Teachers are indispensable in the public education system in California. There is a need for more credentialed teachers in California and a need for those willing to pursue the profession. A qualitative collective case study addressed low morale, teacher satisfaction, and decreasing desire to remain in the profession due to COVID-19. The demands…

The mission of community colleges is to create affordable pathways for students to enter the workforce or transfer into 4-year universities. However, community colleges have not been successful in efforts to assist Students of Color in completing an associate degree or transferring. Therefore, efforts have been made to increase the number of…

The stakes are incredibly high in California to provide access to a high-quality education in a safe environment for all students. As districts across the state resumed full-time instruction and began the task of pandemic recovery, members of the California Collaborative on District Reform convened three times in 2021-22 to continue and deepen…

This one-year qualitative study examined the ways in which five Chicana/o and Latina/o teachers committed to social justice perceived their roles in their college-going work with Latina/o students, as well as the challenges threatening their efforts with students. Building on Stanton-Salazar's (2011) concept of "empowerment social…

This research summary accompanies the report "Final Report of the i3 Impact Study of Making Sense of SCIENCE, 2016-17 through 2017-18." Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in…

Prior studies portray support for the Common Core in California (Finkelstein et al. 2018; Jochim and Lavery 2015) as well as support for other significant reforms, like the change in California's school finance system (Koppich and Humphrey 2018). Along with enthusiasm for California's policy changes over the past decade have come calls to…

Using mixed methods, we investigated (a) the association of the extent of English learner (EL) classroom-level segregation (proportion EL) and number of EL English proficiency levels with elementary EL academic achievement, using 2 years of administrative data, and (b) school staff--reported opportunity to learn-related advantages and…

Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013. The new standards set off a chain reaction of standards adoption and…

These appendices accompany the report "Final Report of the i3 Impact Study of Making Sense of SCIENCE, 2016-17 through 2017-18." Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the…

This research project explored the impact of seven teachers' life experiences on their core beliefs about educationally just teaching philosophy and practices. Results of a qualitative, phenomenological case study yielded six themes, each revealing particular connections between teachers' life experiences and their beliefs about educational…

California is facing a critical need for trained school leaders in the coming years. As current leaders retire, schools could be faced with teachers stepping out of the classroom and into the increasingly demanding job of the principalship with little or no preparation. With few leadership development opportunities available in entry-level…

This study aims to uncover how a particular imported philosophy of early childhood education, Reggio Emilia, is implemented in the context of one public and one private preschool in San Francisco. The philosophy of Reggio Emilia is believed to be progressive and to be developmentally appropriate for children in early childhood. The study involved…

This study investigates how teachers interact with immigrant-origin youth in school-based contexts of reception that mediate youth's educational opportunities. One understudied context is sheltered instruction, where English learners (ELs) are placed into separate content-area courses to target their linguistic needs. This qualitative study…

Some researchers believe that collaboration between schools and community stakeholders--including families, educators, community organizations, and businesses--is the key to improving public education. However, broad and inclusive community-school partnerships are rare. Instead, we frequently hear about friction between communities and their…

Implicit theories about the malleability of skills/abilities have been shown to predict learners' willingness to participate in learning opportunities. The authors examined whether college professors' implicit theories about the malleability of teaching skills predicted their willingness to engage in professional development (PD) related to…