At a time when students of families living in poverty have experienced the worst of the economic trauma caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, community schools have reemerged as a promising intervention for addressing lack of access to quality education and economic prosperity. Policymakers are making investments in scaling up community schools;…

The "CORE Districts" (referred to hereafter as "CORE") is a nonprofit organization created in 2010 to foster collaboration between eight of California's largest districts. In 2018-19, "CORE" provided a range of supports to participating districts, including programs to support multiple levels of district and school…

County offices of education (COEs) are expected to provide ongoing support to districts and other local education agencies to drive continuous improvement within California's education system. Fulfilling this role has required COEs to carry out their historical role as compliance monitors while simultaneously developing the necessary mindsets,…

Academic outcomes and health outcomes are interconnected and reciprocal and school climate has emerged as a way to capture some of this relationship. An increasing trend in education policy is using multiple measures of school success, including school climate, such as California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). As school climate evolves as…

School climate is important for continuous improvement. California's LCFF requires districts to report on school climate and use data to inform decision making. Qualitative data, derived from an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, explored three belief constructs and sub-groups by response patterns. Education leaders have a range of…

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.…

To evaluate the extent to which California's school districts are engaging in continuous improvement, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) interviewed 41 educational leaders across the state. Three main ideas surfaced: (1) State data is insufficient for continuous improvement; (2) Some school districts are developing local data systems,…

School closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically changed the conditions in which students learn and experience schooling. Disparities in students' access to learning and in their academic outcomes are likely to exacerbate longstanding challenges and inequities. Now more than ever, educators need information that will help…

Using an inquiry-based approach to address the challenge of improving schools provides opportunities for informed decision making and carries great promise for return on investment. Taking a collaborative approach toward improvement can be complex, yet also rewarding because of the opportunity to leverage the knowledge and capacity of multiple…

For several years, WestEd's Measure to Learn and Improve (MLI) project team has kept California state policy leaders informed about the statewide implementation of the California Academic Standards in English language arts and mathematics, by summarizing and disseminating results from the RAND Corporation's annual American Educator Panel (AEP)…

Under emerging policy structures in California, the responsibility for school improvement is increasingly placed upon local school districts, with County Offices of Education (COEs) playing a critical support role. In this system, districts are responsible for school improvement, with counties in charge of ensuring quality across districts and…

In educational contexts where many domains subject to improvement are interdependent and causal evidence is frequently lacking it is difficult, if not impossible, for policymakers and educational practitioners to decide which domain should be invested in. This paper proposes a new method that uses Conditional Mean Independent Correlations (CMIC)…

In 2018, California's education community was preparing for a pivotal moment. A new governor would soon take the reins and voters would elect a new superintendent of public instruction. The "Getting Down to Facts II" (GDTFII) project, released in September 2018, assessed the state of preK-12 education in California. As year 2 of…

As career and technical education (CTE) has evolved, many school districts that offer high-quality CTE programs such as career academies have found that these programs attract disproportionate numbers of students from historically advantaged populations. Drawing on data from a study of career academies in a large California school district, this…

Modern computing technology makes it possible for governments at all levels to use the data they already collect to improve service coordination and delivery, and to conduct research and evaluation to inform policymaking. California is well behind other states in taking advantage of this opportunity, in education and in other fields. The state has…