Technical Reports and Research Briefs
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.
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.
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
… expected to balance budgets, maintain safe and functional learning environments, and support diverse learners, even as enrollment patterns shift and reshape the costs of staffing, facilities, and specialized programming. District revenues … Meanwhile, funding for facilities is fundamentally driven by local wealth, particularly for modernization, even though enrollment growth is concentrated in lower-wealth regions and new mandates (e.g., universal transitional kindergarten … locales and shaped by local conditions. From 2014–15 to 2024–25, nearly two in three California districts experienced declining enrollment. The most extreme declines are concentrated in small and rural districts, while longer-term growth …
This brief examines how California’s schools can adapt to enrollment decline, climate pressures, and shifting system capacity while maintaining equitable, high-quality education.
Research Brief
Charter Schools in California: Autonomy, Accountability, and Variation
… By 2024-25, nearly 1,300 charter schools served approximately 727,000 students, about 12 percent of public school enrollment in the state (Smith et al.). Charter schools operate through a policy bargain that grants greater autonomy in …
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.
Research Brief
Curriculum Policy for California Schools
… students learn, how teachers teach, and which academic opportunities remain open or closed as students move through school. Its effects are not always visible at the point decisions are made. During the Common Core transition, for … not prepared. Over time, however, this shift was associated with a decline in advanced mathematics course-taking in high school, particularly in calculus and precalculus, without corresponding improvements in achievement. Students who did … III technical reports on curriculum adoption and use, early literacy, secondary mathematics, early childhood education, high school policy, and multilingual learner access to examine how California’s curriculum policies are functioning in …
This brief examines California’s curriculum policies and offers recommendations to improve coherence, quality, and equitable access to high-quality instructional materials across schools.
Research Brief
Education Data in California: Infrastructure, Access, and Use
… Data about multilingual programming, such as curriculum or multilingual program type, and associated student enrollment or teacher assignment, are missing and thus cannot inform analysis of what opportunities may work for various …
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.
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
… integrated data systems, and unique identifiers for children and educators, California cannot accurately track enrollment, assess program quality, or measure long-term outcomes. The challenge for California now is not simply to … Kindergarten has expanded access to early learning for California’s four-year-olds, although access remains uneven. Enrollment in TK among eligible four-year-olds is high, and available evidence suggests that participation benefits … families. At the same time, not all families are aware that TK is an option, and others continue to face barriers to enrollment. 2. Investment in Universal Pre-Kindergarten improves child outcomes for most students. California has …
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
… Jacob Jackson, Douglas Knecht, Beryl Larson, Susanna Loeb, Julia Perlmutter, Sean Reardon, Sherrie Reed, Lauren Ziegler High schools shape young people’s pathways into college, careers, civic life, and adulthood. The experiences students have … moral reasoning, civic commitments, and the capacity to connect their own experiences to larger social questions. High school therefore serves as both a transition point to postsecondary education and a developmental setting with … This brief examines California high schools as a critical launch point for opportunity, highlighting the need for redesign to better support student …
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.
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.
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.
Research Brief
Mathematics in California: Gaps, Capacity, and Implementation
… Smith and Li). 4. Advanced math course-taking has declined, even though it remains strongly associated with college enrollment. As many California districts reduced access to eighth-grade algebra, participation in advanced math later in …
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.
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.
Research Brief
Student Outcomes in California: Progress, Uneven Recovery, and Persistent Gaps
… reports that address student outcomes in math and reading achievement (Reardon), chronic absenteeism (Gee and Yu), high school course-taking (Kurlaender et al.), and childhood emotional distress (Fisher et al.). These outcomes should be understood in the context of California’s large and high-need student population. In 2024–25, California enrolled about 5.8 million public school students, including just …
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
… most from California’s recent reforms tend to be those whose trajectories most closely resemble the modal MLE: entering school as a kindergartner, making steady progress toward reclassification, and eventually achieving English proficiency … students have become long-term English Learners, compared to 12 percent of MLEs without disabilities, and their high school completion and college enrollment rates lag substantially behind all comparison groups. 3. Reclassification … where bilingual preparation programs are located and where bilingual teachers are needed remains unresolved, with high-need regions along the southern border and in the Central Valley most affected. 5. Other states provide relevant …
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.