UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access

This report synthesizes the findings of a set of expert reports analyzing the plaintiffs’ claims in Williams v. State of California, and it presents the implications of those reports for changes in state policy and practice. It examines California students’ access to three basic requirements for educational quality and opportunity: qualified teachers; adequate textbooks and other relevant instructional materials; and clean, safe, and educationally appropriate facilities. It reviews the role of these resources and conditions in providing or limiting access to students’ opportunities for achievement, and, more specifically, it places the availability of these basic requirements in the context of California’s current standards-based education policies. This report considers both the overall availability of these essential conditions to California students and patterns in their distribution among schools serving different student groups. This synthesis also supplements the material in the expert reports with information from documents produced by the California Department of Education (CDE) and other State agencies, information generated by California schools and districts, and reports of independent organizations. Finally, it assesses the past performance of state education policies and officials in providing California’s students with the educational essentials they require, and suggests policy alternatives that would bring considerable improvement.

About 6% of California’s students attend schools that operate on a multi-track calendar known as Concept 6. On this calendar, three tracks rotate throughout the school year, with two tracks in session at any given time and a third on vacation. This results in the school year being broken up into separate blocks by two two-month long vacations, which occur at different times for different tracks. This calendar provides for the maximum enrollment given a school’s existing space. However, students who attend schools operating on the Concept 6 calendar suffer several clear disadvantages. These schools remain large, even with the implementation of this calendar. Students at Concept 6 schools also lose instructional time, since they have fewer days of school compared to other students, fewer nights for teachers to assign homework, and delays due to the need to review material at the beginning of each block of instruction. Furthermore, because of uneven distribution of curriculum across the different tracks, students have limited access to courses (including Advanced Placement courses) and specialized programs; the ill-timed breaks mean students have less access to extra-curricular activities. Students in Concept 6 schools have poorer academic performance than their peers in other schools. Likewise, busing seeks to address the negative effects of overcrowding, but creates inequities of its own. Students who are bused to school due to overcrowding suffer several disadvantages, including reduced parental involvement, an incentive to skip kindergarten (to avoid having to ride the bus), limited access to after-school programs, and poorer academic performance. Overall, students who attend schools on the Concept 6 calendar, as well as students who are bused to relieve overcrowding, receive a significantly lower quality education than that provided to the overwhelming majority of students in California.

Drawing on research in Oakland, California over a twenty-year period, Noguera considers how poverty and racial isolation have contributed to the problems confronted by schools in that district and other inner-city communities around the state. He illuminates the factors that hinder the development of social capital in low-income communities, and, in doing so, demonstrates why local control does not make it easier for school systems to address the academic needs of poor students. The wide variation in the ability of different communities to generate revenue and other support for schools at the local level creates inequalities in the learning conditions and opportunities that schools provide students. The design of the state’s public education system exacerbates these inequities. Specifically, the state’s current approaches to local control make it possible for advantaged parents and communities with a vested interest in the affairs of public schools to monitor conditions in their schools. However, this form of local control is inadequate as a mechanism for holding schools accountable in high poverty areas. Noguera concludes that in order to improve reform efforts and policy implementation, the state must enact measures to mitigate the effects of poverty and racial isolation. Rather than presuming that all schools can be treated the same, the state must develop strategies to build the social capital of parents and cultivate the civic capacity of communities in low-income areas. Without such measures, local control will remain little more than a guise through which the State can shirk its responsibility for insuring that all students have access to quality education.

Russell examines the extent to which California’s test based policies promote and/or inhibit California students’ access to basic learning resources and conditions. Russell reviews the history of California’s assessment systems and describes the current Academic Performance Index (API), analyzes recent survey data on the impact of testing, considers the experiences of other states, and simulates results under an alternative design for accountability in California. He finds that California’s accountability system has numerous technical shortcomings that prevent it from being a valid and useful indicator for either holding schools accountable for student learning or determining which schools are “low-performing” and warrant state intervention. The design of the system sets a target for schools that far exceeds national averages in student performance. The standardized test on which the API rankings are based is not aligned to state standards; in addition, problems in calculating accountability rankings from results on the test make the former poor expressions of student achievement. However, he also concludes that even if the technical shortcomings were fixed and/or prior decisions were altered to make expectations for most schools more reasonable, California’s single-minded focus on student outcomes as measured by standardized tests fails to adequately prevent, detect or deter gross disparities in education. A system that focuses solely on student learning outcomes, no matter how broadly defined, cannot provide schools and their constituents with information that allows them to identify why students succeed or fail to succeed. Furthermore, reliance on standardized testing tends to result in a narrowing of curriculum and instructional strategies. Evidence from other states shows that more successful accountability systems are possible. Russell concludes that an improved accountability system in California should include an emphasis on educational inputs, the use of better and more varied output measures, and a sensitivity to local contexts.

Darling-Hammond’s paper tackles four key issues related to the state’s teaching force and its distribution among various groups of students: 1) What does the state of California expect of its students and its teachers? In particular, what qualifications does the state require of teachers so that they can support student learning? 2) How does teacher quality matter for equal educational opportunity? 3) Do California students have equal access to qualified teachers who can offer the instruction they need to master the state standards? 4) How might the discrepancies in students’ access to qualified teachers best be remedied, given the policy context and knowledge about successful policy elsewhere? Drawing on a wealth of empirical studies, the paper reveals the critical relationship between qualified teachers and student academic achievement. It also explains that new state standards, an increasingly diverse student population, together with the skills needed to participate in a knowledge-based society create an urgent demand for skilled and effective teachers. The paper also illuminates the notion that the shortage of qualified teachers in schools predominantly serving children of color and poor students does not result from an overall lack of qualified teachers in the state. Rather, Darling-Hammond attributes this problem to a failure of state oversight to ensure that qualified teachers remain in the system and that they are equitably distributed among schools and communities. Finally, Darling-Hammond’s comparison of California policies with those in other states lays the groundwork for new state policies that would support more equitable access to quality teachers.

Koski and Weiss examine California’s educational content standards and related high-stakes accountability measures. They pose the following questions 1) Are higher content standards and stiffer accountability enough to ensure that all children achieve at high levels? 2) Can we be sure that all California students and schools—particularly those in low-income minority communities—enjoy the necessary support, conditions, and resources to succeed? Koski and Weiss answer these questions with an in-depth analysis of California’s K-12 standards and other related state policies, looking specifically at the minimum level of resources and conditions required for students to meet the state’s standards. Their analysis makes clear that California’s standards-based reform strategy and accountability scheme require the provision of basic educational tools, including teachers with particular knowledge and skills and appropriate instructional materials and facilities. However, the state’s policies do not address these requirements explicitly. No standards or accountability mechanisms currently exist to ensure that all children in California have the educational conditions and resources necessary to achieve at the high levels prescribed by the state. Koski and Weiss conclude that the state must analyze its curriculum frameworks and content standards systematically to create parallel standards that delineate the minimum educational resources and conditions required at each grade level for all students to have an adequate opportunity to learn the state’s standards.

Gandara and Rumberger investigate the extent to which California’s English Learners—one-fourth of the state’s public school population—have access to the teachers, instructional materials, and facilities that will enable them to succeed in an English-only, standards-based policy system in which they must learn and compete for grade-to-grade promotion and high school graduation along side (and on the same terms as) their English speaking peers. Gandara and Rumberger conclude that that these students receive a substantially inequitable education vis-à-vis their English-speaking peers, even when those peers are similarly economically disadvantaged. They demonstrate that California has failed in its duty to guarantee that EL students have the teachers, the curriculum, the instruction, the assessment, and the support services they need to achieve meaningful access to the same academic content as native English speaking students. Furthermore, when the state has become aware of specific substandard learning conditions for English Learners it has failed to act effectively to correct these problems. Furthermore, with an ill planned class size reduction program and the poorly articulated implementation of Proposition 227, the state has worsened the learning conditions for these students.

Mintrop examines the degree to which California’s systems of public school accountability and state oversight enable the state to ensure that students in the state’s lowest performing schools have educational opportunities equal to those in other schools. He finds that California’s current system of state oversight lacks standards of adequacy for learning conditions that can potentially be evaluated statewide and that schools can use to evaluate themselves. While the state’s accountability system as currently constructed defines standards of student and school performance with the help of the academic performance index (API), the state lacks mechanisms to identify performance barriers systematically across schools that do not meet adequate performance standards, as defined by API growth targets. Many performance barriers encountered by schools are systemic, that is, caused by district (and state) policies, yet the current school-based accountability system ignores this. As a result, the state has no way of knowing what statewide policies and local interventions are needed to move underperforming schools to adequate performance levels. Further, oversight and support to schools and districts that are in need or distress according to the state’s own performance criteria are insufficient. Large numbers of schools that qualify for the state’s Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) are not reached through state oversight or support. Moreover, there is little evidence that the state has developed effective intervention systems for a sizable number of schools and districts that have not improved sufficiently according to the state’s own performance criteria. Mintrop concludes that California lacks standards for adequate school operations, systematic mechanisms to detect performance barriers, and sufficient provision of support and intervention.

Grubb and Goe examine California’s funding policies through the lenses of established approaches to school finance and the “new” school finance perspective. They draw upon historical evidence, empirical research on school funding, and analyses of policies in other states. They find that while California has made some progress in equalizing funding across districts (largely through litigation and legislation), significant disparities remain. Additionally, the state’s use of categorical funding reduces flexibility, and creates a finance system unresponsive to particular school needs. The state’s funding decisions are often uncoordinated; they are usually made in isolation from other policy decisions and without regard to instructional conditions in classrooms. Consequently, funding policy changes meant to bring improvement are often undermined by school conditions that are not taken into account. In contrast, Grubb and Goe argue that California should adopt a “new” school finance perspective that allows educators and policy makers to determine effective practices and resources at the local level. Funds can then be allotted to these instruments according to their effectiveness. The Williams Case offers an important opportunity to reconceptualize these questions, since its focus of attention is the level of educational opportunities actually experienced by students.

Lee, Ready, and Welner focus on the interface between educational equity and the structure of schools, examining school size, school overcrowding, and two features of school organization: magnet schools and schools-within-schools. They provide an interpretive summary of existing studies of these topics, concentrating on how these structural issues relate to social stratification in student outcomes, particularly academic achievement. The evidence they provide is drawn from both national studies and, when available and appropriate, from research that discusses the effects of school structure in California's schools. Lee, Ready, and Welner use this evidence to define which size high schools are best for all students (under 1,000 students), which responses to school overcrowding are appropriate (building more schools rather than adding portable classrooms or multi-track year round schooling), how magnet schools can decrease rather than increase inequality (by making regular public schools more like magnet schools), and how creating smaller learning communities in high schools can work well for everyone (by not allowing this mechanism to increase stratification). They also show that California policies have not promoted these responses, and, in many cases may have actually exacerbated inequality in educational outcomes by race, ethnicity, and class.