For Napa Valley Unified, the largest school district in Napa County, budget pressures are a constant concern. Over the past few years, the district has made tough choices and shut down four schools to avoid fiscal emergency. It has consistently...

After ending my fourth term as president of the California State Board of Education in 2019, I have begun to reflect, in my sixth decade of education policy, about what I did right and what I should have done differently...

Falling enrollments and gloomy economics point to the inevitable: Many school districts in California will close schools over the next decade. So far, they have been mainly elementary and middle schools, but high schools, spared until now, won’t escape, a...

A decade after California revolutionized the way it funds schools, nearly everyone agrees the initiative has done what it was meant to do: improved math and reading scores and brought more resources to students who struggle the most. And nearly...

For the past decade, California has spent billions of dollars to improve the education of at-risk children, but there’s scant evidence that it had the intended effect. When Jerry Brown returned to the governorship in 2011, a quarter-century after his...

Michael Kirst, the architect of the Local Control Funding Formula and then its chief implementer as president of the California State Board of Education for the first five years after its passage in 2013, freely acknowledges the law needs some...

In 2013, the Legislature adopted the Local Control Funding Formula, landmark legislation championed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that overhauled how California finances TK-12 schools. It significantly redistributed money to districts based on student needs, and, in exchange for transferring more...

The San Francisco Unified School District calls the LCAP its “most important plan.” That’s because the Local Control and Accountability Plan will map out how SFUSD serves its highest-need students: English language learners, foster and homeless youth and socioeconomically disadvantaged...

By directing funding to the state’s poorest schools and targeting racial disparities statewide, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing the biggest changes in a decade to the state system of funding and governing schools. His plan would be an implicit acknowledgment...

Most newcomer students enter school with very low or beginning English language proficiency (ELP), but their language skills can develop rapidly under the right conditions, according to the first in a new series of briefs by Policy Analysis for California...

A new analysis by the research nonprofit PACE (Policy Analysis for  California Education) examines the tradeoffs and various options for one of the key decisions awaiting the Legislature this spring: how to fund TK-12 schools following two years of steep...

Revolutionary change in public education is rare. Yet California's public school districts are today in the midst of a sea change, due largely to the efforts of Michael Kirst, the longest serving state Board of Education president and a longtime professor...

It’s been eight years since then-Gov. Jerry Brown restructured California’s school funding formulas to direct billions of dollars to the state’s neediest students. But, in 2019, state Auditor Elaine Howle confirmed what critics had been saying for years: State and...

California’s landmark funding reform law needs to be fixed to help meet its promise of raising the achievement of underperforming student groups, conclude two recently published research studies. The co-authors of a third report, after examining recent research and interviewing...

In the broadest sense, LCFF embraced the conventional wisdom that altering the flow of money would profoundly affect educational outcomes. However, from its inception, LCFF has been awash in controversy—not over its concept, but rather its implementation. The latest attempt...

The Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, ushered in a new era of school funding in California when it was adopted in 2013. It’s regarded by many as the most significant resource equity reform the state has ever enacted. But...

Right now, school district and charter school leaders, working with parents and the community, are starting to draft their Local Control and Accountability Plans. State law requires new plans every three years and annual updates to show how they plan...

In 2013, policymakers replaced California’s convoluted education funding system with the Local Control Funding Formula, which streamlined dollars into a simplified formula. The revamped formula provides a base amount of funding for each student, plus supplemental dollars for students classified...

USC Rossier Professor of Education Policy discusses strategies for engaging local stakeholders, her experience as a researcher and how COVID-19 will impact funding for education.

It’s no secret that most school finance systems are outdated. But where can state policymakers find a blueprint for positive reform? Perhaps the best model to emulate is California’s Local Control Funding Formula. It’s still early but several studies have...

With a recession imminent and tens of millions of Americans filing for unemployment benefits in the past few weeks, state budgets are taking a beating—and schools could be in serious fiscal jeopardy. In states like Florida, where recently passed budgets...