The unprecedented closure of schools as a result of the global pandemic has had a dramatic—devastating, even—effect on our communities. In its wake, COVID-19 has exposed persistent inequities in our public school systems and has magnified concerns about providing for students’ basic needs, their emotional well-being, and their academic progress. Yet, as is often the case, hard times lead to opportunities to reimagine and rebuild.
This commentary provides California’s K–12 education leaders 10 recommendations for utilizing COVID-19 recovery funds to serve English learner students. It is important for leaders to act boldly and innovatively to begin to reimagine K–12 education, in particular for English learners, whose learning has been yet more negatively affected by the pandemic than that of their English-speaking peers.
The coming much-needed influx of federal and state money to California public schools is an unforeseen and unprecedented windfall that will certainly help mitigate the many extra expenses the pandemic has created. It would be easy, and perhaps understandable, for local officials to become cavalier about how they use the extra funds they receive. The catch is that it is a one-time infusion of funds, not a permanent increase for California’s perennially underfunded K–12 system. How can local school districts best use this one-time bump in funding?
In preparing for the next school year, California state policymakers must set clear statewide expectations for teaching, learning, and student support, regardless of whether instruction is online or in person. This spring, local school districts scrambled to adapt to COVID-19 with a wide range of responses largely focused on securing delivery of online resources. Now is the time to shift the conversation back to the core purpose of school: learning. The state should establish a minimum amount of instructional time; create an instrument of diagnostic assessment and require its use; adopt instructional continuity plans; and advocate for and secure additional funding.
As an immensely diverse group of students, English learners (ELs) will have widely varying experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and thus a broad range of educational, physical, and mental health-related needs. This commentary offers recommendations for how policy can support ELs whether education is online, in person, or both.
The coronavirus pandemic has pushed California and the nation into uncharted waters, especially with the impact on our schools. With the economy in decline and unemployment on the rise, school funding is likely to dip, triggering cuts across the system. This financial impact will come when our schools need more money, not less, to serve our state’s children. As we look toward recovery, Californians should make the kind of significant investments in our public schools that reflect their true importance to our students, families and future.
The closing of California’s physical learning spaces has significant implications for educational equity and access. In the coming weeks and months, PACE’s efforts will be focused on supporting real-time crisis response and helping the state build toward recovery. This commentary, the first in a new series designed to raise up evidence quickly to inform crisis response and recovery, details our approach.
Using nine years of finance data from California, we describe charter school spending for various purposes (e.g., instruction, administration, pupil support, and operations) and compare spending patterns for charter schools and traditional public schools. We also explore how school characteristics (e.g., total enrollment, percent of students eligible for free and reduced lunch and geographic location) explain differences in spending patterns.
In any given year, California alone has typically accounted for roughly half of total enrollment in year-round school calendars nationally. It is likely that this school policy option was so widely embraced in California due to the fact that the state experienced school crowding issues and that year-round school calendars often appear to be a promising solution. Year-round calendars redistribute the same number of school days more evenly across the year. A particular type of year-round calendar, multi-track, does this in a way that supports a larger student body in the same school facility. The multi-track year-round calendar has therefore gained the reputation of being a cost-saving remedy to school crowding.
The Board of Education for the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) recently adopted Vision 2020 for Student Success, a long-range plan for improving performance and student outcomes.
John Deasy deserves the welcoming he is getting as superintendent of the nation’s second largest school district. He should savor the moment; he’ll need it. The public and private speculation about Deasy concerns whether he is really a “reformer,” whatever that means, what deals he has cut with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or the Gates Foundation, or whether United Teachers Los Angeles will electioneer a hostile school board in March. Interesting though it is, the speculation masks deeper substantive issues that both the new superintendent and those interested in education policy need to understand.
In PACE’s view, one key principle for lasting reform in California’s education system is policies that target resources to the students and schools who need them most. How hard is this to do? A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California suggests some grounds for pessimism
Polling on public education almost invariably reports the same pattern of responses when participants are asked to evaluate schools. Respondents give their local schools relatively high grades, but they give much lower grades to the public school system as a whole. In other words, citizens trust the schools they know, where they send (or sent) their own children, but they are doubtful about schools elsewhere. The perceived distance between citizens and their schools is a big problem in California, where financial resources and regulations come mainly from the state and some school districts enroll more students than small countries. Restoring confidence and trust in the public school system is an essential prerequisite to winning the level of political and financial support that will be required to provide a high-quality education to all of the state’s children.
PACE and Pivot Learning Partners co-hosted a conference in southern California that focused on teacher evaluation. The conference brought together teams of administrators, teachers, and union leaders from more than 30 school districts to discuss how to evaluate teachers’ performance in smarter, more effective ways.
As the leader of a state most impacted by immigration policies, the next governor of California must play an active role advocating for comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act.
For nearly 30 years PACE has worked to sponsor a productive conversation about the education policy choices facing California, by bringing academic research to bear on the key policy questions and challenges facing our state. We have done this in traditional ways, by publishing policy briefs and convening seminars and conferences in Sacramento and throughout California. For years PACE’s signature publication was Conditions of Education in California, which provided an annual compendium of data and analysis on the current state of California’s education system.
Undocumented Students and the California DREAM Act
Commentary author
William Perez
Published
Summary
Often missing in the public discourse about immigration is the 1982 landmark Supreme Court case of Plyer v. Doe. Relying on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, the Court ruled that undocumented children could not be denied a public education due to their immigration status. Presently, the Plyler decision protects the educational rights of approximately 1.5 million children under 18 years of age. The educational rights of approximately 65,000 undocumented students expire every year when they graduate from the nation's high schools.