Thanks to Senator Jack Scott, chair of the Senate Education Committee, the CSU was successful in derailing Assembly Bill 1586 (DeSaulnier), a measure that would require the CSU to accept all high school career technical education (CTE) courses that meet standards adopted by the State Board of Education, as fulfilling a new "applied arts" category (g) of high school course requirements for admission to the CSU.

AB 1586 would have essentially bifurcated the CSU and the UC admission. This would confuse students, parents and high school counselors as they prepared to enter a four-year university. This lack of clarity – where CSU takes some courses that UC won’t take – creates a risk that some students will make a mistake, and will not inadvertently be able to attend UC.

In the last five years the CSU and UC have worked hard to review and approve nearly 5,700 CTE courses for “a-g” credit. This is an important process, to ensure students are adequately prepared for college. Students who enter college with more advanced high school courses fare better than those with less advanced academic work. They are less likely to be assigned to remedial courses, they perform better in their courses, they are more likely to graduate, and they graduate sooner. The bottom line is that it saves taxpayers dollars and benefits California’s workforce needs.

In the end, AB 1586 was held in Senate Education Committee due in great part to hard work and partnership with the CSU Academic Senate, and especially the Chair, John Tarjan in convincing Senator Scott and members of the Senate Education Committee that AB 1586 was very harmful to a fully aligned set of preparation standards.

It is worthy to point out that three members of the committee made statements that while they supported Senator Scott’s recommendation to hold the bill in committee, they suggested that this is not over – Senators Romero, Simitian, Wyland and even Senator Scott indicated that something more needs to happen. It is important to note that the CTE advocates have made a great deal of headway in changing some legislators’ perceptions. This is an area where the CSU will need to actively engage over the next couple of years to educate legislators and staff, as well as work more closely with UC to ensure that the university’s majors and student needs are accounted for in the course approval process.