Technical Reports
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.