This brief emphasizes the importance of English learner reclassification in California, where over 19 percent of students are classified as English learners. It outlines the high-stakes nature of this process, particularly under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which mandates uniform criteria for exiting English learner programs. The four…

California's K-12 funding and instructional policies for English learners (ELs) have changed significantly over the past 2 decades, including new requirements for instructional materials specific to ELs statewide and a new school funding system that funds ELs at a higher rate. These major policy shifts held the potential to change student learning…

This essay explores a variety of ways California's English Learner (EL) Roadmap can be used as a tool to make significant and transformative changes to provide meaningful learning opportunities for students classified as English Learners. The EL Roadmap contains 4 principles: (1) Asset-oriented and needs-responsive schools; (2) Intellectual…

This document contains the technical appendices for the report "Targeted K-12 Funding and Student Outcomes: Evaluating the Local Control Funding Formula." Appendices include: (1) Data Sources and Sample Construction; (2) Estimating Effects on Student Outcomes; (3) Estimating Targeting Using School Site Spending Data; and (4) Supplemental…

In total, more than 40 percent of the students in California's public schools speak a language other than English at home. In the 2016-17 school year, 21 percent (or more than 1.3 million) of all students were English Learners (ELs). When students who were formerly English Learners are added in, the population of "ever ELs" expands to 38…

The University of Southern California (USC) Center for Enrollment Research, Policy, and Practice, dedicated to research and action that advances the societal benefit of enrollment policies and practices in higher education, sought to shed light on professional preparation, career path and development issues related to chief admission officers and…

The three appendices herein accompany the main report, "California's New School Funding Flexibility." Included are: (1) California's Previous Flexibility Policies; (2) Data and Methods; and (3) Categorical Funding and Student Disadvantage. (Contains 3 tables and 12 footnotes.) [For "California's New School Funding Flexibility,"…

Relatively little is known about the presumably thousands of branch campuses and centers represented among U.S. higher education institutions. In an effort to fill this void, the research committee of the National Association of Branch Campus Administrators (NABCA) conducted a web-based survey targeting the leaders of branch campuses and…

This article illustrates the effects of embedding a common language derived from research, conducted through Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, into teachers' documentations of classroom experiences. It suggests that documentation can be enhanced by using shared professional vocabularies that describe categories important in…

Although public universities account for most of the higher education enrollment in California, independent colleges and universities make an important contribution to meeting enrollment demand. California's 76 independent non-profit colleges and universities provide a wide range of degree and certificate programs. In fall 2008, the independents…

Although public school districts in Southern California are experiencing declining enrollment overall, accompanying this decline is a continuing increase in the percentage of students classified as English language learners (EL). In one Southern California school district with an enrollment of approximately 5,500, EL represented almost 31% of…

At approximately 9,500 years old, two sets of human remains from La Jolla, California (W-12), known as the University House Burials due to the physical location of their discovery on property owned by the University of California, San Diego, are some of the oldest in the United States. These burials are central to a repatriation controversy…

A growing chorus of people are saying that some school districts are overzealous in categorizing students as English-language learners (ELLs) in the aim of complying with federal and state laws to ensure that children of immigrants get extra help with English. They contend that the information requested on the home-language survey that parents are…

The most effective teaching strategies require higher order thinking, but the most used strategies seem to involve lower order thinking. If a comparison could be made between the cognitive rigor of the content standards that students are to be learning and the cognitive rigor of the actual work students are doing, then these kind of data are…

An effort to bring commonality to what students bring with them may be the reason that California's Content Standards so heavily emphasize what students must know and understand. In fact, this author's analysis of California's Content Standards shows that just over one-quarter of the standards are written at a "remember" or an…