California's educational goals fit into a larger discourse about the need for children to develop their capacity not just for academic achievement, but for broader outcomes such as intellectual, social emotional, and civic development.

Surveys show teachers and principals are positive about the opportunities they've had to learn California's new standards, but teachers want more time to work together to adapt their teaching practice.

"Continuous Improvement" as an approach is a dramatic departure from business as usual, and requires a significant investment in capacity building and data infrastructure. 

The state’s efforts to improve education can be supported or thrown off course by federal policies, making it important for state leaders to strategically manage relations with Washington, D.C., and potential allies in other states.

Timely, accessible, and meaningful data is essential for schools and districts to improve outcomes for students, but California lags far behind other states in supporting an infrastructure for data-driven decisionmaking.

The combination of increased resources and flexibility can improve student outcomes, but many districts do not have the capacity to allocate resources effectively and the state's new System of Support does not yet provide the help needed.

New state policies emphasizing local control call for democratic involvement in school district goal setting and budgeting; districts that engage with their stakeholders more deeply are more strategic in targeting funds to high-need students.

Most educators support the new standards and hope that the state continues to "stays the course;" they seek high-quality materials and opportunities to improve their instruction.

School districts need support in order to fulfill new responsibilities, and California's extensive system of agencies and professional networks could be instrumental in providing that support, yet coherence and capacity among these multiple actors is inconsistent.

California has a patchwork of data systems that, if integrated and made more accessible, could be leveraged to answer important questions to help improve student services and outcomes; significant improvements to data usefulness could be made at relatively low cost if California policymakers had the political will to do so.

California's fledgling System of Support —which brings together the Collaborative for Educational Excellence, the Department of Education, and 58 County Offices of Education—is not yet fully addressing the needs of local schools and districts.

The California School Dashboard is a bold and promising experiment in school accountability but it also has weaknesses, in both data and presentation.

Charter school authorization in California is highly decentralized, with little accountability, in contrast to charter school policies in many other states.

Chief Business Officers are positive about the Local Control Funding Formula and have seen improvements in how districts make financial decisions, but they remain concerned about inadequate base funding and rising costs.