An audio broadcast of our recent seminar International Teachers in California Schools by Lora Bartlett, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of California – Santa Cruz is now available for download.
Increasing the percentage of highly qualified teachers in public schools is a priority for California. In this seminar, Bartlett highlights the role overseas trained teachers have played in addressing this goal. She presents data on the number and distribution of overseas trained K-12 teachers in California public schools, highlighting their concentration in high poverty districts and schools. She also examines the implications of different definitions of teacher qualification, and traces connections between education and immigration policy.
Our recent seminar The Future of Early Education Systems in California (PreK-3rd) featuring Brad Strong, Director of Education, Children Now, Lisa Guernsey, Director, Early Education Initiative, New America Foundation and Loretta Burns, Director, Santa Clara County Partnership for School Readiness, took place last week but no audio is available.
California’s education system continues to struggle to close persistent achievement gaps that often exist at school entry, and the state’s dire fiscal situation certainly doesn’t help. But real progress is possible, even now, as new strategies to build seamless early learning systems are being developed and supported through federal efforts. Presenters discussed the critical components of PreK-3rd systems, provided specific examples of how these systems are working locally to improve school readiness in California, and offered up new opportunities for statewide leadership that are outlined in a New America Foundation report on California’s early education system.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Resources, Incentives and Accountability: Overhauling California’s System of School Finance” featuring Eric Hanushek of The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is now available.
Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public school funding, the United States now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. Yet American students still achieve less than their foreign counterparts, their performance has been flat for decades, millions of them are failing, and poor and minority students remain far behind their more advantaged peers. In this seminar, Eric Hanushek concludes that the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Instead, Hanushek proposes a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising student achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions about how to run their schools, ultimately leading to improved student performance.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “What Now? Improving Schools Within Budget Constraints” featuring W. Norton Grubb of the University of California, Berkeley.
As California continues to wrestle with the challenge of providing sufficient funding for our state’s schools, understanding the relationships among school funding, effective school resources, and outcomes is essential. In this seminar Norton Grubb addressed four principal questions: (1) What kinds of school resources make a difference to outcomes? (2) Why is the relationship between spending per student and outcomes so weak, and how can that help California schools in a time of fiscal crisis? (3) Why are outcomes so inequitable, including the role of race and ethnicity? (4) What should California do now, in both school finance and other areas of school policy, to avoid further damage to the state’s education system?
W. Norton Grubb is a professor and the David Gardner Chair in Higher Education at the School of Education, the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity, published in 2009 by the Russell Sage Foundation, New York. The speaker was introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Designing Categorical Grants to Support Student Learning” featuring Lawrence O. Picus with comments by John Mockler is now available.
As part of the Legislature’s February 2009 budget revisions, school districts were granted more flexibility in the use of some categorical grants. These actions offer an exceptional opportunity to reform California’s confusing system of categorical grants. Flexibility in the use of categorical grant funding creates a paradox because categorical programs are established to focus school resources on high priority programs. Allowing alternative use of these funds is both counter-productive and suggests lack of focus in the mix of categorical programs available. This session provided an overview of the purposes of categorical grants, discussed issues pertaining to local v. state control over the use of educational resources and described Picus’ recent research on ways to structure categorical grants to improve student performance. Picus offered suggestions for ways California’s myriad of confusing categorical programs can be reformed to focus on student learning. John Mockler offered some comments on Picus’ presentation.
Lawrence O. Picus is professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education. His research focuses on school finance and the allocation and use of educational resources to improve student learning. He has conducted school finance adequacy studies in a number of states, and helped design the school funding systems in Wyoming, Arkansas and North Dakota. Ohio is currently considering a funding system based on his work.
John Mockler is the president of John Mockler and Associates, Inc., a consulting firm in Sacramento. He is the former Executive Director of the California State Board of Education and the former Interim Secretary for Education for the State of California. The speaker was introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Effects of the California High School Exit Exam on Student Achievement and Graduation” featuring Sean F. Reardon and Michal Kurlaender is now available.
Sean F. Reardon is Associate Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University, whose research focuses on the causes and consequences of educational and social inequality. Michal Kurlaender is Assistant Professor of Education at University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on education policy in K-12 and higher education. Student-level data from four large California school districts was used to examine the impact of the CAHSEE exam on student achievement and graduation rates. In particular, they focus of the effects of failing vs. passing the CAHSEE in 10th grade on the subsequent achievement and graduation rate of students with relatively low math and ELA skills. The speakers were introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Policy matters: creating the best conditions for community college student success” featuring Nancy Shulock of Sacramento State University is now available.
Nancy Shulock directs the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at Sacramento State, which produces policy research intended to enhance public policy for California higher education. California’s community colleges serve nearly three-quarters of public postsecondary enrollments in the state and are therefore critical to any effort to meet today’s needs for a highly educated workforce and citizenry. State public policies create the conditions under which the colleges operate to serve students’ needs and contribute to the economy. In this presentation, Ms. Shulock makes the case for supplementing ongoing efforts to increase student success with changes to policies in order to provide more favorable conditions under which the colleges can meet the needs of students and the state of California. The speaker was introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar “Making Policy Matter: Why Have Accountability and Assessment Policies Failed to Close the Equity Gaps in Higher Education?” featuring Estela Mara Bensimon and Alicia C. Dowd from the University of Southern California, is now available. Although policy makers have been talking about and drafting policies to address inequities in student higher education experiences and outcomes for decades, problems of racial-ethnic inequities have proven to be intractable under current accountability and assessment policies. Bensimon and Dowd, co-directors of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, discussed research findings from college sites in California and Wisconsin that are using their multi-disciplined approach and tools to help policymakers, leaders, and practitioners make sense of accountability data from the perspective of equity for racial and ethnic minority students.The speakers were introduced by PACE’s Executive Director David N. Plank.
An audio broadcast of our recent seminar International Teachers in California Schools by Lora Bartlett, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of California – Santa Cruz is now available for download.