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Recent Publications
 Beyond the Numbers: Understanding California's High School Dropouts
Six of California’s largest urban school districts have joined together in the Partnership for Urban Education Research (PUER), to address the most pressing issues in urban education. The six PUER districts have agreed to work together to increase data availability, enhance internal research capacity, and promote collaboration and information sharing across district lines for the benefit of their students. PUER seeks to build a partnership in which participating districts can use their collective research capacity to carefully evaluate their own instructional programs and practices. In a new report, six PUER school districts—Fresno Unified School District (FUSD), Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), and San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)—joined efforts to identify opportunities for improving the current dropout reporting system, and to review district efforts to reduce dropout rates. The PUER districts are working with PACE to review and publish their research.
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Reshaping Teacher Policies to Improve Student Achievement
In a new PACE Policy Brief, Julia E. Koppich puts forward a set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the quality of teaching in California’s schools. She argues that California can help to bring about sustained improvement in teaching and learning by experimenting with new policies in several areas, including professional development, evaluation, compensation, and the structure of teachers’ careers. Her policy brief includes descriptions of innovative programs in each of these areas that are now being implemented in school districts across the U.S. As Koppich notes, many of the changes that she proposes will have to be negotiated at the local level, in bargaining between school boards and teachers unions. The state can nevertheless play a critical role by providing incentives to support policy innovation, by carefully evaluating the effectiveness of alternative policies, and by developing partnerships and networks to share new knowledge about effective policies and practices.
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Building an Information System to Support Continuous Improvement in California Public Schools
A new PACE Policy Brief by Susanna Loeb, Tara Beteille and Maria Perez of Stanford University explains why California must accelerate its efforts to create an effective data system for collecting and using vital school information. Building an Information System to Support Continuous Improvement in California Public Schools highlights the elements of an effective data system, with a particular focus on issues related to data collection. It reveals that despite efforts to improve California's education data system, the state continues to lag behind other states in data collection and management, in policy evaluation and data use and in funding for local school districts to support the collection and maintenance of reliable education data. The authors show that valuable lessons can be learned from the high quality data systems that have been created in other states, and in organizations in both the public and private sectors. They argue that data, if used wisely, can help to transform California’s education system.
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Meeting the Challenge: Performance Trends in California Schools
Jennifer Imazeki of San Diego State University analyzes recent performance trends in California’s education system in Meeting the Challenge: Performance Trends in California Schools, a new PACE Policy Brief. Imazeki shows that California students have generally held steady or improved their academic performance across grades and subject areas in recent years, in spite of growing financial and demographic challenges in the stateís schools. Per pupil spending in California is well below the national average, and the ratio of adults to children in the system is lower than in almost any other state. A majority of California’s students are poor, and nearly one quarter are English learners. Despite these challenges, scores on state and national assessments have been rising, not only on average but for poor and minority students as well. The number of students taking advanced courses in math and science has increased, and so has the number of students satisfying the "a-g" requirements for admission to the University of California or California State University. Performance levels in Californiaís schools continue to fall short of the state’s ambitious educational goals, and the need for systemic reforms remains urgent, but the performance gains that Imazeki documents testify to the commitment and hard work of the California’s educators.
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Continuous Improvement in California Education: Data Systems and Policy Learning
In a PACE document prepared for the Convening on California Education Policy on October 19, 2007, Susanna Loeb and David N. Plank present a set of policy recommendations aimed at supporting continuous improvement in California’s education system. Their recommendations address the essential features of a comprehensive education data system, and also the design and implementation of educational policies to support careful evaluation and organizational learning at all levels of the education system, from the classroom to the California Department of Education.
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Reshaping Personnel Policies to Improve Student Achievement
In a PACE document prepared for the Convening on California Education Policy on October 19, 2007, Julia E. Koppich and Amy Gerstein present a set of policy recommendations that address issues related to human capital and personnel in California’s education system. They offer nine specific recommendations under three main headings: Differentiated Roles and Compensation, Evaluation and Accountability, and Making Successful Practices Visible.
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Beyond Access: How the First Semester Matters for Community College Students’ Aspirations and Persistence
A new PACE Policy Brief by Anne Driscoll of the University of California at Davis explains why California must do more than expand access to community college if our state is to prepare the workforce needed to remain economically competitive in the 21st century. Beyond Access: How the First Semester Matters for Community College Students’ Aspirations and Persistence shows that fewer than half of the young high school graduates who entered California community colleges with the goal of transferring to four-year colleges in 1998 made it through their first semester with their goals intact. One quarter of these young people did not return for the second semester, and barely half of those who returned still planned to transfer to four-year schools. Approximately 40 percent of those who aspired to transfer to four-year colleges when they entered community college ultimately achieved their goal. Driscoll’s analysis illuminates the decisive importance of the first semester in students’ post-secondary academic careers, and suggests that providing additional guidance and support to students as they enter college for the first time could yield big dividends in terms of student persistence and eventual transfer.
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District Dollars: Painting a Picture of Revenues and Expenditures in California’s School Districts
PACE Co-Director Susanna Loeb has published a report analyzing the revenues and expenditures of California schools districts. The report, entitled “District Dollars: Painting a Picture of Revenues and Expenditures in California’s School Districts” was co-authored by Jason Grissom and Katharine Strunk. It was released in March 2007, along with the other “Getting Down to Facts” studies. In their report the authors examine spending and revenues across districts and across time, and compare the patterns that they observe in California to patterns in other states. Among other things, they find that California school districts differ dramatically in the amount of money that they have to spend, but that they spend the money they have in generally similar ways.
Parallel Play - Preschool and K-12 Finance Reform in New Jersey and Texas. Working Paper 07-3.
In a new PACE Working Paper, Co-Director Bruce Fuller and Joseph Wright offer policy and implementation lessons from two states – New Jersey and Texas – that have moved to advance preschool and K-12 finance reform in tandem. These states have assembled the puzzle pieces in differing ways, but both states are determined to widen access for families who can least afford quality preschool. The policy experiences of these states over the past quarter century yield notable lessons for current policy debate on pre-school and education finance reform in California.
Making Sense of Career-Technical Education: Options for California. Policy Brief 07-1.
W. Norton Grubb and David Stern
Career-technical education (CTE) is back in the policy spotlight, as Governor Schwarzeneggger and key legislators seek strategies to strengthen California’s much-criticized high schools. Some forms of CTE that integrate academic with occupational content could usefully be expanded to provide high school students with multiple pathways to college and careers. This strategy, which we call "CTE/multiple pathways," is more feasible and desirable for California high schools than other approaches to CTE — including the traditional vocational education of the past century, the "dual" systems developed in Austria and Germany, or the sophisticated technical training provided in community colleges.
Widening Disparity Between State and Federal Gauges of Student Progress
Federal assessments of student learning are now conducted in every state, under NCLB, allowing comparison between the the share of students deemed proficient by state officials and the percentage estimated under the National Assessment of Educational Progress. PACE's Bruce Fuller and Joseph Wright have been tracking this pair of trend lines in 12 diverse states. Their latest findings, presented at the American Educational Research Association in Chicago, detail how state estimates of proficiency have climbed to unprecedented levels when pegged against federal results. The lecture, graphics, and Education Week's reporting of the results can be clicked-on below. For baseline data, look at PACE's earlier report, "Is the No Child Left Behind Act Working?"
California Principals’ Resources: Acquisition, Deployment, and Barriers
Fuller, Bruce; Loeb, Susanna; Arshan, Nicole; Chen, Allison; and Yi, Susanna (2007), Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE).
A Review of State Teacher Policies: What are they, What are their effects, and What are their Implications for School Finance?
Loeb, Susanna, and Miller, Luke (2007), Stanford University.
The Unequal Opportunity to Learn in California's Schools: Crafting Standards to Track Quality
Andrea Venezia and Julie Maxwell-Jolly
Community Voices: California Preschool Directors Speak on Policy Options
PACE's statewide survey of 439 directors of community preschools, those funded outside of school districts, inquired about basic facts and their perceptions of long-term issues. Preschool access and quality remain unfairly distributed among California's diverse communities. Persisting questions examined include how to grow more plentiful and higher quality preschools, and how to ensure a robust balance between organizations run by schools or community organizations. Despite rising interest among policy makers, we know little about how preschool directors themselves understand and evaluate differing policy options. PACE's working paper amplifies the views and voices of local practitioners. Coauthored by Bruce Fuller, Kathryn Gesicki, Thea Sweo, and Sunyoung Jung.
State Strategies To Improve Low-Performing Schools: California's High Priority School Grants Program
Tom Timar is an Associate Professor of Education at U.C. Davis. He has spent much of his career focusing on education policy and governance, and school finance. He is the author of a new study which examines how schools spent High Priority Schools Grant (HPSG) Program funds.
Crucial Issues in California Education, 2006: Rekindling Reform
Crucial Issues in California Education, 2006 provides the education community with an overview of key policy topics grounded in lessons learned from recent research and practice. Authors locate issues within the context of the state's standards and accountability system and current fiscal realities. Each chapter includes demographic and historic perspective, data and analysis, and proposals for long-term structural remedies. Crucial Issues serves as a dynamic reference volume for anyone interested in today's education policy landscape.
Errata: Please note, we wrongly attribute the request of the "Getting Down To Facts" school finance research to the Governor's Advisory Committee on Education Excellence. The studies were jointly requested by Governor Schwarzenegger's Committee on Education Excellence, Democratic leaders in the State Legislature and Jack O'Connell, Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Haleh Hatami, Project Coordinator.
Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William & Flora
Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the Noyce
Foundation.
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Click here for a complete list of PACE publications 