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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.