Technical Reports
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. It describes how schools designed around relationships, meaningful inquiry, civic reasoning, identity development, and purpose can support more powerful learning for adolescents.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.