On July 1, 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed California's landmark Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) into law. In addition to providing districts with greater control over how to spend funds, LCFF marked a tremendous opportunity for educational equity. The new funding law gave districts additional resources, called supplemental and concentration…

Community colleges, with their commitment to open access, admit millions of students each year who are unprepared for college-level work, even though they have earned a high-school diploma. For decades the schools had a built-in base of students attracted to their open doors and relative affordability. But enrollment at public two-year college has…

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,…

Evaluation studies can provide feedback on implementation, support continuous improvement, and increase understanding of evaluation systems' impact on teaching and learning. Despite the importance of educator evaluation studies, states often need support to prioritize and fund them. Successful studies require expertise, time, and a shared…

With increasingly widespread calls to raise educational attainment levels without substantially growing public investment in higher education, policymakers and others have devoted growing attention to the role of financial aid programs in providing access to, promoting affordability for, and incentivizing success in college. Given relative levels…

Purpose: The purpose of this grounded theory qualitative study was to discover the perceptions of special education directors regarding the changes in special education at the policy level, teacher practice level, and student support level necessary to improve the academic achievement of students with disabilities in California. Methodology: The…

California's new accountability system originated in the radical decentralization of power and authority from Sacramento to local schools and their communities brought about by the Legislature's adoption of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013. Under California's previous accountability policies and the federal "No Child Left…

In 2013, Governor Jerry Brown and the California legislature radically restructured the state's school funding system and accountability systems with a weighted student formula and a mandated local planning process in each district. The new law substitutes local politics and grassroots agency for state-driven mandates and compliance reviews. While…

This paper explores what happens to similar groups of children educated in different school districts. In this case, the "twins" in the study are groups of students who live in the same state in similar geographies and who share certain demographic characteristics. For this report, "twin districts" have very similar sizes and…

In 2013 California adopted a new funding formula that includes a significant reinvestment in public education after years of budget cuts. The new law allocates funds differently, directing more resources to students with higher needs and providing more local control and greater transparency. This revolutionary change presents California districts…

Across the United States, community colleges are facing severe funding reductions and surging enrollment, resulting in a condition of impaction in which demand for coursework exceeds financial or physical capacity. In turn, impaction is necessitating changes in enrollment management policies, including rapid evolution in registration priority…

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) represents a fundamental transformation of the way California allocates state funds to school districts and the ways the state expects districts to make decisions about (and report on) the use of these funds. This is the first in a series of short briefs that aims to capture some key themes emerging from…

A year ago at ASBO International's Annual Meeting and Expo in Seattle, Washington, school business officials from four states presented a powerful double-session panel on the status of changes in teacher contracts and educational funding in their regions of the country. The presenters have since updated their comments with new information and…

This brief reports on the early stages and initial successes of turnaround efforts in a California school district. With administrators and educators in the midst of implementing a robust reform agenda, there are clear signs that the district is on the rise. The reform initiatives have stopped a downward slide in student attendance, behavior, and…

Despite the popularity of performance funding among policymakers and policy advocates, only half of all states have ever created a performance funding system for higher education. State performance funding systems have also been surprisingly unstable. Nearly half of those states that established performance funding systems for higher education…