has proven to be an enormous challenge for even the best-prepared students from less privileged backgrounds. To that end, we offer rigorous college counseling, and will continue our advising via dedicated alumni outreach after they graduate. We also are preparing to share our resources electronically with graduates and to be available to help them navigate college environments, including through campus visits.

We think the Ednovate model is now working, and LAUSD agrees—in April, the board of education approved an expansion of the Ednovate network, so that a total of five Ednovate schools will be in operation across the greater Los Angeles area by fall 2017, including in Lincoln Heights, Santa Ana, Pico-Union, and East Los Angeles.

These successes should not be misconstrued. While we benefit from the charter model, a charter school alone is neither a prerequisite for, nor a guarantee of, student achievement. Nor should our students be seen as fundamentally different from students in any other school in Los Angeles. They aren’t.

We think our progress shows the value of research, collaboration, and a commitment to make adjustments in the best interests of students. And we think this kind of work will only benefit future models of school improvement, whether through the new California task force working on improving the state’s school accountability system, or within the Los Angeles Compact, a commitment by 18 major L.A. institutions to support positive change in Los Angeles public schools. USC is involved in both these efforts.

I succeeded in college in part because of the support I received as a student; now, a new generation of students has support from my school and me. One day, we hope these students will support still more students. The work goes on.

The post For College Prep Charter Schools Serving Underprivileged Communities, High School Graduation Is Just the Beginning appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.