Leading experts and practitioners discuss the state’s ambitious goals of expanding high-quality early education and care statewide. Learn more about California’s constraints and opportunities. The webinar, part of an ongoing series of deeper dives into the Getting Down To Facts II research released earlier this year, is co-sponsored by PACE and the Learning Policy Institute.

Once a national leader in early childhood education, California faces unique challenges in addressing the educational and developmental needs of the nearly 24 million children. Compared to the rest of the US, twice as many of these children live in families without a parent fluent in English, and an additional one in five live in poverty. The current early childhood education system consists of an array of underfunded and incoherent programs that under-serve children, families, and workers. In this seminar Deborah Stipek highlights inefficiencies and potential areas of improvement.

Motivated by statewide efforts to improve persistence and completion rates in college, the goal of Early Start is to better prepare students in math and English before their first semester at CSU. Specifically, Early Start requires all incoming students who do not meet the threshold on the entry level math or English proficiency requirements to take a designated developmental education course in the summer before their freshman year. In this seminar Michal Kurlaender will present results from a study that examines the impact of Early Start on persistence rates and achievement in the CSU.

As California moves to implement the Common Core State Standards in Math the question of when to introduce key math content has taken on even greater importance. In this seminar, Neal Finkelstein will report findings from a recent comprehensive transcript study on the math pathways that students follow in California, and explore the implications of those findings for developing effective course sequences and placement strategies in the context of CCSS implementation.

Policy Analysis for California Education presents a panel discussion on the state and future of higher education in California with a focus on the issues of cost and quality.