Governor Brown’s landmark finance reform —the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) —has shifted large quantities of new revenue to school districts that serve large concentrations of poor children, but less is known about how districts are distributing resources to local schools. Are the schools that educate large numbers of poor children receiving additional resources in proportion to the share of kids who generate the new revenues? Can we detect organizational improvements in these schools? Are the financial and organizational changes supported by LCFF making teachers’ working conditions

PACE’s inaugural conference is the premier event for policymakers, researchers, advocates and other leaders working to define and sustain a long-term strategy for comprehensive policy reform and continuous improvement of California’s education system. Our full-day conference will engage with three key education policy issues: school funding adequacy, teacher policies and cross-system-alignment. Registered participants will learn about the key policy debates and research based best-practices through conference plenaries and workshops.

In this seminar Morgan Polikoff reports findings from his research on school and district textbook adoptions in math, English language arts, and science. He presents quantitative evidence from SARCs and statewide longitudinal achievement data on the spread of new materials, timing of implementation, distribution across districts and schools, and impact on student outcomes. This with insights via interviews of district leaders on policies, practices guiding local curriculum adoption decisions in CA, alongside the utility of SARC data, and challenges scholars face using them for research.

Nearly every county and legislative district in California has a rural and/or small school district. All school districts face challenges in their efforts to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), but these issues may be exacerbated among school districts located in under-resourced, isolated regions of the state. In this seminar Tom Timar discusses the challenges of rural and/or small districts to overcome the limitations that size and geography have imposed on them, and proposes solutions to overcome these limitations.

ESSA makes sweeping changes to the way school performance is measured, and shifts decisions about how to define school quality and how to support struggling schools back to states and districts. The CORE Districts’ innovative accountability system is aligned with both LCFF and ESSA requirements, and includes many measures that the State Board of Education is considering for inclusion in CA's emerging accountability system. In this seminar Heather Hough, Rick Miller, and Noah Bookman provide an overview of what has been learned in the first year of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) makes sweeping changes to the way school performance is measured. Using the innovative measurement system developed by the CORE Districts in California, our CORE-PACE Research Partnership will present the research findings from, "Identity Crisis: Multiple Measures and the Identification of Schools under ESSA."

With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, California state policymakers are tasked with determining the subgroup threshold for school-level reporting. To inform this decision, this policy brief explores the implications of utilizing various subgroup sizes using data from the CORE Districts. In this seminar, PACE authors present findings that the 20+ subgroup size presents clear advantages in terms of the number of students represented, particularly in making historically underserved student populations visible.

During the Great Recession, California school districts laid off unprecedented numbers of teachers. In this seminar, Katharine Strunk presents findings that assess the effects of receiving a layoff notice on teacher mobility and teacher effectiveness. Her analyses are based on six years of detailed panel data, including four years of teacher layoffs, from the Los Angeles Unified School District. She finds strong evidence that the receipt of a Reduction in Force (RIF) notice increases the likelihood that teachers will leave their schools, even if the teacher is not ultimately laid off.

The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd is conducting research on the experiences of California teachers as they implement the new CA Standards. As a part of this work, the Center is conducting a series of focus groups to give voice to teachers in the process of implementation. In this seminar, Robert Sheffield will present findings from the first round of focus groups. In his discussion, he will offer an analysis of how the findings fit within the policy context defined by CA's new funding and accountability systems, and will present recommendations for policy leaders.

Don’t miss the Learning Policy Institute, The Opportunity Institute, New America, Educare California at Silicon Valley & Early Learning Lab as they present new research briefs to inform the policy conversation on California’s Early Education System, with responses from policy makers and practitioners.

Most of the students who set out to earn degrees in California Community Colleges never do. The reasons behind these low rates of persistence and completion have long been a focus of policy and popular concern, and a variety of strategies have been adopted to tackle the problem. In this seminar, Rachel Baker will present findings that show how students, and schools, reacted to SB 1440, which created the Associates Degree for Transfer.

To address the issues of truancy and chronic absenteeism, Michael Gottfried has partnered with Attorney General Kamala Harris to develop strategies to reduce truancy among elementary school students in public schools throughout California. These “Truancy Reduction Pilot Projects” include a two-phase study on elementary school early intervention and prevention practices in a handful of model school districts throughout the state. In this seminar, Gottfried will present findings from the first, pre-implementation phase of the study.

The conference will present new evidence on the scale of California’s emerging teacher shortage, with a particular focus on already critical shortages of teachers in specific fields and regions. It will also feature presentations on new approaches to teacher recruitment, preparation, and retention that might help to ameliorate the worst impacts of the shortage on California students. Presenters and panelists will include senior researchers, policy leaders, and local practitioners. This conference is cosponsored by PACE), the Learning Policy Institute, and the Education Policy Center at AIR.

Under a waiver granted by the federal government, the six CORE Districts (Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Santa Ana) have developed the School Quality Improvement System (SQIS). In this seminar, Rick Miller, David Plank, and Heather Hough will discuss the CORE-PACE research partnership with a particular focus on the unique features of the SQIS and their implications for the new state accountability policy that is currently under development in California.

The forum will explore the role that social-emotional learning plays in supporting young people's academic achievement and well-being. Experts will present the latest research on measuring social-emotional outcomes. School district leaders will talk about emerging practices at the district, school, and instructional levels, including perspectives from the CORE initiative, the charter school movement, and the expanded learning field. The forum will close with opportunities for the audience to discuss policy implications and hear reactions from policymakers and researchers.

In this seminar, PACE researchers will present findings from a study of the second-year of LCFF implementation, focusing on how local leaders are adapting to California’s new finance and accountability systems, identifying some promising approaches to LCFF implementation, and providing implications of the findings for adjustments to the LCFF. The report is based on case studies of LCFF implementation in 7 to 9 California school districts, along with LCAP reviews of over 50 districts and interviews with over 25 County Office of Education leaders.

In this seminar, Ilana Umansky and her colleagues present policy recommendations for improving the educational outcomes of English learner students in California, based on research from the educational opportunities, experiences, and outcomes of EL students conducted in a set of California school districts over the last five years. Their research sheds light on critical issues including EL classification and reclassification policies, the effects of English immersion and bilingual education, and EL students’ access to learning opportunities.

California educators and state leaders have been preparing for Common Core State Standards since 2010, but 2014-2015 is the first academic year that many educators, students, and parents are seeing changes inspired by the reform in classroom practice. In this seminar, Andrea Venezia and Jodi Lewis present findings from their research exploring implementation of the Common Core. The study identifies practices that appeared to help teachers operationalize the Common Core in their classrooms, challenges associated with implementation, and implications for state policy.

Michal Kurlaender and Jacob Jackson present research following up on their statewide evaluation of California’s Early Assessment Program (EAP), an academic preparation program developed jointly by the California Department of Education, the California State Board of Education, and the California State University and implemented in 2004. The goals of the EAP are to bridge the gap between K-12 educational standards in English and mathematics and the requirements and expectations of postsecondary education. In this seminar, Kurlaender and Jackson present new findings on EAP effects at California

As California educators enact the instructional shifts called for by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), formative assessment has reemerged as a key practice for moving students toward college and career readiness. Join us for a one-day, hands-on workshop focusing on questions of practice: how can educators embed formative assessment into the classroom and the curriculum, and how can administrators and district leaders embed formative assessment into the culture of schools?

Parents play an important role in their children’s education, but there are substantial differences in the home learning experiences of children by socioeconomic status. In this seminar, Susanna Loeb and Ben York discuss the results of a randomized control trial of READY4K!, a text messaging program for parents of preschoolers designed to help them support their children’s literacy development. Given the extremely low cost and widespread use of text messaging, texting proves to be an attractive alternative for supporting parents.

Californians are just now beginning to recognize the scale and impact of recent policy changes in the state’s education system. The simultaneous adoption and implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) promise large and potentially transformational improvements in the state’s schools and classrooms. PACE has organized this conference to discuss the changes that are underway in California’s accountability system, and to analyze what they mean for the state’s schools and students.

In this seminar, Margaret (Macke) Raymond investigates operator supply in the charter sector in the United States. She examines the performance of individual schools as they opened and grew over their early years. Her analysis expands to consider the likelihood of quality among new schools and networks of schools, called Charter Management Organizations. Using a new method to ensure rigorous comparisons, she compares the performance of charter schools to the traditional public schools with which they compete.

The Local Control Funding Formula represents the first significant change in 40 years to the way California funds education. It gives school districts greatly expanded flexibility to allocate dollars in ways they believe make the most educational sense for their students. It requires districts to engage parents, community members, and other stakeholders in discussion and deliberation about district services, programs, and priorities. This seminar explores the results of a study of early implementation of LCFF.

A judge’s initial ruling in the Vegara v. California case would eliminate five key provisions in the state’s Education Code that govern teacher employment and dismissal. If upheld on appeal these changes would eliminate some employment protections for teachers, extending the time to “tenure” and limiting the role of seniority in decisions about employment and assignment. This forum will explore the question of whether and how these changes matter in the context of the larger challenge to provide high quality teachers for all students in California schools.