What's at stake?
State standardized test scores have been slowly rebounding since the pandemic, but for students classified as English learners, uncertain budgets and federal cuts affecting English learning services could further hinder their achievement gap.
Fresno’s English-language learners could face a more difficult incoming school year.
Funds annually released to schools on July 1 were withheld by the Trump administration, putting English-learning services and before/after school programs in limbo.
That leaves low-income and English-learning students, who’ve historically scored lower on the SBAC, even more vulnerable.
Prior to the pandemic, test scores in Fresno County were rising, but after the COVID-related suspension of the 2020 tests, schools saw a sharp decrease in scores. Now, schools are back to making progress, but the recent funding freeze could impact certain students in Fresno County schools negatively in the coming year.
“These have been hard-fought gains given the pandemic and absenteeism rates,” said Diana Diaz, director of communications for Fresno Unified. “While we wish the scores were higher, we recognize we are moving in the right direction.”
In the 2023-2024 school year, 34.72% of students in Fresno Unified met or exceeded state standards in ELA and 25.14% for Mathematics.
In comparison, the 2021-2022 school year scores for both subjects were 32.24% for ELA and 20.83% for math.
At the same time, only 10.19% and 10.07% of students classified as English learners met or exceeded state standards for ELA and Math in the 2023-2024 school year. While enrollment at Fresno Unified has been decreasing, the number of English learners has been steadily increasing, up to 15,872 in 2024 from 14,627 in 2020.
Scores for English learners vary by district, with Clovis Unified reporting ELA and Math proficiency rates of 22.25% and 19.50% and Central Unified reporting 6.46% and 6.31% respectively for the 2023-2024 school year.
However, across the county and the state of California, proficiency scores for English learners remains low.
For the 2023-2024 school year, Fresno County reported scores of 11.21% and 10.24% respectively for ELA and Math, which is consistent with the state’s overall scores of 10.29% and 10.25%.
How Fresno Unified is responding
While it remains unclear if and when the federal funds will be unfrozen, the impact it has had on school district’s planned budgets can already be seen in Fresno.
For Fresno Unified, the frozen funds are one of multiple factors affecting the district’s funding, which include declining enrollment, no new funding from the state and notably, $30 million lost annually because of absenteeism, an issue Diaz says is the most significant remnant from the pandemic.
“A change of 1% can affect us by $10,000,000,” the district said in a media release on Wednesday.
However, this doesn’t mean that the district isn’t responding.
For English learning students, Diaz says the district utilizes progress monitoring to create personalized learning plans that cater to the needs of individual students.
In a media release last week, the district also announced cuts to the coming school year across multiple areas to help offset the deficits.
“In all, the district cut $61.9 million in 24/25 and 25/26 from the budget by making reductions at the central office, negotiating elimination of Designated Schools, utilization of grants, eliminating vacant positions and moving special assignment teachers back to the classroom. Most importantly, no teachers were laid off,” the district said in Wednesday’s release.
Moreover, despite these cuts and two-thirds of the district’s state funding being deferred for the 2025/2026 year, the district announced in their release that no teachers were laid off.
