Technical Reports and Research Briefs
Technical Report
Academic Gatekeeping of English Learner-Classified Students: The Case of California
This report examines California’s English learner reclassification criteria. It shows how local variation in academic criteria can shape students’ access to academic opportunities.
Technical Report
Adolescence and the Reimagined High School: Scientific Perspectives on Development, Learning, and Civic Reasoning
This report draws on developmental science, neuroscience, and field studies of California secondary teachers, along with organizational research, to identify how high school design influences possibilities for adolescent development, including the development of transcendent thinking.
Technical Report
Adoption Windows and Reform: California’s Math Pathways in the Post-Common Core Era
This report studies changes to middle and high school math pathways after the Common Core transition. It shows how decisions about the timing of Algebra I and the structure of high school courses can shape students’ achievement and opportunity in advanced mathematics.
Technical Report
AI and Education across California Schools: Calls for More Professional Development and AI Literacy
This report documents how AI is already entering California schools. It highlights the need for clear policies, professional learning, and AI literacy so that adoption is guided by educational purpose rather than left to chance.
Research Brief
Artificial Intelligence, Learning, and the Future of California Schools
This brief explores the implications of artificial intelligence for California schools, focusing on how AI can support learning while raising important questions about equity, implementation, and future system readiness.
Technical Report
Assessing Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) Using Generative AI
This report uses generative AI to analyze thousands of LCAP goals and actions across California. It raises important questions about how local planning tools could become more measurable, strategic, and useful for improvement.
Technical Report
Beyond the Whole Class: Systematizing Engaging, Individualized Support at Scale
This report examines high-impact tutoring and individualized support. It asks how California can organize staffing, time, and instruction to meet students where they are more consistently.
Technical Report
California Community Schools: Past, Present, and Early Impacts of the California Community Schools Partnership Program
This report examines the impact of California's $4.1 billion investment in community schools and illustrates how local leaders leveraged state funds to drive these outcomes. It highlights how the strategy has enabled early adopter sites to improve chronic absence and achievement, with historically underserved student groups (including Black students and Engish learners) benefitting the most.
Technical Report
California Principals: Trends in Supply, Preparation, Distribution, Retention, and Turnover
This report examines principal supply, preparation, distribution, retention, and turnover across California. It highlights how leadership stability and support shape schools’ capacity to sustain improvement.
Research Brief
California’s Balance Between State and Local Control
This brief examines California’s balance between state and local control, exploring how governance can better support equity, accountability, and continuous improvement across school systems.
Technical Report
California's School Facilities in a Changing Climate: Funding, Equity, and Resilience
This report examines school facilities funding, climate resilience, and equity. It highlights how buildings, outdoor spaces, and local fiscal capacity shape students’ learning environments.
Technical Report
California’s System of Special Education Staffing
This report analyzes California’s special education workforce needs across teachers, related service providers, and paraeducators. It highlights strategies for improving recruitment, preparation, role design, and retention.
Research Brief
California’s Teacher Workforce: Progress and Persistent Structural Challenges
This brief examines California’s teacher workforce, highlighting progress in addressing shortages while emphasizing persistent structural challenges in recruitment, retention, and equitable teacher distribution.
Research Brief
California Schools in Transition: Enrollment Decline, Climate Pressure, and System Capacity
This brief examines how California’s schools can adapt to enrollment decline, climate pressures, and shifting system capacity while maintaining equitable, high-quality education.
Technical Report
California Schools’ Revenue Sources and Constraints
This report explains how California’s revenue structure shapes school funding adequacy, equity, and reliability. It helps clarify why funding levels, revenue volatility, and local constraints matter for districts’ ability to plan and support students.
Research Brief
Charter Schools in California: Autonomy, Accountability, and Variation
This brief examines California’s charter school system, focusing on the balance between autonomy and accountability and the wide variation in performance and practice across schools.
Technical Report
Curriculum Adoption and Implementation in California
This report examines how California districts and teachers select and use instructional materials. It highlights opportunities to strengthen guidance, quality, and implementation support so curriculum choices better serve instruction.
Research Brief
Curriculum Policy for California Schools
This brief examines California’s curriculum policies and offers recommendations to improve coherence, quality, and equitable access to high-quality instructional materials across schools.
Technical Report
District Dollars 3: Recent Patterns in California School District Finances, Trends in Teacher Compensation, and Within-District, Between-School Spending
This report analyzes recent trends in California district finances at a moment when school revenues have grown substantially. It shows how rising costs for special education, employee benefits, and retiree obligations shape what districts can do with new resources.
Technical Report
Does Your Math Pathway Make a Difference? High School Mathematics and College Outcomes
This report studies high school math pathways and their relationship to college enrollment. It highlights how four years of math and access to advanced coursework can expand opportunity, especially for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
Technical Report
Early Childhood Education - Section 2: Staff Preparation & Support
This report examines preparation and professional support for early childhood educators. It identifies opportunities to strengthen quality and consistency across early learning settings.
Technical Report
Early Childhood Education - Section 4: Quality Assessment & Monitoring
This report examines how California monitors early childhood program quality. It asks how the state could build a better system to assess and support improvement in the quality of children’s learning experiences across settings.
Technical Report
Early Childhood Education - Section 5: P-3 Instructional Continuity
This report examines alignment from preschool through third grade. It identifies ways to create a more coherent early learning pathway across standards, curriculum, assessment, and teacher preparation.
Technical Report
Early Childhood Education - Section 6: Data & Data Systems
This report reviews California’s early childhood data systems. It considers how better-integrated data could help the state understand access, quality, workforce conditions, and child outcomes; and make more informed decisions about its investments.
Technical Report
Early Childhood Education - Section 3: The ECE Workforce
This report analyzes the early childhood workforce. It highlights how compensation, credentials, retention, and career pathways shape the quality and stability of early learning programs.
Technical Report
Early Childhood Education - Section 1: The Changing Landscape of ECE in California
This report examines how universal prekindergarten expansion is reshaping early childhood education in California. It considers what expanded access means for families, providers, capacity, and the broader mixed-delivery system.
Research Brief
Education Data in California: Infrastructure, Access, and Use
This brief examines California’s education data systems, highlighting opportunities to improve data infrastructure, access, and use to support better decision-making and student outcomes.
Technical Report
Education Data Needs, Availability, and Access in California
This report reviews California’s progress in building statewide education data systems. It identifies opportunities to make data more connected, accessible, and useful for families, educators, policymakers, and researchers working to improve student outcomes.
Research Brief
English Language Arts and Literacy in California: Progress, Capacity, and Implementation
This brief examines English Language Arts and literacy in California, highlighting progress in student performance alongside ongoing challenges in instructional capacity and consistent implementation across schools.
Research Brief
Family and Community Engagement in California: Requirements, Capacity, and Relationships
This brief examines family and community engagement in California schools, highlighting state requirements, uneven district capacity, and the importance of building stronger relationships to support student success.
Research Brief
From Expansion to Excellence: Addressing Systemic Challenges to Better Serve California’s Youngest Learners
This brief examines how California can expand and improve early childhood education by addressing systemic challenges to better serve its youngest learners.
Research Brief
Goals for Students and Schools in California: Broad Aspirations, Uneven Translation into Practice
This brief examines how California’s broad goals for student success are inconsistently defined and implemented, creating uneven educational opportunities and outcomes across schools.
Research Brief
Governing for Improvement: Transparency, Alignment, and Accountability in California Education
This brief examines how California can strengthen education governance by improving transparency, alignment, and accountability to better support systemwide improvement and student outcomes.
Research Brief
High School as a Launch Point: Opportunity, Development, and Redesign in California
This brief examines California high schools as a critical launch point for opportunity, highlighting the need for redesign to better support student development, engagement, and postsecondary pathways.
Technical Report
High School Coursetaking in California: A Primer
This report examines students’ access to college- and career-preparatory coursework. It shows how course-taking patterns shape postsecondary opportunity and why access to advanced and A–G coursework matters.
Technical Report
Imagining the Educational Futures for Black Children in California
This report centers Black families’ aspirations for their children’s education. It describes schools that affirm identity, cultivate curiosity and dignity, and expand students’ sense of what is possible.
Research Brief
Improving Instruction in California: Capacity, Coherence, and State Support
This brief explores how California can strengthen instructional improvement by building educator capacity, improving system coherence, and providing more effective state support for schools and districts.
Technical Report
(In)Effective Responses to Shrinking Enrollment: The Pressures of Demographic Change on California’s Schools
This report examines how enrollment decline is reshaping California districts. It considers what kinds of planning, funding, and community engagement can help districts respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.
Research Brief
Leadership Stability in California: Capacity, Continuity, and System Coherence
This brief examines leadership stability in California schools, highlighting how capacity, continuity, and system coherence affect school and district improvement efforts.
Technical Report
Learning from California’s Prior Reading Reforms
This report studies California’s recent literacy initiatives and what can be learned from their design. It shows that professional learning, funding, planning, and support can improve reading outcomes.
Technical Report
Local Control in a Time of Change: The Work of California School Board Members
This report examines the characteristics and work of California school board members in a period of fiscal, demographic, and political change, including their practices, the challenges they face, the supports they have and want, and their future intentions. It shows the complexity and variation in what it means to serve and navigate the responsibilities of local governance.
Technical Report
Mandatory Regionalization and Its Limits: How California Districts Experience and Navigate Special Education Governance
This report provides evidence on how California’s SELPAs serve important administrative, compliance, and service-coordination roles that are only partially visible in current reporting. It identifies substantial variation in SELPA spending and supports, pointing to policy changes that could strengthen transparency, accountability, and equitable access to regional special education services.
Technical Report
Material Hardship, Emotional Distress, and Early Learning Supports Among California Families with Young Children: Evidence from the RAPID California Voices Survey
This report uses the RAPID California Voices Survey to examine the lives of families with young children. It connects material hardship, emotional well-being, and early learning supports to broader questions about how California can support children before they enter school.
Research Brief
Mathematics in California: Gaps, Capacity, and Implementation
This brief examines mathematics education in California, highlighting persistent achievement gaps and challenges in instructional capacity and implementation across the state.
Research Brief
Meeting Students Where They Are: The Challenge of Differentiation in California Schools
This brief examines the challenge of differentiation in California schools, emphasizing the need to better meet students where they are through more responsive and personalized instruction.
Technical Report
Multilingual Learners learning English: What can California learn from other states?
This report compares California with other states to identify policy options for supporting multilingual learners. It focuses on teacher expertise, funding, program access, and the structures that make multilingual learner policy more actionable.
Technical Report
Multilingual Learners of English with Disabilities in California: Patterns in Enrollment, Opportunities, Outcomes, and County-Level Variation
This report examines the educational experiences of multilingual learners with disabilities. It highlights enrollment trends, demographic characteristics, and indicators of educational opportunities and outcomes. Implications for identification, reclassification, services, and long-term pathways from elementary school through college are discussed.
Technical Report
Multilingual Learners of English: Progress of California's English Learners and the Resources That Support Their Educational Achievements
This report examines the progress of California’s English learners over time. It connects student outcomes to the resources, staffing, and policies that support stronger multilingual learner trajectories.
Technical Report
Navigating the Transition to College: LGBTQ+ Students’ High School Experiences and Academic Plans
This report examines LGBTQ+ students’ high school experiences and how these may influence their college plans. It highlights both challenges in school climate and students’ strong aspirations for postsecondary education.
Technical Report
Paraeducators in California: Current Trends and Recommendations for Policy
This report examines California’s growing paraeducator workforce, which is increasingly central to student support. It identifies ways to strengthen training, role clarity, compensation, professional support, and career pathways.
Technical Report
Pensions and California Public Schools, 2026
This report analyzes how rising pension costs affect California school district budgets. It shows how obligations from the past can shape the resources available for current students, staff, and programs.
Technical Report
Public Accountability in California: Evaluating the SARCs and the California School Dashboard
This report evaluates California’s public accountability tools, including the Dashboard and School Accountability Report Cards. It considers how these tools could become clearer, more usable, and more actionable for families, educators, and policymakers.
Technical Report
Re-Envisioning California’s County Offices of Education
This report examines the evolving role of county offices of education in California’s education system. It considers how county offices can serve as both support providers and accountability partners for districts.
Technical Report
Recent Academic Achievement Trends in California
This report analyzes two decades of California achievement trends. It shows where the state has made progress and where persistent disparities, especially in mathematics, continue to demand attention.
Technical Report
Redesigning Special Education: Leveraging Technology for Flexibility, Equity, and Inclusive Designs for Learning
This report explores how technology could support more flexible, inclusive, and responsive special education systems. It emphasizes that technology is most promising when paired with strong guidance, educator support, equity protections, and attention to students’ rights.
Research Brief
Special Education in California: Growth, Capacity, and Equity
This brief examines the growth of special education in California, highlighting increasing demand alongside ongoing challenges in capacity, funding, and equitable access to services for students with disabilities.
Technical Report
Strategic School Staffing in California: Opportunities and Barriers
This report examines the evidence on strategic school staffing, a framework for rethinking how schools organize educators’ roles, time, and pay to better align teacher expertise with student needs. It presents evidence of demonstrated impact on teacher and student outcomes, investigates California principals' interest in and perceived barriers to implementation, and concludes with implications for state policy to further support more innovative staffing.
Technical Report
Structuring Charter School Accountability: How State Policy Shapes Authorizer Practice in California
This report examines how California’s charter authorizing system works in practice. It considers how state policy can support clearer expectations, more consistent oversight, and stronger accountability.
Research Brief
Student Outcomes in California: Progress, Uneven Recovery, and Persistent Gaps
This brief analyzes student outcomes in California, showing uneven post-pandemic recovery and persistent achievement gaps across student groups and regions.
Research Brief
Student Well-Being in California’s Current Context: Policy, Conditions, and Supports
This brief examines student well-being in California, focusing on current policy conditions and available supports while highlighting gaps in addressing students’ mental health and overall needs.
Research Brief
Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities in California School Finance
This brief examines California’s school finance system, highlighting key successes while identifying ongoing challenges and opportunities to improve equity, adequacy, and transparency in funding allocation.
Research Brief
Supporting California’s Multilingual Learners: Progress, Persistent Gaps, and a Path Forward
This brief examines how California supports multilingual learners, highlighting progress in instructional and policy efforts while noting persistent achievement gaps and the need for stronger, more consistent supports across schools.
Technical Report
Supporting Immigrant-Origin Students in California’s Schools
This report examines immigrant-origin students’ educational experiences in California schools. It highlights the preparation, policies, and supports educators need to serve students and families of immigrant backgrounds well.
Technical Report
Teacher Certification Policies: Balancing Quality and Access in the Teaching Profession
This report examines California’s teacher certification system and the pathways educators navigate to enter the profession. It identifies ways to make those pathways clearer, more coherent, and better aligned with both quality and access.
Technical Report
Teacher Preparation for English Learners and Bilingual Education in California Schools
This report examines California’s preparation system for teachers of English learners and bilingual classrooms. It highlights regional access, teacher qualifications, and the preparation needed to support multilingual instruction.
Technical Report
The California State Role in Supporting District Capacity for TK-8 Math Improvement
This report examines district capacity to improve instruction in TK–8 mathematics and how current education governance and policies are insufficient to meet district needs. The findings have implications for reorganizing the system of support to create meaningful accountability for district improvement and changing policy approaches to improve focus and coherence.
Technical Report
The Fiscal Consequences of School Closures in California: Evidence from a Statewide Synthetic Difference-in-Differences Design
This report examines whether school closures improve district finances. It offers evidence to inform more careful decision-making as districts respond to enrollment decline and community change.
Technical Report
The Hidden, Guiding Hand of Compliance in California Public Schools
This report documents the administrative time California educators devote to compliance. It considers how the state could preserve accountability while reducing unnecessary burden on local leaders.
Technical Report
The Impact of Intervention: LCAP, Differentiated Assistance, and Resource Effectiveness in California School Districts
This report studies Differentiated Assistance and LCAP spending. It asks how intervention systems can better connect planning, resources, and improvement for districts needing support.
Technical Report
The Learning Experiences that Matter and AI’s Role
This report asks how AI might support the learning experiences students most need, including targeted direct instruction, and caring and supportive relationships. Rather than treating AI as a standalone tool, it considers how technology could become part of the infrastructure that helps schools create richer learning at scale.
Technical Report
The Special Education Assessment Conundrum
This report examines special education assessment practices and the role they play in students’ educational experiences. It asks how eligibility processes could better inform instruction and ongoing support.
Technical Report
The State of Chronic Absenteeism in California: Projections, Reasons, and Solutions
This report documents California’s chronic absenteeism trends during and after the pandemic. It considers what it will take to accelerate recovery and support students whose attendance remains disrupted.
Technical Report
Trends in California's Teacher Workforce: Understanding Supply, Demand, and Shortages
This report examines California’s teacher supply, demand, and shortages, with attention to where shortages are most acute. It highlights how preparation, retention, and distribution matter for students’ access to fully credentialed teachers and what factors matter for recruiting and retaining a well-prepared, diverse, stable workforce.
Technical Report
What California’s Latine Students, Families and Communities Want From and For Their Schools
This report centers the voices of Latine students, families, and communities. It describes the kinds of schools families want: places that offer safety, belonging, cultural affirmation, multilingual support, and meaningful engagement.
Technical Report
Who Benefits from Public PreK Expansions & Increased K-5 Spending? Dynamic Complementarity in California’s Education Policies
This report shows how California's investments in CSPP, TK, and elementary school spending delivered substantial, equity-enhancing gains in student achievement, and their effects reinforce one another across the preschool and early elementary grades. The results suggest that sequenced public investments in educational opportunity can produce developmental multiplier effects that exceed the sum of their independent effects.
Technical Report
Who Governs California’s Schools? A Cross‑State Map of Supervision, Administration, and Implementation in CA, FL, NY, and TX
This report maps California’s school governance system in comparison with other large states. It shows how authority, supervision, and implementation responsibilities are distributed across a complex set of actors.
Technical Report
Who Stays, Who Leaves: Five-year Retention Patterns by Teacher Entry Pathways
This report follows teachers across their first five years in the profession. It shows how entry pathways, preparation, and school context shape early-career retention and the stability of the teacher workforce.