This report summarizes efforts to align California's K-12 and postsecondary education systems to address disparities in educational attainment. Based on district leaders' interviews and quantitative data, the report finds that rigorous academic preparation is crucial to college success, and that participation and performance on college admissions exams are key indicators of college readiness. However, substantial inequality exists across all measures of readiness, and district leaders emphasize the importance of engaging families and the community in supporting postsecondary success.

Given the importance of a college degree for both individual and societal economic prosperity, policymakers and educators are focused on strengthening the path to college beyond college entry. In this report, we synthesize the existing literature on four factors key to educational attainment—aspirations and beliefs, academic preparation, knowledge and information, and fortitude and resilience—and the implications of each.

With a new governor, state superintendent and legislators in Sacramento and a diminished federal role in education, there is an opportunity for California’s leaders to take stock of recent educational reforms and make necessary improvements. There are also a host of new and looming issues in K-12 and higher education. As California’s leaders confront these and other issues, where do California voters, including parents, stand on education and education policy? The newest edition of the USC Rossier/PACE Poll shares voter perspectives on a wide range of education issues.

This report details where California public high school students attend college and how college attendance and destinations vary by county. The report was created to fill the information gap on the college destinations of high school graduates in California. The data set assembled includes three recent cohorts of public high school students matched with college enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

This report commemorates the fifth anniversary of the Getting Down to Facts project, which sought to provide a thorough and reliable analysis of the critical challenges facing California’s education system as the necessary basis for an informed discussion of policy changes aimed at improving the performance of California schools and students. The report focuses on the four key issues that received emphasis in the Getting Down to Facts studies: governance, finance, personnel, and data systems.

This report provides policy guidance for new state assessments aligned to Common Core State Standards. It aims to inform the work of the two consortia funded by the U.S. Department of Education in developing the assessments. The report includes three papers addressing issues of computer adaptive assessments, assessment of English learners, and assessing science. The authors' vision of new assessments goes beyond the horizon of current practice and emphasizes the need to use new technologies to provide useful and timely information to students and teachers.