Background: In recent years, school districts have experienced a complex policy environment with myriad reforms aimed at addressing longstanding and historically entrenched disparities in opportunities and outcomes between racially minoritized students and White students. One such reform is standards-based accountability, with its emphasis on…

The COVID-19 pandemic creates unprecedented conditions for K-12 teaching and learning, and education leaders everywhere are working quickly to make the best policy decisions possible. Knowing that the current context is dramatically different than previous school years and that students' access to learning from home varies, how should schools…

Schools and districts have long grappled with race- and disability-based exclusionary discipline inequities. Research on the topic has uncovered a variety of systems that maintain such disparities, including school policies and practices that exacerbate the problem. Researchers and practitioners have increasingly considered school context and…

The current wave of educational reform is complex and situated in market-based initiatives coupled with a renewed emphasis on local autonomy, deliberation, and community--middle-of-the-road reforms. In practice, schools are challenged to develop organizational forms that can support collaboration and community engagement, alongside the…

Schools should be safe, nurturing, and welcoming environments for all students. Frequently, exclusionary school discipline practices, which remove students from the classroom--even for minor infractions of school rules--through suspension or expulsion, prevent students from participating fully in their education. Suspensions, expulsions, and other…

Every year, California's community colleges identify hundreds of thousands of students as not ready for transfer-level courses in math and English. Since these courses are required to transfer to a four-year college, students deemed underprepared are placed in developmental (also known as remedial or basic-skills) courses to prepare for college…

The education system has changed dramatically over the years, but the basic process still involves teachers conveying information and insights to students. The tools and strategies that help teachers accomplish this goal have evolved, and schools are continually in search of the piece of equipment that will enable them to educate more students…

ACSA (Association of California School Administrators), the CSBA (California School Boards Association), the California Educational Technology Professionals Association, the Santa Clara County Office of Education, CUE (Computer Using Educators), the law firm Fagen, Friedman & Fulfrost and others have joined forces to develop policies that can…

The 1999 Academic Senate for California Community Colleges paper, "The Role of Academic Senates in Enrollment Management", presented principles for effective faculty participation in developing policies and making decisions that affect course offerings. In 2007, an Academic Senate resolution called for an update to that paper, to provide…

This case study examined a multi-college community college district in northern California in a primarily rural area, to understand how their practices compared to management best practices designed to improve student success, barriers that may exist in implementing best practices, and how the institution may improve its own practices. The problem…

The purpose of this ethnographic study is to examine how a commitment to socially just pedagogies influences the core practices and policies of a school. This article presents a comprehensive description and analysis of two public middle schools committed to teaching for social justice: Urban Promise Academy and San Francisco Community School.…

This collection of papers suggests that the laissez-faire policies of charter school reform often exacerbate existing inequalities in U.S. schools. It is based on a study of 10 urban, suburban, and rural school districts and 17 diverse charter schools in California, focusing on accountability and equity to explore how charter school policies…

This book examines the reactions of schools in Massachusetts and California to policies that sought to persuade schools to abandon or reduce tracking--the practice of grouping students into classes by ability and organizing curriculum by level of difficulty. The text is divided into 8 chapters: (1) "Implementing Tracking Reform," which…

This Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) report was designed to assist the California legislature in developing a long-term state strategy--or master plan--for improving the state's K-12 education system. A K-12 master plan would serve two purposes. In developing the plan, the legislature would create a forum to review the state's existing…

This technical report is the second edition of "Conditions of Education in California," and contains 53 figures and tables of data that range from student test performances to state revenue projections. Following a summary of state education highlights, the section "The Evolving Context of California Education" presents past,…