Californians Shouldn’t Need a High School Diploma to Go to a Public University

To Make Up for the Pandemic-Era Student Achievement Gap, Our Higher Ed Systems Should Skip the Requirement

Why should you need a high school degree to go to university in California?

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 …

California’s Bad Bet on School Finance Leaves Too Much to Chance

It’s the Already-Fortunate Who Are Most Likely to Luck Out in the State’s Public Education System

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 …

For College Prep Charter Schools Serving Underprivileged Communities, High School Graduation Is Just the Beginning

With a Majority of Students From South L.A., USC Hybrid High School Rejected Teaching to the Test to Focus on Getting 90 Percent of Graduates Through College

In 2012, USC’s Rossier School of Education, where I am the dean, began working in South L.A. to improve high school education. Our goals were to help disadvantaged students find …