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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. 

Landmark research dissects California’s public education system

Stanford University on Thursday released a sweeping research project that takes a 360-degree, immersive look at all aspects and operations of public education in California, from preschool through high school, from special education to teacher certification, enrollment decline to high school redesign.

Called “Getting Down to Facts,” the research project comes at what Stanford education professor and project director Susanna Loeb calls “an inflection point” for California education.  In a 40-page summary of 55 technical reports and 22 research briefs, Loeb writes that the findings arrive amid major shifts:  the election of a new governor and state superintendent of instruction, the retreat of the federal government’s oversight and education-funding responsibilities, and the emergence of new technologies and their impact on the classroom and the workplace. Together, she said, these changes require the schools to respond to new conditions.  

Getting Down to Facts is “designed to help Californians understand the condition of the state’s education system and the policy choices needed to improve it.

Getting Down to Facts III: A Comprehensive Review of California’s PreK-12 System

Getting Down to Facts III (GDTF III), a comprehensive independent review of California’s PreK–12 system, is now free and publicly available at  www.gettingdowntofacts.com. Led by Dr. Susanna Loeb, Professor and Faculty Director of the SCALE Initiative at Stanford University, this new body of research consists of 55 technical reports and 22 research briefs produced by leading education policy researchers from around the country. It is the most comprehensive review of California’s public education system since the GDTF II report, released in 2018.

The period between Getting Down to Facts II and GDTF III has been anything but ordinary. A global pandemic closed schools, devastated learning, and left chronic absenteeism nearly double its pre-pandemic level. Wildfires, extreme heat, and power outages have cost California students nearly 10,900 instructional days, and the districts hit hardest are still the least equipped to recover. Artificial intelligence is arriving faster than schools can absorb it, demanding new thinking about what students need to know, what educators need to do, and what schools need to become. California families, meanwhile, are under extraordinary financial and emotional strain: 84 percent of families with young children experienced material hardship as of December 2025, and 92 percent of parents report emotional distress, pressures that reach well into middle-income households.