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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.]

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 examines how financial aid reform based on postsecondary institutional performance impacts student choice. Federal and state regulations often reflect concerns about the private, for-profit sector's poor employment outcomes and high loan defaults, despite the sector's possible theoretical advantages. We use student-level data to examine how eliminating public subsidies to attend low-performing for-profit institutions impacts students' college enrollment and completion behavior. Beginning in 2011, California tightened eligibility standards for their state aid program, effectively eliminating most for-profit eligibility. Linking data on aid application to administrative payment and postsecondary enrollment records, this paper utilizes a difference-in differences strategy to investigate students' enrollment and degree completion responses to changes in subsidies. We find that restricting the use of the Cal Grant at for-profit institutions resulted in significant state savings but led to relatively small changes in students' postsecondary trajectories. For older, nontraditional students we find no impact on enrollment or degree completion outcomes. Similarly, for high school graduates, we find that for-profit enrollment remains strong. Unlike the older, nontraditional students, however, there is some evidence of declines in for-profit degree completion and increased enrollment at community colleges among the high school graduates, but these results are fairly small and sensitive to empirical specification. Overall, our results suggest that both traditional and nontraditional students have relatively inelastic preferences for for-profit colleges under aid-restricting policies. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Center for American Progress Equitable Growth Fund and the W.E. Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award program.]

In April 2021, New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Philanthropication thru Privatization Project (PtP) released a joint proposal that the federal government should invest a substantial portion of the windfall proceeds from future auctions of public airwaves (spectrum) to seed a new Digital Equity Foundation dedicated to addressing equity gaps in broadband adoption and affordability, education, telehealth, access to government services, and other critical areas. The next step in realizing this vision is now in the hands of Congress and other federal policymakers, as allocation of spectrum auction proceeds to support the creation of a Digital Equity Foundation requires legislation. Policymakers will also play a critical role in establishing the guidelines for the creation of an initial foundation board and mission. This paper serves to help flesh out the options for how that could be accomplished, drawing on a review of existing foundations created with public and nonprofit assets to identify best practices for how to start a foundation with public, quasi-public, or nonprofit funds. This paper is structured in five parts. Part I provides a brief overview of the proposed Digital Equity Foundation; Part II, examines some key examples of existing U.S. foundations that illustrate the use of public or quasi-public funds to support priority public needs; Part III, explores ways the proposed Digital Equity Foundation might be structured and organized to achieve its programmatic goals to advance digital equity and inclusion, while operating with appropriate transparency and public accountability; Part IV, considers additional legal considerations that surfaced in a review of foundations previously established under federal legislation; and Part V, provides a summary of concrete recommendations for the proposed foundation. [This report is a joint product of the Open Technology Institute at New America and the Philanthropication thru Privation Project.]

Drawing on qualitative data collected in a sample of colleges as part of a larger study on the implementation and impact of AB 705 in California, this paper explores the rollout of corequisite reforms, focusing on the use of embedded tutors in introductory math and English courses as a strategy to meet to the needs of students. This paper highlights promising practices identified through extant research and fieldwork at study institutions, provides additional evidence on the value of the reform, discusses challenges, and makes recommendations for the field.

Drawing on qualitative data collected in a sample of colleges as part of a larger study on the implementation and impact of Assembly Bill 705 in California, this paper explores the rollout of corequisite reforms, focusing on the use of embedded tutors in introductory math and English courses as a strategy to meet to the needs of students. This paper highlights promising practices identified through extant research and fieldwork at study institutions, provides additional evidence on the value of the reform, discusses challenges, and makes recommendations for the field.

Efforts to strengthen the pipeline to college degree completion have focused on improving college access and providing academic, social, and financial supports to students post-enrollment. This paper explores one facet of postsecondary education that has served as a barrier to both college access and success--developmental education--which has proven to exacerbate racial inequities in academic progress in higher education and has effectively decreased college access for low-income students and students of color. After more than a decade of trying to tackle the developmental education problem indirectly through basic skills-related initiatives, task forces, and success initiatives, the California state legislature passed Assembly Bill 705 (AB705) in 2017, which directed colleges to replace standardized placement tests with multiple measures of high school performance to determine college readiness. In this paper, the authors describe the research that prompted developmental education reform approaches nationally and in California, describe the efforts in California that led to the passing of AB705, and summarize research on its implementation and outcomes. Building on analysis of the research, the paper concludes with five key practice and policy recommendations for California community college leaders as they move toward realizing a civil rights agenda for college access and success in the next 25 years: (1) Address faculty and practitioners' beliefs; (2) Move from structural to instructional reform; (3) Improve data accessibility, reporting, and accountability; (4) Expand equitable college access opportunities for students in high school; and (5) Address barriers facing English learners.

The purpose of this feasibility study was to examine the potential impact of reading digital interactive e-books, Word Knowledge e-books (WKe-Books), on essential skills that support reading comprehension with third-fifth grade students. Students (N= 425) read two WKe-Books, that taught word learning and comprehension monitoring strategies in the service of learning difficult vocabulary and targeted science concepts about hurricanes. We investigated whether specific comprehension strategies -- 1) word learning and strategies that supported general reading comprehension, 2) summarization, and 3) question generation, show promise of effectiveness in building vocabulary knowledge and comprehension skills in the WKe-Books. Students were assigned to read one of three versions of each of the two WKe-Books, each version implemented one strategy. The books employed a choose-your-adventure format with embedded comprehension questions that provided students with immediate feedback on their responses. Paired samples t-tests were run to examine pre-to-post differences in learning the targeted vocabulary and science concepts taught in both WKe-Books. For both WKe-Books, students demonstrated significant gains in word learning and on the targeted hurricane concepts. Additionally, Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) revealed that no one strategy was more associated with larger gains than the other. Performance on the embedded questions in the books was also associated with greater posttest outcomes for both WKe-Books. These findings suggest that the affordances offered by technology, which are unavailable in paper-based books, can effectively support students' development of reading-related skills, including strategy use. Further, this work discusses important considerations for implementation and future development of e-books that can enhance student engagement and improve reading comprehension. [This paper was published at "arXiv" 2024.]

The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's (SHEEO) "Communities of Practice" project builds upon SHEEO's ongoing efforts to measure the capacity and effective use of state postsecondary data systems and provides states with opportunities to develop solutions to common issues with those systems. The sixth Community of Practice convening, "Aligning K-12 and Postsecondary Education," was held December 7-8, 2021, in Denver, Colorado. The two-day meeting included representatives from 13 states: Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington. Teams included representatives from SHEEO agencies, state K-12 agencies, P-20 partnership organizations, state longitudinal data systems, and others. The Community of Practice also addressed the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on student transitions and how state data systems can be used to promote equitable outcomes for low-income students and students of color. During the convening, teams explored practical uses of state P-20 data for improving college access, equity, and success and how state postsecondary data can better inform the K-12 to postsecondary pipeline. This white paper highlights key themes and findings of the convening, including challenges and lessons learned from the participating state teams and suggestions of topics for further consideration. Case studies describing ongoing efforts in Georgia and Pennsylvania are included in the appendices. Presentations from the December 2021 convening are available on SHEEO's state postsecondary data website.

This paper focuses on the evaluation of the clinical component of preservice teacher preparation. In this paper, clinical experience in teacher preparation refers to the "application of academic knowledge to practice" in classrooms, schools, and communities where candidates learn to "contextualize" the curriculum, learning experiences, and other teaching practices for specific individuals and groups of students. The authors describe and provide examples of promising practices for several types of clinical experiences with different purposes and approaches including traditional student teaching, special purpose practicums, internships, and residencies. The discussion in this paper is organized into four sections. The first section addresses variations in clinical experiences related to the application of academic knowledge to practice in classrooms and other settings. The second section is focused on community-based clinical experiences addressing the preparation, recruitment, and retention of teachers for schools serving urban and underserved students. The third section describes statewide initiatives for teacher residencies that address teacher shortages in specific subject areas and schools facing staffing challenges. The final section presents a proposal for a research-based approach for evaluating the clinical component of teacher preparation focused on quality indicators with the highest value in developing teaching efficacy.

The diversity of California's teaching force continues to lag behind its student population. While students of Color make up 78% of the state's K-12 population, Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) comprise just 34% of the teaching workforce (California Department of Education, 2018), a statistic that has dominated the teacher shortage narrative. Although there is promise in the fact that teacher education program (TEP) enrollment is more diverse than the state's current educator workforce, it's still 27% less diverse than the state's K-12 students. As demand for greater representation increases, so have the initiatives to recruit and retain more racially diverse teachers. In the past few years, California has spent billions in an effort to diversify its teacher workforce, including Assembly Bill 520, which allocated $15 million to be distributed to school districts to develop and implement programs that diversify teaching staffs, and Assembly Bill 130, which appropriated $350 million over the next five years to create or expand Teacher Residency Programs, a pathway that has been shown to recruit and retain higher numbers of TOCIT (California Legislative Information, 2023). This study sets out to (1) explore how current policies, structures, practices, attitudes, and ideologies across the pipeline and profession impede the recruitment and retention of TOCIT, and (2) better understand the racialized experiences and perspectives of pre-service and in-service Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers. The following paper is based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collected from system leaders in teacher preparation, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and former teachers over the course of approximately one year: spring 2021 to summer 2022.

Academic support services such as coaching and mentoring programs have shown the most promise, but only when they are implemented in a very proactive manner--when they provide students with personalized follow-up and attention. Unfortunately, these programs are often expensive, making them hard to implement or scale at a regional or national level. This policy brief analyzes a relatively low-cost but targeted-group coaching program that has the potential to scale. This program was rolled out at a large public university in California starting in the year 2009. The program targeted first-year students most at risk of dropping out--those placed on academic probation during their first semester at university. A prior working paper also provided some of the first causal evidence that coaching and/or mentoring programs can lead to significant gains in the labor market. While we find that coaching had no overall effect on employment and wages, it does document substantial wage gains for men and lower-income students. These findings are timely and relevant, as policymakers and researchers aim to address the college "completion crisis" in the United States. [For the working paper, "Keep Me In, Coach: The Short- and Long-Term Effects of Targeted Academic Coaching. Upjohn Institute Working Paper 22-370," see ED623810.]

Background: The Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and Next Generation Science Standards ([NGSS] NGSS Lead States, 2013) emphasize that all students from the earliest grades onward must have the opportunity to learn and actively participate in authentic science. In K-12 science instruction, this means that students should have the opportunity to learn by applying the three dimensions of science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts in the context of reasoning about phenomena and problem solving. Yet, the current reality is there is a lack of emphasis on teaching science in the early elementary grades and the quality of what is being taught varies tremendously, both in content and quality (NAS, 2022). Recently, NGSS-designed instructional materials for the elementary grades have become available to school districts, creating an opportunity for conducting evidence-based research on the efficacy of NGSS designed curricula. We conducted a study of an integrated science and literacy curriculum (ISLC) for first grade classrooms that was initially developed with funding from IES. The curriculum, now a part of the commercially available K-5 Amplify Science program, was designed to support integrated science, language, and literacy learning, consistent with the NGSS. We evaluated the efficacy of ISLC for improving first grade students' learning in relation to NGSS performance expectations and to Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy. Two primary research questions motivated this paper: (1) What is the impact of ISLC and accompanying professional learning on students' science and literacy learning? and (2) Does the impact of ISLC on learning vary for students with different prior achievement or other policy-relevant characteristics? Setting and Participants: The study was conducted in 40 ethnically and culturally diverse elementary schools across three districts in California, involving 82 first-grade teachers and 2035 students. One treatment school dropped from the study before the student outcome learning outcome assessments were administered. Each district was committed to providing regular science instruction in the early elementary grades. Table 1 shows the composition of the analytic student sample. Seventy percent of students receive free-or-reduced price lunch (FRPL) and 74 percent identify as Hispanic. Table 1 also shows the results of baseline equivalence tests for the analytic sample. Groups were equivalent at baseline on prior reading proficiency (Hedge g = 0.02) with some minor differences in ethnic composition. Intervention: The ISLC materials consist of three units, each focused on one of three science domains: life, physical, and Earth and space science. Each unit consists of 22 45-minute lessons that can be taught within a 6-8 week period. The curriculum adopts a model of literacy and science integration that embraces a reciprocal relationship: that reading, writing, and language can be employed to promote the learning of science; and that students can make substantial progress in literacy development when reading, writing, and language are used to support science learning. The curriculum includes 3 professional learning (PL) sessions (a total of 4 days) distributed across the school year and timed to prepare teachers to teach each unit. Research Design: Schools were randomly assigned within district to either implement ISLC materials (treatment) or their business as usual materials (control) in their first-grade classrooms. Prior to assignment, schools were matched on enrollment size, percent minority and percent economically disadvantaged students. Teachers in the control group were asked to teach with their regular curriculum materials and participate in typical science professional learning provided by their districts. Control teachers were accountable to the same NGSS performance expectations and coverage of the same Grade 1 science topics as treatment teachers. Outcome Measures: The outcome measures included two standardized Iowa Assessments for Grade 1 Reading and Science and two study-developed NGSS-aligned assessments of science learning and science vocabulary-in-use. All assessments were administered on paper by teachers in the spring towards the end of the school year. Spanish-versions of the assessments were administered by teachers when all their instruction was in Spanish. Further details on the study-developed assessments are included in the Appendix. Data Analysis: We investigated the effect of ISLC on student learning and possible moderators using a multilevel linear regression model (students within schools). Student-level covariates included prior reading scores from fall assessments, gender, English-learner (EL), FRPL and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) status, and ethnicity. At the school-level, the randomization block was the covariate. Results and Discussion: Table 2 shows the results of the impact analysis. We found statistically significantly positive effects of the ISLC curriculum on the study-developed science learning assessment (Hedges g = +0.24) and the science vocabulary-in-use assessment (Hedges g = +0.46). We also found a small positive effect (Hedges g = +0.09) on the science component of the standardized Iowa assessment. This result was somewhat expected given that the Iowa science assessment was not designed for the NGSS and thus less likely to be instructionally sensitive to the use of an NGSS-designed curriculum. Finally, we found no difference between conditions on the standardized Iowa reading assessment. This is an intriguing result. We believe the null effect result for the Iowa reading assessment may be evidence that teachers can teach considerably more science in the early grades using ISLC without concern that students' reading scores will be negatively impacted. We are currently investigating the differences in time spent in science instruction between conditions. None of the effects on learning varied by prior achievement, ethnicity, or FRPL, IEP, or EL status. Conclusions: The NGSS vision for learning requires changes in how science curriculum and instruction are conceptualized, supported, and implemented (Penuel et al., 2015). The results of this study shows promising evidence that curriculum materials designed for the early grades to support NGSS teaching and learning can improve student acquisition of ambitious science skills and science vocabulary usage. As other new-NGSS designed materials become more widely used across geographic regions and with varying student populations, additional studies at larger scale will be needed so that we can further build the evidence base for the uptake of science in the elementary grades.

Declining student enrollment is leading to a loss of revenue in many California school districts. To address ongoing budget shortfalls, many districts have consolidated or shuttered schools, and others are contemplating doing so. A new report and working paper, summarized in this brief, explore the racial dimensions of school closures and how to address them. The authors find that closures are far more common for schools that serve higher proportions of Black students. Even after controlling for a range of factors, the odds of school closure increase by nearly 25 percent for every 10-percentage-point increase in the share of Black students. This research situates this and other disparities within the U.S. history of segregation, neighborhood disinvestment, and gentrification, and provides evidence and suggestions to help education leaders center equity as they confront declining enrollment-related school closures.

Utilizing a person-centered approach, the present study explored two-hundred and sixty-five adolescents' reports of self-disclosure, help, conflict, and conflict resolution with a close friend to investigate variability in profiles of friendship quality, whether gender and gender homophily and ethnicity homophily of friends are associated with profile membership, and how the profiles relate to feelings of school belonging. A latent profile analysis revealed three profiles of friendship: an "ideal" friendship profile (29.7%), a "realistic" friendship profile (50.8%), and a "somewhat problematic" friendship profile (19.5%). Compared to adolescents in the "somewhat problematic" profile, female adolescents were more likely to have a "realistic" or "ideal" friendship profile than males, and adolescents with friends of different ethnicity were more likely to be in the "realistic" friendship profile. Adolescents with the "ideal" and "realistic" friendship profiles reported the highest feelings of school belonging; those in the "somewhat problematic" profile reported the lowest school belonging. The unique understanding that attending to profiles that incorporate multiple dimensions of friendship quality to understanding the social and academic experiences of adolescents is discussed. [This paper was published in "Journal of Social and Personal Relationships" v40 n8 2023.]

To provide a landscape of mathematics activities children experience in U.S. preschool and kindergarten classrooms, we observed time children spent in mathematics activities (and -- as a contrast -- literacy) in 101 geographically diverse early childhood classrooms in seven U.S. states. We also observed what mathematics content, grouping strategies, and management formats teachers engaged during classroom mathematics activities. Each observation lasted approximately 2 hours; collectively these observations focused on 930 children observed one to three times during the 2018/2019 or 2019/2020 school year. Averaging across individuals' data within classrooms, we found that mathematics and literacy activities comprised 5% and 45% of time observed in preschool classrooms, respectively; and 26% and 42% of time observed in kindergarten classrooms, respectively. At both grades, when mathematics activities occurred, they were proportionally more often teacher-led rather than child-led. These findings raise concerns about the paucity of mathematics and over-reliance on developmentally inappropriate teacher-managed mathematics instruction in early childhood classrooms, especially preschools. Amount of time in math did not vary by preschool auspice, but time in literacy and the proportion of math time devoted to specific math content did: In Head Start classrooms we observed lowest percentage of time in literacy (and the highest percentage of time in non-instruction) compared to all other auspices. Across auspices, numeracy was the predominant math content area overall, but especially in Head Start classrooms. Thus, some aspects of early mathematics may differ with program auspice, suggesting that recommendations to increase and improve early mathematics activities may need to consider auspice characteristics. [This paper was published in "Early Childhood Research Quarterly" v69 p25-37 2024.]

Consistent with its vision for an education system that supports all students on a path to progress, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is committed to exploring innovations that support improvements in teaching and learning. As with many aspects of education, the pandemic created an additional sense of urgency regarding the need for states to revisit systems of assessment to ensure that they meet the current needs of policymakers, district and school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. One path of innovation under consideration is a version of a "through-year" assessment that provides information about student learning during the academic year. Based on published papers and through discussions with the California State Board of Education (SBE) and the California Department of Education (CDE), Smarter Balanced began to explore how to make changes to the system that might mitigate some issues that have been identified, including end-of-year test length and the desire for information that can support student learning during the school year as well as teachers' learning and reflection about students' progress, thus supporting educators to accelerate student learning throughout the school year. To further add to the consortium's knowledge base on through-year assessment, Smarter Balanced collaborated with the CDE and the SBE to explore whether performance assessment tasks for the summative test can be administered during the school year in a way that informs both instruction and assessment. This brief summarizes the information gathered from the investigation. In addition, it describes planned future research to inform decisions regarding the implementation of performance tasks as part of a through-year approach to summative assessment.

Talladega County Schools (TCBOE) spans 760 square miles and serves about 7,000 learners, 71 percent of whom receive free and reduced-priced meals. It also is a member of the League of Innovative Schools, a network of forward-looking school districts that have declared their commitment to improving and advancing equitable outcomes for students through innovative solutions, including those powered by the smart use of learning technologies. This white paper examines how the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning compares to more learner-centered, personalized, and motivating frameworks; why there needs to transition to them at scale; and how digital technologies now enable that scaling. It is also a companion to the report, "Delivering on the Promise of Digital Equity" (ED626483) which is designed to help state and local community leaders find effective ways for investing in K-12 education to increase digital equity.

The purpose of this study was to examine the accuracy of function-based decisions made in consideration of scores from the Intervention Selection Profile (ISP)-Function, a tool founded upon direct behavior rating methodology. The ISP-Function is designed to be a brief measure, given the need for efficient and low resource assessments in schools. Data from a previous investigation were used to create data reports for each of 34 elementary students with a history of exhibiting disruptive behavior in the classroom. The first report summarized ISP-Function data that the student's classroom teacher collected. The second report was representative of more typical functional behavior assessment (FBA), summarizing data collected via a functional assessment interview with the teacher, as well as systematic direct observation data. Nine school psychologists conducted blind reviews of these reports and derived decisions regarding the function of each student's behavior (e.g., adult attention or escape/avoidance). Gwet's agreement coefficients were statistically significant and suggested Fair to Almost Perfect correspondence between ISP-Function and FBA reports. Limitations and implications for practice are discussed herein. [This paper was published in "School Psychology."]

Although public K-12 student enrollment dropped by 3% nationwide in 2020-21, the school year that marks the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the patterns differ for specific areas and types of schools. This paper describes the COVID-19 and Equity in Education (CEE) Enrollment Explorer tool, which was developed to help policymakers and educators examine enrollment trends by a range of school, community, and student characteristics. The CEE Enrollment Explorer allows users to examine state, regional-, district-, community-, and school-level shifts in student enrollment before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) in selected states. The interactive CEE Enrollment Explorer aims to paint a more detailed picture of public K-12 student enrollment.