Education

A Review of the California National Guard Education Assistance Award Program

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September 27, 2016 - Chapter 12 of 2009 (AB4X 12, Evans) created the California National Guard Education Assistance Award program as part of the 2009-10 budget package. The program provides financial aid to members of the California National Guard and the State Military Reserve to pay for postsecondary education. The legislation sunsets the program July 1, 2019 and requires our office to review the program prior to this sunset. Because the Military Department does not track certain data, we were unable to evaluate whether the program is helping the department retain members with critical skills or whether it is increasing the number of members enrolled in postsecondary education or increasing the units they take. Given the available data does not show that the program is effective at retaining members or increasing their skills and education, we recommend allowing it to sunset. Because the program’s ineffectiveness appears to stem in part from a lack of a clear focus, we recommend the Legislature consider as a next step developing a more thorough understanding of the Military Department’s most pressing personnel problem and identifying a new solution tailored to that specific problem. Though the evidence does not support extension of the existing version of the program, we also suggest several modifications for the Legislature to consider if it decides to continue the program.

California Community Colleges: Second Progress Report on the Student Success Act of 2012

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September 22, 2016 - In this report, we provide background on the Student Success and Support Program, student equity, and other student success programs of the California Community Colleges (CCC). As background, we consider the effects of recent actions taken by the CCC Board of Governors, including setting minimum academic standards for fee waivers and establishing new policies for registration. We next discuss implementation of student success and equity programs. We conclude with an assessment of implementation to date and offer recommendations for legislative consideration.

Improving Education for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in California

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September 21, 2016 - California opened its first school for the deaf in 1860, long before it established most other forms of special education. Today, we estimate California spends more than $400 million a year to educate approximately 14,000 students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). On a per–student basis, California spends substantially more to educate DHH students than other groups of children, including students with various other disabilities. Despite California’s long experience with and relatively large expenditures on DHH students, these students continue to lag far behind their hearing peers on statewide assessments of reading and math. In this report, we undertake a comprehensive review of DHH education in California. We begin by describing the state’s current approach to DHH education, then identify several major shortcomings with this approach, and conclude by making recommendations to address the shortcomings.

Improving Workforce Education and Training Data in California

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September 8, 2016 - Presented to: Career Technical Education Legislative Staff Working Group

Improving Workforce Education and Training Data in California

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August 18, 2016 - In 2016-17, eight state agencies are receiving more than $6 billion in state and federal funding to administer almost 30 workforce education and training programs. Historically, state and federal laws have required service providers to report different types of outcome information even for similar workforce programs, making comparing programs and assessing the overall system's performance difficult. In addition, to collect information about program participants’ longer-term outcomes, state agencies often must share and link data with one another. Currently, the state's method for linking data is inefficient and administratively burdensome. To address these concerns, we recommend the Legislature direct the California Workforce Development Board to determine a set of common outcome measures for workforce programs and require programs to collect and report data for those measures. We also recommend the Legislature replace the state’s existing method of linking data with a streamlined, systemwide method. To increase the value of workforce data, we further recommend the board present the data in a few workforce reports each year, with the intent of informing policy makers’ policy and funding decisions and improving the overall quality of the state’s workforce system.

Correction (8/18/16): CalWORKs employment and training services funding levels corrected in Figure 1.

Overview of Charter Schools in California

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August 3, 2016 - Presented to Senate Education Committee

EdBudget Tables (July 2016)

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July 14, 2016 - EdBudget Tables (July 2016)

What Are Alternative Schools and How Does the State Fund Them?

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July 6, 2016 - What Are Alternative Schools and How Does the State Fund Them? This is one in a set of issue briefs examining important questions about education funding in California. For more, see our EdBasics page.

How Did California Schools Spend Common Core Implementation Funding?

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June 10, 2016 - The 2013-14 state budget package included $1.25 billion in Proposition 98 funding for schools to implement the new Common Core State Standards in English and math. State law allowed schools to use the funds in three areas associated with Common Core implementation: (1) information technology, (2) staff development, and (3) instructional materials. State law required the California Department of Education to report expenditure data to the Legislature by January 1, 2016. In this post, we summarize schools’ expenditures based on that report.

Overview of School Facilities Bond Measure

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May 18, 2016 - Presented to: Joint Hearing of Assembly Education, Senate Education, and Assembly Higher Education Committees

EdBudget Tables (May 2016)

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May 17, 2016 - At key times during the state’s budget cycle, we post tables containing important information about the education parts of the budget. This May posting reflects the 2016-17 May Revision proposals. The tables cover Proposition 98, K-12 education, child care and preschool, higher education, and student financial aid.

Overview of May Revision Proposals For Higher Education

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May 16, 2016 - Notable new higher education proposals in the May Revision include a $75 million increase for community college general purpose apportionments, a $26 million increase for two initiatives to improve California State University (CSU) graduation rates, and a $4 million increase to expand the University of California’s (UC’s) online A-G course offerings. We recommend adopting the proposal for community college apportionments in order to provide colleges with more flexible funding. We recommend rejecting the Governor’s proposals for UC and CSU, largely due to insufficient information about why the funding increases are needed. In this report, we also assess and make recommendations on various other higher education May Revision proposals.

The 2016-17 Budget: Analysis of the Proposition 98 May Revision Budget Package

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May 16, 2016 - In this brief, we analyze the Governor’s Proposition 98 May Revision budget package. In the first section, we focus on changes in the overall Proposition 98 funding level under the May Revision compared to the Governor’s January budget. In the next three sections, we describe and assess the major changes in specific Proposition 98 proposals for K-12 education, early education, and the California Community Colleges (CCC), respectively.

Teacher Workforce Trends

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April 26, 2016 - Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance

State Budget Update (CASBO Presentation)

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April 14, 2016 - Presented to: California Association of School Business Officers