Search

The Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) partnered with the California Department of Education to create resources for local education agencies (LEAs) to guide the development of well-written goals for their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs). The LCAP is a three-year plan that California LEAs use to set goals, plan actions, and leverage resources as part of their strategic planning process to improve student outcomes. Included in this report is a checklist that LEAs may use in conjunction with the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) Template instructions to support the development of well-written goals, why statements, metrics, baselines, yearly outcomes, desired outcomes, and actions, along with the Local Control and Accountability Plan.

Across the country, school district superintendents are transforming into community school leaders. Responsible for systems of learning that also include school nutrition, bussing, safety, finances, community engagement, and so much more, superintendents recognize that they need a different strategy to effectively address the learning needs of the whole child. Only with a collective approach--one where nonprofit organizations, community members, families, government agencies, institutions of higher education, afterschool programs, museums, faith-based groups, and others can rally around the school and its children--can they successfully create the conditions where children can learn and thrive. Increasingly, district leaders are finding community schools to be the strategy they need and are taking advantage of federal grants and supportive policies in states such as New York, Maryland, Vermont, New Mexico, and California to start and sustain community school initiatives. Given the crucial role played by superintendents, this brief lays out 10 tips for district leaders to effectively start and sustain community schools.

The Student Success Center Network (SSCN) Coaching Program engages community colleges in institutional transformation through institutional coaching. In the most recent phase of work, supported by Ascendium Education Group, Jobs for the Future (JFF) and Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) engaged with grantee Centers in four states--California, Michigan, New York, and Oregon--to build the evidence base around institutional coaching. This brief summarizes what was learned and is drawn from interviews and focus groups with Center leadership, college administrators and staff members, and the coaches themselves. Through their conversations, the authors identified 10 common ways that coaching makes a difference for the people and institutions engaged in supporting guided pathways and other student success initiatives.

Redwood City School District (RCSD) has a long history of attending to the needs of its students and their families, and it has responded to this moment of crisis by setting a goal that by June 2024, every student will receive "appropriate social-emotional supports designed to meet their needs." The plan for achieving this goal includes placing a full-time, district-employed, licensed clinical mental health counselor in each of its twelve schools for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years, and dedicating a portion of one counseling position to the role of "lead counselor" responsible for overseeing program design, development, and implementation. The mental health counseling program is part of a broader initiative known as the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), a comprehensive framework for creating a coordinated system of universal (Tier 1), supplemental (Tier 2), and intensive (Tier 3) supports that promote students' academic behavioral, and social-emotional growth and development. This implementation study, conducted as part of a long-term partnership between Stanford University and RCSD, aims to describe the role and contribution of RCSD's mental health counselors and identify opportunities for improvement as the program moves into its second year of implementation. A qualitative implementation study was conducted from October 2021-May 2022 focusing on data collected via 23 interviews with district and site administrators, teachers, MTSS coordinators, community school coordinators, and mental health counselors; 51 participant observations of meetings related to the counseling program and student services more broadly in which school and district staff, board members, and parents participated; and more than 100 district-produced program documents related to MTSS and/or the counseling program. This research brief summarizes key findings and identifies strategic opportunities not only for improving the counseling program, but for leveraging the program to advance a district-wide, coordinated system of support that effectively promotes mental health and wellbeing. [For the executive summary, see ED627396.]

The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office is pleased to present the 2021 Report on Course Section Offerings and Plans for Future Instruction for California Community Colleges. Pursuant to Senate Bill 129 (Skinner, 2021), California community college districts are required to report on the total number of course sections offered, broken out by lecture and laboratory courses; and the percentage of course sections offered in-person, online or in a hybrid format. This report provides information on college enrollment trends, nationally and statewide, as well as community college student demand for various course modalities and actions taken to meet student demand.

Increased attention to police brutality and violence against people of color has elevated scrutiny of campus police. Students have critiqued the inequitable treatment of students of color on their campuses by campus police. In doing so, the students are critiquing racial inequity in the campus climate. The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office (Chancellor's Office) issued a "Call to Action for the California Community Colleges" in summer 2020 to eradicate systemic racism across the programs and services at California's community colleges. This scrutiny includes campus police training, practices and campus culture. To address the first area of the Call to Action, which is focused on campus policing practices, a diverse Reimagining Campus Policing Task Force has been assembled. After nearly a year, the task force has drafted this set of substantive recommendations to enhance campus policing and campus climate as well as impact student success as part of this broad Call to Action to mitigate structural racism.

States have recognized the impact of high-quality early childhood education (ECE) on a child's later college and career readiness and success in life. Yet disparities in program access, quality, and resource allocation continue to deprive many young children and their families of adequate support. By investigating and applying state boards' authority and their impact in collaborating with legislatures and governors, more states can develop effective policies to strengthen the ECE system and ensure equitable access to high-quality learning for young children. This policy update reflects information gathered from news reports and state board meeting agendas and minutes that chronicle state policy activity in 2023 affecting children's access to education from birth to third grade. While not a comprehensive review of state actions last year, this report does provide a snapshot of trending issues and approaches.

To address lingering pressures in the aftermath of the pandemic, California public schools received record funding, largely bolstered by nearly $60 billion in federal and state one-time stimulus funds. This report takes a comprehensive look at the allocation and uses of these federal and state educational recovery funds in California.

Funding for California schools had improved rapidly in recent years but is still insufficient to meet educational goals and address the needs of students. Now, schools and districts face three major challenges: precipitous declines in student academic achievement and social-emotional wellbeing; increased costs associated with distance learning and school reconfiguration to comply with public health orders; and the need to tighten budgets. State leaders have temporarily shielded school districts from budget cuts by spending state reserves and promising but deferring payments to schools. That debt will eventually have to be repaid but could be reduced if California receives more federal stimulus dollars. Districts can also weather the deferrals by borrowing from banks and utilizing their local reserves. Longer term, the picture is more bleak as the state economy remains severely depressed. Even if upcoming state ballot measures to increase revenues pass, the new taxes may not be enough to prevent reductions to schools, much less to fully fund them. Nonetheless, investments in education and other children's services will be critical to strengthening the economic and social future of the state and its citizens. This report examines how California might secure and protect revenues for schools in sustainable and responsible ways. Drawing from interviews with 23 education stakeholders and an extensive literature review, the authors outline how education is currently funded and discuss the ways in which California could increase revenue, including: (1) making full and better use of available funds by reexamining state spending priorities and braiding funding across education and children's services areas; (2) raising new revenues from broader and more stable sources, including property and services taxes, and making it easier for local governments to levy taxes so long as equity is safeguarded; and (3) reducing tax expenditures by eliminating tax breaks and incentives. [For the summary brief, see ED609212.]

The California Community Colleges serves 2.2 million students among its 115 colleges, and is a key driver in ensuring educational opportunity and success for all Californians. About 29% of University of California graduates and 51% of California State University graduates start their higher education at a community college. The system is also the largest provider of workforce training in the nation, positioning it at the center of economic and social mobility opportunities in the state. As an open-access institution, the system serves a diverse student population in terms of race and ethnicity, age, and levels of educational attainment. However, student success remains a challenge for the system. In November 2018, the Board of Governors requested that the Chancellor's Office establish a Faculty Diversity Task Force, renamed the "Vision for Success" Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force, stemming from a statewide study conducted by the Campaign for College Opportunity that revealed how campus leadership, faculty, and staff in California's colleges and universities are not representative of the racial and ethnic diversity of the students that they serve, and the impact the lack of diversity has on student success. This report summarizes three recommendations by the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force to increase faculty and staff diversity in the system. It documents the intensive six-month process the Chancellor's Office and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force undertook to identify strategies to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of the California community college workforce. The document is meant to provide a snapshot of the work that took place and the Board of Governors' commitment to ensure an equal employment opportunity environment at all 115 colleges and 73 districts.

In this brief we summarize findings from three surveys that sought to learn how county offices of education (COEs) are changing in response to the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and the Statewide System of Support (SSS). COEs have been assigned critically important responsibilities in the implementation of these initiatives, and our survey results suggest that most county superintendents are strongly supportive of the state's new policy direction. They are increasingly aware of the scale of change that will have to occur to fully implement the LCFF and the SSS, both in the organization and operation of their own COEs and in their relationships with other agencies, and they recognize that full implementation remains a work in progress.

All youth need the support of parents, family members, and other caring adults. Parents and families are children's first teachers and, in many respects, their most influential role models and motivators. Among the varied efforts to ensure that children succeed and thrive, there is growing acknowledgement of how critically important it is to engage parents and families and to intentionally create connections between schools and other community resources. This publication is designed to: (1) provide clarity on what systemic engagement is and what it looks like in practice; (2) provide an analysis of how systemic practices are being implemented in the family and community engagement field through exemplars of systemic engagement (district engagement briefs); (3) share promising practices that promote systemic engagement while leveraging engagement to advance equity (regional capacity-building models); and (4) provide insights and recommendations to practitioners, funders, policymakers, and other key constituencies regarding family engagement practices and potential areas for additional research.

Addressing student absenteeism continues to permeate education policy and practice. California and a majority of other states have incorporated "chronic absenteeism" as an accountability metric under the Every Student Succeeds Act. It is therefore a crucial time to take stock of what we know on the research, policy, and practice to better understand the measurement of student absenteeism and how to reduce it. To further this goal and spark a broader conversation about student attendance as a valuable policy lever, we wrote the first book centered on the issue of school absenteeism. This policy memo summarizes our multifaceted, multidisciplinary examination of what we have learned about how schools measure and reduce absenteeism and what we need to know going forward as California and other states hold schools and districts accountable for students' absences.

The University of Southern California (USC) transformed its undergraduate education program by making it a top priority in its strategic plans for the last two decades. The undergraduate experience was thoroughly studied and findings were used to determine what needed to be changed to improve the educational experience for students in and outside of the classroom. The institution has spent over $1.5B to hire new faculty to teach undergraduates, construct new residential colleges and renovate older ones (all led by tenured faculty), and build a new health center, campus center, and spaces in the USC College and professional schools dedicated to undergraduate academic programs, support services, and co-curricular programs. The key to the transformation was leadership provided by its late President Steven B. Sample and the university leaders he recruited to take on this big challenge. The team was focused and empowered to make administrative and academic changes, in concert with deans and faculty leaders, and given resources to turn thoughts, dreams and hopes into reality. The results are clear and demonstrate that institutions can improve undergraduate education by making it a high priority, allocating resources to recruit and hire outstanding faculty, and expand and improve programs, activities and facilities that directly serve undergraduates.

This document contains the following nine appendixes of the main report, "What Does It Cost to Educate California's Students? A Professional Judgment Approach. Technical Report. Getting Down to Facts II": (1) Professional Judgement Panel General Instructions; (2) Professional Judgement Panel. Task Instructions; (3) School Resource Profiles; (4) Suggested Reading for Professional Judgement Panelists; (5) Professional Judgement Panelist Information; (6) Program Design Documents; (7) Professional Judgement Panelist Cost Estimates; (8) Descriptive Statistics; and (9) Explanation of Update to Study Findings. [For the main report, see ED594739.]

This report presents the results of a thorough study conducted by American Institutes for Research (AIR) to investigate the cost of providing an "adequate" education to California students attending public elementary, middle, and high schools. The study addresses the following question: "What is the cost of providing all California public school students with access to the California content standards and achieving appropriate levels of proficiency in accordance with standards established by the California Department of Education?" The AIR research team employed a professional judgment approach to costing out an adequate education. This approach leveraged the knowledge and experience of groups of expert educators, known as professional judgment panels (PJPs), to develop school programs that are capable of delivering an adequate education. For the purposes of this study, an adequate education was defined as providing access to instructional programs consistent with the California content standards and providing the opportunity to achieve the proficiency standards established by the California State Board of Education. The PJPs' school program designs needed to deliver adequate education at a minimum cost, and in a variety of contexts with different enrollment sizes and different student needs (i.e., different proportions of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, students classified as English learners [ELs], and students enrolled in special education). Chapters in the report include: (1) Introduction and Overview; (2) Measuring Adequacy Cost Estimates through the Professional Judgment Approach; (3) Translating Resource Specifications into Cost Estimates; (4) "Costing Out" California Adequacy: The Results; (5) Summary and Conclusion. [For the appendices to this report, see ED594741. For a related research summary, see "Working Toward K-12 Funding Adequacy: California's Current Policies and Funding Levels. Research Brief. Getting Down to Facts II" (ED594719).]

Rural school districts face unique challenges in procuring funds, recruiting staff, and obtaining high-quality technical assistance. This environment creates problems in identifying high-quality instructional materials and implementing best practices. A collaborative learning network can address these challenges by providing access to professional development, collaborative time with peer districts, and economies of scale. This report discusses rural networks, specifically Pivot Learning's Rural Professional Learning Network, can cost-effectively provide expertise and build a professional culture.

California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was signed into law in 2013, and represents the most significant change in California education finance and governance in 40 years. It moves additional funds to districts with students in poverty, English language learners, and foster youth. The LCFF sends supplemental funds to districts based on unduplicated counts of these target student groups and concentration funds to districts with high proportions (over 55%) of these same students. In addition, the LCFF eliminates nearly all categorical funding and pushes decision-making about how best to allocate resources to the local level. The LCFF also requires districts to develop a Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) with meaningful local community engagement of parents, community members, students, and educators. The LCFF Research Collaborative has been following the implementation of LCFF since the first year of LCAP planning. In that time, we have seen broad support for the intent of the law, both in its emphasis on more equitable allocation of resources based on student need and in its incorporation of local control and flexibility to support more locally responsive and coherent approaches to improvement. However, we have also noted wide variation among districts in the extent and ways in which they have been able to manifest these intents at the local level. Often the attention of policy makers and the public is drawn to implementation shortcomings and instances in which either the intent or the specific provisions of the law are not being met. Certainly, it is important to address these shortcomings if implementation and the law itself are to be improved over time. Equally important, however, are cases in which the LCFF is operating as envisioned, for it is through such positive exemplars that others might learn and improve. Thus, after studying LCFF implementation for 4 years, the LCFF Research Collaborative decided to identify and document the work of school districts whose implementation efforts in three specific areas are reputed to be noteworthy. We were interested in school districts that were particularly innovative in their attempts to: (1) Meaningfully engage stakeholders in their Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) development; (2) Advance the implementation of the California State Standards (CCSS); and (3) Take an innovative approach to resource allocation decision-making.

In the coming years, California will need a growing supply of educated workers to meet the demands of a dynamic state economy, and this supply will must come from populations that have historically been underrepresented in higher education. The higher education sector will need strong state policy leadership focused on the long-term success of the state to overcome difficult demographic, economic, and political challenges on the horizon. The development of a new coordinating body given the proper authority and resources could provide the essential leadership necessary to confront these challenges and help secure the future prosperity of the state. The new coordinating body has the potential to maximize state investments by creating more efficient and effective higher education systems focused on achieving outcomes such as ensuring affordable access to postsecondary education, increasing educational attainment, closing equity gaps, and meeting workforce demands. Designating an entity with the responsibility to develop and provide leadership in implementing a long-term strategy to improve postsecondary education attainment and outcomes is a nationally recognized best practice in state higher education policy. [This publication is part of "Our California: A Call to Action and Blueprint to Increase College Graduates and Keep Our Economy Strong," which calls upon the Governor of California to make the necessary investments and implement bold reforms to California's higher education to ensure that our students and our state thrive.]

In the wake of an intense contract negotiation, and against the backdrop of a district bankruptcy, multiple teacher strikes, and a wave of mistrust that veterans of the era still refer to as "rock bottom," the San José superintendent and the San José Teachers Association president decided to chart a different path forward. This report is the Executive Summary of a new report from the California Collaborative on District Reform, "From Combat to Collaboration," which explores the way in which the district and union laid the groundwork for a new way of working together, how leaders have continued to foster and deepen the partnership, the day-to-day policies and practices that allow the relationship to flourish, and how collaboration enables the district to better serve its students. The report concludes with a set of lessons that can inform other districts and unions seeking to develop a more productive relationship. [For the full report, see ED578860.]

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) has introduced positive and much-needed change to California's approach to K-12 education funding by allocating resources according to student need and freeing districts to make decisions that address local priorities. For all of LCFF's advantages, however, the Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs) in which districts articulate their programmatic and spending decisions have received criticism for being archaic, cumbersome, difficult to complete, opaque, and incoherent. This brief, written in partnership with Pivot Learning, is the fifth in a series from the California Collaborative exploring key issues of LCFF implementation, and it describes an alternative approach to solving policy problems. The brief shares four prototypes that emerged from a November 2016 design sprint as new approaches to achieving LCFF goals. By embracing user-centered design, California's education leaders have an opportunity to overcome flaws in the LCAP, fulfill the potential of LCFF, and preserve the funding system through the upcoming statewide elections and into the future.

A 1966 University of California academic plan estimated that future enrollments would soar to well over 200,000 before leveling off, and that by 1975 student demand would require two more UC campuses in addition to the ones opened a few years earlier at Santa Cruz, Irvine, and San Diego. The 1970 US census brought these stratospheric assumptions down to earth. Its projections of declining numbers of college-age students into the next decade and beyond, combined with the shock of unfavorable academic market and budgetary trends, became the starting point for an ambitious new UC planning endeavor. The intent was to improve long-range decision-making on the size, quality, and academic balance of the University. The strategy was to ensure that planning led budgeting; that campus academic plans were systematically reviewed at the university-wide and Regental level; and that fiscal realities disciplined planning at all levels. Two UC presidents led this experiment in multi-campus system planning. Charles J. Hitch (1968-1975) had revolutionized planning and budgeting at Robert S. McNamara's Department of Defense before coming to UC. David S. Saxon (1975-1983) brought a deep knowledge of the University and its culture gained through long experience as a faculty and administrative leader at UCLA. Despite differences in background, perspective, and approach, both shared the same goal: to create a truly university-wide plan that harmonized campus ambitions with the broader aims of the University as a whole and with the coming constraints on growth. This paper considers the context, assumptions, and forces that shaped, and then reshaped, the planning directions UC chose at the end of the golden age of the 1960s. A bibliography is included.

This report is the third in a series by the Local Control Funding Formula Research Collaborative (LCFFRC). This research seeks to help policymakers and others better understand ways in which the LCFF is changing fundamental aspects of resource allocation and governance and how these changes might lead to improved student outcomes. The work is grounded in an understanding of how the LCFF is supposed to work and what it is meant to accomplish, in other words, in the law's theory of action. Drawing on findings from previous research, this study focuses on four main issues: (1) the extent of meaningful stakeholder engagement in Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) development; (2) ways LCFF implementation is advancing or challenging Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation; (3) how resources are allocated, especially to targeted groups; and (4) the extent to which LCFF planning and implementation advance equity and coherence. This report is based on eight case studies, seven in traditional districts and one in a charter management organization. Study sites reflected California's geographic and demographic diversity. To collect data, researchers conducted 151 interviews with administrators, parents, community members, union leaders, and board members in fall 2016 and examined a range of relevant documents, including LCAPs, district budgets, collectively bargained contracts, strategic plans, and school site plans. While this study has limitations, including the small number of cases and the timing of the data collection (districts had not yet used the revised LCAP template and the new state accountability system was not fully in place), this research provides important insights into the ongoing implementation of the state's ambitious new system of finance and governance. The Research Methodology is appended. [This report was written with the assistance of Taylor Allbright, Jarah Blum, Tasmin Dhaliwal, Laila Fahimuddin, Katherine Ramage, and Laura Tobben. For the previous study, "Two Years of California's Local Control Funding Formula: Time to Reaffirm the Grand Vision," see ED564335.]

Guided pathways are emerging as a strategy to help students complete a credential in a timely manner by encouraging or requiring them to select a program, and develop a degree plan or map, on a specified timeline. At a minimum, institutions may ask students to identify a meta-major, which is a broad area of academic programs with related courses (for example, business, health care or social sciences). Guided pathways programs typically include structured course plans and intensive support services to keep students on track to finish their credential or transfer to complete a degree. This report from the Education Commission of the States examines state policies related to guided pathways and concludes that in 2016 two bills were enacted, ten were introduced, and at least six states considered guided pathways legislation. The report provides an additional update from the 2017 legislative session and profiles states that have passed related policies in recent years.

Higher education is ripe for innovation. While emerging technological developments such as digital courseware and mobiles apps have made it easier than ever for people to engage with learning resources, significant issues of access and equity persist among students from low-income, minority, single-parent families, and other disadvantaged groups. The one-size-fits-all approach of many traditional higher education paradigms is ineffective as it is in stark contrast with an increasingly diverse student population. Retention of these students is a daunting task for colleges and universities: non-traditional students' first-year attrition rates are more than twice as high as traditional students. The challenge facing higher education is catering to all learners' needs, aligning college programs with deeper learning outcomes and the acquisition of 21st century skills that lead to personal goal achievement and gainful employment. Peeling back the layers of this challenge reveals a web of hurdles that impede the successful scaling of innovative solutions. At "Innovating Higher Education: Moving to Scale," a workshop organized by the New Media Consortium (NMC) as part of the Personalized Learning & Student Success Summit at the SXSWedu conference in March 2016, more than 120 higher education leaders from colleges, universities, educational organizations, and digital learning companies convened to address these obstacles. The NMC engaged in a deep analysis post-event, conducting research and informal interviews with thought leaders. From this work, the NMC ultimately found that 8 of the 15 challenges already had potential solutions in various stages--ranging from frameworks to small-scale pilot programs to government and institutional initiatives. As such, this publication focuses on those 8 challenges with a lens on their implications for access and equity for low-income students and other disadvantaged groups. In addition to providing readers with a brief overview that strives to make the complex challenges easier to digest, each section encompasses a discussion of the solutions, and, wherever possible, includes evidence-based approaches to demonstrate concrete benefits for student success. To gain a more holistic view of the issues impacting higher education, the NMC also disseminated a survey to its community of postsecondary administrators, educators, instructional designers, and other key faculty and staff. Analytics from the survey as well as direct quotes from respondents are integrated throughout this publication. By better defining the challenges impeding innovation in US postsecondary education and illuminating high-quality programs and initiatives, it is the NMC's hope that this report catalyzes critical discussions, projects, and products that bolster student success, making high-quality learning opportunities more accessible to all. The challenges addressed in this publication can be categorized as largely relating to faculty needs, institutional culture, and technology-enabled practices and programs--all with an eye toward students as the ultimate beneficiaries of the potential solutions.

California educators continue in their struggle to communicate district plans to parents, teachers, and other members of the school community. Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), have ballooned into jargon-laden stacks of tables, impenetrable to all but the most sophisticated reader. Envisioned as a tool to improve transparency, the LCAP as implemented has instead left many parents and community members utterly confused. In recognition of the LCAP's issues, state and district leaders are looking for better ways to inform the community about districts' plans and results. This brief, the fourth in a series informs district leaders as they communicate about their overall vision for school improvement, and the strategies and resource allocation decisions they are using to achieve that vision. It highlights insights that emerged from a November 2015 meeting of the California Collaborative on District Reform, in which participants reviewed resources already in use in the field--a sample of executive summaries, infographics, and other communication materials. As California continues to refine the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) system of policies and practices, these guidelines can help districts further the goals LCFF was designed to foster.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) launched Quality Collaboratives (QC): Assessing and Reporting Degree Qualifications Profile Competencies in the Context of Transfer in 2011 as a three-year project that engaged educational, assessment, and policy leaders in student learning outcomes assessment and transfer pathways. With funding from Lumina Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the QC project was organized through AAC&U's current signature initiative, Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP), which champions a twenty-first-century liberal education for all college students. During the project, two- and four-year transfer partner institutions within nine states--each already engaged, prior to the start of the project, in learning outcomes assessment work--beta tested different ways to assess proficiencies articulated in Lumina Foundation's Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP). The DQP, now in its second version, benchmarks "what degree recipients should know and be able to do" at the associate's, bachelor's, and master's degree levels, and offers scaffolded learning expectations to guide paths between and among transfer partners. This publication features campus work from twenty institutions involved in QC--campuses with collaborative relationships that worked together as two- and four-year "QC dyads." The ten participating campus dyads hailed from California, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Utah, Wisconsin, and Virginia (two other states--North Dakota and Oregon--participated in the project at the state system level). This publication is anchored by a flowchart that reflects lessons learned from the campus-based work in which the QC dyads engaged. The flowchart is meant to serve as a guide for campus practitioners seeking to initiate transfer-based change efforts on their campuses. Key action steps taken by the various QC campus partners to implement assessment in the transfer context. Each action step (eleven in total) correlates with a case study presented herein. Written by QC dyad leaders, who are listed as contacts in this publication, these case studies represent campus change efforts that unfolded over the course of the three-year project.

At KIPP Comienza Community Prep--an elementary school in Huntington Park, California, where 94 percent of students qualify for free lunch, and more than 60 percent are English language learners--most kindergarteners start out well below pre-reading levels. In 2015, however, just a few years after these students walked in the school doors unable to identify the letters of the alphabet, 81 percent met or exceeded standards in English on the Common Core--aligned Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) assessment; 82 percent did so in math. Principal Shirley Appleman attributes her school's success in shifting to college- and career-ready standards to the robust use of data. Using data at this level of consistency and rigor--so that it informs instruction every day, in every classroom--requires substantial planning and organization. This case study describes several practices that Appleman and her team maintain to ensure that student data drives every decision about instruction and curriculum at KIPP Comienza. Questions for reflection conclude the study. [For the main report, "Ambitious Leadership: How Principals Lead Schools to College and Career Readiness," see ED584804.]

California ended 40 years of reliance on categorical funding for schools when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law on July 1, 2013. LCFF intends to enhance services for high-needs students through new flexibility, targeted student funding, and local accountability. Two years into LCFF implementation, research in 18 districts and more than half of the state's County Offices of Education (COEs) uncovers both reasons for optimism and a few concerns. The LCFF represents an ambitious effort in the nation's largest state to fundamentally change the way education decisions are made, engage local stakeholders in these important decisions, and target additional resources to traditionally underserved students. Now is the time for mid-course corrections that will ensure the state is able to realize the "Grand Vision" that the LCFF is intended to be. Data Collection Methods are presented in the appendix. ["Two Years of California's Local Control Funding Formula: Time to Reaffirm the Grand Vision" was written with the assistance of Jarah Blum, Ashley Campbell, Camille Esch, Laila Fahimuddin, Michelle Hall, Jennifer O'Day, Katherine Ramage, Laura Stokes, and Laura Tobben.]

"Understanding Entry-Level Courses in American Institutions of Higher Education" outlines a study conducted by EPIC that empirically identifies the characteristics of work at the college- and career-readiness level in English/language arts, science, and social sciences courses. Using a previously collected national sample of over two thousand entry-level college course documents, EPIC used an emergent coding design to analyze the content of postsecondary syllabi, assignments, and assessments. The analysis revealed information about the content, requirements, and challenge level expected of students in thirteen entry-level college courses in both two- and four-year institutions of higher education across the country. Researchers then used the findings of this study to develop a set of high school performance assessment tasks that represent the types of activities and assessments required in entry-level college courses. This article outlines the methods and rationale for the study, the specific data that were collected from the entry-level college course documents, and the outcomes of interrater reliability tests. Finally, this report includes a discussion of possible implications of the study, including the need to raise the level of cognitive demand in secondary and postsecondary settings. This information has the potential to inform changes in curriculum and instruction, assessment, graduation, and admissions decisions at both the secondary and postsecondary levels.

As the University of California continues to face unprecedented challenges--from state disinvestment, to attempts by the legislature to wrest control of the university, to disruption brought on by new technology, to concerns, valid or otherwise, about the value of college--university leaders must return to fundamental questions about the purposes of higher education to guide us in our decision making. With this essay, I look back at how we arrived at contemporary understandings of undergraduate education in order to show that today's dominant debates--regarding the purpose of higher education, its benefit to society, its benefit to individuals, its role in the economy, how curricula and the university itself should be structured, who should pursue a university education, and who should fund it--have in fact been meaningfully shaping institutions of higher education for centuries. I hope to show, too, that the system of public higher education that developed in the United States--and, particularly, in California--is exceptional, and worth not only preserving, but also enhancing and strengthening, given its unique contributions to economic growth, innovation, socioeconomic mobility, civic engagement, and cultural vitality, both for the state and for the world.

State implementation of new standards (revising, adapting, and adopting new standards) is a significant undertaking. Such an effort at the state level requires extensive support, planning, and resources. Implementing new state standards also requires the support of multiple education leaders--governors, legislators, state departments of education, school and district administrators, teachers, and state boards of education (SBEs)--each of whom holds important and varying roles in the education system. The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) and the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) aim to support SBEs in the leadership roles they can and do play relative to implementing new science standards such as the Next Generation Science Standards. Indeed, SBEs can, and often do, provide important leadership in setting policies related to state standards, advocating for change, and bringing multiple stakeholders together. Many states are just beginning to consider whether to modify existing science standards, adapt standards being used in other states, or develop new ones. This document guides SBEs through this complex process. While many organizations have developed resources to support implementation of new science standards, this document goes beyond others by providing clear examples, resources, and a step-by-step process that SBEs can use to begin this work.