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Fireside Chat with Linda Darling-Hammond on The Future of High School

California, Coherence, and Continuous Improvement

With the release of Getting Down to Facts, Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative finds that school performance in California remains widely uneven. While uneven performance is a finding that shocks no one, what sets Getting Down to Facts apart is—with the help of 112 researchers across 22 research briefs—the meticulous detailing of the conditions of California’s education system and the policy changes needed to improve it.

A key finding: Although better positioned than ever before to pursue” broad and ambitious goals for students, California’s education system lacks coherence. More specifically, “Governance structures are fragmented, and policies have proliferated over time, often creating disconnected, contradictory, and burdensome guidance to schools,” writes Susanna Loeb, director of the SCALE Initiative.

Education’s Disappearing Act in California’s Governor’s Race

When Gov. Brown returned to the governorship for a second time in 2010, average spending on education per student was a mere $8,340, putting California dead last in the nation. During the current school year, average spending per students is $24,500, an enormous increase, putting California at the national average, after adjusting for high labor costs in the state. That’s according to an analysis from the exhaustive Getting Down to Facts initiative issued last month.

It’s time to make California’s education system work better for our kids

In contrast, California’s system has led to relatively poor student performance — just 46% of California 4th graders are proficient in English, while just 42% are proficient in math, according to Children Now’s 2026 California Children’s Report Card. The Getting Down to Facts III report released this month also confirmed the need for education governance reform as a pre-requisite to the other major reforms needed to improve student performance.

We cannot wait any longer to address a core reason for our state’s education failures. Will adopting the governor’s proposal miraculously change student outcomes and solve all our issues? Of course not. But governance is foundational to improving our student achievement. It is critical that our education system has clear accountability for delivering support to students and getting results. With nearly 1000 organizations across California in agreement, now is the time to make California’s education system work better for our kids.

California’s high ROI investment in teacher pipeline is paying off, but at risk of faltering

The pull to pivot back to cheaper shortcuts — like emergency credentials — just to ensure there is an adult in every room is a false, short-term economy.  The most recent Getting Down To Facts III review underscores this.

Emergency credentials are a crisis-management tool that only begets more crises, especially when they lead to higher burnout, lower student achievement, and ultimately cost the state more when those teachers leave within 18 months. 

Now is the time for districts to take stock and double down on what talent strategies are resulting in a true return on investment. Districts should be strategically using the resources provided by the state’s Local Control Funding Formula and federal funding streams to support effective, sustainable, long-term teacher talent pipelines. But the state has a critical role in supporting the tuition costs of earning a teaching credential, especially for teachers choosing to work in low-income school communities.

NEPC Talks Education: An Interview With Susanna Loeb About the Stanford SCALE Initiative Project

Getting down to facts: Education policy at scale

For Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) Professor Susanna Loeb, the work of bringing an incoming governor up to speed on the state’s education system begins with a listening tour.

“There are a billion different things you could look at in education,” Loeb told School’s In co-hosts GSE Senior Lecturer Denise Pope and GSE Dean Dan Schwartz. “We started by talking to a whole range of policymakers, advocacy groups, families to get a sense of where the interest was. From there, I put together a research agenda to answer some of those questions.”

California needs to double down on attention to math, researchers say

State leaders’ recent attention to early literacy has led to funding and new programs to help close the literacy achievement gap.

But math? The state hasn’t focused on it. And that neglect shows. State and national scores reflect many of California’s systemic weaknesses, according to a paper that is part of the sweeping research project, Getting Down to Facts.  

How bad is it? The gap in math achievement between the highest and lowest income students in California grew from an already alarming 1.9 grade levels in 2009 to 2.7 grade levels in 2024, a 40% increase, according to calculations by Stanford professor Sean Reardon, director of the Stanford Education Data Archive. That means the highest-income students are nearly three grade levels ahead in math compared to the lowest-income students.

Gaps in reading, while also very wide, narrowed 5% over that time period. A third of eighth graders were proficient in math on the 2025 Smarter Balanced Assessments. The gaps among racial and ethnic groups have grown as well.

California’s public schools need better oversight and guidance from the state

Finally, 13 years after the Local Control Funding Formula came into being, its shortcomings in accountability have been recognized in a massive study of California’s public school system, titled Getting Down to Facts, issued this month by Stanford University.

It explored many aspects of the system other than Brown’s handiwork, but it leaves no doubt that subsidiarity hasn’t worked well.

“California has many accountability tools and data systems, but they are not well connected to one another or to clear guidance and support” for schools and educators, Susanna Loeb, director of the study, says in her summary.

What’s holding back California students? A new report urges stronger state oversight

California K-12 schools have come a long way over the past 20 years, but according to an exhaustive overview of the state’s school system, further progress may require tinkering with a long-entrenched form of school governance: local control.

That’s among the conclusions of the much-anticipated Getting Down to Facts report released Thursday, a 1,000-page undertaking written by more than a hundred K-12 education researchers.

“We’re in a much better place than we were,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the State Board of Education and one of the report’s authors. “But we need a coherent governance system if we’re going to continue to progress.”

The Getting Down to Facts reports, published every 10 to 12 years, are large-scale reviews of California’s K-12 system – what’s working, what’s not, and how lawmakers should respond. For this report, researchers looked at everything from special education staffing to school closures to overhauling high schools. The report is based on extensive data analysis and interviews with hundreds of superintendents, principals, school board members and parents.