The announcement came shortly after the Senate’s admissions board said it was pulling back on its original timeline to have two working groups — one to consider resurrecting the exams and the other to review high school course requirements for UC admission — through next year. That news, , caused confusion and doubt over how and when the admissions test question would be addressed.

Regents Chair Maria Anguiano settled that issue at Tuesday’s board meeting after a vast majority of public speakers voiced strong support for reinstituting the SAT and ACT.  

“As stewards of this institution, we need to ask a broader and more consequential set of questions,” she said of the admissions process. “What knowledge, skills and experiences best prepare students for success at UC and beyond? We have a responsibility to continually examine whether our understanding of college readiness keeps pace with the changing world around us.”

And, just as important, she said, the system needs to work with educators, families and communities across the state to strengthen students’ academic preparedness. 

“The goal of this review is not to rehash old questions or data, but an opportunity to take a fresh look at how we define and evaluate college readiness in a rapidly changing world,” she said. “We anticipate a recommendation from the Academic Senate no later than the end of this academic year.”

Much of the enthusiasm about reinstating the SAT and ACT as a screening tool came from faculty: They’ve been waging a growing campaign to bring back the exams to screen out what they say are underqualified first-year students.

The idea arose in part because of incoming freshmen’s abysmal performance in math. Between 2020 and 2025, for example, the number of students at the University of California San Diego whose math skills fell short of high school standards increased nearly thirtyfold — and 70% of those students were below

Reading and writing has suffered mightily, too, in recent years, faculty note. 

But some K-12 educators and advocates in the Golden State are skeptical of the idea, saying it will only widen the opportunity gap for students and would fail to address the real and solvable problems in K-12 education — particularly around teacher readiness.  

“That exam will be a gatekeeper, punishing the most under-resourced districts, schools and communities,” said Rodolfo Ornelas, whose position as STEM coordinator at Oakland Unified School District was recently eliminated because of budget cuts. “Districts like Oakland Unified serve some of our most vulnerable populations and attract teachers who are newer in their career or are on a number of emergency credentials.”

Ornelas will soon start a job at San Francisco Unified School District where he will coach new principals. He said one of the most fundamental problems with math instruction is that many educators don’t know how to teach the subject effectively. 

“A lot of times, they lack that content knowledge and the confidence to even teach mathematics, so they teach it the way they learned it and so that’s where we see our kids getting shortchanged,” Ornelas said. “Or you see these districts typically prioritizing literacy without realizing math needs to be an equal partner.”  

Educators point to COVID-related learning loss, chronic absenteeism and the corrosive nature of social media as other factors that play into college students’ poor math performance. They say the university system must work closely with K-12 schools to help ensure students have the skills they need. 

Andrea McChristian, national policy director for Just Equations, a California-based math equity group, said the use of the SATs and ACTs in admissions runs against the university system’s stated goals. 

“Their core mission and admissions policy says that they’re supposed to be representative of the student population in the state,” she said. “So, if you’re saying that as a public institution you want to represent the diversity of student voices and student experience in the state, yet you’re putting in this screener in the admissions process — which has been shown to lessen and suppress that very diversity that you want to have within your class — then something’s not adding up there.”

After the regents meeting, Just Equations Executive Director Pamela Burdman called for greater transparency in the process moving forward and questioned the fast-moving events of the last few days.

“The abandonment of the originally announced plan came on the eve of today’s regents meeting — in which the public had its first opportunity to comment on the idea of reinstating admissions tests — and amid intense pressure from a group of faculty demanding that the regents take an immediate vote, with no time to inquire into the evidence,” she said. 

The university system stopped requiring the SAT or ACT in 2020 and then , said the tests could not be used at all in admissions as part of a settlement to brought by four students, six nonprofits and the Compton Unified School District. The 2019 complaint charged that the UC system knowingly created barriers to higher education for students of color and those with disabilities by relying on the SAT and the ACT.

Around the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed strong reservations about the exams, saying their use “ for underrepresented students, given that performance on these tests is highly correlated with race and parental income, and is not the best predictor for college success.” His office did not respond to requests for comments. 

But those working within the nine-school, student university system disagree: more than 3,000 faculty members last month imploring school leadership to bring back the tests. 

The first, signed by 2,300 people, called for the admissions exams to be reinstated for incoming students applying to STEM majors. 

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other qualitatively demanding fields,” the STEM faculty . “UC has finite resources and can only help so many students, and only when the preparation deficits they need to overcome are within reach.”  

The signed by 900 faculty members in social sciences, humanities, arts, business, law, education and other non-STEM fields, said the SAT’s and ACT’s reading and writing sections were also critically needed indicators. 

The university system is also considering using the state-level exams — annual math and English tests taken by high school juniors — in admissions, but there are complicating factors with that alternative, including that not every out-of-state applicant takes the test.

Josh Godinez is an assistant high school principal in Southern California and board director for the nearly 2,000-member California Association of School Counselors.

He said he knows socioeconomic status, access to educational resources, mental health and test anxiety can all impact a student’s performance on high-stakes exams like the SAT and ACT.  But he still believes standardized tests should be a component of what he called a “holistic” admissions review, adding these exams “provide colleges and universities with a valuable snapshot of a student’s current academic proficiency that complements transcripts, coursework, and other measures of achievement.”

The push to bring back the college entrance exams began at UC Berkeley, about eight miles north of the Oakland Unified School District. Lakisha Young, whose organization The Oakland REACH builds and delivers family-centered learning solutions in partnership with school systems, said the parents of the students who performed poorly in math at the college level surely would have wanted to know their kids were missing key benchmarks in earlier years. 

Report cards might not have revealed the depth of their problems with the subject, she said. 

“Grades don’t tell the story about competence,” Young said. “If a parent looks at a report card and sees Bs and C pluses, how are they supposed to make that connection? A ‘C’ is at least average. I think a parent would be floored about that, thinking, ‘My child has been moving through the system still stuck at a 6th- or 7th-grade math level.’”

Proponents of returning the admissions tests say they are better measures of how well students will do in college than their high school grades. They argue, too, the exams are a more equitable method of identifying high-performing students from marginal backgrounds than other, more subjective criteria, such as exceptional extracurriculars.

Liz Noone, an instructional coach who helps math teachers inside Oakland USD, is conflicted about bringing back the tests but sees some value in the move because they would allow her students — and her school — to learn how they compare to others. 

“People who are in a better socioeconomic position get tutors, they do classes, they get books, they get practice, they do this and that, where our students who are from lower socioeconomic status don’t have access to all those resources and support,” she said. “So, it’s a double-edged sword.”

Dave Kung, executive director of TPSE Math, a professional organization that works to better serve students in higher education mathematics, said the original decision to pull the entrance tests was based on an observed inequality — but was not a solution to the underlying problem. 

“We saw an injustice — big equity gaps on SATs, especially for students of color — and tried to act like that wasn’t the result of deeper issues: poverty, generational wealth, the echoes of educational exclusion,” he said. “Instead, we thought ignoring it might make it go away, or at least diminish the problem. That was clearly overly optimistic thinking.”

The , led by the University of California-Riverside, followed more than 54,000 South Carolina students from the time they entered ninth grade at low-performing schools — primarily between the years 2000 and 2005 — until 2017, when most were in their early 30s.

The arrest rate for graduates of unsatisfactory schools was 19.7%, versus 22.4% for below-average schools. 

The study also found improvements in student academic performance and school climate, but no changes involving teacher turnover, per-pupil spending or the replacement of principals.

“It appears that accountability pressures prompted schools to implement policies that led to changes in school climate, which, in turn, manifest as improvements in short-term success and long-term reductions in criminal involvement,” the study said.

In , schools can be labeled unsatisfactory, below average, average, good or excellent. Low-performing schools are often required to create an improvement plan and set by the state. If schools don’t make progress, the state may replace their leaders or even take over. 

Researchers have of school accountability systems — another recent study found that only 29% of school leaders across the nation said the ratings help improve student outcomes. 

But other that turnaround programs are associated with better attendance, test scores and graduation rates.

The California researchers measured school climate by the percentage of students who felt satisfied with their learning, social and physical environments at school. The student satisfaction with the learning environment at unsatisfactory schools was nearly 65%, compared with 60.6% in below-average schools. Satisfaction with the social and physical environment was about 71% for unsatisfactory schools but 66.4% for those that were below average.

More than 64% of 10th graders passed standardized tests in unsatisfactory schools compared to 61.6% in below average schools. 

“Improving low-performing schools is a perennial problem,” the study said. “Policymakers have implemented various strategies to turn around struggling schools. Our findings are intriguing in that they suggest the existence of policies and practices that low-performing schools have implemented when they faced increased accountability pressures.”

Ryan Manriquez opened the door of his second-floor apartment to a blaring fire alarm. It was September 2023, a few weeks into the school year at UC Berkeley, where he’s a graduate student studying public policy.

Residents descended the staircase, following lighted exit signs. The alarm was getting louder, urging Manriquez to leave. But he couldn’t. Sitting in his power wheelchair, he looked at the only way out of the building for him — an elevator down the hallway, its doors now shut and inoperable. There was no way out for him. 

“When I stepped into the hallway, I just broke down in tears because I knew finally that I wasn’t going to have a place to safely evacuate,” he said.

As a safety measure, elevators shut down to contain a potential fire. Even though the alarm turned out to be false, Manriquez waited four hours before the elevator worked again, causing him to miss his favorite class that afternoon — public policy. 

While California’s public university systems have robust emergency policies and procedures, not all students who are physically disabled have reliable access to equipment to help them evacuate in an emergency. 

Last summer, when Manriquez toured a unit of The Intersection, an off-campus apartment complex the university operates for graduate students, he noticed there were no disability evacuation chairs in the building.  

Evacuation chairs allow people who have a mobility disability to  in emergencies. Some chairs require assistance from two people and are typically folded and stored with other emergency supplies or mounted on the wall. Other evacuation chairs can be battery-powered, allowing physically disabled residents to independently transport themselves up or down stairs.

According to UC Berkeley’s housing policy, evacuation chairs must be  in all campus buildings. Before he moved in, Manriquez requested a chair from the Berkeley Housing office in July. The evacuation chair was not installed when the school year started the following month. And it still wasn’t installed when the fire alarm went off in September. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires at least one  on every floor, whether it is achieved with an elevator, ramp or lift. The law doesn’t require buildings to have evacuation chairs in multi-storied buildings.  

People with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by disasters and emergencies. Data cited by the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies shows that disabled people are two to four times as likely  in emergencies compared to their non-disabled counterparts.

“It is hard to think that they just weren’t ready for someone like me to enter into one of the top graduate programs in the country,” Manriquez said. 

The ripple effect 

A few weeks after he was trapped in his apartment building, still without an evacuation chair on his floor, Manriquez shared his experience during public comment at the University of California Board of Regents meeting. After his speech, UC President Michael Drake offered a “personal apology.” Drake also asked campus chancellors to prepare an update on the status of emergency exit accessibility on their campuses at a future meeting.  

“The chancellors are here and I know by the time we come back to the November meeting all the chancellors will be able to ensure nothing like this can happen on any of the campuses in the future,” Drake said. 

Shortly after Manriquez spoke to the regents, in October 2023, two folding manual disability evacuation chairs were installed in his building, one of them on his floor. 

But some students have had to wait longer.

Some students still unequipped

Less than 24 hours after Manriquez’s experience, UC Berkeley student Trisha Nguyen couldn’t leave her second-floor, on-campus apartment during a fire drill.

Like Manriquez, Nguyen was met with shut elevator doors, blocking people from using it. After the drill was over, Nguyen’s apartment mates returned to open the elevator doors, so she could leave in her power wheelchair. 

“All undergraduate students and staff evacuated safely except for my personal care attendant (my mom) and me,” Nguyen wrote to CalMatters. 

Before the incident, Nguyen said UC Berkeley’s University Housing Department failed to give her an evacuation plan that would meet her needs. It wasn’t until after Manriquez shared his experience that the university housing department sent out information on , Nguyen said. 

“UC Berkeley does not do an excellent job of informing disabled students about emergency protocols for persons with disabilities,” Nguyen said. 

The UC Berkeley Office of Disability and Compliance sent out a self-identification questionnaire after her experience asking whether students with disabilities want a consultation to prepare for emergencies. The responses were then shared with building managers and first responders, said UC Berkeley Chief Accessibility Officer Eva Callow. 

Nguyen explained that with folding evacuation chairs, individuals with disabilities are “expected to simply wait” for first responders to assist, “hoping they arrive in time before the fire reaches us.” 

Nguyen wants to see the campus install electric evacuation chairs that allow disabled students like her to evacuate safely without relying on first responders or others. She added that as someone who doesn’t live on the first floor, she understands there might not be a safe route with an electric wheelchair. 

“The current protocol involves us relying on other people to get us out of the building safely,” Nguyen said. “But, I also want to have the resources necessary to take the initiative to evacuate myself.”

In March 2024, nearly six months after the September fire drill, Nguyen said university housing installed a manual evacuation chair on her floor.

Attempts to build accessible emergency plans

Across UC Berkeley’s campus, there are at least  to find an evacuation chair, according to the campus. As of publication, a webpage with in each building was still under construction.

The UC system does not record how many buildings have evacuation chairs across its 10 campuses, though developing system wide policies on disability accommodations such as emergency exits will be the responsibility of the UC’s new Office of Civil Rights.  

“My office is monitoring the progress of this work on our campuses and we’ll keep the board informed,” Drake said at the November UC Regents meeting. 

Within the office, which officially launched in February, there will be a disability rights office dedicated to improving accessibility at UC campuses. 

In January 2024 the UC’s Systemwide Advisory Workgroup on Students with Disabilities provided updated recommendations to better serve disabled students and staff. Developing a systemwide disability-inclusive emergency evacuation plan was the group’s main recommendation. 

“Students with disabilities experience an  for emergency evacuation — and often, downright danger,” the report read.

Currently, all campuses have emergency protocols for students with disabilities, some more extensive than others. While most campuses have evacuation chairs available, the onus falls on students to think proactively and request them, according to UC Communication Strategist Stett Holbrook. 

At UC Irvine, for example, students can use the  to request a customized evacuation plan by selecting “ADA” under the “Report” section. The university is updating its individualized emergency evacuation plan process, so this method will likely change soon, said ADA coordinator Andrew Berk.

“There are a lot of people with hidden disabilities who choose not to disclose,” he said. “We do not in any way want to put pressure on someone to disclose their disability.”

No student has requested an emergency evacuation plan this year, according to Berk. UC Irvine’s Emergency Management Director Randall Styner said his office is working to better communicate emergency evacuation options and resources available to students with campus posters and programming at orientation. 

Berk and Styner collaborate to create customized plans for students when requested. Both stressed the importance of including people with disabilities in the planning process. 

“You cannot have accessibility if you do not involve people with disabilities,” Berk said, adding he is as a person with a disability. 

UC Irvine has installed evacuation chairs in  according to a 2021-2022 emergency management report. Additionally, newer student housing offers two options: a button with two-way communication alerting first responders of the person’s location or a one-way system for guidance during emergencies. 

“This goes beyond people with disabilities because what we do for that population also helps people who are injured and people who might be a little older,” Berk said. 

At UC Davis, representatives from housing, emergency management and the campus fire department are currently revising some emergency protocols, according to UC Davis Crisis Communications Manager Bill Kisliuk.

“The draft calls for relevant campus units, for example, Student Housing and Dining Services, to train staff in identifying those in their communities who have access needs or functional needs and supporting them in an evacuation or other emergency,” Kisliuk wrote to CalMatters.  

Other higher education emergency plans

The 23-campus California State University system requires campuses to have emergency management programs, but not a protocol for accessibility. The Cal State Chancellor’s Office does not track which buildings at each campus have an evacuation chair. Each campus decides how to maintain evacuation chairs in the buildings, depending on how frequently the building is used or who is using the building, said Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith.  

Like UC students, Cal State students with disabilities have had to navigate campuses not built for them. Cal Poly Humboldt alum Christine diBella  her campus and the CSU over a  in October 2021. Her complaint outlined a general lack of accessibility on campus, including the lack of an emergency evacuation plan. Despite living on the third floor of her dorm building at the time, like other disabled students she could not get out in her power wheelchair. The case was settled in October 2023.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office instructs campuses to follow the state-recommended , “emphasizing that districts comply” with the recommendations. Those include communicating plans on social media or having a local disaster registry — a list of individuals who might need additional support during emergencies, said system spokesperson Melissa Villarin.  

“We feel it’s important that college officials, who have deep and specific knowledge of their campuses, partner with local emergency response officials,” said Villarin, who explained each community college district has individualized emergency plans. “Their knowledge, combined, can be used to develop plans and policies that protect students, staff and the public.” If there is a need for further emergency training, campuses are directed to consult the California Office of Emergency Services.

What is happening now at UC?

The UC Office for Civil Rights  Feb. 20 and includes a Title IX office, an office for anti-discrimination and one for disability rights. Catherine Spear will start as  of the civil rights office on May 6, reporting directly to Drake. The office will streamline all discrimination and harassment allegations and aims to provide consistency in the reporting process, according to the office’s website.  

In an email sent March 19, Drake required each campus to designate a representative to update on campus evacuation plan changes and to complete a checklist by June 30. Campuses must designate a campus representative, develop individualized emergency evacuation plans and provide evacuation chairs.  

These new requirements are aimed at ensuring students don’t experience the anguish Manriquez felt in his hallway in September. He says he’s optimistic about the new protocols and office, something that may not have happened had the UC Regents not heard him from that meeting. 

“I think it is extremely important to have leaders among higher education that are representatives of the students they serve,” Manriquez said. “I rarely, if ever have, seen a physically disabled person in a position of university leadership at the highest level.” 

For the record: This story has been updated to clarify the process for students to request an individualized evacuation plan at UC Irvine.

This story was originally published on .

The University of California suspended for a year its plan to allow undocumented students to acquire campus jobs, crushing a student-led movement more than a year in the making.  

The decision all but halts an effort by UCLA law professors and student advocates to create a pathway for the estimated 4,000 undocumented UC students to earn a paycheck legally. While many students without legal immigrant protections receive state financial aid and have their tuition waived, those students are often on their own financially to cover rent, food and other necessary expenses to continue their studies. These students also are blocked from receiving federal grants, further intensifying their fiscal strain.

“We have concluded that the proposed legal pathway is not viable at this time,” said Michael Drake, president of the UC, at today’s regents meeting. He said the proposal is “inadvisable” and “carries significant risk for the institution and for those we serve.”

However, “as new information becomes available, we will evaluate that information, and if appropriate, move ahead,” he said.

Regents, who make up the top governing board of the UC, voted to formally rescind a policy it adopted in May to explore implementing the hiring plan. Undocumented students in the audience screamed through tears, some who were on a hunger strike since Tuesday to pressure the UC to adopt the hiring measure. 

“Cowards!” a student yelled. “Shame,” another said. “I hope you live with this for the rest of your life,” said another.

“I’m deeply disappointed that the UC Regents and President Drake shirked their duties to the students they are supposed to protect and support,” said Jeffry Umaña Muñoz, a UCLA undocumented student and leader at Undocumented Student-Led Network, in a statement. “We as UC students deserve so much more from our university leadership. This is not the end of our fight for equality.”

Ten regents voted in  to rescind the proposal for a year and six opposed. One voter abstained.

“I can’t think of a moment where I’ve been more disappointed sitting around this board table,” said John PĂ©rez, a UC regent and member of a working group to explore the plan. He voted no.

The UC would have been the first university to adopt such a measure, said Jorge Silva, a senior spokesperson for the UC.

UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, and his legal team were “very skeptical of the legal theory,” said Merhawi Tesfai, a UC regent and graduate student who votes on the board. Tesfai was also part of the working group and wanted the UC to hire undocumented students.

Drake in his comments today said that his office consulted with legal experts “”

Tesfai said the general counsel’s office sought legal analysis from multiple outside law firms, and their conclusion was that “this wasn’t something that they would recommend and that it wouldn’t be legally viable,” Tesfai said, summarizing comments that Robinson and Drake made to him and other regents.

After today’s vote, he and a few other regents consoled the crying undocumented students in attendance at the UC San Francisco meeting space. “It was all justified anger,” he said.

Legal theory

Core to the novel legal argument of the UCLA coalition Opportunity For All is that while a 1986 federal law bars employers from hiring undocumented immigrants, the UC, as a state agency, . “Under governing U.S. Supreme Court precedents, if a federal law does not mention the states explicitly, that federal law does not bind state government entities,” the coalition’s 2022 legal memo said. Nothing in that federal law “expressly binds or even mentions state government entities.” 

PĂ©rez said that “we have gotten so focused on the question of what the law clearly says today that we’re losing sight of the moral imperative of what the law should be interpreted as being.”

But Drake said the risks were too great. Human resources employees and legal staff “might be subject to criminal or civil prosecution if they knowingly participate in hiring practices deemed impermissible under federal law,” he said. He said the UC “will be subject to civil fines, criminal penalties, or debarment from federal contracting if the university is found to be in violation of the Federal Immigration Reform and Control Act,” the 1986 federal law. The billions in federal research grants could also be at risk, Drake said.

The argument to hire undocumented students has the support of some of the country’s most prominent immigration law scholars, who signed the legal memo backers of Opportunity for All published in 2022. Meanwhile, more than 500 faculty  saying “we will hire undocumented students into educational employment positions for which they are qualified once given authority to do so by the UC.”

Student advocates of Opportunity For All pushed the UC Regents to take the group’s legal theory seriously. Last May, the regents voted to consider  and what that process would look like. Students , but months later were furious when the UC blew past its own deadline on how to proceed at the November meeting.  by crossing the stanchions separating them from the regents, shutting down the meeting. That prompted a meeting between advocates and several regents.

Those regents told the students then that they were committed to a full roll-out of the plan by this month, but they were not speaking for the full board.

“It is deeply shameful that the UC is holding them back from achieving their full potential,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA immigration law scholar and one of the architects of the legal theory arguing undocumented students can legally work at the UC. 

Recent federal rules

The ability to work legally is a matter of survival for immigrants in the U.S. But while more than half a million undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. young are allowed to have jobs through the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, federal courts have halted the federal government’s ability to accept new applications. But even if the courts permit new applications, most of today’s young undocumented immigrants wouldn’t benefit. That’s because DACA applies to individuals who arrived in the U.S.  and are at least 15 years old upon applying, leaving most young students today ineligible.

In 2023, were under 21 years old.

“As a leader of an American Indian nation, for us to sit here and be so concerned and keep talking about risk when the students and their families have gone through so much risk just to get here, only can strike me as patronizing,” said Gregory Sarris, a UC regent.

The UC has a history of upholding legal protections for undocumented students. The university sued the Trump administration in 2017 for ending the deferred action program. That  with a Supreme Court decision upholding the program in 2020. DACA lived on, but lower court decisions since then have blocked the Biden administration .

But PĂ©rez said the UC didn’t lead, as Drake said, but reacted to student, faculty and community advocacy to challenge the Trump administration. Roughly 17,000 Californians  because of decisions by the Trump administration and the courts. 

Donald Trump is likely to emerge as the Republican nominee for the Oval Office. A Trump presidency could lead to a redux in the fight between the UC and the federal government over immigration rights for the country’s young residents. 

“What happens if we have a new administration?” asked Jose Hernandez, a UC regent who supported the hiring plan. “I don’t even think this is going to be considered to be implemented, to tell you the truth, so I think we’re squandering a great opportunity.”

There had already been pushback to the UC proposal from some Republicans, among them Rep. Darrell Issa of San Diego County. He shot off  to Gov. Gavin Newsom warning that California couldn’t “pick and choose which federal laws to follow and which to declare null and void.” If the UC system did approve the policy change, he wrote, “please inform Congress how the system intends to refund its current federal funding, as well as provide a detailed estimate of the fiscal impact to students by foregoing future federal assistance.”

Work and financial aid

Abraham Cruz, 25, is a UCLA senior and undocumented. His DACA status lapsed a few years ago and he has been unable to renew it, so no employer can legally hire him.

He found a loophole, but it’s uncommon: Cruz is part of a labor cooperative where he’s his own boss. He consults clients on immigration policy, research and writing, he said.

Still, he’d rather have a campus job, where managers know to prioritize students’ academics over work. Or he could work with a professor and pursue research in his field of labor studies.

Drake, UC’s president, said in November that he wants to protect students from any legal consequences, but Cruz said students are already assuming the risk of working under the table or in dangerous jobs, often below minimum wage.

“I don’t know what the UC thinks, but if it doesn’t offer jobs on campus students are going to have to find a way 
 to come up with that money,” he said. “The best thing the UC could do is provide these safe jobs for students.”

PĂ©rez echoed that view. “We can fool ourselves into thinking that our students aren’t working. They are,” he said. “They’re working in underground jobs subjected to inhumane and horrific conditions.”

Another option for undocumented students is receiving an academic fellowship. But fellowships and scholarships are financial aid — and no student can receive aid above the state cap, which is equal to what a campus calculates is the cost of attendance. Even the most generous financial aid package from the UC still expects a student to find $8,000 to $10,000 of their own money each year to pay for tuition, housing, food and other costs. Academic fellowships and outside scholarships can’t exceed that $8,000 to $10,000 personal contribution.

And while students with income could see their financial aid decrease, most undocumented students  to qualify for California’s marquee financial aid tool, the Cal Grant, which waives tuition. 

“I’m frustrated, I’m pissed off, I’m angry that we’re at this point,” said Keith Ellis, a regent representing UC alumni. “I feel like we’ve led on the students, that we’ve lied to you in some ways, and for what it’s worth, I apologize.”

This was originally published in .

Conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland, the analysis of over 14,000 districts nationwide shows that in 2000, the average child from a poor family went to an elementary school where almost half of the students were defined as middle class. By 2015, that figure had fallen to 36 percent.

As the nation’s population grows, the shift — especially in the West and the South —means they are less likely to experience of racially and socioeconomically mixed schools, the study notes, including higher test scores, smaller racial achievement gaps and higher college enrollment rates.

The findings, according to the researchers, also carry broad implications for academic recovery efforts in the wake of the pandemic. 

A previous analysis by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ showed disproportionate increases in chronic absenteeism among English learners, three-fourths of whom are Spanish-speakers. And data shows that Latino families were among those by COVID-related job loss and financial hardship, creating a larger challenge for schools serving high concentrations of Latino students.

“Deeper forces have sustained achievement disparities in recent decades, especially this worsening isolation of the poor from middle-class students,” said Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley sociology professor and lead author of the paper. “COVID-era learning loss is but a surface symptom of deeper ills that beset public education.”

“slowed desegregation efforts” in districts with large Black student populations and shifted attention toward improving schools in Black and Latino communities, the authors said. 

Now among Latinos, combined with the movement of Latino families to the suburbs, have contributed to racial isolation, they wrote.

“‘White flight’ from the public school system translates into resource flight from racially isolated schools,” said Feliza Oritz-Licon, chief policy and advocacy officer at Latinos for Education, a nonprofit focusing on teacher recruitment and education policy. She added that in racially isolated schools it becomes easy to “dismiss” Latino students as underperforming.

But not all districts have seen a decline in their white student populations. The chances that Latino children will interact with white peers at school are higher in the Midwest and Northeast. In fact, the researchers found 800 school districts where the white student population had not declined over that 15-year time period, even as the Latino student population grew. 

‘Under one school roof’

The Berkeley study builds on research by Sean Reardon at Stanford University, drew connections between racial segregation and large achievement gaps due to concentrations of Black and Latino students in high-poverty schools.

Pedro Noguera, dean of education at the University of Southern California, said rising segregation not only affects who students sit next to in class, but also broader support for public schools. 

“All of this is troubling. We have to get better at offering the kinds of programs that will attract affluent parents,” he said, noting that International Baccalaureate programs, Advanced Placement courses and other offerings “send the signal of a high standard. That’s what Latino parents want as well.”

Fuller and his co-authors wrote that without more inter-district choice programs, which would allow entree to higher-performing schools in wealthier neighborhoods, Latino students will continue to have fewer opportunities to attend integrated schools. 

A report released last year by Bellwether Education Partners explored additional obstacles to integration created by a lack of affordable housing in districts with higher performing schools; even if low-income families want to move into such school districts, housing options are scarce.

“Civic leaders and educators must expand ways of pulling the nation’s diverse children under one school roof,” Fuller said.

In 2020, the Century Foundation, a left leaning think tank, identified initiatives underway in school districts and charter school networks to increase integration. Some of the programs were voluntary, while others resulted from desegregation orders.

‘The country’s prosperity’

But Noguera said some charter schools predominantly serve Black students or Latino students, . 

By 2060, Latinos are projected to make up over one fourth of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau , and Latino children currently account for of public school enrollment. 

Increasing the numbers of Latino educators is one way for districts to increase achievement, researchers at the Brookings Institution wrote in last year that focused on the Clark County School District in Nevada. They cited studies showing that Latino students are more likely to be placed in gifted programs and take Advanced Placement courses when their schools have more teachers that look like them.

Recruiting more Latino educators and giving Latinos a greater role in education policy is also a priority for philanthropist McKenzie Scott, who last week donated to Latinos for Education to support the organization’s work.

Latino educators are often assigned to high-need, racially isolated schools because they reflect the cultural backgrounds of students. But turnover is high, with many leaving the profession within four years, noted Oritz-Licon of Latinos for Education.

The organization’s October featured concerns from Latino educators, such as the cost of earning a degree and requests from administrators to provide translation services without additional compensation. 

Oritz-Licon called on schools serving Latino students to use relief funds for afterschool programs, academic support and parent engagement efforts since many high-needs schools might lack those services. 

“Latino students are American students,” she said. “Their educational outcomes should matter because as a growing population, their prosperity is the country’s prosperity.”