Education Policy Program
 

California Education Policy

 The California Education Program provides high-quality analysis and commentary for the general public on K-14 education issues, as well as research and technical assistance to inform policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders. Its multiple projects include efforts to strengthen K-14 teacher and school leader quality, develop a blueprint for community college reform, and improve college readiness in high schools.

About This Program

Our Approach
New America’s California Education Program focuses on improving public education in grades K through 14. The program’s goals are:
  • to provide high-quality analysis and commentary for the general public on critical, state-level education issues—a need made more urgent by the deterioration of the news industry, and
  • to provide valuable research and technical assistance on specific topics to inform policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders who aim to improve education in California.

Our Vision for Education in California
California’s education challenges are great, but so too is its potential for reform. Much is already known about schools that succeed “against the odds” and new policies could create the conditions for more schools to follow their lead. In the ideal policy framework, California districts and schools would have strong incentives to use research-based strategies to improve performance, but would also have room to innovate and tailor programs to the local context. They would pay close attention to student outcomes and would have information systems that could guide instruction and programming decisions, not just calculate school-level performance for accountability purposes. They would have incentives to improve student performance at all skill levels and to help students succeed in their educational and career goals. They would offer an attractive profession and workplace for adults, yet remain tightly focused on doing what is best for students. They would be part of a culture of learning and continuous improvement that extends all the way up to the state house.

Our Assessment of the Problem
Despite the emerging consensus in support of this vision for education, we are far from it in California today. An illogical system of governance, a tangled web of funding streams, and powerful interest groups have made it virtually impossible to change the status quo in any significant way. Decades of reform efforts (costing billions of dollars) have managed only to tinker at the margins of California’s education system. Student performance has improved modestly, but much more needs to be done to accelerate the rate of improvement and prepare the state’s diverse students for the challenges of a 21st century global economy. Even before financial crisis struck in California, education reform was stalled by a long-standing political stalemate centered on the issue of adequate resources. Caught in the crossfire, good reform ideas simply haven’t been able to gain traction, resulting in a lose-lose situation for California students: no further investments in education and no significant reforms.

To move forward, California needs to disrupt this perennial state of gridlock, a feat we believe can be accomplished only by developing a broader base of stakeholders—from business, labor, student advocates, the general public—who understand key problems of the state’s education system and are equipped to advocate for a sensible reform agenda to address those problems. The California Education Program’s goal is to provide accurate analysis, compelling commentary, and high-quality technical assistance to aid this process over the long term.

Publications

Higher Ed's Bermuda Triangle

Treating children that way is like giving a lion their food without making them hunt for it.

Jacinth Thomas-Val writes the sentence on the blackboard in her classroom at Sacramento City College, then asks her students what's wrong with it. "What does ‘them' refer to in this sentence?" she asks one young woman. The young woman doesn't know, shakes her head, then gets up and leaves the classroom without explanation, not returning for the rest of the period.

Camille Esch | The Washington Monthly | September/October 2009

Put Teachers To the Test

In recent years, reformers have sought to improve our failing public education system by tightening and standardizing the measures we use to judge performance. From the numerical requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to California's increased focus on assessment and accountability, there's been a conscious attempt to use hard data to measure success at every level of the education system.

Camille Esch | Los Angeles Times | March 23, 2008

Dropout Factories

California has a massive dropout problem: An estimated 25 percent of students fail to complete high school, ultimately costing the state billions in lost income tax revenue, crime costs and public assistance.

Last month, a study from UC Santa Barbara suggested that the dropout problem might be more concentrated than previously thought: It found that just 20 percent of schools account for 80 percent of dropouts, and that many of them are "alternative" schools that are meant to help students who… more

Camille Esch | San Francisco Chronicle | March 4, 2008

We're Still Failing Our Students

On Monday, the ACLU of Southern California and Public Advocates Inc. released an upbeat progress report on the results of the settlement of Williams vs. California, a class-action suit brought on behalf of the state’s most-neglected students. In the lowest-performing schools, there are more textbooks, adequate facilities and teachers with proper credentials. However, the report, like the settlement, failed to address the bigger issue: achieving "teacher equity" across the state.

Camille Esch | Los Angeles Times | August 14, 2007

More:

All Publications | All Related Content | Program RSS Feed RSS feed for this program

Articles

Higher Ed's Bermuda Triangle

Treating children that way is like giving a lion their food without making them hunt for it.

Jacinth Thomas-Val writes the sentence on the blackboard in her classroom at Sacramento City College, then asks her students what's wrong with it. "What does ‘them' refer to in this sentence?" she asks one young woman. The young woman doesn't know, shakes her head, then gets up and leaves the classroom without explanation, not returning for the rest of the period.

Camille Esch | The Washington Monthly | September/October 2009

Put Teachers To the Test

In recent years, reformers have sought to improve our failing public education system by tightening and standardizing the measures we use to judge performance. From the numerical requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act to California's increased focus on assessment and accountability, there's been a conscious attempt to use hard data to measure success at every level of the education system.

Camille Esch | Los Angeles Times | March 23, 2008

Dropout Factories

California has a massive dropout problem: An estimated 25 percent of students fail to complete high school, ultimately costing the state billions in lost income tax revenue, crime costs and public assistance.

Last month, a study from UC Santa Barbara suggested that the dropout problem might be more concentrated than previously thought: It found that just 20 percent of schools account for 80 percent of dropouts, and that many of them are "alternative" schools that are meant to help students who… more

Camille Esch | San Francisco Chronicle | March 4, 2008

We're Still Failing Our Students

On Monday, the ACLU of Southern California and Public Advocates Inc. released an upbeat progress report on the results of the settlement of Williams vs. California, a class-action suit brought on behalf of the state’s most-neglected students. In the lowest-performing schools, there are more textbooks, adequate facilities and teachers with proper credentials. However, the report, like the settlement, failed to address the bigger issue: achieving "teacher equity" across the state.

Camille Esch | Los Angeles Times | August 14, 2007

More:

All Articles & Op-Eds | All Related Content | Program RSS Feed RSS feed for this program

Special Projects

The California Education Program focuses on public education in grades K through 14, with an emphasis on college readiness, the high school-to-college transition, community college issues, and teaching and leadership quality across the grades.

The following special projects support in-depth policy work and reform efforts in specific areas.

Blueprint for Community College Student Success Project
The Blueprint for Community College Student Success project aims to change the policymaking environment for community college reform by equipping leaders to translate research and best practices into systemic policy, reducing the data and administrative obstacles to reform, brokering relationships and supporting a coalition of partner organizations, and raising the level of public and media discourse on community colleges. Through these efforts, the project aims to support a major leadership initiative on community college student success over the next two years.

The Blueprint for Community College Student Success Project is funded through a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Key staff
Christopher Cabaldon, Project Director
Camille Esch, California Education Program Director


Project to Strengthen Teacher and School Leader Quality in California
This project aims to identify and develop concrete, state-level policy options for strengthening teacher and school leader quality in California in tough economic times. The project seeks to define the core issues related to teacher and school leader quality, identify systemic barriers and inefficiencies in our current policies, learn from exemplary programs in California and nationally, and develop a set of state-level policy options for strengthening the teacher and school leader workforce. The project will identify both low-cost, near-term options and farther-reaching policy directions for the future. It will include efforts to communicate findings directly to policymakers as well as an outreach strategy that engages a wide variety of external stakeholders.

The Project to Strengthen Teacher and School Leader Quality in California is funded through a generous grant from the Stuart Foundation.

Key staff
Camille Esch, California Education Program Director
Julia Koppich, Visiting Scholar
Richard Seder, Visiting Scholar

 
The New America Foundation, 1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20009
http://www.newamerica.net

New America content carries a Creative Commons license, which permits non-commercial re-use when proper attribution is provided. For additional information, please visit http://www.newamerica.net/about/copyright

This site carries a Creative Commons license, which permits non-commercial re-use of New America content when proper attribution is provided. Please click on this image for more details.