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California does not use a student-level growth model to measure school performance, which is uncommon among states. This brief refutes common beliefs about growth models and provides evidence that they are inaccurate or unsupported. It suggests that California should adopt a growth model to replace the current "change" metric in the California School Dashboard, with student-growth percentiles and residual-gain growth models as two specific models that would more accurately identify schools that require support.
Evidence from the CORE Districts and the PACE/USC Rossier Poll
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The increase in students opting out of standardized tests is a threat to accurately measuring student achievement. This brief examines the effects of opting out in the CORE districts and models how it could affect accountability measures. More opt-outs could significantly impact some metrics, but the growth measure is largely unaffected. Metrics tracking achievement by cohort are at risk of bias, even with low levels of opting out. Adjusting for characteristics of students who take the tests could be a solution.

Evidence from California’s CORE Districts
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This paper uses a large dataset to confirm that self-management skills predict student success and are a better predictor of student learning than other socio-emotional skills. Students with higher levels of self-management experience almost 80 days of additional learning. The paper also describes self-management gaps across student groups.
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In this report we explore the patterns in mathematics course-taking among California public high school seniors. We describe what courses students are enrolled in and how course participation varies by key student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and performance level on the state’s 11th grade assessments. We also explore course-taking patterns for students eligible for California’s public four-year colleges—California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC), and for applicants and admitted students at the CSU and UC.
A Research Summary and Implications for Practice
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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.
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California has added student attendance to its accountability system to emphasize its importance, but chronic absenteeism's causes are not well-understood. Schools face the expectation to address absenteeism, but myths about attendance persist. The brief covers local efforts to improve attendance and highlights the steps required to build schools' and communities' capacity to get and keep kids in school.
Evidence from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier Voter Poll
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Governor Newsom has proposed initiatives to support children under 5, but California voters prioritize K-12 education and college affordability over early education. Despite evidence that high-quality early education has a powerful impact on children’s future success, more active engagement by the Governor and his allies may be necessary to build public support for expanding access and improving the quality of early education programs.

Perspectives from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier Poll
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College affordability was ranked as the second most important education policy issue in the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier poll. Governor Newsom’s budget proposal and several bills in the state legislature reflect this concern. The diverse geography and socioeconomic status in CA demand local context consideration for designing effective reforms. Variation in concern over college costs is discussed by county and income and racial/ethnic groups. Proper evaluation and implementation of college promise programs and equity initiatives are suggested as fruitful avenues for addressing college affordability.

Insights from Outlier Schools
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This paper explores social-emotional learning (SEL) practices in ten middle schools and their impact on students' outcomes. Despite the growing recognition of the importance of SEL, many schools struggle to implement effective strategies. The paper focuses on schools with strong student-reported data on SEL outcomes, particularly for African American and Latinx students.
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Continuous improvement is a holistic and research-based approach to education grounded in the belief that every system is designed to achieve the results it gets; therefore, change must be systemwide, not piecemeal. California is a national leader in the continuous improvement movement that is spreading throughout local school districts as well as state and county offices of education. At its annual conference in February 2019, PACE convened a panel of California educators working on the cutting edge of continuous improvement. In this brief, they share their stories and lessons learned.
What It Takes
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This brief discusses the importance of preschool program quality for improving kindergarten readiness, and highlights California Governor Gavin Newsom's efforts to prioritize preschool quality as a signature issue of his administration. The brief covers proposals, successful reforms, and ongoing challenges related to funding, access, and teacher preparation, as discussed at PACE's annual conference in February 2019.
Opportunities for Research, Policy, and Practice
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This brief discusses the challenges of fragmented and misaligned public education and proposes intersegmental collaborations as a solution. Effective collaboration between high school and college, between higher education systems, and between education and economic development sectors can increase student success. Bridging research, policy, and practice is crucial for the sustainability of these collaborations and to improve outcomes for students. The brief provides lessons for effective collaboration and highlights opportunities for bridging research, policy, and practice.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom proposes $10 million to develop a statewide longitudinal data system to track student outcomes and align the education system with workforce needs. The lack of a coherent education database in California is a barrier to fulfilling continuous improvement policy goals. Experts discussed essential questions at a PACE conference in February 2019 to guide the development of a coordinated data system.
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This study examines the impact of target setting for non-academic indicators on school quality ratings in CORE districts' elementary schools. The authors found that non-academic measures of school quality vary over time, are not consistently associated with demographics, and are sensitive to small changes in rating thresholds. The results suggest a need for more research on target setting for non-academic indicators in school quality systems.
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This report presents benchmarking data on self-report student surveys measuring social-emotional learning (SEL) from nearly half a million students in grades 4 through 12 across 8 CORE districts in California. The data provide means and standard deviations by construct, grade level, and subgroup, and can serve as a proxy for a nationally-normed sample for other schools across the country looking to administer the CORE survey.
Evidence from California
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This paper examines how the growth of charter schools affects traditional public schools' financial health in California. The study finds that higher charter enrollment is associated with lower per-pupil spending and fiscal health in traditional public schools, but the effects are smaller than in other states. However, the proportion of expenditures allocated to different activities, goods, or services does not differ. The paper provides lessons for policymakers and suggests that California's economic and policy context may explain the differences from similar analyses in other states.
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This report examines the stability of school effects on social-emotional learning (SEL) over two years in California's CORE districts. The correlations among school effects in the same grades across different years are positive but lower than those for math and ELA. While these effects measure real contributions to SEL, their low stability draws into question whether including them in school performance frameworks and systems would be beneficial.

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This report highlights the challenges that California’s school districts face due to increasing employee health benefit costs, including retiree benefits. Such costs strain district budgets, making it harder to address other priorities, like increasing teacher salaries or supporting disadvantaged students. The brief suggests that districts must navigate these costs more effectively, with potential help from state policymakers, to ensure they are sustainable and not left as unfunded liabilities.

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Community engagement remains one of the most challenging expectations of California’s Local Control Funding Formula, so much so that state leaders have funded an initiative to support regional networks focused on engagement. This brief shares insights from a session where a lead administrator from the San Bernardino County Office provided an update on that initiative. Other speakers shared their on-the-ground experiences working with educators, parents, and students to create the relationships needed for community stakeholder engagement to be consistent, meaningful, and productive.
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This report updates previous research on California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) using a 2019 poll of California voters. Despite increased awareness, over half of voters are unfamiliar with LCFF. Support for the policy remains high but has decreased. Participation in LCFF engagement has increased but remains low, particularly among low-income voters. Low-income communities may not be meaningfully engaged in LCFF decision-making.

How Do Different High School Assessments Measure Up?
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This report investigates the predictive power of the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC), high school GPA (HSGPA), and SAT scores on first-year college outcomes at California State University and University of California campuses. The assessments' relationships with early college outcomes differ by key student subgroups, and HSGPA is found to be a stronger predictor than SBAC or SAT for first-year college GPA and second-year persistence at CSU.
Evidence from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier Voter Poll
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This brief analyzes the 2018 update of the California School Dashboard, examining improvements and areas for continued enhancement. Using data from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier poll, the author characterizes use of and support for the Dashboard, finding low use, equity gaps, but high support and preference for the new Dashboard.

Evidence to Inform Policy
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Governor Newsom’s first Budget Proposal increases funding for education in California. There are areas of substantive overlap in the Budget Proposal and research findings from the Getting Down to Facts II (GDTFII) research project, released in September 2018, which built an evidence base on the current status of California education and implications for paths forward. As the Budget moves from proposal to reality, it is critical that the evidence from GDTFII continues to inform the policy process.

Views from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier Poll
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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.
Describing Chronically Absent Students, the Schools They Attend, and Implications for Accountability
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In "Absent from School," PACE Executive Director Heather J. Hough analyzes student absenteeism using data from California's CORE districts. She explores the differences in absenteeism rates among students and schools, comparing them to other performance indicators. Dr. Hough also examines how schools' performance on chronic absence metrics corresponds to other accountability measures, highlighting the implications for reporting school-level measures of chronic absenteeism.