Laura Hill is a policy director and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Her areas of expertise are K–12 education and immigration. She is currently researching English Learners in California schools, special education, and ESL students in community colleges. Her recent publications examine student achievement on the state’s K–12 assessments and the link between language reclassification policies and student success. Prior to joining PPIC, she was a research associate at the SPHERE Institute and a National Institute of Aging postdoctoral fellow. She holds a PhD in demography and an MA in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Julien Lafortune is a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he specializes in education and economics. He is also a member of the PPIC Economic Policy Center. His primary areas of focus include K–12 education finance, school infrastructure, human capital, and labor market policy. He has authored policy reports, briefs, presentations, and blogs on a variety of policy topics, including K–12 education, labor market issues, demographics, and housing markets. He has academic published research papers on school finance reforms and school capital investments in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.