Technical Reports
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.