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Across California, students face a daunting academic reality. 

In January, scores from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that students in our state performed significantly below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math. Gaps between low-income students and their wealthier peers widened. As the world becomes more complex, it is critical that youth are adaptive, literate, numerate, and creative thinkers. 

California is not alone in this post-pandemic drop, but our state must act swiftly before students fall behind and dim their future opportunities. Fortunately, there are tested and proven strategies we can invest in to help students. 

High-dosage tutoring — in one-on-one or small groups for at least 30 minutes, three or more times a week — is one of the most effective and versatile ways to yield student academic gains.

Teach For America’s (TFA) high-dosage tutoring program, called the Ignite Fellowship, has served hundreds of students in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and the Central Valley with strong early results. At Aspire Rosa Parks Academy in Stockton, fifth grade math students who participated in Ignite showed 170% growth on their school assessments. At Camino Nuevo Charter Academy’s Jane B. Eisner Middle School in Los Angeles, seventh graders experienced 360% growth on math assessments, moving their average scores up 10 percentile ranks. Yet only a fraction of California students have received any high-dosage tutoring.

While high-dosage tutoring is a proven investment, it’s not a silver bullet. Educators are critical to student success, as they are often the most important school-based determinant of student outcomes. Even so, teacher and tutor shortages reflect national labor challenges.

Schools across the country begin each school year with vacancies for existing and new positions. On average, public schools had only filled 79% of open teacher positions at the start of the 2024-25 school year. 

To close these educator supply gaps and meet students’ needs with high-impact solutions, California must consider how to increase interest in teaching and lower the cost of and barriers to entering the profession.

Our state can improve student academic achievement by investing in the educator pipeline. That could include developing innovative routes to the profession. At TFA, for instance, we found that 42% of eligible Ignite tutors applied to join our 2024 corps as teachers.

Investing in the educator pipeline can also include practical measures to make it easier to become a California teacher. One of the most common barriers standing in the way of recruiting new teachers continues to be personal finances.

In a 2022 survey of California TK-12 teachers, respondents indicated that the costs of attending a teaching credential program, credentialing and testing fees, and no or low pay for student teachers are a major financial burden and stressor. Some teachers indicated they would not have pursued a career in education without financial support provided by their spouse. 

California’s AB-1128, a bill under consideration in the legislature, proposes a California Student Teacher Support Grant program. This program would provide financial support to teacher candidates as they complete their required student teaching. Such support would create more trained educators and place them at the front of the classroom, a strategy worth pursuing. I firmly believe that the state should create and fund this program. 

Our students face a difficult road ahead, but it’s not one without hope. With this year’s budget, our state can — and should — act swiftly to support our students. We can help California students regain lost ground by investing in high-impact tutoring and removing barriers to the teaching profession. 

Lida Jennings is executive director of Teach For America Los Angeles and San Diego.