This commentary examines California’s opportunity to articulate a coherent and forward-looking vision for public education that extends beyond academic standards and performance metrics. While the state has adopted important frameworks over the years, it lacks a unifying definition of student success that addresses the full range of skills and competencies young people need to thrive in a changing world. The commentary traces past efforts to define such a vision and highlights emerging work—such as local and statewide “Portrait of a Graduate” initiatives—as steps toward greater coherence. It considers how aligning policies such as graduation requirements, accountability metrics, and educator development can support this vision, and emphasizes the importance of engaging student voice to ensure it is both relevant and actionable. The piece concludes with recommendations for state leaders to move from vision-setting to implementation in ways that support whole child outcomes.

California schools face potential disruption and destabilization related to increased immigration enforcement practices, with up to one in eight students, and/or their close family members, at risk of direct impacts. As schools increasingly face the possibility of becoming sites of immigration enforcement, many educators are working to understand how to support students and families who could be—or who already are—affected. This commentary suggests best practices educators can follow before and during any immigration enforcement event that affects a student or their family. The authors also highlight how districts can partner with legal organizations to educate students, staff, and families as well as to help students and families who are in deportation proceedings.

An analysis of recently released Smarter Balanced Assessment System (SBAC) test scores shows very modest improvements in 2024 in students’ proficiency at meeting state standards for English language arts and mathematics. However, the rate of improvement is too slow to erase declines from the pandemic. Substantial gaps across student subgroups persist, with disproportionate impacts on the performance of students of color, disadvantaged students, and English learners (ELs). Also of concern is a pattern showing that overall proficiency in mathematics declines as students progress through school, indicating that they may not be prepared for postsecondary success.

PACE co-founder Michael W. Kirst, former president of the California Board of Education (1977–1981 and 2011–2019), highlights in a new PACE commentary findings from his Learning Policy Institute report Standards-Based Education Reforms: Looking Back to Looking Forward, which analyzes the evolution of standards-based reforms in the United States. Kirst issues a call to action: California needs a strategic and tactical roadmap to improve instructional capacity in classrooms statewide. The commentary offers four recommendations: return the CDE to its former role of providing technical assistance on how to implement subject matter standards; strengthen COEs for effective capacity building; reorient the district role to focus on instructional capacity; and design the roadmap for targeted district support. Without a unified strategy, California risks more uneven progress. A comprehensive, coordinated approach is essential to equipping educators with the tools they need to deliver equitable, standards-aligned instruction to all students.

This commentary from LEARN Network provides practical guidance on how to pilot new evidence-based interventions to build support for and eventually scale new programs that measurably improve student outcomes. Key steps include: bringing together the right people in the form of a cross-functional leadership team; gathering the necessary information for decision-making (including how educators use the program, what supports and resources are necessary for its effective implementation, and whether students actually benefit); and spreading the intervention to a larger group. Unless new programs become "institutionalised" by educators with ownership over their implementation, they will be incapable of surviving leadership turnover, and the cycle of moving to the next new thing will continue unbroken.