The COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of schools shone a spotlight on the issue of student mental health. Rates of depression and anxiety among youth skyrocketed, resulting in an increase in emergency room visits related to youth mental health. While children and youth were reporting the need for behavioral health supports prior to the pandemic,…

To address lingering pressures in the aftermath of the pandemic, California public schools received record funding, largely bolstered by nearly $60 billion in federal and state one-time stimulus funds. This report takes a comprehensive look at the allocation and uses of these federal and state educational recovery funds in California.

The COVID-19 pandemic created lingering challenges related to enrollment and made transparent the need for institutions to examine processes and remove enrollment barriers. Higher education may be perfectly poised to implement deep and lasting change that could result in increased access and improved retention. As student populations become…

To jump-start educational recovery after the disruptions from COVID-19, the federal and state governments sent billions in one-time stimulus funds to school districts. California allocated much of its stimulus funding to districts based on their shares of low-income students--a proxy for student need and the main way California directs money…

Adopting an ethnographic lens, readers are provided a look inside a California high school sexuality education classroom. On this chosen day, two invited guest speakers from an outside company are teaching students about pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, and risks associated with having sex. Analysis of the guest speakers' pedagogical…

In spring 2020, the California State University System and its 23 campuses became the first in the United States to commit to a year of remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote instruction separated the system's librarians from their users, whose needs were especially great within the system's ethnically, economically, and…

In this article, the author braids storytelling with oral life history interviews, Chicana Feminisms, and portraiture. The piece centers the portrait of Ms. Sotomayor, a veteran elementary teacher, who through her stories shares with us pedagogies of pain, trust, autonomy, and empowerment. These glimpses of her life journey as a Nepantlera offer…

This brief identifies the steps necessary to realize an integrated system of care, reviews two current approaches, and makes recommendations--including specifying policy reforms that would promote interagency collaboration, integration, service delivery, and improved outcomes for California's children, both with and without disabilities. As a full…

This article shows how the adoption of technology may serve as a catalyst for deeper, systemic reforms. This article shares a local case of organizational learning in which a midsize California urban school district faithfully acted on a technology goal nested in its strategic plan. Through this experience, the school district demonstrated various…

The purpose of this quantitative pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study was to examine the effect on student success rates in biology courses with laboratory components taken via distance education at a California community college. This study examined success rates for nine different courses, including 98 sections (2,299 students) taught only…

Post-secondary education is essential to the development of our nation (Miller, 2006; The White House, n.d.). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States already faced a college attainment gap (Miller, 2006; Jenkins, 2011; Welton & Martinez, 2013). The fallout from the pandemic has caused additional issues related to higher education…

The term "throughput" refers to the percentage of a student cohort who complete a course sequence within a set period after having begun that sequence at the same point in time. Under AB 705 the set period for observing throughput rates is described in law as "one year". While that time frame seems intuitive enough, the…

The California Community College system serves over 121,000 students with dis/abilities who are both historically underrepresented and disproportionally impacted for success outcomes. Research indicates that dis/ability perceptions influence college stakeholders, impacting outcomes for this student population. Beyond the Cover...Living Books is a…

Attending to students' thinking and using it to inform instruction has been shown to be an effective teaching practice. Although research on teacher noticing has explored how teachers attend to and interpret thinking in the moment and through video, less is known about the ways in which teachers notice students' thinking in written work, as well…

U.S. Census Bureau Report (2020c) showed Hispanic students constituted 18.5% of the U.S. population, 36% attended higher education and only 14% completed postsecondary education. Research has shown Hispanic, specifically Latinx, students faced barriers in accessing higher education's hidden curriculum, compounded by deficit beliefs about their…