California’s Transitional Kindergarten (TK) program provides an additional year of schooling within the K–12 system that aims to prepare children for kindergarten. Launched a decade ago with limited eligibility, the program will be expanded to all four-year-olds by 2025–26. Little is known about TK’s longer-term impact—especially among multilingual students and students with disabilities, who might benefit from early identification. Taking stock of TK’s impact so far can help the state expand it successfully.

This study used data from California CORE Districts to explore whether changes in students' self-reported social-emotional learning (SEL) predicted changes in academic outcomes and attendance. The findings revealed that within-student changes in SEL were positively associated with improvements in English language arts (ELA) and math achievement, as well as attendance, and were consistent across various student subgroups.

A case study of Ayer Elementary School in Fresno, California, reveals leadership practices that foster continuous improvement in education. The report identifies three lessons for supporting improvement in other schools: access to district resources, a culture of continuous improvement, and teacher agency. The study highlights the importance of leadership skills in promoting a culture of risk-taking, teacher agency, and collective efficacy to improve student outcomes in California schools.

The CORE-PACE Research Partnership's report on Long Beach Unified School District highlights lessons learned from their continuous improvement approach to improving classroom instruction. This report describes four key practices that have led to improvements in organizational function, including shared clarity of purpose, structures for shared learning, differentiated support for instructional leaders, and deepening understanding of implementation. LBUSD's efforts offer valuable insights for other systems and leaders seeking to support continuous improvement.

This case study explores the Garden Grove Unified School District's culture of improvement through four key structures and processes, including consistent goals, data-driven reform, vertical and horizontal structures, and prioritization of people. The district's culture prioritizes student outcomes, commitment, and high-quality teaching. Lessons from GGUSD are broadly applicable to other California districts seeking to foster a culture of improvement.

Educators face a dilemma of staying up-to-date with evidence-based practices while dealing with superficial ideas. Continuous improvement methods can help in testing new ideas but if seen as add-ons, they may not yield sustained improvement. This brief describes the CORE Districts’ five-driver model that deepens educators’ ownership and sustains improvement over time.

This article explores the issue of satisficing, which is suboptimal responding on surveys, in the context of a large-scale social-emotional learning survey administered to over 400,000 elementary and secondary students. Despite concerns about its impact on data quality, the study found that satisficing had a more modest effect than expected. The article offers an approach for defining and calculating satisficing for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to improve the quality of survey data.

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.

ESSA allows states to design accountability systems and measures to meet new college and career readiness goals. With the lack of adequate measures, states will need to develop new measures and structures. The CORE Districts in CA, with its innovative accountability system and waivers from No Child Left Behind, is a model for other states. Reports from CORE-PACE highlight the impact of decisions such as subgroup sizes and test score growth on identifying low-performing schools. States can use the district waiver provision to help develop and refine their accountability systems under ESSA.

This article assesses confusion due to negative wording on social-emotional learning (SEL) assessments using mixture IRT models. Results based on student self-reports show confusion biasing scores, especially in Grades 3-5, and correlational relationships between SEL constructs and reading proficiency and ELL status. Using positively oriented items in future SEL measures is recommended to address these issues.

California's CORE districts have been collecting data since 2014 on social and emotional learning (SEL) and school climate and culture to improve K-12 schools' holistic approach to student development. Advocates argue that a focus on SEL and school culture will lead to higher academic achievement and better well-being for students. The CORE districts developed survey instruments for SEL competencies and school climate perceptions involving students, staff, and parents. Many states and districts have adopted SEL-specific curricula and disciplinary reforms.

The shift towards multiple-measure dashboard accountability has potential for promoting more meaningful learning, but also comes with challenges. Lessons learned from research on CORE Districts show that a shift to flexibility and capacity building efforts has challenges. Oakland Unified School District's approach suggests that districts have agency to modify mindsets by modeling inquiry, openness, and flexibility, giving stakeholders space and authority to manage accountability and improvement.

Parental engagement is essential to improve academic outcomes for all students, particularly low-income, Black, and Latinx students. Distance learning has intensified the need for parental support, but state policies and tools for engagement are inadequate. Local Educational Agencies can remove barriers to data access and support parent engagement by following three key principles and taking related actions.

The Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) in California and the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) encourage local control in school accountability. The CORE waiver districts have implemented an innovative measurement system and supports for school and district improvement, providing an opportunity to learn from the enactment of a system supported by accountability policy in this new era. This report examines the early implementation and effects of the CORE reform and seeks to inform the ongoing efforts within CORE and future accountability policy in other states and districts.

This paper explores social-emotional learning (SEL) practices in ten middle schools and their impact on students' outcomes. Despite the growing recognition of the importance of SEL, many schools struggle to implement effective strategies. The paper focuses on schools with strong student-reported data on SEL outcomes, particularly for African American and Latinx students.

Self-report surveys are used to track students’ social-emotional development. This large-scale panel survey reveals that self-efficacy, social awareness, and self-management decrease after Grade 6, except for growth mindset. Female students report higher self-management and social awareness but lower self-efficacy than males in middle and high school. Students of color and economically disadvantaged students report lower levels of each construct. Policymakers should consider these trends and use self-reports to target interventions and resources.

The CORE Districts in California conducted a survey to measure K-12 students’ social-emotional well-being during the pandemic. Results indicate that students’ personal and interpersonal well-being rated lower than their learning environments. Interpersonal well-being was most correlated with academic achievement. Home/online learning environment improved, but Grades 5-12 students reported not liking school as much in winter 2020-21. Stakeholders should focus on meeting the pressing needs of each group of students.

At the first anniversary of school closures due to COVID-19, nearly half of the K–12 students in the U.S. were attending schools that were either fully remote or offering hybrid instruction, with more than 70 percent of California students attending schools remotely. For this reason, continued efforts to unpack the effects of COVID-19 on student outcomes are especially important for California students, who may be experiencing larger-than-average effects of continued school closures relative to the nation overall.

California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) aims to improve educational equity by providing additional funds to districts with disadvantaged students. Districts are required to engage with their communities and develop Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs) to identify priorities and allocate funds. However, there are concerns about the quality of LCAPs, lack of stakeholder involvement, and limited transparency. To improve the effectiveness of LCFF, districts must ensure meaningful stakeholder engagement and use data to guide decision-making.

This report examines the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and how schools can be identified for support and improvement using a multiple measures framework. The authors find that different academic indicators measure different aspects of school performance and suggest that states should be allowed to use multiple measures instead of a summative rating. They also find that non-academic indicators are not given enough weight and suggest a clarification in federal policy.

This paper uses mixture IRT models to evaluate whether students experience confusion due to negative wording of items on a social-emotional learning assessment. It examines the consequences of confusion on student- and school-level scores and correlations with student-level variables, finding that confusion is present and most prevalent in lower grades, and is related to reading proficiency and ELL status. The study recommends the use of positively oriented items in future SEL measures, and suggests bias corrections based on the studied mixture model to maintain measurement continuity.

This report discusses the validity and reliability of CORE Districts’ social-emotional learning (SEL) student-report surveys. Through a pragmatic approach, the report answers four guiding questions that explain different facets of validity for school leaders. The aim is to provide guidance around the use of SEL surveys within and outside of the CORE districts to facilitate decision-making for educational leaders.

This policy brief analyzes the implications of using various subgroup sizes for school-level reporting under the ESSA. Data from the CORE Districts shows that a subgroup size of 20+ offers clear advantages in representing historically underserved student populations. The authors also produced a supplementary report comparing subgroup sizes of 20+ and 30+ in response to new ESSA regulations.

The use of social-emotional learning (SEL) and school culture/climate (CC) measures is a promising way to understand school performance. SEL and CC measures are reliable, distinguish between schools, and relate to academic and non-academic measures. They can identify areas for improvement within schools, such as subgroup gaps. Incorporating these measures into higher stakes accountability systems requires further research.

California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) requires districts to report student performance measures and use state and local data to monitor progress towards preparing students for college, career, and citizenship. Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) utilized principles of Improvement Science and a data dashboard to increase college access for students, in partnership with the University of California, Merced.