The PACE Annual Conference in January 2024 will bring together California policymakers, researchers, and education leaders to address critical questions about the state's public education system and explore transformative actions for improvement at all levels, from early childhood through higher education.

Declining student enrollment is leading to a loss of revenue in many California school districts. To address ongoing budget shortfalls, many districts have consolidated or shuttered schools, and others are contemplating doing so. In this session, Carrie Hahnel (Bellwether) and Francis A. Pearman (Stanford Graduate School of Education) will discuss new research exploring the racial dimensions of school closures and how to address them.

Newcomer students have long been an underserved group in California’s school systems. Newcomers require specialized curricula and instruction to succeed in school as well as access to social services to meet even their basic needs. Unfortunately, most newcomers have not experienced schooling that adequately addresses their unique needs and drop out at a disproportionately high rate. There are thus significant opportunities to improve education for newcomers in California through policies, data systems, curricula, programs development, and collaborations.

Academic preparation for postsecondary schooling is largely a function of rigorous, inclusive, and relevant high school curricula, including mathematics. Yet not all high school students have equal access to the courses that best prepare them for college and career. In this webinar, we will present new research on 12th grade math and course-taking in California which shows that nearly half of high school graduates do not meet the math requirements of state universities or are ill-prepared for college math.

PACE’s 2023 conference marks many important milestones: our first in-person annual conference since the start of the pandemic, the 10-year anniversary of the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula, and the 40-year anniversary of PACE’s founding.

The pandemic has introduced a great deal of hardship into many students’ lives, which may make it difficult for them to learn. Disruptions to students’ mental and emotional health, social systems of support, and learning environments require a new focus on social and emotional well-being. At the same time, pandemic-related school disruptions have put a heightened focus on the need to understand student learning. Measurement now is more critical than ever but requires new methods of assessing students and new approaches for analyzing and acting upon the data.

Districts across California are working on three discrete but related challenges as they address the impacts of COVID-19 on teaching on learning: 1) What do we do now to support student learning before school year ends; 2) What can we do in the Summer to mitigate the disparate impact of distance learning; and 3) What should we be designing for the Fall to best meet the needs of students, teachers and families. Expanded learning providers are critical partners for all three challenges.

This webinar will present findings from two forthcoming publications on community schools: the PACE brief “Community Schools: A Coronavirus Recovery Strategy;” and “Creating Strong Community Schools: The Role of California Counties in Providing Technical Assistance” by the Learning Policy Institute. The webinar will also feature perspectives from leaders at the school and county levels who will speak to what it takes to launch and sustain community schools.

The rapid onset of the health and economic crisis accompanying COVID-19 has presented an array of challenges for school districts and county offices across California. To aid in both local and state decision-making, PACE and Pivot Learning have been documenting promising practices at school districts in California. In this webinar, researchers and local superintendents will highlight how two districts initially addressed students’ immediate needs and how they are approaching strategic planning for the months ahead.

Even before COVID-19 dramatically changed the context of teaching and learning in California and across the country, there was a growing consensus in education that schools can and should attend to students’ social-emotional development. In this webinar, researchers will share new evidence showing that improvements in students’ social-emotional skills can be an effective strategy for improving academic and behavioral outcomes, and that teachers and schools can play an important role in helping students develop these skills. This research is based on data from the CORE districts.

With the economy in decline and millions out of work, funding for education—which is heavily dependent on personal and corporate earnings and spending—is expected to be significantly reduced in 2020-21. California’s per pupil spending is already well below the national average, and this financial impact will come at a time when our schools need more money, not less, to serve our state’s children and youth. The goal of this webinar is to build understanding about the challenges to come and suggest how state and local policy can mitigate the impact on teaching and learning.

Improving education equity is one of the most important goals of CA's education system, and undergirds the state's policy structures. How money is allocated to districts and how districts and schools are held accountable for student outcomes. The state's current measurement approach is insufficient for understanding the extent to which our education systems are providing equitable opportunities for CA's students. This webinar presents findings from a landmark report by the National Academies, which provides the architecture for a system to help policy makers address educational equity.

In this seminar, we will present a comprehensive overview of California’s college readiness metrics and new statewide data on college persistence and completion. In addition, we describe the efforts of several public school districts to improve postsecondary access and success for all students, and to close persistent gaps by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

This webinar was the third in a three-part webinar series on special education featuring new research on the status of special education in California and paths forward for organizing schools to better support students with disabilities. This webinar will cover Differentiated Assistance, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, Interagency Collaboration, and Lessons from Other States in Support of Students with Disabilities.

This webinar was the second in a three-part webinar series on special education featuring new research on the status of special education in California and paths forward for organizing schools to better support students with disabilities. This webinar covered Universally Designed Teaching, Teacher Preparation, Teacher Shortages, and Teacher Development.

This webinar was the first of a three-part webinar series on special education featuring new research on the status of special education in California and paths forward for organizing schools to better support students with disabilities. This webinar covered issues related to transitions into and out of special education services for students: Early Identification, Transitions into Preschool, Transitions Into and Between Identification Categories in K-12, Post-Secondary Transitions, and Work-Based Learning for students with disabilities.

What happens following preschool to sustain learning gains? To what extent do early learning programs align with early elementary grades in areas such as instruction and teacher professional development? What are the challenges in creating alignment? What state policies facilitate or hinder districts from creating stronger connections between preschool and elementary school? To answer these questions, PACE researchers interviewed superintendents or directors of early learning programs in 25 representative California school districts to better understand alignment work and challenges.

The LCFF fosters accountability through districts’ use of LCAPs and District Dashboard metrics aligned to state priorities. The state’s new system of support is designed to assist districts whose Dashboard results have fallen short of expectations and is intended to advance both equity and excellence by helping districts shift from a culture of compliance to one of support and continuous improvement. CEOs play a key role in the system of support. In this seminar, PACE researchers will share new work on the changing role of COEs and lessons from early implementation of new structures.

College access is more important than ever, and the time is right for a fresh look at the research on college admissions and the implications for education equity. PACE and UC Berkeley bring together an amazing group of policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. Speakers include leaders from the State Board of Education, each of California’s institutions of higher education (UC, CSU, and community colleges), K-12 school districts, the College Board, and advocacy organizations, along with experts in college admissions and access from universities across California and nationwide.

In this seminar, Pivot Learning will discuss two case studies aimed at better understanding the ways in which California districts’ budget challenges impact their ability to serve students. The cases explore this impact in two unique locations: the Sacramento City Unified School District and the Marin County Unified School District. These reports find that, in Sacramento, increasing health care costs and poor business practices have led to deficit spending and cuts to programs and services.

Since 2014-15, the CORE districts have surveyed students in grades 4-12 on their social-emotional learning (SEL). School and district leaders use these measures in the context of CORE’s multiple measures data system to understand and improve student and school outcomes. In this webinar, researchers will discuss: How student reports of their self-management, growth mindset, and self-efficacy change over time, vary by subgroup, and are related to other outcomes; student response patterns; and the impact of classrooms and teachers on students’ social-emotional development.

In line with LCFF and California’s ESSA plan, districts and schools across the state are increasingly seeking to use continuous improvement to identify areas of focus and to shape their approach to addressing performance gaps and improve student outcomes. In this seminar, Alix Gallagher (PACE) will present lessons learned about these critical questions from the most recent research report and case studies, and Rick Miller (CORE districts) will discuss how these findings are influencing CORE’s approach moving forward.

In this webinar, PACE will highlight two of CORE’s innovative data approaches: their school impact model and student surveys of social-emotional learning. Researchers, representatives from the CORE Districts, and two district leaders will discuss the importance of using a school growth model to understand school performance, share new research on applying a growth model to social-emotional learning surveys, and discuss how to think about the reporting of academic and social-emotional measures for different purposes and users.

Sound, timely data is critical to making good decisions about schooling policy and practice. Despite California’s investments and improvements in a statewide data system, important data from CALPADS are still fragmented and generally inaccessible to district-level personnel while the system is not geared toward helping districts measure progress toward specific goals in real time. Stronger data systems can be found both outside and inside the state. In this seminar, we reveal key findings about California’s data systems and the challenges and opportunities for improving them.

Education experts from PACE, LPI, and Opportunity Institute present a Plenary Session introducing CA’s education system to education scholars and leaders from countries around the world. They will discuss the historical roots of the many challenges facing CA’s schools and teachers, promising changes in the state’s education policy framework, and ongoing concerns about whether new policies will lead to meaningful improvements in the education policy framework, and ongoing concerns about whether new policies will lead to meaningful improvements in the education provided to CA students.