California’s redesigned school funding formula, as well as updated standards and assessments, are pushing the state’s education system in the right direction, according to a comprehensive package of studies released Monday. But Getting Down to Facts II—a follow-up to an...

en years ago California’s K-12 education system had the equivalent of a physical exam. Education experts from 32 universities and research organizations across the country studied its inner workings and effectiveness. They examined the state’s school finance and governance systems...

A decade ago, an academic research team produced a massive report on the shortcomings in how California’s K-12 schools educate about 6 million children and adolescents. The “Getting Down to Facts” report was issued just as a very severe recession...

Leading researchers will reveal findings contained in a report comprising 35 studies on the effects of reforms adopted over the past decade in California's K-12 education system. Entitled Getting Down to Facts II, the report serves as a sequel...

Dozens of California school systems — including some in Santa Cruz County — with some of the state’s worst test scores and biggest academic achievement gaps won’t get any extra help this year under a support system launched recently by...

The state of California, a long-time leader in college access, has turned its attention to improving college persistence and degree completion. In particular, recent changes to remediation policies in the California State University (CSU) system, the largest four-year system in...

PACE and the Learning Policy Institute hosted an event on how schools can be organized to support the whole child, which featured a series of panels with leading researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Topics included:

• A new framework on how...

The development of social-emotional skills within the CORE districts, a network of urban California school districts that serve more than 1 million students A new Policy Analysis for California study, " Trends in Student Social-Emotional Learning: Evidence from the CORE Districts,"...

Kenji Hakuta, professor emeritus at the GSE, shares his extensive experience in developing standards for classrooms at all levels. Hakuta has also spent much of his career focused on ensuring that standards are equitable for English language learners, and he...

Nowhere is a data-informed approach to social-emotional learning more pronounced than in California’s CORE Districts, which embarked on a groundbreaking effort in 2013 to capture a more holistic vision of student success and school quality. There, eight of the largest...

Nowhere is a data-informed approach to social-emotional learning more pronounced than in California's CORE Districts, which embarked on a groundbreaking effort in 2013 to capture a more holistic vision of student success and school quality. There, eight of the largest...

Hans Fricke, the director of quantitative research at Policy Analysis for California Education, which is based at Stanford, and a collaborator on this study, says the findings show that it's possible to overdo it when it comes to giving parents...

California’s new accountability and continuous improvement system relies on partners using several different measures of performance to identify where changes are needed throughout a student’s learning life. Carefully monitoring the development, testing, and evaluation of improvement strategies requires partners having...

Teachers are responsible for educating and cultivating today’s students—the future of the U.S. democracy and workforce. By 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the United States will require postsecondary education or training. To be prepared for democratic participation and...

For the 50th episode of School’s In, GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope were joined by Michael Kirst, Professor Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Kirst is also president of the California State Board of Education, where...

California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) allows districts to better meet local needs and improve services for low-income students, children in foster care and English learners. But three-fourths of the superintendents responding to a new survey say the basic level...

California’s superintendents overwhelmingly support the state’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and its underlying goal of promoting more equitable allocation of resources for high-needs students, according to the first comprehensive survey of how district superintendents view the five-year-old law. In...

Hundreds of district superintendents in California have offered both support and criticism of the Local Control Funding Formula in a survey, released Wednesday, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the law that transformed how districts are funded and held accountable...

Students’ reports of whether they have developed a growth mindset continue to climb steadily throughout their K-12 years, but their assessments of their social awareness skills and feelings of self-efficacy drop sharply beginning in middle school, according to a recent...

As the conversation grows over how to measure SEL among students grows, gathering their own perspectives is an important part of the picture. States are also beginning to include student surveys as one piece of their accountability plans for the...

Sam Agronow had a long and distinguished career in institutional research spanning a number of institutions including Riverside County Schools, the University of California, Samuel Merritt College, and Saint Mary’s College. Sam also served as CAIR’s president in 2007-08 and...

Like their state counterparts, state boards must both respond to crises and plan ahead. A focus on creating the best possible learning for all will help educators, students, and families emerge from this crisis on a stronger footing. This issue of...

In its recent report, How Stakeholder Engagement Fuels Improvement Efforts In Three California School Districts, The Local Control Funding Formula Research Collaborative highlighted the Palmdale School District (PSD) as a leader in much-needed innovative stakeholder engagement efforts. Fundamental to the...