As schools grapple with declining enrollment and budget deficits, the only solution for many leaders is to consider closing schools. Here’s how leaders are handling those conversations. Hundreds of concerned family members recently entered Fort Worth ISD’s O.D. Wyatt High...

On February 10, as part of its mission to “maximize government efficiency,” the Trump administration announced its cancellation of roughly $1 billion in federal contracts for education research. These contracts were held under the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)—the research...

From private school vouchers to threats over “woke” curriculum, the Trump administration has launched a slew of reforms intended to reshape K–12 schools. But it’s still too soon to determine how—or if—those efforts will play out in California...

A new brief by Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) outlines the strategies used in partnership with California Education Partners (Ed Partners) aimed at improving student outcomes. Over the past four-years, 48 districts participated in an Ed Partners’ collaboration with...

Over a three-year period beginning in 2020, Grass Valley School District, located in Nevada County, was able to implement strategies that improved literacy instruction and outcomes for students. Policy Analysis for California Education’s (PACE) brief “Building Momentum One Step at...

California school districts would receive $2.5 billion through a small cost-of-living increase, plus additional funding to train math and reading coaches, expand summer and after-school programs, and help launch the state’s Master Plan for Career Education in the proposed 2025-26...

Using evidence-based approaches, Ed Partners District to District program collaborates with districts and county offices to improve systems to achieve better outcomes for students. In Taking Reform to Scale, researchers at PACE studied our work with districts over four years...

Are California’s stubborn failings in teaching basic subjects such as math and reading, which the educational establishment hopes no one will notice, fixable? Two recent projects to improve academic skills indicate that learning can be improved with sustained effort that...

Students file out of classrooms after the final bell rings. It’s the end of the day and they shuffle to their parents’ cars or the school bus to catch a ride home or to an extracurricular activity or job. Others...

While schools in the Bay Area and across the state are seeing more students graduate and attend class, academic performance among students remains stagnant nearly five years after the pandemic. That’s according to new data from the California Department of...

The re-election of former President Donald Trump is certain to bring a period of conflict,tension and litigation between his White House and California’s political and education leaders whose policies and values the president-elect castigates. It also could potentially have major...

Oakland mom Azlinah Tambu vividly remembers the moment that would transform her from the law-abiding, neighborhood school mom into a trespassing activist threatened with jail time. For months, Tambu, whose two children were then in elementary school, and others had...

This month we want to highlight the work in Grass Valley. The Improvement Team is engaged in year two of the P3CC Literacy Collaboration. Grass Valley has focused on Preschool through 3rd grade coherence as foundational to their district-wide initiative...

Sierra House Elementary in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District is working to develop a sustainable math system that focuses on enhancing both teaching and learning experiences. One of their key initiatives includes embedding open tasks in student experiences, which...

San Francisco must do everything it can to avert a state takeover of its schools. That’s the stark message brought by Carl A. Cohn, the only outside educator to be brought in to help the team of city administrators set...

As the San Francisco Unified School District deliberates over a tentative list of school closures, it will have to account for the fact that the district’s enrollment has declined for several years—and could fall much further. But San Francisco’s public...

A recent report from Policy Analysis for California Education aims to provide education leaders with a better understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can be used in education by exploring its potential strengths and limitations. Generative AI in...

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...

The rise of AI promises new solutions to long-standing challenges. It also introduces some challenges of its own. In addition to concerns over privacy, bias and reliability, AI is driving a flood of new products in a broad range of...

When a new intervention or program is introduced, the conventional wisdom among many seasoned educators is, “This too shall pass.” This attitude doesn’t mean an intervention is not promising or educators are not flexible and innovative. Rather, it emerges from...

With all the hubris of a startup founder, Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, took to the stage in March to launch Ed the chatbot. He told parents and students it had “the potential to personalize the...

Despite post-COVID challenges and economic uncertainties, education leaders and state lawmakers have made enduring commitments to building educational equity and improving academic outcomes for all students. Nonetheless, for many school districts even with new policies and initiatives, and dedicated funding...

There was a lot of conversation during the pandemic about how school districts’ scramble to deliver content fully virtually could fundamentally change K-12 learning. But did that become a reality? While most public school educators were eager to return to...