The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long-standing systemic inequities in education with resulting gaps in opportunity and academic achievement. In addition, many affected students have experienced additional trauma as the pandemic has cost lives and livelihoods in families already vulnerable and on the edge. School staff have also experienced…

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, extended school shutdowns, and renewed protests about racial injustice, schools confront sharp increases in student learning, behavioral, and emotional challenges. Despite this, the matter of how best to address these pervasive concerns--many of which result from long-standing structural and systemic barriers that…

The educators of Ayer Elementary in Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) began their continuous improvement journey in 2016. The stability of their underlying organizational conditions to engage in improvement work--a shared purpose, mutual trust, structures and resources that foster collaborative work, and preparation and mobilization of…

California's school accountability and support system, the Statewide System of Support (System of Support), was designed to transform California's approach to school improvement. Rather than focusing on punitive consequences for underperformance, the System of Support is designed to provide education leaders and educators with needed support to…

Equity is the consistent thread that runs through major California education policies of the last decade, which have focused on providing access and opportunity tailored to students' needs in order to reduce disparities in learning outcomes. Equity challenges, already significant prior to COVID-19, have been exacerbated by the pandemic's education…

This brief summarizes key points from the report "Enabling Conditions and Capacities for Continuous Improvement: A Framework for Measuring and Supporting Progress Towards the Goals of the Statewide System of Support" and contextualizes the findings within the current challenge of supporting teaching and learning during a pandemic. The…

Continuous improvement is a holistic and research-based approach to education grounded in the belief that every system is designed to achieve the results it gets; therefore, change must be systemwide, not piecemeal. California is a national leader in the continuous improvement movement that is spreading throughout local school districts as well as…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) makes sweeping changes to the way school performance is measured. Using the innovative measurement system developed by the CORE Districts in California, the authors explore how schools can be identified for support and improvement using a multiple measures framework. They show that 1) Different academic…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to develop an accountability system that includes multiple measures of student academic performance and at least one additional indicator of "School Quality or Student Success" (SQSS). To support policymaking at both the state and federal level, the authors of "Identity Crisis:…

California ended 40 years of reliance on categorical funding for schools when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law on July 1, 2013. LCFF intends to enhance services for high-needs students through new flexibility, targeted student funding, and local accountability. Two years into LCFF implementation,…

California's new accountability system originated in the radical decentralization of power and authority from Sacramento to local schools and their communities brought about by the Legislature's adoption of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013. Under California's previous accountability policies and the federal "No Child Left…

The Common Core provides districts an opportunity to renew their focus on teaching and learning. But it also poses a number of design and implementation challenges for school districts. The "Leadership and Design Cycles" described in this guidebook offers an evidenced-based and structured process for leaders to design and implement…

In this report, the authors present some initial findings on the early implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in California. They report on their interviews with educators in all regions of the state, and on their views of how implementation is proceeding in their schools and districts. The authors then review some of the key…

California has embarked on a major new wave of curriculum reform with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the new English Language Development (ELD) standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The adoption of the CCSS builds a legacy of standards-based education reform in California that began with the…

The education system in California today is unable to meet the needs of the state's economy or the expectations of its citizens. From school finance to ensuring the quality of teaching, from assessment and accountability to preparing students for college and careers, education policy today in California often works against the best interests of…