To ensure a robust and comprehensive educational experience, every K-12 learner must have access to high quality Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) education. To make this happen, their teachers must be effectively prepared to provide excellent art education experiences. Although arts education is required in many states (including California) as…

Gains in school spending helped to lift achievement over the past half century. But California's ambitious effort--progressively distributing $23 billion in yearly funding to poorer districts--has yet to reduce disparities in learning. We theorize how administrators in districts and schools, given organizational habits and labor constraints, may…

In fall of 2015, a Field Poll of California voters revealed that Californians are well aware of the emerging shortage of K-12 public school teachers and think the state should take decisive action to rectify the situation. Eighty-six percent of voters view the shortage as a serious problem, and nearly two-thirds see it as very serious. Ninety-one…

The stakes are incredibly high in California to provide access to a high-quality education in a safe environment for all students. As districts across the state resumed full-time instruction and began the task of pandemic recovery, members of the California Collaborative on District Reform convened three times in 2021-22 to continue and deepen…

The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to improve student outcomes--particularly high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority students--by increasing student access to effective teaching. The RAND Corporation worked…

California's draft Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan is now open for public comment. As the plan was reviewed, five primary things came into focus. This report discusses how the state did, what is in the plan and what still needs to be done to strengthen protections and services for low-income students, students of color, and other…

The premise of the white paper is that education policy results are better for students when policies are informed and shaped by highly effective educators who know firsthand what it takes to deliver excellent teaching and learning. Policymakers and educators should share a sense of urgency to work together to provide every child in our country…

Nobody goes into teaching to get rich, but that's no excuse not to pay teachers as professionals. Compensation is one of the most important factors in determining who enters the teaching profession and how long they stay--yet 90 percent of all U.S. school districts pay teachers without any regard for their actual performance with students,…

Little is known about the importance of instructional quality in American higher education because few recent studies have had access to direct measures of student learning that are comparable across sections of the same course. Using data from two developmental algebra courses at a large community college, I found that student learning varies…

Teachers matter. Educators, policymakers, and the general public alike agree that great teachers are vital to a thriving K-12 education system, yet the pathways to assembling a high quality teaching force remain elusive. This case study of Garden Grove Unified School District (GGUSD), winner of the 2004 Broad Prize for Urban Education,…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

This paper is part of a nonpartisan project to identify specific state-level policy changes that could have a significant impact on teaching quality and be accomplished in a constrained fiscal environment. Of course, many aspects of California's teacher development system could be strengthened, better funded, or otherwise changed for the better.…

"The Right Trajectory" brings to the forefront an often-overlooked voice in the debate about new state assessments developed in consortia: that of the best teachers in the country. This research suggests, despite challenges still to overcome, that these front-line experts believe that the new consortia tests are an improvement on the…

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…

If asked about the hottest topic or most talked-about players in American public education today, pretty much everyone's answer--from parents to policymakers to pundits--would include the words "teachers" or "teaching." From both intuition and experience, individuals know that good teaching matters. This has been true for a…