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In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

Emotional, behavioral, and mental health challenges make it difficult for many children and adolescents to engage and succeed at school. Research indicates that at least 20% of all children and adolescents have been diagnosed with one more mental health disorders. Behavioral problems, anxiety, and depression are the most diagnosed mental health issues, and they often co-occur. Moreover, these conditions are being diagnosed at increasingly younger ages. In the past several years there has been a rise in the number of adolescents and young adults with serious mental health issues such as major depression and suicidal ideation, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems for children and adolescents. Schools offer promise for providing intensive clinical support to the most at-risk students, and schools are necessary environment to explore the implementation of multi-modal youth mental health services. This paper provides an analysis of an intensive, in-school mental health services model developed and implemented by Effective School Solutions (ESS), a New Jersey based provider of high acuity school based mental health services for K-12 students. We analyze this multi-modal model for its effectiveness in improving educational outcomes for over 3,000 students identified as requiring intensive clinical mental health support across the 2021-22 school year. This analysis reveals that those students receiving High- versus Low-fidelity programming (i.e., multiple sessions per week for at least half of the school year versus for less than half of the school year) had better educational outcomes. Students receiving High-fidelity programming had greater improvements in grade point average (GPA) and greater reductions in absences across the school year. A higher number of in-school clinical sessions per week significantly predicted a greater increase in GPA and a greater reduction in total disciplinary incidents (including out of school suspensions) across the school year. This report provides initial promising evidence that in-school intensive mental health clinical services yield positive effects on students' educational outcomes. Though future research is needed to validate and extend these findings, schools may consider implementing such services onsite to meet students where they are and to optimize students' mental, behavioral, and educational well-being. [This white paper report was published by the Yale Child Study Center."]

Since establishing its first campus in 1868, the University of California (UC), California's land-grant university, developed into the nation's first multi-campus system in the United States, and is today widely recognized as the world's premier network of public research universities. This short essay provides an historical brief on the role that shared governance, and specifically the role of the Academic Senate, played in creating an academic culture of excellence and high achievement in pursuing its tripartite mission of teaching and learning, research and knowledge production, and public service. A key component in understanding the critical role of the Senate in UC's evolution from a single campus in Berkeley to now a ten-campus system is the university's unusual designation as a public trust in the state constitution that, beginning in 1879, protected the university at critical times from external political pressures and allowed the university to develop an internal academic culture guided by the Academic Senate. By the 1920s, the emergence of California's unique and innovative public system of higher education, with UC as the sole public provider of doctoral degrees and state funded research, also helps explain the ability of the UC system to maintain its mission and formulate what is termed a "One University" model. The Academic Senate has created coherency and shared values within UC, and a culture and expectation for faculty performance that is unique among universities around the world. This essay also offers a brief reflection on the Academic Senate's past influence, its current status, and prospective role. The overall intent is to provide context for the current academic community and higher education scholars regarding the past and future role of faculty in university governance and management, and what distinguishes UC in the pantheon of major research universities.

Measures of student disadvantage--or risk--are critical components of equity-focused education policies. However, the risk measures used in contemporary policies have significant limitations, and despite continued advances in data infrastructure and analytic capacity, there has been little innovation in these measures for decades. We develop a new measure of student risk for use in education policies, which we call Predicted Academic Performance (PAP). PAP is a flexible, data-rich indicator that identifies students at risk of poor academic outcomes. It blends concepts from emerging "early warning" systems with principles of incentive design to balance the competing priorities of accurate risk measurement and suitability for policy use. PAP is more effective than common alternatives at identifying students who are at risk of poor academic outcomes and can be used to target resources toward these students--and students who belong to several other associated risk categories--more efficiently.

A focus on faculty professional learning, given the challenges that California community colleges and students face, must remain a high priority and continue to evolve. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) has long been an advocate for the development of robust professional development policies as part of senate purview under Title 5 §53200, colloquially referred to as the 10+1. Indeed, as student populations within the California community colleges become more diverse, colleges seek to improve student success and close the opportunity gap for marginalized communities. The ASCCC has passed numerous resolutions in support of intentional learning opportunities to address diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism throughout the curriculum and college cultures. Such intentional learning must be a significant component of faculty professional learning and development. The goal and purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of faculty professional learning that is necessary to improve student success as well as the role local academic senates can play in such efforts. The paper will examine the issues from both a philosophical and practical point of view.

The primary purpose of this paper is to emphasize and reiterate the centrality of the faculty role in tutoring and learning centers, where peer-to-peer, discipline-specific collaborative learning is the primary objective. This paper provides a breadth of content for practitioners in the field and also assists those seeking to understand the unique role of the tutoring and learning center and the faculty that develop and lead these services. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges asserts that faculty, preferably full-time, tenure-track faculty, should oversee tutoring and learning centers. The tutoring and learning center is a crucial instructional space on campus that should be supervised and led by faculty. [Written in collaboration with the Transfer, Articulation, and Student Success Committee 2020-2021.]

As the COVID-19 crisis disrupted schooling, recovery efforts to ensure educational continuity in California included the adoption of Senate Bill 98, which mandated local educational agencies (LEAs) to complete Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs). These plans act as critical snapshots of sensemaking in the midst of crisis; however, their details have yet to be explored statewide, concealing the potential trends that arise in local planning when traditional schooling is disrupted by crisis. Through a multiphase, mixed methods approach, this study examines the legislative requirements of an educational policy that orchestrated large-scale local planning. Results suggest that, during a crisis, equity is centered in both policy and the plans of public school districts, threaded through accessibility to instruction as well as academic and social-emotional supports. [For the Policy Brief, see ED624610.]

Eligibility is a policy construct unique to California. UC and CSU are the only US universities that distinguish between eligibility for admission and admission itself and set separate requirements for each. The eligibility construct derives originally from California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which famously mandated that UC admit students from the top 12.5% (and CSU from the top 33.3%) of California public high school graduates. Thus began a long and twisting saga of policy implementation that has become increasingly convoluted over time. UC's decision to eliminate the SAT/ACT in university admissions presents an opportune moment to rethink the eligibility construct from the ground up. This essay proposes, first, eliminating the now-antiquated "Eligibility Index," a mechanical algorithm that is increasingly at odds with the thrust of UC admissions policy over the past two decades; second, moving from a 12.5% eligibility target (the percentage of students who qualify for admission) to a 7.5% participation target (the percentage who actually enroll); and third, redefining eligibility from a norm-referenced to a criterion-referenced construct. "Using holistic or comprehensive review to select from among applicants who have successfully completed UC subject requirements at a specified level of proficiency, UC would admit that number of applicants needed to yield a 7.5% participation rate among California high school graduates." This is the same average participation rate that the Master Plan has yielded historically, so that the proposal would be revenue-neutral with respect to State funding for UC. At the same time, like the 12.5% eligibility target, a 7.5% participation target would tie UC enrollment growth to growth in California's college-age population. Conversion from an eligibility to a participation target would not eliminate the eligibility construct but would redefine it. In place of a norm-referenced standard -- whether students rank in the "top 12.5%" -- eligibility would be redefined as a criterion-referenced standard: Whether students have mastered the foundational knowledge and skills needed to succeed at UC. When we judge students against that standard, two truths become evident. First is that the pool of students who are qualified for and can succeed at UC is far larger than UC can accommodate; the chief advantage of a criterion-referenced standard is the greater scope for UC to select from a broader, more diverse pool of qualified applicants. Second is that expanding eligibility is much less a priority than increasing actual enrollment and participation rates among the pool of those who are already qualified.

Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less-lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which increasingly enforce GPA restriction policies that prohibit students with poor introductory grades from declaring popular majors. We investigate these GPA restrictions by constructing a novel 50-year dataset covering four public research universities' student transcripts and employing a dynamic difference-in-difference design around the implementation of 29 restrictions. Restricted majors' average URM enrollment share falls by 20 percent, which matches observational patterns and can be explained by URM students' poorer average pre-college academic preparation. Using first-term course enrollments to identify students who intend to earn restricted majors, we find that major restrictions disproportionately lead URM students from their intended major toward less-lucrative fields, driving within-institution ethnic stratification and likely exacerbating labor market disparities. [Funding for this report was provided by University of California Humanities Research Institute and Opportunity Insights.]

In April 2021, New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Philanthropication thru Privatization Project (PtP) released a joint proposal that the federal government should invest a substantial portion of the windfall proceeds from future auctions of public airwaves (spectrum) to seed a new Digital Equity Foundation dedicated to addressing equity gaps in broadband adoption and affordability, education, telehealth, access to government services, and other critical areas. The next step in realizing this vision is now in the hands of Congress and other federal policymakers, as allocation of spectrum auction proceeds to support the creation of a Digital Equity Foundation requires legislation. Policymakers will also play a critical role in establishing the guidelines for the creation of an initial foundation board and mission. This paper serves to help flesh out the options for how that could be accomplished, drawing on a review of existing foundations created with public and nonprofit assets to identify best practices for how to start a foundation with public, quasi-public, or nonprofit funds. This paper is structured in five parts. Part I provides a brief overview of the proposed Digital Equity Foundation; Part II, examines some key examples of existing U.S. foundations that illustrate the use of public or quasi-public funds to support priority public needs; Part III, explores ways the proposed Digital Equity Foundation might be structured and organized to achieve its programmatic goals to advance digital equity and inclusion, while operating with appropriate transparency and public accountability; Part IV, considers additional legal considerations that surfaced in a review of foundations previously established under federal legislation; and Part V, provides a summary of concrete recommendations for the proposed foundation. [This report is a joint product of the Open Technology Institute at New America and the Philanthropication thru Privation Project.]

Efforts to strengthen the pipeline to college degree completion have focused on improving college access and providing academic, social, and financial supports to students post-enrollment. This paper explores one facet of postsecondary education that has served as a barrier to both college access and success--developmental education--which has proven to exacerbate racial inequities in academic progress in higher education and has effectively decreased college access for low-income students and students of color. After more than a decade of trying to tackle the developmental education problem indirectly through basic skills-related initiatives, task forces, and success initiatives, the California state legislature passed Assembly Bill 705 (AB705) in 2017, which directed colleges to replace standardized placement tests with multiple measures of high school performance to determine college readiness. In this paper, the authors describe the research that prompted developmental education reform approaches nationally and in California, describe the efforts in California that led to the passing of AB705, and summarize research on its implementation and outcomes. Building on analysis of the research, the paper concludes with five key practice and policy recommendations for California community college leaders as they move toward realizing a civil rights agenda for college access and success in the next 25 years: (1) Address faculty and practitioners' beliefs; (2) Move from structural to instructional reform; (3) Improve data accessibility, reporting, and accountability; (4) Expand equitable college access opportunities for students in high school; and (5) Address barriers facing English learners.

The diversity of California's teaching force continues to lag behind its student population. While students of Color make up 78% of the state's K-12 population, Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) comprise just 34% of the teaching workforce (California Department of Education, 2018), a statistic that has dominated the teacher shortage narrative. Although there is promise in the fact that teacher education program (TEP) enrollment is more diverse than the state's current educator workforce, it's still 27% less diverse than the state's K-12 students. As demand for greater representation increases, so have the initiatives to recruit and retain more racially diverse teachers. In the past few years, California has spent billions in an effort to diversify its teacher workforce, including Assembly Bill 520, which allocated $15 million to be distributed to school districts to develop and implement programs that diversify teaching staffs, and Assembly Bill 130, which appropriated $350 million over the next five years to create or expand Teacher Residency Programs, a pathway that has been shown to recruit and retain higher numbers of TOCIT (California Legislative Information, 2023). This study sets out to (1) explore how current policies, structures, practices, attitudes, and ideologies across the pipeline and profession impede the recruitment and retention of TOCIT, and (2) better understand the racialized experiences and perspectives of pre-service and in-service Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers. The following paper is based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collected from system leaders in teacher preparation, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and former teachers over the course of approximately one year: spring 2021 to summer 2022.

Declining student enrollment is leading to a loss of revenue in many California school districts. To address ongoing budget shortfalls, many districts have consolidated or shuttered schools, and others are contemplating doing so. A new report and working paper, summarized in this brief, explore the racial dimensions of school closures and how to address them. The authors find that closures are far more common for schools that serve higher proportions of Black students. Even after controlling for a range of factors, the odds of school closure increase by nearly 25 percent for every 10-percentage-point increase in the share of Black students. This research situates this and other disparities within the U.S. history of segregation, neighborhood disinvestment, and gentrification, and provides evidence and suggestions to help education leaders center equity as they confront declining enrollment-related school closures.

This paper focuses on the evaluation of the clinical component of preservice teacher preparation. In this paper, clinical experience in teacher preparation refers to the "application of academic knowledge to practice" in classrooms, schools, and communities where candidates learn to "contextualize" the curriculum, learning experiences, and other teaching practices for specific individuals and groups of students. The authors describe and provide examples of promising practices for several types of clinical experiences with different purposes and approaches including traditional student teaching, special purpose practicums, internships, and residencies. The discussion in this paper is organized into four sections. The first section addresses variations in clinical experiences related to the application of academic knowledge to practice in classrooms and other settings. The second section is focused on community-based clinical experiences addressing the preparation, recruitment, and retention of teachers for schools serving urban and underserved students. The third section describes statewide initiatives for teacher residencies that address teacher shortages in specific subject areas and schools facing staffing challenges. The final section presents a proposal for a research-based approach for evaluating the clinical component of teacher preparation focused on quality indicators with the highest value in developing teaching efficacy.

Consistent with its vision for an education system that supports all students on a path to progress, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is committed to exploring innovations that support improvements in teaching and learning. As with many aspects of education, the pandemic created an additional sense of urgency regarding the need for states to revisit systems of assessment to ensure that they meet the current needs of policymakers, district and school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. One path of innovation under consideration is a version of a "through-year" assessment that provides information about student learning during the academic year. Based on published papers and through discussions with the California State Board of Education (SBE) and the California Department of Education (CDE), Smarter Balanced began to explore how to make changes to the system that might mitigate some issues that have been identified, including end-of-year test length and the desire for information that can support student learning during the school year as well as teachers' learning and reflection about students' progress, thus supporting educators to accelerate student learning throughout the school year. To further add to the consortium's knowledge base on through-year assessment, Smarter Balanced collaborated with the CDE and the SBE to explore whether performance assessment tasks for the summative test can be administered during the school year in a way that informs both instruction and assessment. This brief summarizes the information gathered from the investigation. In addition, it describes planned future research to inform decisions regarding the implementation of performance tasks as part of a through-year approach to summative assessment.

Talladega County Schools (TCBOE) spans 760 square miles and serves about 7,000 learners, 71 percent of whom receive free and reduced-priced meals. It also is a member of the League of Innovative Schools, a network of forward-looking school districts that have declared their commitment to improving and advancing equitable outcomes for students through innovative solutions, including those powered by the smart use of learning technologies. This white paper examines how the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning compares to more learner-centered, personalized, and motivating frameworks; why there needs to transition to them at scale; and how digital technologies now enable that scaling. It is also a companion to the report, "Delivering on the Promise of Digital Equity" (ED626483) which is designed to help state and local community leaders find effective ways for investing in K-12 education to increase digital equity.

Although public K-12 student enrollment dropped by 3% nationwide in 2020-21, the school year that marks the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the patterns differ for specific areas and types of schools. This paper describes the COVID-19 and Equity in Education (CEE) Enrollment Explorer tool, which was developed to help policymakers and educators examine enrollment trends by a range of school, community, and student characteristics. The CEE Enrollment Explorer allows users to examine state, regional-, district-, community-, and school-level shifts in student enrollment before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) in selected states. The interactive CEE Enrollment Explorer aims to paint a more detailed picture of public K-12 student enrollment.

The COVID-19 pandemic required that virtually all in-person instruction move suddenly to an online format. Given the unprecedented nature of this disruption, the California Community Colleges (CCC) issued an emergency regulation allowing all students to drop spring 2020 courses without incurring a withdrawal or "W" notation on their transcripts. Instead, they received an Excused Withdrawal or "EW" notation, which shields students from possible negative repercussions of a W notation on their transcript. The EW is not factored into academic progress calculations, and it is treated as if the student never enrolled in the course. However, an EW still indicates an unsuccessful attempt to complete a class, and a student who receives this notation will need to retake the course in a future term, if the course is required to fulfill their educational goal. The Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) historically included EW notations as indicators of non-successful course attempts in the calculation of throughput and course success in our research papers, within the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office (CCCCO) Gateway Completion Transfer-Level Dashboard, 2 and AB 705 compliance reporting templates. Given this changing context, MMAP examined how including or excluding EWs impacted the calculations of students' throughput in transfer-level English and math courses. Further, some educators are concerned about how this policy shift will specifically influence the proportion of students receiving an EW in a transfer-level math course, and how students' increased use of EWs may affect success and throughput rates within math pathways. In turn, the authors additionally examined the distribution of non-passing grades of students in their first gateway math course over time to shed light on the emerging impact of EWs on math throughput. This report summarizes these results for system-level leaders and college educators to support decision-making about equitable placement and completion in the CCC system.

Explore Learning contracted with LearnPlatform, a third-party edtech research company, to examine the relationship between student usage of Frax and math learning outcomes. Frax is a game-based, adaptive technology designed using the latest research on effective fractions instruction to support all learners in meeting early standards for fractions in elementary grades. This study occurred during the 2021-22 school year and analyses included 658 third and 653 fourth-grade students from a school district in California using a retrospective and correlational methodology. The sample's largest racial/ethnic group is Hispanic (53%), and over one-third of students (39%) qualified for lower socioeconomic status programs. Researchers examined relationships between Frax usage and STAR Math scaled scores to understand the impact of the program on students' math achievement outcomes. After accounting for baseline STAR Math results, students who completed more missions in Frax, had higher math achievement (r = 0.13, p < 0.01). Greater Frax usage was also statistically significantly related to higher math scores for low-achieving students and lower socioeconomic status students. This study provides results to satisfy ESSA evidence requirements for Level III (Promising Evidence) given the study design and positive, statistically significant findings. [This paper was prepared for Explore Learning by LearnPlatform.]

The first step to addressing equity gaps is to identify them. How can community colleges determine, with some degree of certainty, whether one or more student groups on a campus is in need of assistance in order to succeed? This paper tackles this question by delving into the three methods typically used to identify equity gaps, comparing and contrasting the benefits of each approach, and then demonstrating how these methods can be utilized through examination of three case studies. While data and statistics are discussed, this review is intended for a general audience of educators and practitioners. The goal is to help readers garner the skills and knowledge that will facilitate dialogue, planning, and action concerning equity gaps.

In the wake of COVID-19, the California legislature mandated that local educational agencies (LEAs) develop detailed Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs) to address student learning and progress during the 2020-21 academic year. This brief summarizes results of an analysis of nearly 1,000 LCPs from public school districts across the state to understand how they intended to support students in critical areas like instruction, technology, assessment, attendance, and well-being. Overall, districts planned to provide technology, assess student learning, employ tiered levels of support, and prioritize services for special student populations. However, the practices described in the plans varied across districts, with the most notable differences between urban and rural areas. This analysis exposes broader opportunities for wide-scale reform in both education policymaking and implementation accountability postpandemic. [For the Working Paper, see ED624611.]

This report provides a closer look at the well-being of the early care and education (ECE) workforce in California, using data collected by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) through the 2020 California Early Care and Education Workforce Study. For decades, low levels of public investment in this sector have kept the ECE workforce--largely women of color and immigrant women--in a grim financial bind. During the first year of the pandemic, the majority of early educators continued to work in person--risking their health and that of their families--while K-12 schools closed for distance learning. This report reveals new details on the economic realities of life as an early educator during the COVID-19 public health crisis. [Additional funding for this paper was provided by the TIME'S UP Foundation and the Blue Shield of California Foundation.]