Equitable educational opportunities and outcomes are crucial for the success of all students. What can state and local educational agencies do to address inequities? This infographic shares resources, conditions for success, and examples of innovative models to ensure all students are set up to succeed.

Equity practices have expanded throughout the California community college (CCC) system. Every CCC develops an equity plan, where each institution chooses a disproportionately impacted population and focuses on improving access, basic skills completion, degrees and certificates awarded, and transfer rates. Each college is required to develop…

In 2021, California made historic investments in early learning to expand transitional kindergarten (TK) to serve all of California's 4-year-olds. Transitional kindergarten began in California in 2012 as a free public school program for 4-year-olds who were not yet eligible for kindergarten (a non-compulsory grade). Yet by 2019, just 28 percent of…

California requires each school district to belong to a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) for special education planning and governance. The California Department of Education (CDE) and the State Board of Education (SBE) are interested in the impact on the surrounding small and midsized districts when large districts become single-district…

This study explores the ways in which local students experience housing instability--and how cross-sector strategies can better identify and serve these students. The report accompanying this brief considers a rich set of school administrative data, collected over the course of three school years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic: 2016-17 through…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? This report and the accompanying research brief endeavor to answer that question by examining a humanistic and systems thinking approach to cultural change that took…

"Understanding Entry-Level Courses in American Institutions of Higher Education" outlines a study conducted by EPIC that empirically identifies the characteristics of work at the college- and career-readiness level in English/language arts, science, and social sciences courses. Using a previously collected national sample of over two…

Schools must address the impact of the prolonged closures due to COVID-19 on the linguistic and academic development of California's dual language learners (DLLs) and English learners (ELs). Fully 44 percent of school-aged California children speak a non-English language at home; for children ages 0-5, the proportion is around 60 percent. While it…

Purpose: Most community college students do not graduate let alone transfer to university. Hence, the purpose of this qualitative study was to (a) examine the learned experiences of California community colleges and California State University (CSU) administrators and staff in implementing the California Student Transfer Achievement Reform (STAR)…

California's education data, at least as they currently are collected, managed, and made available, are not sufficient for understanding and addressing the needs of California's students. That's the conclusion of the first three reports in the series "California Education Policy, Student Data, and the Quest to Improve Student Progress,"…

California has long been a national and global leader in developing and maintaining quality higher education options, as well as in providing financial aid and consumer protections for Californians who access that education. However, although California's colleges and the state government do collect, receive, and report a great deal of data, these…

Early childhood education programs play an important role in child family-to-school transition. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10, the California Children and Families Act, which levied a 50-cent tax on each pack of cigarettes and other tobacco products to finance programs for children ages 0-5. In less than two decades, First 5…

At Peters K-3 Elementary School in Garden Grove, California, teacher leadership and empowerment supported by professional learning from the district have led to increases in student outcomes and in parent and student satisfaction with the culture and climate of the school community. Peters demonstrates the impact that empowering staffs and…

School district central offices regularly engage with external partners in improvement efforts, but these partnerships are not always productive. Indeed, little is known about under what conditions partnerships are likely to lead to organizational learning outcomes. We conducted a longitudinal comparative case study of two departments in one urban…

In September 2013, based on a national survey of state Adult Basic Education (ABE) directors or designates, Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) published "Stepping Up to ROI on Adult Education: A Survey of State Activity." This paper reported on the states' activity, from the perspective of the respondents, in collecting and…