Continuous Improvement and Support Systems in California

Over the past 15 years, California has made significant changes to its educational systems, including adopting new academic standards, transforming its approaches to funding and accountability, and shifting toward a more decentralized system of governance and finance. These shifts have been implemented with continuous improvement as the vision for California’s approach to advancing experiences and outcomes for students. Given these recent significant shifts, PACE saw the need to take stock of what we know about the implementation of these policies and what we still need to know to continue moving policy and practice in a positive direction. To this end, on October 15–16, 2019, PACE hosted a meeting of key actors in policy, practice, and research to assess the current status of the implementation of continuous improvement in schools in California and to develop a research agenda to better understand and strengthen California’s continuous school improvement and support systems. Together, this PRP discussed the latest research on the systems to support continuous improvement in the state, surfaced knowledge needs, and co-developed strategies for using research to equip policymakers and practitioners in advancing outcomes for students.