Pursuant to California Education Code Section 84362, each community college district is required to allocate at least 50% of its annual education expenses, as defined by law, to the salaries and benefits of classroom instructors. This requirement ensures a significant portion of educational expenditures directly supports classroom instruction. The…

This is the technical document for the report, "Centering Quality, Centering Equity: Lessons Learned in Increasing Early Childhood Educator Credentials." The report explores Early Childhood Education (ECE) credential requirements in California (CA) and Washington, D.C. (D.C.) for two key reasons: 1) both recently raised these…

Our goal in this paper is to better understand public pension funding dynamics with a focus on sustainability and intergenerational equity. We examine the steady-state properties of deterministic models and simulations of stochastic models to illuminate the implications of recently proposed policies to alleviate current funding pressures. We close…

This report examines findings from the 2020 PACE/USC Rossier poll of California voters. The poll represents the views of 2,000 registered California voters across a range of topics from early childhood education to higher education. Based on these results, the authors have identified five key findings: (1) There is growing pessimism about the…

Career education programs in California's community colleges are a critical component of public higher education in the state. Also known as career technical or vocational programs, career education trains individuals for middle-skill jobs that require more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year degree. These jobs make up a third of…

This is the technical appendices for the report, "Higher Education and Economic Opportunity in California." Lower rates of college access and completion among Latinos, African Americans, and low-income Californians exacerbate the state's economic divide and puts California further behind in meeting its workforce needs. And even though a…

Early care and education (ECE) programs for children prior to kindergarten in California are provided through a mixed delivery system that includes licensed home- and center-based programs as well as school settings. The requirements, experience, and supports for educators vary widely across settings, depending more on funding sources and…

Strong and stable school leadership is critical for success in schools across the nation. The duties of the principal are many and varied. Principals, for example, can oversee instruction, purchase curricular materials and supplies, and provide professional learning and supports for teachers. Carrying out these duties effectively makes a…

California's school funding system has changed in several very significant ways since the original "District Dollars" report (Loeb, Grissom, and Strunk 2007), so the purpose of this report is to update that analysis and to track the evolution of district finances over the intervening 12 years, as well as to consider a few other issues…

During the 2014 White House Science Fair, President Barack Obama used a sports metaphor to explain why we must address the shortage of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), particularly in the engineering and computing fields: "Half our team, we're not even putting on the field. We've got to change those…

During the 2014 White House Science Fair, President Barack Obama used a sports metaphor to explain why we must address the shortage of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), particularly in the engineering and computing fields: "Half our team, we're not even putting on the field. We've got to change those…

Making robust and reliable information about schools accessible is one of the most powerful ways to foster engagement and promote informed decisions that will shape our communities. Though education data is frequently collected and aggregated at the state level, data is rarely synthesized across cities. This report provides comparable information…

To prepare this report, the Commission examined faculty salary data supplied by the University of California (UC) and the California State University (CSU) systems. This report compares faculty salaries at California's public universities with faculty salaries at comparable institutions of higher education. Based on five-year trend projections,…

The Education Commission of the States reviewed all 36 Race to the Top (RttT) round II applications. Each of the 36 states that applied for round II funding referenced pay for performance under the heading of "Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance." The majority of states outlined pay for performance…

At the request of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) undertook this analysis of the teacher policies in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). A coalition of civil rights groups were also involved in this project, including Parent Organization Network, Families in Schools, Alliance for a…