The 2019-20 year continued the important work of refining and improving the new accreditation system. Significant progress was made by the Commission, the Committee on Accreditation (COA), and the Commission staff with respect to implementation of the revised accreditation system. The accreditation system is the primary means by which the…

Declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization in 2020 forced many schools to switch to emergency virtual instruction. This situation provided an opportunity to explore the effectiveness of online learning from students' perspectives. To discover best practices for online learning, 584 STEM students at California State…

The historic $3 billion investment in the California Community Schools Partnership Program provides an opportunity to transform schools into community hubs that deliver a whole child education. This brief examines key elements of the new law. It then lays out evidence-based principles of high-quality community schools implementation that are…

This critical narrative study examined the disconnect between special education law and practice in the rural Desert/Mountain region of Southern California. The Desert/Mountain region encompasses over 18,000 square miles, creating a geographic isolation that impacts special education service delivery and implementation of Individualized Education…

An innovative system-building initiative known as the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice (SLECoP) is transforming U.S. STEM education through cross-sector partnerships between schools, afterschool and summer programs, libraries, museums, and businesses, among others. Although logic models exist to describe how SLEs can make positive…

Early childhood education programs (ECE) invest in assessments of classroom quality to enable accountability and to enact efforts towards quality improvement. The "Early Childhood Environment Rating System -- Revised" (ECERS-R) and "Classroom Assessment Scoring System" (CLASS) are two widely used classroom quality assessments…

Purpose: With a growing need to assess multiple aspects of healthcare education, the goal of this study was to develop an innovative web-based application to streamline assessment processes and meet the increasingly complex role of the educational manager. Design/methodology/approach: AARDVARC (Automated Approach to Reviewing and Developing…

Social isolation among online college students may be a key contributor to the higher attrition rates reported by online universities relative to traditional institutions. This experiment investigated the effects of instructor-student communication on online students' self-reported social integration with faculty, institutional commitment, and…

Continuous improvement is being embraced in California as the path for improving student outcomes. In 2018-19, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) researchers undertook a third year of study of the "CORE Districts"' continuous improvement work. This brief summarizes the main lessons presented in four reports stemming from…

Under emerging policy structures in California, the responsibility for school improvement is increasingly placed upon local school districts, with County Offices of Education (COEs) playing a critical support role. In this system, districts are responsible for school improvement, with counties in charge of ensuring quality across districts and…

Special education administrators in the state of California are responsible to ensure that high-quality education is delivered to 17,000 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) learners each year. While all administrators must obtain specific types of credentials to prepare them for their role, it is unknown how much knowledge they have pertaining to DHH…

The quality of a school's leadership is a key determinant of its performance. Research links effective leadership to a variety of school outcomes, including more positive school learning climates (Sebastian & Allensworth, 2012), lower rates of teacher turnover (Boyd et al., 2011; Grissom & Bartanen, 2018; Ladd, 2011), and greater parental…

Using a large sample of longitudinal assessment data from children in publicly funded infant/toddler care, preschool, and kindergarten (analytic N = 453,468), this study modeled language and literacy trajectories from early infancy through kindergarten for dual language learners (DLLs) from homes representing many different languages and their…

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…

Public research universities were previously able to provide excellent education to white families thanks to healthy government funding. However, that funding has all but dried up in recent decades as historically underrepresented students have gained greater access, and now less prestigious public universities face major economic challenges. In…