There are at least 39 million Americans who have attended college but needed to stop out before earning a degree. The "Degree Reclamation Playbook" supports practitioners seeking to reengage this population, capture the momentum of existing credits, and bring students across the degree finish line. Drawing on more than a decade of work,…

In partnership with the Educating All Learners Alliance and the Canopy Project, CLE identified and interviewed school leaders who found innovative ways to provide meaningful inclusion for students with disabilities. This brief shares lessons from school leaders committed to ensuring that students with disabilities are meaningfully included and…

This article showcases an instructor-librarian collaborative model for teaching critical information literacy (CIL) skills in a higher education course by incorporating interactive workshops into a sequence of required course assignments. Using an asset-focused design, this assignment sequence allows students to first demonstrate their existing…

Drawing on a multiyear local research project on the affordable housing crisis, this article outlines a pedagogical approach we call Community-Initiated Student-Engaged Research, or CISER. The CISER model brings together three key groups of actors--undergraduate students, university researchers, and community organizations--drawing on and…

Faced with the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, California's adult education programs found innovative ways to pivot and continue serving students. With the support of the California Department of Education and its state leadership projects, adult educators embraced new technologies, virtual modes of professional development, and adapted…

This article explores international library partnerships from the basics of getting started, including identifying potential partners, non-travel partnering ideas, travel planning tips, and resources, to entering formal, institutionally supported partnerships that feature travel, librarian exchanges, and curricular tie-ins. Advice, including…

The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (RP Group) launched Leading from the Middle (LFM) Academy in 2013 to support the development of middle leaders across California Community Colleges (CCCs). This report captures reflections from both leaders of and participants in the 2017 LFM Academy, with the goal of advancing and…

The Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (RP Group) launched Leading from the Middle (LFM) Academy in 2013 to support the development of middle leaders across California Community Colleges (CCCs). This is an executive summary to that full report that captures reflections from both leaders of and participants in the 2017…

Educators are bound to encounter students with a broad range of speech-language and communication needs in their respective classrooms. According to federal mandates, current and future teachers are required to implement inclusive practices, which involves providing access to communication for all students. This practitioner-focused article shares…

In California, a half century after the landmark "Serrano v. Priest" decision overturning the state's public school finance system because of the inequality between the state's school districts, a significant amount of wealth-based inequality in per-pupil expenditures continues to exist. One of the sources of this inequality is the…

Distance ed and information technology (IT) have had to teamed up to boost Wi-Fi on campus and provide students with face-to-face tutoring due to COVID-19. While the relationship between IT and distance-learning staff is often necessity-driven, changes wrought by the coronavirus resulted in more of a "hand-and-glove" approach, where most…

This knowledge brief is part of a continuing series designed to inform California education leaders about new research findings on key state policy topics. To better understand the reopening planning process and other issues related to education during the pandemic, WestEd conducted telephone interviews with County Office of Education (COE)…

Like schools across the country, Green Dot Public Schools California closed its campuses in mid-March and kept them closed for the rest of the school year. Early in the crisis, the network focused on distributing food, Chromebooks, and hotspots to its roughly 11,000 students. It conducted wellness checks by phone with all of its families. Over the…

Data governance is a core obligation for leaders and staff across any agency that collects, stores or uses individuals' data. It ensures that individuals' personal information is protected, and can support the continuous improvement of data quality and use, particularly when it includes well-defined processes, structure and responsibilities.…

More than 5 years after the passage of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), California school districts continue to develop and refine strategies to act on the opportunities and expectations associated with the state's school finance system. A new project called the LCFF Test Kitchen has enabled three school districts to make progress by…