5.15 Adult Education

Not all students in public schools are children. In California, about 1.2 million adult students per year enroll in adult education courses through public schools. Over a third of these adult students are studying English as a second language. This program is supported with federal funds.
Adult education programs today are a …

5.14 College in California

California has three interconnected systems of public colleges: community colleges, which provide two-year degree programs, the California State University (CSU), and the University of California (UC). The connections among these systems were designed decades ago in the Master Plan for Higher Education.
All three systems depend heavily on the California state …

9.05 Achievement Gaps

Frustratingly stable patterns predict which groups of students tend to do better in school and which do worse. These differences, known as “achievement gaps,” are usually quantified using standardized test scores, but they can also reflect graduation rates or other measures.
Poverty strongly correlates with test scores, graduation rates, and other …

7.11 Initiatives and Education

California’s powerful initiative process was added to the state constitution in 1911. Popular from the moment of its creation, Proposition 13 demonstrated the scope of its power in 1978. With a majority vote, initiatives can directly amend the state constitution, bypassing the legislative process. In the years that followed Prop …

2.11 Student Voices

Students generally play a very small role in defining the education system that educates them. Although preparing students for their future is the whole point, it is generally agreed that adults are to run the show; students are to focus on learning.
Technology and budget pressures are gradually softening the teacher-led …

2.10 Foster Care

The foster care system is designed to help children for whom home is not a good place, due to issues like neglect or abuse. Kids who are removed from the custody of their parents are among the most at-risk individuals in our society. Many end up in trouble or homeless.

Most …

8.7 Equity

Since the gold rush of 1849, Californians have seen their state as a land of opportunity – a place where anyone, with hard work and a little luck, can make a great life. Dreams of gold, sunshine, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley define this place.
On the other hand, California is …

2.9 Undocumented Students

Perhaps one in ten students in California’s public K-12 schools is undocumented. Some of these students are unaware of their immigration status. Many additional students who (under the 14th amendment to the US Constitution) are themselves US citizens by birth have at least one parent whose immigration status is unauthorized.
Understandably, …

5.13 Community Colleges

California’s first community college, Fresno City College, was established in 1910. In the following fifty years, community colleges grew throughout the state, becoming an essential ingredient of a rather chaotic system of schools focused mainly on training people for work in California’s rapidly expanding economy. In 1960, California adopted a …

7.9 Advocates

There are many participants in the sausage factory that makes education policy. Elected officials and legislators are influenced, counseled, advised and lobbied by an un-orderly system of interest organizations, researchers, philanthropies and others.
The official referee in this tumult is the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office (LAO), a small team that serves …

7.15 Elections

Who gets to lead? Leadership of the education system in California blends democratic and executive systems at every level, from site councils to the governor’s office. In most districts, school board members are chosen by ballot. District superintendents, the administrators of the system, are in turn hired by school boards …

5.3 Selectivity and Diveristy

Here is a suitable thesis for a term paper: Selectivity and diversity are competing priorities in the history of American public education.
On paper, California’s student body is incredibly diverse. On closer inspection, it is well sorted. Throughout childhood, students grow accustomed to being sorted, or to sorting themselves: by age, by …

5.1 Where Do You Live?

Where a child attends school usually depends primarily on where he or she lives. California is organized into about a thousand geographically defined school districts. These vary from tiny, rural districts serving only a handful of students to sprawling urban districts. Los Angeles Unified School District, America’s second-largest, serves about …

9.10 Change The World

What is the most important issue facing the world?
Many passionately argue that climate change is an existential crisis. Others point to the horror of billions living in poverty, dying needlessly from preventable diseases. Others make the case for issues like biodiversity, or peace, or disaster preparedness, or technological innovation.
All of …

9.9 Graduate from College

The leaky bucket that carries students from kindergarten to college admission continues to leak after students reach college. As usual, it is tragically easy to predict which students will earn a degree and which will not. In a speech to Full Circle Fund members, Ted Mitchell, president of the …

9.8 Go To College

A leaky bucket carries students from kindergarten to middle class employment. Even those students who finish high school ready for college do not necessarily go, and the school system is not necessarily set up to encourage them to do so. Even if a student has an inclination toward college, inclination …

9.7 Be Ready For College

The vast majority of students and their parents expect K-12 education to prepare them for success in college. This is too often a flawed assumption, even for students that appear on paper to be prepared. According to the National Report Card on Higher Education, only 40 out of every 100 ninth …

9.6 Graduate From High School

Graduation rates (or the inverse, drop-out rates) are more difficult to evaluate than it might seem. “Dropping out” sounds like an action that can be counted in a straightforward way. But students don’t fill out a form to drop out. They just stop coming. Or they move and don’t re-enroll.
One …

9.5 Multiple Measures

Many teachers and school leaders are frustrated that once-a-year standardized test results so thoroughly dominate conversations about educational success. Tests are very narrow measures of a student’s progress toward adulthood. Is there a better, more useful way to tell the difference between great results and mediocre results?
As a broader, more …

9.4 Focus on Improvement

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) established 2014 as the deadline for every student subgroup in every school in America to demonstrate proficiency at the level of state standards. Under NCLB, every school must make a certain amount of progress toward that goal for every subgroup every year. Glossing …

9.11 What Will You Do?

If you are reading this page, perhaps you have read through the 100 main posts of Ed100. If so, along the way you explored the proposition that:
Education is
Students and
Teachers
Spending Time
in a Place for learning
with the right Stuff
and a System
that $upports
Success
So now what? What will you do to make education work …

9.3 Keep Track

Imagine if Amazon.com were unable to keep track of customer purchases. Imagine a pharmaceutical company unable to tell one pill from another. Or a bank losing track of accounts. In the last few decades, the world has become accustomed to organizations that can keep track of things in large numbers, …

9.2 Test The Exit

Most state tests are deeply unimportant to students. They are dull. The score makes no difference to the student. The score is calculated during the summer, and often the student’s new teacher never even sees the score. Beginning with the class of 2006, however, a state test in California became personal. …

9.1 Can Tests Tell if Schools Are Working?

Can we know if kids are really learning? Can we figure it out before it’s too late?
School-related data can measure either inputs or outputs (sometimes called outcomes). Inputs influence outcomes.Most of Ed100 has focused on inputs, because if you are reading this you are probably interested in things you can …

7.8 “Blow It Up”

Reform advocates (especially rookies) periodically call for the education system to be “blown up.” The old hands smile, or grimace.
It is easy to become jaded.
Education is Big. Perhaps because classrooms are small, it is hard to internalize the reality that America’s education system is enormous. In rough numbers, the …

7.7 Teachers’ Unions

Teachers’ unions have tremendous influence in America’s public schools, perhaps nowhere more so than in California. This section provides information about the major functions of these unions, and summarizes varying points of view about their role in student learning.
There are two main national teachers unions in the USA: the National …

7.6 Interventions

The federal No Child Left Behind act (NCLB, also known by its old moniker, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA) required states to set standards for grade-level proficiency in each subject. It required states to assess student learning against these standards annually and to take corrective action if …

7.5 Charter Schools, Reprise

Charter schools are part of the public school system. They are public, tax-funded schools that operate separately from the normal school system under a contract (“charter”) with an authorizing agency (usually the school district).
We included this post in the “system” section of Ed100 to reinforce the message that charter schools …

7.4 School Site Councils

School site budgets are generally small. They exclude salaries and benefits, and frequently also exclude anything that is negotiated and planned across multiple schools. These small budgets are key resources for principals to address the specific needs and opportunities for their school.  Site budgets are subject in many places to …

7.3 Decentralization

Over time, principals have lost influence over hiring, staffing, standards, and even key budget decisions in their schools. School districts, which exist to support schools, now control almost all of the funds used in education. Districts, in turn, are constrained in their use of funds by the terms they negotiate …