Search

While current higher education literature stresses the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusivity, these imperatives have been mainly absent from conversations related to boards of higher education. In this paper, the authors present a historical overview of the demographic landscape of trustee boards from inception to the present. Using critical literacy as a methodology, the authors problematize the lack of discourses regarding Board's diversity. The authors juxtapose the longstanding homogeneity of boards with the increasing heterogeneity of higher education students and argue that systemic forms of racism have denied the opportunity to diversify those in charge of making decisions in higher education. Additionally, using the case of California, the authors problematize how diversity gaps in board composition manifest even within one of the most diverse and liberal states in the country. Ultimately, the authors make a case for diversifying the board of trustees as an instrumental step to align with the national push for enhanced diversity and equity in higher education.

This paper presents a rationale for using professional and continuing education (PaCE) units at post-secondary institutions throughout California to design and implement talent-pipelines, research and development collaborations, and other knowledge ecosystems where emerging and returning professionals can acquire the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), as well as the experience, they need to address the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The paper provides an analysis of the reasons why PaCE units are uniquely positioned to address the needs of industry and job seekers, and on a timetable that keeps pace with 4IR velocity.

An ongoing debate in K-12 education policy has been between the "reform" agenda, including charter schools and school vouchers, and advocates of traditional public schools, led by educator unions. A similar split has emerged in higher education, particularly community colleges. Using California as an example, this paper: 1) summarizes the evolution of the current political divide between advocates of the "completion and success" agenda and faculty-led opponents, including the major reforms involved, 2) discusses the claims that leading organizations on each side have made, including their policy priorities, and 3) argues that the two sides share do share some areas of mutual agreement. The paper concludes by noting future policy considerations that could complicate reform efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous challenges to students across the United States, particularly those who are parents enrolled in community colleges. California's community college system serves a diverse student population, including a significant number of non-traditional, working adults who are also parents. These students have faced unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic, including the difficulties of balancing childcare responsibilities with academic and professional obligations. This paper summarizes the preliminary findings of a study that intends to contribute to the crucial conversation around childcare needs among community college students. The focus of this study was understanding the experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) mothers with young children and the impact of COVID-19 on their educational experiences in community colleges across the state of California.

In this paper we present the Advancing Racial Equity in Community College Model which maps out the organizational conditions shaping institutional transformation. Focused on two dimensions, the level of "organizational support" and "shared responsibility" to enact equity, we describe four quadrants with distinct organizational conditions that shape how equity advocates design, build, and sustain equity efforts. With well-documented racial inequities and renewed calls for racial justice across higher education, it demands new ways of exploring and understanding how institutional actors leading equity efforts are nested within differing organizational contexts that can enable as well as restrict the enactment and success of racial equity efforts. Our model helps equity advocates gain an "awareness" of known barriers to implementation in higher education, assess the readiness of their campus for racialized change, and take action to build the necessary institutional support and capacity to move the work forward.

This study explores the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students in California's community college Dual Enrollment (DE) programs. The study investigates how DE staff describe an understanding and commitment towards equity for Black and Latinx students in DE programs and how staff engage in equitably aimed praxis to serve Black and Latinx students through practices and collaborations between feeder high schools. Using a Critical Policy Analysis lens, the research highlights how Black and Latinx students are prioritized through equitable practices focused in advising and outreach. However, not all DE staff prioritize Black and Latinx through practices. Despite this, scant instances reveal that collaborative efforts between DE programs, high schools, and districts improve DE services and outcomes, though majority of K-12 partners are absent from collaborative efforts led by DE programs. The study emphasizes the need for increased collaboration between K-12 partners and integrating equitable approaches to DE outreach and advising to engage and recruit Black and Latinx students. This research advances the conversation of equity in DE programs and offers insights for addressing participation gaps among Black and Latinx students.

In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

Emotional, behavioral, and mental health challenges make it difficult for many children and adolescents to engage and succeed at school. Research indicates that at least 20% of all children and adolescents have been diagnosed with one more mental health disorders. Behavioral problems, anxiety, and depression are the most diagnosed mental health issues, and they often co-occur. Moreover, these conditions are being diagnosed at increasingly younger ages. In the past several years there has been a rise in the number of adolescents and young adults with serious mental health issues such as major depression and suicidal ideation, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems for children and adolescents. Schools offer promise for providing intensive clinical support to the most at-risk students, and schools are necessary environment to explore the implementation of multi-modal youth mental health services. This paper provides an analysis of an intensive, in-school mental health services model developed and implemented by Effective School Solutions (ESS), a New Jersey based provider of high acuity school based mental health services for K-12 students. We analyze this multi-modal model for its effectiveness in improving educational outcomes for over 3,000 students identified as requiring intensive clinical mental health support across the 2021-22 school year. This analysis reveals that those students receiving High- versus Low-fidelity programming (i.e., multiple sessions per week for at least half of the school year versus for less than half of the school year) had better educational outcomes. Students receiving High-fidelity programming had greater improvements in grade point average (GPA) and greater reductions in absences across the school year. A higher number of in-school clinical sessions per week significantly predicted a greater increase in GPA and a greater reduction in total disciplinary incidents (including out of school suspensions) across the school year. This report provides initial promising evidence that in-school intensive mental health clinical services yield positive effects on students' educational outcomes. Though future research is needed to validate and extend these findings, schools may consider implementing such services onsite to meet students where they are and to optimize students' mental, behavioral, and educational well-being. [This white paper report was published by the Yale Child Study Center."]

Since establishing its first campus in 1868, the University of California (UC), California's land-grant university, developed into the nation's first multi-campus system in the United States, and is today widely recognized as the world's premier network of public research universities. This short essay provides an historical brief on the role that shared governance, and specifically the role of the Academic Senate, played in creating an academic culture of excellence and high achievement in pursuing its tripartite mission of teaching and learning, research and knowledge production, and public service. A key component in understanding the critical role of the Senate in UC's evolution from a single campus in Berkeley to now a ten-campus system is the university's unusual designation as a public trust in the state constitution that, beginning in 1879, protected the university at critical times from external political pressures and allowed the university to develop an internal academic culture guided by the Academic Senate. By the 1920s, the emergence of California's unique and innovative public system of higher education, with UC as the sole public provider of doctoral degrees and state funded research, also helps explain the ability of the UC system to maintain its mission and formulate what is termed a "One University" model. The Academic Senate has created coherency and shared values within UC, and a culture and expectation for faculty performance that is unique among universities around the world. This essay also offers a brief reflection on the Academic Senate's past influence, its current status, and prospective role. The overall intent is to provide context for the current academic community and higher education scholars regarding the past and future role of faculty in university governance and management, and what distinguishes UC in the pantheon of major research universities.

This study investigates racial disparities in school closures both within California and nationally. Findings highlight an alarming pattern: Schools enrolling higher proportions of Black students are at significantly increased risk of closure relative to those enrolling fewer Black students, a pattern that is more pronounced in California than elsewhere in the United States. This study also finds that conventional explanations for school closures--such as declining enrollments, poverty rates, and achievement differences--cannot fully account for why schools enrolling larger shares of Black students have greater odds of closure. These findings underscore that school closures in California and elsewhere reflect racial inequalities that require adequate policymaking to ensure equitable and fair school-closure proceedings

Measures of student disadvantage--or risk--are critical components of equity-focused education policies. However, the risk measures used in contemporary policies have significant limitations, and despite continued advances in data infrastructure and analytic capacity, there has been little innovation in these measures for decades. We develop a new measure of student risk for use in education policies, which we call Predicted Academic Performance (PAP). PAP is a flexible, data-rich indicator that identifies students at risk of poor academic outcomes. It blends concepts from emerging "early warning" systems with principles of incentive design to balance the competing priorities of accurate risk measurement and suitability for policy use. PAP is more effective than common alternatives at identifying students who are at risk of poor academic outcomes and can be used to target resources toward these students--and students who belong to several other associated risk categories--more efficiently.

As the COVID-19 crisis disrupted schooling, recovery efforts to ensure educational continuity in California included the adoption of Senate Bill 98, which mandated local educational agencies (LEAs) to complete Learning Continuity and Attendance Plans (LCPs). These plans act as critical snapshots of sensemaking in the midst of crisis; however, their details have yet to be explored statewide, concealing the potential trends that arise in local planning when traditional schooling is disrupted by crisis. Through a multiphase, mixed methods approach, this study examines the legislative requirements of an educational policy that orchestrated large-scale local planning. Results suggest that, during a crisis, equity is centered in both policy and the plans of public school districts, threaded through accessibility to instruction as well as academic and social-emotional supports. [For the Policy Brief, see ED624610.]

Eligibility is a policy construct unique to California. UC and CSU are the only US universities that distinguish between eligibility for admission and admission itself and set separate requirements for each. The eligibility construct derives originally from California's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, which famously mandated that UC admit students from the top 12.5% (and CSU from the top 33.3%) of California public high school graduates. Thus began a long and twisting saga of policy implementation that has become increasingly convoluted over time. UC's decision to eliminate the SAT/ACT in university admissions presents an opportune moment to rethink the eligibility construct from the ground up. This essay proposes, first, eliminating the now-antiquated "Eligibility Index," a mechanical algorithm that is increasingly at odds with the thrust of UC admissions policy over the past two decades; second, moving from a 12.5% eligibility target (the percentage of students who qualify for admission) to a 7.5% participation target (the percentage who actually enroll); and third, redefining eligibility from a norm-referenced to a criterion-referenced construct. "Using holistic or comprehensive review to select from among applicants who have successfully completed UC subject requirements at a specified level of proficiency, UC would admit that number of applicants needed to yield a 7.5% participation rate among California high school graduates." This is the same average participation rate that the Master Plan has yielded historically, so that the proposal would be revenue-neutral with respect to State funding for UC. At the same time, like the 12.5% eligibility target, a 7.5% participation target would tie UC enrollment growth to growth in California's college-age population. Conversion from an eligibility to a participation target would not eliminate the eligibility construct but would redefine it. In place of a norm-referenced standard -- whether students rank in the "top 12.5%" -- eligibility would be redefined as a criterion-referenced standard: Whether students have mastered the foundational knowledge and skills needed to succeed at UC. When we judge students against that standard, two truths become evident. First is that the pool of students who are qualified for and can succeed at UC is far larger than UC can accommodate; the chief advantage of a criterion-referenced standard is the greater scope for UC to select from a broader, more diverse pool of qualified applicants. Second is that expanding eligibility is much less a priority than increasing actual enrollment and participation rates among the pool of those who are already qualified.

Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less-lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which increasingly enforce GPA restriction policies that prohibit students with poor introductory grades from declaring popular majors. We investigate these GPA restrictions by constructing a novel 50-year dataset covering four public research universities' student transcripts and employing a dynamic difference-in-difference design around the implementation of 29 restrictions. Restricted majors' average URM enrollment share falls by 20 percent, which matches observational patterns and can be explained by URM students' poorer average pre-college academic preparation. Using first-term course enrollments to identify students who intend to earn restricted majors, we find that major restrictions disproportionately lead URM students from their intended major toward less-lucrative fields, driving within-institution ethnic stratification and likely exacerbating labor market disparities. [Funding for this report was provided by University of California Humanities Research Institute and Opportunity Insights.]

In the United States, the prevailing high school mathematics course sequence begins with a year of Algebra I, followed by a year of geometry and a year of Algebra II. Educators and others have raised concerns about the extent to which this sequence, which prioritizes the mastery of algebra, is appropriate for the longer-term education and career goals of students who do not intend to pursue STEM degrees in college. These concerns have impelled educators and policymakers to reexamine the prominence of algebra in high school mathematics curricula and to consider new approaches that provide students with more mathematics course options better aligned with their academic and career goals. In this paper, we explore existing approaches to high school mathematics curricula as well as new developments in the field. To start, we discuss a range of high school mathematics course sequences that are currently offered across the country and look at some of the systemic challenges embedded within the traditional paradigm. Then we explore federal and state changes to the provision of high school mathematics in the early 21st century, which we follow with a look at the influence of postsecondary institutions on high school math curricula. We then introduce short case studies of innovative high school math reforms that are occurring in five states. We conclude the paper by considering the Charles A. Dana Center's new initiative, Launch Years, and how this project works to reimagine high school mathematics and its relationship to postsecondary education and careers.

All universities and colleges in the United States were deeply and immediately affected by the sudden appearance of COVID-19. Two-year public community colleges suffered the same fate as their university neighbors: the immediate needs were to close up operations, shift instruction to online and distance modalities and keep students engaged and focused when all around them collapsed. But the community colleges suffered under constraints not shared by many of their university neighbors: limited discretionary, little or no funding from endowments to fall back on and students whose limited economic resources and constrained family circumstances made any transitions much more difficult and stress-inducing. But it would be an error to look at the experience of U.S. community colleges and their students during the pandemic only through the lens of their constraints or their limited resources. This is instead a story of resilience and engagement, and the remarkable ability of poor and first-generation students to resist despair and isolation. More critically, it is a story of what happens when equity drives college practice and commitments to participation and democratic governance matter.

Educational inequality due to family socioeconomic status (SES) has been the focus of both public dialogue and education research in the United States for many years. The current study aims to understand how educational inequality due to family SES has changed in the United States. Specifically, the study focuses on the changes in achievement gaps between high and low SES students between 2003 and 2017 and the changes in the performance of low-SES students over time. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 8 mathematics assessment were used for the analyses. Results show that the SES achievement gap at the national level has remained the same over time. State-level results suggest that 34 of the 50 states' SES achievement gaps experienced no significant change between 2003 and 2017, 14 gaps widened, and only two SES gaps narrowed. In addition, at the national level, more low-SES students achieved at the NAEP Basic and at the NAEP Proficient levels over time with a majority of states improving their low-SES students' performance. In conclusion, the study contributes to the existing literature not only by reflecting on U.S. national trends using an effective SES index, but also by providing state-level results. It also collects trend data on states' macro-level indicators, including economic growth, social inequality, and educational expenditures, allowing state-specific findings to be presented in the context of changes in macro-level context. Initial explorations of relationships between state SES achievement gap trends and macroeconomic factors are presented to motivate future research. The trends in SES achievement gaps and the specific policy contexts are presented in greater detail for 13 states/jurisdictions.

This report, commissioned by the Bay Area Geographic Leads Consortium, explores how five county offices of education and local school districts pivoted to reach, teach, and support the holistic needs of students experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report documents the rising number of students experiencing homelessness as well as the causes and consequences of childhood homelessness. It also describes how educators faced unique challenges and creatively found solutions to educating students without a stable home or an appropriate place to attend school remotely. Each county offers promising examples of ways to provide instruction and learning supports to students without homes and meaningful ways to deliver urgently needed social-emotional, mental health, and well-being assistance to students and families, including meeting basic needs such as food and shelter. The report also describes innovative ways that the counties addressed technology and connectivity gaps that resulted from the shift to distance learning and collaborated with community-based partners.

I study the efficacy of test-based meritocracy in college admissions by evaluating the impact of a grade-based "top percent'' policy implemented by the University of California. Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) provided large admission advantages to the top four percent of 2001-2011 graduates from each California high school. I construct a novel longitudinal dataset linking the ELC era's 1.8 million UC applicants to educational and labor market outcomes. I first employ a regression discontinuity design to show that ELC led over 10 percent of barely-eligible applicants from low-opportunity high schools to enroll at selective UC campuses instead of less-selective public colleges and universities. Half of those participants were from underrepresented minority groups, and their average SAT scores were at the 12th percentile of their UC peers. Instrumental variable estimates show that ELC participants' more-selective university enrollment caused increases in five-year degree attainment by 30 percentage points and annual early-career wages by up to $25,000. I then analyze ELC's general equilibrium effects by estimating a structural model of university application, admission, and enrollment with an embedded top percent policy. I find that ELC and counterfactual expansions of ELC substantively increase disadvantaged students' net enrollment at selective public universities. Reduced-form and structural estimates show that ELC participants derived similar or greater value from more-selective university enrollment than their higher-testing peers. These findings suggest that access-oriented admission policies at selective universities can promote economic mobility without efficiency losses. [Additional funding for this research was provided by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.]

Many low-income young people of color living in cities today face great adversity and the resiliency of the cities they live in is being challenged on many fronts: violence, poverty, gentrification, and homelessness as well as the threat of global climate change. The predicament is that, despite their enthusiasm and innate intelligence on the matter, the youth of today are rarely invited into the city planning process. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an equity-driven framework to guide and assess the quality of young people's engagement in city planning -- using resilience as a case study -- for cities now and in the future. The first part of this paper examines the experiences of young people involved in Youth - Plan, Learn, Act, Now! (Y-PLAN) Initiative, a civic learning and engagement initiative centered on the belief that fostering relationships between civic leaders and young people around meaningful action creates more resilient cities that work for all residents. The second part of this paper examines the importance of students' lived experience and the value of the tools of professional practice in relation to the effectiveness of their proposals for how to respond to climate change and enhance resiliency in their communities. This paper concludes that then both young people's lived experiences and adult professional practices are equally privileged, the results can be formidable. Together these efforts can lead to the development and adoption of innovative, inclusive, and equitable new approaches to city planning.

Academic freedom is a fundamental concept that exists to ensure that institutions of higher education function for the public good and that colleges are constructed on the foundations of genuine trust. For over a century, members of The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have been agile guardians, careful stewards, and erudite experts regarding the principle of academic freedom and its application in the faculty profession. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges began a deep and sustained conversation on academic freedom. California community colleges are in a period of significant and systemic change. Faculty are engaging with and challenging each other to act in adopting culturally responsive teaching, in eliminating racism in all its forms--interpersonal, institutional, systemic--and in serving the whole student in ways that provide care and support as well as ensure a clear and direct path toward reaching an educational goal. The purpose of this paper is not to be the definitive word on academic freedom in the community college system; rather, it is to begin an exploration of what academic freedom means and how it should be protected and implemented in California's community colleges. This paper strives to lay a foundation to ensure that the principles of academic freedom remain strong and flexible to adapt to the changing dynamics in the California community colleges and in academia.

Racism exists within communities and within colleges. It is ever-present in the structures that professionals in the California Community Colleges system work within and that students of color must navigate. Striving to achieve equity is not enough and is not possible within the current community college system. Policies, processes, and other systemic structures built on a history of racism must first be dismantled and then rebuilt with a focus on equity and inclusion. Dismantling racist structures requires a review of the history that created those structures. It requires understanding the history of the construct of race as a culture, the white supremacy ideology, the centuries of laws intended to maintain positions of power for whites, and the ways in which the equity and diversity efforts within California's community colleges have fallen short. Constructing anti-racist structures and developing anti-racist campus cultures require an understanding of the tenets of antiracism education and principles for professional development. This paper provides foundational information for California community college practitioners to better understand the origins of today's racial conflict and reasons why gaps in achieving equitable educational outcomes for students, particularly for students of color, cannot be closed within current systems. The paper is intended to engage college practitioners in self-reflection and critical consciousness as they develop and deliver the strategic anti-racism education and professional development needed to reconstruct campus cultures and learning environments built on principles of equity and inclusion. It concludes with recommendations for individual growth, for local academic senates, for colleges and districts, and for the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges. [Title varies: "Anti-Racism Education in the California Community Colleges: Acknowledging Historical Context and Assessing and Advancing Effective Anti-Racism Practices for Faculty Professional Development."]

College students who are parents or caregivers of dependent children make up more than one in five U.S. undergraduates. Colleges need basic information about the experiences and outcomes of the student parents they serve, since these students face distinct challenges, including high rates of economic insecurity and significant time and caregiving demands that can affect their educational outcomes (Institute for Women's Policy Research and Ascend at the Aspen Institute 2019). This briefing paper discusses why data on student parents are critical to increasing equity in college outcomes, and reviews existing and potential new data sources on undergraduate college students with children. It also provides recommendations for improving data collection efforts around parent status, including examples of how these data can be collected by institutions of higher education.

Like California, South Korea's system of higher education is a work in progress. Each must evolve and reshape themselves at various points in their histories in their quest for relevancy and, increasingly, to external pressures and demands of governments and, more generally, society. Utilizing California's pioneering higher education system as a comparative lens, I provide an outsider's view of South Korea's higher education system from two perspectives. First, a national system viewpoint: How is the higher education eco-system organized and managed, and what funding and other incentives are provided by the national government? The second is an institutional viewpoint: What is the academic and management culture of national universities and how might they seek self-improvement and a greater impact on their regional role? In pursuing this analysis, I leverage my knowledge and research related to California's efforts to build its mass higher education system with institutions of high quality and world prestige as well as aspects of my "New Flagship University" model that focus on institutional self-improvement and management. Two general observations are offered: First, Korea needs to reorganize its network of public and private tertiary institutions; that includes reducing the number of private institutions, while also improving regional role and impact of its public institutions. Second, a major challenge for Korea, in my view, is to deemphasize the race for rankings and to focus more on the internal management capacity of institutions, and to pursue a more holistic societal role for its universities. "The New Flagship University" model is one way to examine this issue for Korea. [This essay was written at the request of South Korea's President's Council on Education and presented at the Korea/OECD conference held in Ilsan, Republic of Korea, on October 24, 2019.]

Although many programs remotely disseminate information to students about the college application process, there is little evidence as to how students experience these programs. This paper examines a large-scale remote counseling program in which college counselors initiated interactions with 15,000 high school seniors via text message to support them through the college application process. Given the passive nature of text messaging, not all of the counselors' prompts elicited similar responses from students. I use text-as-data methods (combining qualitative coding and supervised machine learning) to measure which interactions lead to productive engagement between counselors and students, and which do not. I show that interactions about financial aid offers and financial aid applications are much more likely to generate productive engagement than interactions about college lists. This finding may help to explain why recent remote counseling interventions that have sought to influence students' college lists have been ineffective.

This study examines the effects of English Learner (EL) status on subsequent Special Education (SPED) placement. Through a research-practice partnership, we link student demographic data and initial English proficiency assessment data across seven cohorts of test takers and observe EL and SPED programmatic participation for these students over seven years. Our regression discontinuity estimates consistently differ substantively from results generated through regression analyses. We find evidence that the effect of EL status on SPED placement was either null or tied to slight under-identification. Our results suggest that under-identification occurred two years after EL classification. We also find that EL status led to under-identification for Spanish speakers and proportionate representation for Mandarin/Cantonese speakers and speakers of all other languages. [Additional funding was provided by the California Education Partners.]

Prior work has shown that students' reports of their levels of social-emotional skills predict achievement levels and gains, but we have little evidence on whether within-student changes in student reports of social-emotional skills are predictive of changes in theoretically related academic and behavioral outcomes. We use large-scale data from the California CORE districts to examine whether changes in individual students' reports of their social-emotional skills from one school year to the next predict changes in state math and English language arts (ELA) test scores and attendance. The CORE districts provide the largest yearly measurement of social-emotional learning (SEL), achievement, and attendance data in the U.S. We show that changes in self-reported social-emotional skills predict changes in both achievement and attendance. These results are robust across model specifications. Moreover, the relationships between SEL and achievement and attendance outcomes are consistent across student subgroups.

On May 21, 2020, the University of California (UC) Board of Regents unanimously approved the suspension of the standardized test requirement (ACT/SAT) for all California freshman applicants until fall 2024. UC plans to create a new test that better aligns with the content the University expects students to have mastered for college readiness. However, if a new test does not meet specified criteria in time for fall 2025 admission, UC will eliminate the standardized testing requirement for California students. The Board's decision is the seeming culmination of a 19 year debate over the role of standardized test scores at UC. Opponents of the widespread use of the SAT have long claimed that the SAT promotes needless socioeconomic stratification: The test favors students from upper income families and communities, in part because they can afford a growing range of expensive commercially available test preparation courses and counseling. The Regents' 2020 decision echoes this view. Yet UC has an even longer history of concern with the standardized testing. In fact, and as discussed in this essay, UC was relatively slow in adopting the SAT as a requirement in admissions when compared to other selective universities, public or private. This provides the basis for a brief discussion of the current politics related to admissions at UC. Setting admission policy is not simply the result of rational policy solutions; they are, in some form, a reflection of the internal and external politics that shape the policy behaviors of a university -- particularly at highly selective public institutions with greater levels of expected accountability and expectations than their private counterparts. Another axiom that is largely lost in the debates over the usage of test scores and a growing array of admissions requirements: selective public universities may attempt to create relatively transparent admissions criteria, but in the end much of the decision-making is arbitrary when choosing among a large pool of highly qualified candidates. I then offer a number of observations: First, that changes in admissions policies focused, to some extent, on equity and greater access to underrepresented groups means redistribution of what is essential a zero sum, access to a selective public university. Second, that the path to the Regents' 2020 vote ignored the recommendations of UC's Academic Senate, designated by the Regents to set admissions policies. The Senate, UC's representative body of the faculty, recommended retaining the SAT and ACT in setting UC eligibility policies and for campus selection of students for admission. This raises internal questions of the purpose and future of shared governance.

This study finds that, breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago. This descriptive analysis is designed to be understood by a general, non-technical readership. It primarily compares student achievement gains on the NAEP after implementation of Common Core to student achievement gains in the years preceding implementation of Common Core. Since test score results, by their nature, tend to "bounce" somewhat from one year to the next and gains are rarely perfectly smooth, a significant part of the analysis determines the average annual gain since implementation of Common Core and compares that to the average annual gain before implementation of Common Core. This report also includes a section addressing defenses by Common Core advocates denying responsibility for the poor results. The following state samples are included: (1) California; (2) Florida; (3) Georgia; (4) Illinois; (5) Kentucky; (6) Massachusetts; and (7) New York.

One of the major claims of the report of University of California's Task Force on Standardized Testing is that SAT and ACT scores are superior to high-school grades in predicting how students will perform at UC. This finding has been widely reported in the news media and cited in several editorials favoring UC's continued use of SAT/ACT scores in university admissions. But the claim is spurious, the statistical artifact of a classic methodological error: "omitted variable bias." Compared to high-school grades, SAT/ACT scores are much more strongly correlated with student demographics like family income, parental education, and race/ethnicity. As a result, when researchers omit student demographics in their prediction models, the predictive value of the tests is artificially inflated. When student demographics are included in the model, the findings are reversed: High-school grades in college-preparatory courses are actually the stronger predictor of UC student outcomes. The Task Force should go back to the drawing board and provide the UC community with more realistic estimates of the true value-added by the tests.

As the California Community Colleges system strives to meet the needs of students, one important part of its mission is transfer, as this goal is the one most identified by community college students. In order to address the needs and goals of so many students, community colleges throughout the state must provide resources that can guide students through the process. It is focused on removing barriers to a college education and providing a wide array of opportunities for underrepresented students throughout the state. The California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office "Vision for Success" lists as one of its goals that the system will "Over five years, increase by 35% the number of California Community College students transferring annually to a UC or CSU." This goal is critical in order for California to meet demand of an educated workforce and close the equity gap created by systemic barriers. Equity in a transfer world involves removing barriers in transfer pathways, aligning curriculum across the California Community Colleges, the University of California, and California State University systems, and successfully supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds to achieve their goal of transfer. [For "Vision for Success Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force," see ED610507.]

To boost college graduation rates, policymakers often advocate for academic supports such as coaching or mentoring. Proactive and intensive coaching interventions are effective, but are costly and difficult to scale. We evaluate a relatively lower-cost group coaching program targeted at first-year college students placed on academic probation. Participants attend a workshop where coaches aim to normalize failure and improve self-confidence. Coaches also facilitate a process whereby participants reflect on their academic difficulties, devise solutions to address their challenges, and create an action plan. Participants then hold a one-time follow-up meeting with their coach or visit a campus resource. Using a difference-in-discontinuity design, we show that the program raises students' first-year GPA by 14.6 percent of a standard deviation, and decreases the probability of first-year dropout by 8.5 percentage points. Effects are concentrated among lower-income students who also experience a significant increase in the probability of graduating. Finally, using administrative data, we provide the first evidence that coaching/mentoring may have substantial long-run effects, as we document significant gains in lower-income students' earnings seven to nine years following entry to the university. Our findings indicate that targeted, group coaching can be an effective way to improve marginal students' academic and early career outcomes.

This paper provides information about noncredit instruction in the California Community Colleges and updates the 2009 paper "Noncredit Instruction: Opportunity and Challenge" to incorporate subsequent changes from the last decade. Since the passage of SB 361 (Scott, 2006), noncredit instruction has seen significant changes, including the equalization of funding for some areas of noncredit instruction, the passage of the Adult Education Block Grant that created adult education consortia including K-12 and community college adult education providers, and the passage of AB 705 (Irwin, 2017) that specifically encouraged colleges to use noncredit courses to support the needs of credit students. Despite noncredit's long history in the community colleges, a limited number of robust noncredit programs currently exist, and many colleges may be looking to or are beginning to offer noncredit courses for the first time. This paper is intended to provide information about noncredit instruction that will be useful to individuals with varying backgrounds and experience with noncredit and to provide recommendations that will help noncredit continue to serve the needs of diverse student populations. [For the original paper, "Noncredit Instruction: Opportunity and Challenge" (adopted spring 2009), see ED510579.]

Libraries are the central resource for supporting faculty and students in their research and information needs, both physically and remotely. This essential role of libraries and library faculty has remained consistent amid significant technological and pedagogical changes within the community college system. As librarians continue to determine their other roles within the California Community Colleges System and local districts in response to evolving demands, the inclusion and engagement of library faculty in college decision-making processes, program development, and other academic and professional matters are critical. Just as each student body and community is diverse with its own characteristics, needs, and goals, so are each of the libraries throughout the California community colleges. This paper provides encouragement for library faculty, administrators, and staff to apply the various recommendations outlined throughout its text to meet their individual campus needs and requirements in providing impactful and equitable library instruction and services. It outlines the importance of library faculty in facilitating student success and provides information on the core roles of library faculty in the California Community Colleges System. The content of the paper may be used to inform the development of local and external policies, regulations, and guidelines that pertain to the operation and performance of California community college libraries and assist in the ongoing dialog among library faculty, staff, and administration regarding the role, services, design, and development of libraries and librarians. [The paper was developed by the Transfer, Articulation, and Student Services Committee of the Academic Senate in partnership with the Council of Chief Librarians.]

Work-based learning provides students an opportunity as aspiring employees to explore careers and to turn theory and simulation into practice by gaining on-the-job experience. The hands-on experience gained from work-based learning opportunities, especially when considered in combination with the attainment and application of employment soft skills, is a critical component of career training and preparation. This paper seeks to define a variety of work-based learning experiences including internships, cooperative work experience, apprenticeship programs, clinical or practicum experience, preceptorships, and other forms of work-based learning, including work study as a financial aid option, all of which are used within the California Community College system. These experiences are defined by providing information about intent and guiding principles, statutes and regulations, funding, and stakeholder roles. A summary of recommendations concludes the report.

Shifting demographics within the state of California and more specifically within the California Community College System have created a need for equitable processes to promote the success of students. Students who enter community colleges should be afforded the same level of support whether they enter virtually or in-person. The development of the Online Education Initiative has sparked great interest and collaboration within the system to support students' successful completion of courses by using services such as online tutoring. Framing the need to innovate and reimagine the way institutions serve students in a continually adapting and evolving world of technology is equally valuable and important. Colleges must meet the needs of all students who may have barriers to success, such as full workloads along with course commitments and other barriers that impact diverse student populations. This document was created by the Transfer, Articulation, and Student Services Committee (TASSC) of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges and is intended for local academic senates to use as a guide for online tutoring considerations. It may also be used to assist community colleges with the development of effective practices for online tutoring programs. Information provided in this paper may help to develop, enhance, identify, and address areas of both value and concern for online tutoring programs. As such, this paper contains multiple sections that include the following: (1) Accreditation and Online Tutoring; (2) The Value and Benefits of Online Tutoring; (3) Audiences for Online Tutoring; (4) Online Tutoring Skills and Practices; (5) Challenges and Parameters of Services; and (6) Recommendations for Practice.

While the importance of social-emotional learning for student success is well established, educators and researchers have less knowledge and agreement about which social-emotional skills are most important for students and how these skills distribute across student subgroups. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh grade students in California districts, this paper describes growth mindset gaps across student groups, and confirms, at a large scale, the predictive power of growth mindset for achievement gains, even with unusually rich controls for students' background, previous achievement, and measures of other social-emotional skills. Average annual growth in English language arts and math corresponding to differences between students with fixed and growth mindset in a same school and grade level is 0.07 and 0.05 standard deviations respectively, after adjusting for students' characteristics and previous achievement. This estimate is equivalent to 48 and 35 additional days of learning.

Teachers play a critical role in establishing classroom and school environments that contribute to students' social and emotional development. This paper explores whether we can estimate a classroom-level measure of student growth in SEL by applying value-added models to students' [social-emotional learning] SEL. We analyze data from the 2016 and 2017 administrations of student self-report surveys, which contain responses from roughly 40,000 students in Grade 5 within five of California's CORE Districts. We estimate separate value-added models for each of the four SEL constructs assessed--growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness--and for math and [English language arts] ELA academic growth. We find across-classroom-within-school variance of students' SEL outcomes, even after accounting for school-level variance. The magnitude of classroom-level impacts on students' growth in SEL appears similar to impacts on students' growth in ELA and math, although the growth models of SEL do not perform as well as growth models of academic outcomes. Results suggest that across-classroom-within-school impacts may be larger in magnitude than across-school impacts on students' SEL growth. Finally, we show that there are generally low correlations between classroom-level growth in SEL and classroom-level growth in ELA or math; however, growth mindset stands apart from the other three SEL constructs in that there is a moderately strong relationship. By assessing whether we can develop a sound approach for measuring classroom-level impacts on students' SEL, we aim to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about appropriate and innovative uses of data on students' non-cognitive and social-emotional learning. [For the policy brief, "Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?," see ED600449.]

Academic self-efficacy is a student's belief about their ability to learn or to perform within a school environment. This paper captures differential trends in academic self-efficacy by gender using self-efficacy survey data from five large districts in California from the 2014-15 through 2017-18 school years. We find that female students report significantly higher self-efficacy in elementary school compared to males. In middle school, students' self-efficacy declines for both genders; however, this drop is substantially greater for females, leading to significantly lower levels of reported self-efficacy for females than males from middle school onward. Despite large differences in average self-efficacy, this gendered pattern of drop-off occurs consistently across racial, socioeconomic, and academic subgroups. Average self-efficacy also varies significantly among schools; however, school demographics and culture and climate, as reported by students, are not strongly associated with the average female-male self-efficacy gap. Looking at how the general measure of academic self-efficacy corresponds with test scores, we find the drops in self-efficacy are most pronounced for low scoring students, and that changes in grade-to-grade test scores modestly correlate with changes in general academic self-efficacy.

The number of students opting out of standardized tests has grown in recent years. This phenomenon represents a potential threat to our ability to accurately measure student achievement for schools and districts. This working paper documents the extent to which opting out is observed in the CORE districts. It then models the extent to which various accountability measures would be impacted by growth in the rate of opting out. The growth of opting out could significantly impact some accountability measures in use in California, but the CORE growth measure is largely unaffected. In contrast, accountability metrics that track student achievement by cohort are at risk of becoming biased even with relatively low absolute levels of opting out, and districts should consider explicitly adjusting for the characteristics of the students that actually sit for tests when designing school accountability systems.

Existing research on self-management skills shows that measures of self-management predict student success. However, these conclusions are based on small samples or narrowly defined self-management measures. Using a rich longitudinal dataset of 221,840 fourth through seventh grade students, this paper describes self-management gaps across student groups, and confirms, at a large scale, the predictive power of self-management for achievement gains, even with unusually rich controls for students' background, previous achievement, and measures of other social-emotional skills. Self-management is a better predictor of student learning than are other measures of socio-emotional skills. Average growth in English language arts due to changing from a low to a high level of self-management is between 0.091 and 0.112 standard deviations, equivalent to almost 80 days of learning.

School value-added models are increasingly used to measure schools' contributions to student success. At the same time, policymakers and researchers agree that schools should support students' socialemotional learning (SEL) as well as academic development. Yet, the evidence regarding whether schools can influence SEL and whether statistical growth models can appropriately measure this influence is limited. Recent work shows meaningful differences across schools in changes in SEL scores by grade (Loeb, Christian, Hough, Meyer, Rice, & West, 2019), but whether these differences represent the effects of schools is still unclear. The current paper builds upon this earlier work by examining the stability of the estimated school-by-grade effects on SEL across two years, using a large-scale SEL survey administered in California's CORE districts. We find that correlations among school effects in the same grades across different years are positive, but they are lower than those for math and English Language Arts (ELA). Schools in the top or the bottom of the school effect distribution are more persistent in their impacts across years than those in the middle of the distribution. Overall, the results provide evidence that these school effects measure real contributions to SEL. However, the low stability of effects from one year to the next draw into question whether including these school value-added measures of self-reported SEL in school performance frameworks and systems would be beneficial.

In many school districts the policies that regulate personnel are governed by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) negotiated between teachers' unions and school boards. While there is significant policy attention and, in some cases, legislative action that has affected the scope of these agreements, there is relatively little research that assesses how CBAs vary over time, or whether they change in response to states' legislative reforms. In this paper we compare CBAs in three states at two points in time: before and after substantial reforms in Michigan and Washington impacting collective bargaining and in California where there were no major statutory changes affecting CBAs. We find that few district characteristics predict changes in CBA restrictiveness over time, other than institutional spillovers from local bargaining structures. However, we observe that reforms to the scope of bargaining in Michigan and Washington drastically reduced the restrictiveness of Michigan and Washington CBAs relative to California.

In this paper, we study the role of expertise and independence on governing boards in the context of education. In particular, we examine the causal influence of professional educators elected to local school boards on education production. Educators may bring valuable human capital or experience to school district leadership, thereby improving student learning. Alternatively, the independence of educators may be distorted by interest groups. The key empirical challenge is that school board composition is endogenously determined through the electoral process. To overcome this, we develop and implement a novel research design that exploits California's randomized assignment of the order that candidates appear on election ballots. The insight of our empirical strategy is that ballot order effects generate quasi-random variation in the elected school board's composition. This approach is made possible by a unique dataset that combines election information about California school board candidates with district-level data on education inputs and outcomes. The results reveal that educators on the school board causally increase teacher salaries and reduce district enrollment in charter schools relative to other board members. We do not find accompanying effects on student test scores. We interpret these findings as consistent with educators on school boards shifting bargaining in favor of teachers' unions.

Dual language learners make up an increasing share of preschool students, but they often perform worse than monolingual students on assessments measuring school achievement. This study compares Head Start classrooms implementing either the dual language model or the English with home language support model. The author examines how the models affect gains in English or Spanish oral proficiency over a school year and how classroom organization and quality affect potential proficiency gains. Students in dual language classrooms showed significantly greater average gains from pretest to posttest in English oral proficiency and Spanish oral proficiency than did students in classrooms using the English with home language support model. The difference was even more pronounced among classrooms with low organization. Findings highlight the need for professional development on language model use to ensure consistency in delivery. [This work was funded through the Young Scholars Award.]

Education researchers use surveys widely. Yet, critics question respondents' ability to provide high-quality responses. As schools increasingly use student surveys to drive policymaking, respondents' (lack of) motivation to provide quality responses may threaten the wisdom of using surveys for data-based decision-making. To better understand student satisficing (suboptimal responding on surveys) and its impact on data quality, we examined the pervasiveness and impact of this practice on a large-scale social-emotional learning survey administered to 409,721 students in grades 2-12. Findings indicated that despite the prevalence of satisficing in our sample, its impact on data quality appeared more modest than anticipated. We conclude by providing an accessible approach for defining and calculating satisficing for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working with large-scale datasets.

We illustrate the application of mixture IRT [item response theory] models to evaluate the possibility of respondent confusion due to the negative wording of certain items on a social-emotional learning (SEL) assessment. Using actual student self-report ratings on four social-emotional learning scales collected from students in grades 3-12 from CORE districts in the state of California, we also evaluate the consequences of the potential confusion in biasing student- and school-level scores as well as correlational relationships between SEL and student-level variables. Models of both full and partial confusion are examined. Our results suggest that (1) rating scale confusion due to negatively-worded items does appear to be present; (2) the confusion is most prevalent at lower grade levels (3rd-5th); and (3) the occurrence of confusion is positively related to reading proficiency and ELL status, as anticipated, and bias estimates of SEL correlations with these student-level variables. For these reasons, we suggest future iterations of the SEL measures use only positively oriented items. To maintain measurement continuity, we suggest bias corrections based on the studied mixture model may be useful, although the precision of such corrections is sensitive to the nature of confusion (e.g., full versus partial).