In 2013, the California legislature approved the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) as a new way to fund local school districts. The new formula aimed to increase educational equity for low-income, English learners, homeless and foster youth students. The policy established a way to increase funding for school districts with higher percentages…

This study explores the ways in which local students experience housing instability--and how cross-sector strategies can better identify and serve these students. The report accompanying this brief considers a rich set of school administrative data, collected over the course of three school years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic: 2016-17 through…

While the statewide trends and disparities suggest that the rate of lost instruction in California due to out-of-school suspension (OSS) is about where it was before the COVID-19 school closures, this is the first report to highlight how post-COVID suspensions in 2021-2022 have added to the pandemic's harmful impact of instructional loss,…

COVID-19 has disrupted California's education system in fundamental ways. Districts across the state are quickly creating strategies to serve all students, and many are designing their response around the needs of their most vulnerable students. This brief highlights the response of Mother Lode Union School District (MLUSD) to the COVID-19…

Parent involvement is frequently identified as a variable in student success. A gap in the literature regarding how African American parents create opportunities to engage with their children's education exist. One district's outreach to parents, and parents' responses to the outreach served as a case study for exploring how African American…

In partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and 22 San Mateo County school districts, this report and research brief explore the ways in which local students experience housing instability, and how cross-sector strategies can better identify and serve these students. This study considers a rich set of school administrative data, which allow…

Living doubled-up is a form of homelessness that can go undetected by schools, yet the toll it takes on the lives of students is significant. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to determine how students who live in doubled-up homeless families differ from low-income students who live in permanent housing with regard to demographics,…

The research featured in this paper is part of the CORE-PACE Research Partnership, which is focused on producing research that informs continuous improvement in the CORE districts as well as policy and practice in California and beyond. In this report, the authors used data from multiple interim assessments to examine how the rate of student…

When schools closed their doors in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a scramble to adjust to remote learning. Over the summer and into the fall, the debate over reopening took center stage, as school leaders struggled to answer how and when it would be safe to return to the classroom. The Center for American Progress (CAP)…

Equity is the consistent thread that runs through major California education policies of the last decade, which have focused on providing access and opportunity tailored to students' needs in order to reduce disparities in learning outcomes. Equity challenges, already significant prior to COVID-19, have been exacerbated by the pandemic's education…

In spring 2020, the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the shift to hybrid and remote learning for most schools turned what was once a "homework gap" into a "learning opportunity gap" as devices and internet access became necessary in order to keep students connected and learning. The purpose of this brief is to…

This report provides information on enrollment in the Texas public school system from the 2012-13 through 2022-23 school years, based on data collected through the Texas Student Data System. Enrollment data are provided by grade, race/ethnicity, gender, and economically disadvantaged status, and for instructional programs, nontraditional school…

California is in the midst of a crisis of homelessness, with more than 1 in 5 of the nation's students identified as experiencing homelessness residing in the state. The incidence of student poverty and homelessness in California has been rising steadily both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the total student population. Although the…

In this policy brief, we describe the chronic absence performance levels of California's districts, schools, and student groups using newly released data from California's School Dashboard. We also examine the role that chronic absence plays in determining differentiated assistance. For schools with very high chronic absence rates (above 20…

This report provides information on enrollment in the Texas public school system from the 2011-12 through 2021-22 school years, based on data collected through the Texas Student Data System. Enrollment data are provided by grade, race/ethnicity, gender, and economically disadvantaged status, and for instructional programs, nontraditional school…