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.

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.

Join us for a conversation about education during COVID-19 including the challenges and opportunities ahead as schools and families prepare for a new academic year. What policies and practices can help ensure equitable and effective re-opening? What might learning and classrooms look like in the future?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Over the past 10 years, California's PreK-12 public school system has seen transformative changes in almost every arena, from academic standards and accountability to resource allocation through the funding formula. The Getting Down to Facts II project brought together over 100 of the country's top education scholars to examine these changes and assess our progress. The project's 36 studies focused on student success, governance systems, personnel issues, and school finance, and together, they can help build a common understanding of where we are that can be used to guide further improvements.

California supports the learning of 1.3 million English students and has the highest proportion of EL students in the nation. With the adoption of the California English Learner Roadmap by the State Board of Education and the passage of Prop 58, state support has grown for improved services. Consideration of the needs of the diverse EL student population is essential as it evolves at all education levels. In this seminar, PACE researchers present the needs of California's EL students, barriers to their success, and potential tools districts can use to support their EL populations.

Rural school districts face unique challenges in procuring funds, recruiting staff, and obtaining high-quality technical assistance. This environment creates challenges in implementing best practices. A collaborative learning network can address these challenges by providing access to professional development, collaborative time with peer districts, and economies of scale. Pivot Learning designed the Rural Professional Learning Network to address this need. In this seminar, based on a recent PACE report, lessons learned from a rural network in El Dorado County will be discussed.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is excited to invite you to The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) Implementation and Impact Conference. Panels will address three key sets of issues: Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement California’s Infrastructure of Support for Schools and School Districts What Have We Learned After Four Years of LCFF Implementation?

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.

Being able to manage your emotions and behavior, interact effectively with other people, and persevere through challenges are decidedly common skills we draw on in multiple settings. Given this reality, it’s important to understand the “how” of SEL, including conditions for successful implementation, the importance of continuous quality improvement, and the opportunity to leverage after school and summer resources for full day, full year learning. This seminar will explore SEL in both the school-day and expanded learning settings and include real-world examples from the SCUSD.

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.

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.

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.

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?

This seminar presents findings on the early implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in California. Milbrey McLaughlin reports on interviews with educators in all regions of the state, and on their views of how implementation is proceeding in their schools and districts. She reviews some of the key challenges that local educators identify as they move forward with CCSS implementation, and highlights areas where districts, schools, and counties will require more or different support as they continue their implementation efforts.

School districts across California have begun working to implement the Common Core State Standards and to prepare for California’s new assessments. Policy Analysis for California Education and California County Superintendents Educational Services Association are pleased to sponsor six regional leadership sessions on CCSS Systems Implementation. These meetings will introduce you to a variety of strategies, tools and resources that your district can use to support successful implementation of the CCSS.

In this seminar, Svetlana Darche and David Stern focus on the practical question of how high schools might be held accountable for developing students' career readiness. Their goal is to propose a feasible indicator of high school students' career readiness that could be included among the measures used by states to hold schools accountable, and would complement and enhance the assessments of proficiency in academic subjects. Such an indicator could address the requirement for a career readiness measure as stated in a new provision of the California Education Code.

In this seminar Jorge Ruiz de Velasco and Milbrey McLaughlin will report findings from a statewide study of continuation high schools. Their study shows these are failing to provide the academic and critical support services that students need to succeed. They focus on schools that are performing well under state and federal accountability systems, in an effort to identify promising policy and practice interventions and develop recommendations for school, district, and state education officials that will lead to improved performance for continuation high schools and their students.

In this seminar, USC Assistant Professor Morgan Polikoff reviews the problems with the Academic Performance Index and offers a series of straightforward, concrete suggestions designed to improve the API and the identification of low performing schools in California. The suggestions, which include tracking the achievement of individual students, using multiple years of achievement data, measuring growth and level of student achievement, and accounting for school level and size, are drawn from his research on the design of accountability systems in the state and nationwide.