This report examines the CORE Districts’ Breakthrough Success Community (BTSC), which focused on improving ninth-grade on-track rates through evidence-based changes in daily practice. Some schools effectively adapted BTSC strategies, fostering strong relationships and engagement. While implementation varied and overall impact on student outcomes was not detected, schools valued key BTSC measures, and later adjustments may strengthen results. This report highlights promising practices and offers recommendations to enhance future education improvement efforts.

This brief introduces a three-part series describing California Education Partners’ multistage approach to supporting school districts with improving their students’ outcomes in literacy and mathematics. The approach addresses persistent barriers to improvement by building capacity in the district, piloting reforms, and focusing on scaling changes systemwide in sustainable ways. PACE authors highlight the successes and challenges of Ed Partners’ approach, emphasizing the fundamental importance of leadership at the teacher, school, and district levels to drive change throughout the district.

This case study explores how Lake Tahoe Unified School District worked to improve math instruction, starting a pilot at Sierra House Elementary School. Partnering with California Education Partners, LTUSD addressed stagnant test scores by developing pacing guides, essential standards, and open-ended math tasks. Sierra House used these tools to create a collaborative system for analyzing student learning and refining instruction. While scaling districtwide remains a challenge, the Sierra House model highlights leadership and resource use with collaboration in advancing instructional coherence.

Grass Valley School District (GVSD) partnered with California Education Partners through an initiative to improve literacy instruction. Over three years, GVSD implemented new literacy assessments and phonics practices, emphasizing teacher leadership, data use, and accountability. That shifted the district’s culture toward continuous improvement, enabling districtwide adoption of literacy initiatives and improved student outcomes. This case study highlights the need for stronger systems to build adult capacity and sustain leadership and collaboration.

Optimists believe AI will partner with teachers to provide customized learning resources, digital tutors, and innovative experiences tailored to individual students’ needs. Pessimists express concerns about the potential dehumanization of education, arguing that AI could increase students' reliance on digital tools, reduce meaningful human interactions, and perpetuate biases and misinformation. In this article, the authors highlight the need for education leaders and policymakers to navigate the use of AI with care, balancing its transformative potential with its inherent risks.

Within the TeachAI Policy Workgroup, PACE has facilitated the development of AI policy informational briefs aimed at ensuring the effective, safe, and responsible integration of AI in education. These briefs offer guidance to education leaders and policymakers, emphasizing the importance of crafting policies that prioritize teaching and learning. The briefs provide insights derived from current research and landscape analysis of AI use in TK–12 educational settings, addressing common questions and centering around five guiding principles for developing responsible AI policies in education.

TeachAI—in collaboration with Code.org, CoSN, Digital Promise, the European EdTech Alliance, James Larimore, and PACE—has launched an AI Guidance for Schools Toolkit to help school systems worldwide meet the urgent need for guidance on the safe, effective, and responsible use of artificial intelligence.It helps education authorities, school leaders, teachers, and others create thoughtful guidance to help their communities realize the potential benefits of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) in education while understanding and mitigating the potential risks.

Declining student enrollment is leading to a loss of revenue in many California school districts. To address ongoing budget shortfalls, many districts have consolidated or shuttered schools,and others are contemplating doing so. A new report and working paper, summarized in this brief, explore the racial dimensions of school closures and how to address them.

Enrollment in California public schools has been declining and is projected to fall even more steeply during the next decade. Because funding for school districts is largely based on average daily attendance rates, a decline in enrollment results in a loss of funding. To address budget shortfalls and align services with student counts, many districts have consolidated or closed schools, or they are contemplating doing so.

This study investigates racial disparities in school closures both within California and nationally. Findings highlight an alarming pattern: Schools enrolling higher proportions of Black students are at significantly increased risk of closure relative to those enrolling fewer Black students, a pattern that is more pronounced in California than elsewhere in the United States. The findings underscore that school closures in California and elsewhere reflect racial inequalities that require adequate policymaking to ensure equitable and fair school-closure proceedings.

This chapter in an edited book focuses on the work of two improvement network hubs in California as they tried to support participating districts and schools to improve the proportion of students “on-track” for post-secondary success. California has a particular stake in figuring out how to support districts in consistently using continuous improvement (CI) to achieve measurable gains in student outcomes because state policy (e.g., Local Control Funding Formula, California’s Every Student Succeeds Act Plan) prescribes CI as the approach to improvement in its accountability system.

Collaborative networks using continuous improvement principles can accelerate and spread learning. This brief highlights the importance of understanding the benefits of collaboration, building a culture of trust and vulnerability, and engaging in true collaborative work, not just "show and tell." These lessons can help network members work together effectively to improve outcomes for students in changing conditions.