Gardner Center staff and two institutional partners at the University of Chicago and Brown University, developed and studied the implementation of a CRIS in five urban school districts across the country. The seminar will present the recently-released CRIS Resource Series, including a menu of research-based indicators and six essential elements of CRIS implementation. The seminar includes a discussion of how districts, schools, and state agencies can use a college readiness indicator system to fulfill college readiness mandates and advance equitable access to deeper learning opportunities.

School districts throughout the country are facing mounting accountability pressures to improve student achievement and turn around failing schools. In response to these pressures more than 20 major cities have adopted the portfolio management model of school governance. In this seminar, Katharine Strunk and Julie Marsh will explore how portfolio management is working in the Los Angeles Unified School District's Public School Choice Initiative (PSCI).

SFUSD provides English Learner students with a variety of instructional program options. The district partnered with researchers at Stanford University to investigate the effectiveness of different instructional programs for EL students, and to examine whether they are equally effective for Latina/o and Chinese EL students. In this seminar, Sean Reardon and Ritu Khanna present the findings from this study, including the effects of different EL instructional programs on English language acquisition (CELDT scores), academic skills (CST scores), and reclassification rates.

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.

The QEIA, one of California’s most ambitious intervention programs for low-performing schools, is now in its sixth year of full implementation in nearly 400 schools across the state. In this seminar, Jane Robb and Courtney Malloy will share findings that examine the extent of QEIA program implementation, explain why QEIA works in some schools while other schools continue to struggle, investigate the various impacts of QEIA and uncover promising practices that can be shared with all schools.

California’s teacher policies do not match the actual career trajectory that most new teachers follow. In this seminar, Julia Koppich and Dan Humphrey will present results from a 2013 study of California’s state policy system designed to shape beginning teachers’ careers, including induction, clear credentialing evaluation, and tenure. They will discuss several areas in which California policymakers need to reexamine the system in order to ensure that it paves the way for ensuring beginning teachers’ success in the classroom.

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. The conference will feature presentations on changes in the state’s assessment policies, Local Control Accountability Plans, and the new accountability system developed by the CORE districts, with reactions and discussion from state and local policy leaders. The conference will also include a discussion of findings from the recent PACE/USC Rossier poll, which focused on accountability issues.

In this seminar Daniel Solorzano and Amanda Datnow present findings from a study focusing on young adults in poverty, many of whom are enrolled in community colleges. Their study is guided by the premise that it is important to take an asset-based approach to understanding youth in poverty and their communities. They argue to truly expand opportunities for success educational institutions must find a way to build on current strengths in families and communities. The project seeks to understand what knowledge and tools are needed to maximize postsecondary opportunities for low-income youth.

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.

Research consistently shows teacher quality is a powerful determinant of student achievement gains, yet urban school districts often struggle to staff schools with qualified teachers. In this seminar, Susanna Loeb explores changes in teacher recruitment in one urban school district as a result of a salary increase. Studying a policy in SFUSD, Loeb finds a differential salary increase can improve a school district’s attractiveness within the local teacher labor market and increase both the size and quality of teacher applicant pools, having the potential to increase the quality of new-hires.

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.

In this seminar Charles Kerchner will discuss technology policy as a potential solution to three difficult, expensive educational problems in California: Helping English Learners to achieve fluency in English, providing remediation for students at all levels of the education system, and increasing the number of students who successfully transition from high school to college. He argues that modest, achievable gains in these areas could reduce costs for the state while increasing student success.

Income inequality among the families of school-aged children in the US has grown sharply over 40 years. How has rising income inequality affected patterns of educational outcomes? In this seminar Sean Reardon will addresses this question. He will describe trends in the “income-achievement gap.” Evidence shows the association between income and achievement has grown much in recent decades, while the association between race and achievement has held steady or declined. He will then describe trends in the relationship between family income and the quality of colleges in which students enroll.

California participates in President Obama’s goal of increasing participation in postsecondary education the state needs to add roughly 100,000 students a year for the next ten years. Public institutions do not have the ability to meet these needs under current fiscal and structural constraints. What might be the role of private and for-profit colleges and universities in meeting the needs of the state? In this seminar, William G. Tierney addresses this question and more.