Stanford University on Thursday released a sweeping research project that takes a 360-degree, immersive look at all aspects and operations of public education in California, from preschool through high school, from special education to teacher certification, enrollment decline to high school redesign.
Called “Getting Down to Facts,” the research project comes at what Stanford education professor and project director Susanna Loeb calls “an inflection point” for California education. In a 40-page summary of 55 technical reports and 22 research briefs, Loeb writes that the findings arrive amid major shifts: the election of a new governor and state superintendent of instruction, the retreat of the federal government’s oversight and education-funding responsibilities, and the emergence of new technologies and their impact on the classroom and the workplace. Together, she said, these changes require the schools to respond to new conditions.
Getting Down to Facts is “designed to help Californians understand the condition of the state’s education system and the policy choices needed to improve it.
While the project details financial pressures facing districts, Loeb said that “California’s goals for students have grown broader and more ambitious, and the state is better positioned than before to pursue them.”
Overall, state funding is at record levels with billions invested in transitional kindergarten, after-school programs, the establishment of thousands of community schools, and early literacy reforms, as foundations for the future. And as a result of investments in teacher recruitment, like the Golden State Teaching Grant program, the latest data shows that the number of newly credentialed teachers is the highest in a decade.
But an overriding theme of Getting Down to Facts is that school performance remains widely uneven, and the state lacks the ability to bring to scale examples of excellence in districts once they’re identified.
Loeb and the studies repeatedly cite “a lack of coherence” that is draining energy and holding back improvement. That term translates into paperwork burdens for administrators, unclear guidance over curriculum, and insufficient instruction for teachers. It’s been accompanied by inconsistent levels of support from the state Department of Education, county offices, and other agencies over how to improve. Multiple new initiatives by Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators who created the state’s kludgy system over decades sent mixed messages on priorities.
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