School climate and student engagement surveys can tell us a good deal about important contributors to student success. They can illuminate students’ sense of belonging at school and their sense of themselves as learners. They can shed light on bullying...

Local officials have begun reevaluating how much their communities are getting for their single biggest expense: the degree-certified competence of public school teachers and administrators. Does every school system really need a credentialed curriculum director, when any good teacher should...

More than 20 years ago, Proposition 227 was passed in California, requiring that all public schools teach curriculum in English and providing only a year of special instruction to English learner students in the hope of quickly producing assimilated and...

Due to statewide teacher shortages, many of California’s approximately 800,000 special education students are being taught by teachers who haven’t completed teacher preparation programs or have received only partial training.

Recent survey results show that while more California county office of education leaders are understanding and accepting of the new roles of COEs in the Statewide System of Support, the state must further build out and enhance the system to...

As he was campaigning for governor, Gavin Newsom made some enormous promises for the youngest Californians and their families — universal preschool, affordable, high-quality child care, six months of paid family leave. And he’s delivered — on the first few...

California has earmarked nearly $200 million over the last four years to address the state’s persistent teacher shortage, but it is not enough, according to new studies that are part of “Getting Down to Facts II,” a research project focused...

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...

The Policy Analysis for California Education Policy Research Panel on Special Education has released a series of policy briefs summarizing key findings from the project Organizing Schools to Serve Students with Disabilities.Distinguished Professor George Farkas's article - "Achievement Gaps and...

This is one of the most exciting, daunting and critically important moments in California’s education policy history. We are all in uncharted territory. Policymakers and educators at all levels of the system are wrestling with the virtually simultaneous implementation of...

You can hardly open a newspaper or major magazine today without finding a story about another incarnation or overhaul of teacher evaluation. But underlying nearly all these detailed descriptions of state and local programs is a near-unanimous and long-standing assumption...

So what’s the alternative? If narrow, test-based evaluation of teachers is unfair, unreliable, and has negative effects on kids, classrooms, and curricula, what’s a better approach? By demonizing teachers and unions, and sharply polarizing the education debate, the corporate reform...

On the football field, a talented quarterback often calls the option play, holding off on the decision to run or pass to the last possible moment. This gives him time to survey the field and choose the best option for...

To help lay the groundwork for reforming California's faltering school system, more than 30 researchers nationwide have launched the largest independent investigation ever of how the state governs and finances education. Stanford Associate Professor of Education Susanna Loeb, an economist...

Citing the thousands of California students who were shut out of community colleges last year because of budget-forced course and staffing cuts, a report issued Tuesday predicted worse times ahead for the state’s two-year colleges without significant funding and policy...

California faces a huge increase in demand for higher education over the next few years, and it urgently needs a broad plan to meet its statutory guarantee of access to college, state business and labor leaders said on Tuesday during...

Too Much Demand: California faces a huge increase in demand for higher education over the next few years, and it urgently needs a broad plan to meet its statutory guarantee of access to college, according to “Ensuring Access With Quality...

In the debate on improving California's educational system needs to include the issue of students who transfer schools, say University of California, Santa Barbara researchers in a just-completed study published by California Analysis for California Education (PACE).  It backs this...

Thousands of Bay Area children who used to play after school are spending their afternoons at pricey tutoring centers that are springing up like fast-food franchises. Parents are spending $2,000 to $4,000 a year to buy their children extra academic...

Asian immigrant students, representing a striking range of languages, cultures and socioeconomic levels, are streaming into schools in the San Gabriel Valley, forcing districts that were largely Anglo or Latino to grapple with profound ethnic changes that seemed to develop...

The state's schools need about 8,000 new classrooms just for first grade. Portable classrooms seem an obvious solution, but manufacturers normally make 2,500 a year, and orders are expected to exceed 15,000. Another issue is affordability: The state initially provided...

en years ago this spring, a federal commission released a report that shocked the nation with its grim assessment of public education. With ringing martial metaphors and a dire warning of a “rising tide of mediocrity,” A Nation at Risk...

An experiment in six California school districts aimed at finding common ground between teachers’ unions and administrators achieved moderate success last year and will be expanded to at least five more districts, project participants reported last week. Under the “Trust...

But most people who work with problem kids say there are more relevant statistics. According to the child advocacy group Children Now, more kids than ever are growing up in poverty in California—1 in 5; 1 out of 3 kids...