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. As we mark these milestones, our public education system is facing a troubling set of challenges, including declining enrollment, staffing shortages, and polarized communities, along with devastating setbacks to student learning and well-being that have exposed long-standing systemic inequities in education and have revealed new gaps in

PACE’s annual conference brings together nearly 300 California policymakers, researchers, and education leaders to discuss new research and approaches to improving educational outcomes for California’s students, from early childhood through higher education.