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Geography of Child Poverty in California

By Caroline Danielson, Sarah Bohn

One-quarter of young children across the state live in poverty. In inland regions, reducing child poverty requires efforts to improve job opportunities. In many coastal regions, increasing access to affordable housing will help.

interactive

Geography of Child Poverty in California

This interactive map highlights local variation in poverty among young children age 0–5 across California. It also shows demographic traits and family resources, as well as factors that can affect poverty, such as parents’ education and employment, cost of living, and the social safety net.

Report

Improving California Children’s Participation in Nutrition Programs

By Caroline Danielson, Sarah Bohn

Food and nutrition assistance programs help children gain access to adequate amounts of nutritious food—reducing child hunger and food insecurity as well as promoting healthy development. Yet in California, enrollment varies widely across counties and across the main nutrition programs that serve children: CalFresh, popularly known as food stamps; the WIC program, which serves infants and preschool-age children; and school meals, which include lunch and often other meals. Increasing children’s enrollment in CalFresh and achieving healthier outcomes for Californians are priorities for the state. The governor’s January 2016 budget set a goal of enrolling 400,000 more eligible children in CalFresh over two years.

This report assesses children’s eligibility for CalFresh and eligible children’s participation in the three main nutrition programs to explore opportunities for improving enrollment and the benefits of higher enrollment. Key findings include:

  • CalFresh has lower enrollment than free school meals and WIC. In 2015, 24 percent of all California children participated in CalFresh, while more than twice as many age-eligible children (51%) were enrolled in free school meals; 44 percent of infants and 34 percent of young children were enrolled in WIC.
  • There is substantial potential to expand the impact of nutrition programs. We estimate that if all CalFresh-eligible children were fully enrolled in both CalFresh and either free school meals or WIC, these programs would reach 1.6 million more children.
  • Infants and young children are better connected to nutrition programs. Among CalFresh-eligible children, we find that 12 percent of public school students participate in neither CalFresh nor free school meals—more than a quarter million school children (331,000). In contrast, only 4 percent of infants (21,000) and 9 percent of young children (87,000) are disconnected from both CalFresh and WIC.
  • Higher participation in nutrition programs would lower child poverty. Among public school students living in poverty, we project that full participation in nutrition programs would increase family resources by 15 percent. Among infants and young children living in poverty, we project that family resources would increase by 9 percent following full participation in nutrition programs.

To some extent, lower CalFresh enrollment reflects more restrictive eligibility requirements. However, there is good reason to believe that more children participating in free school meals and WIC could be connected to CalFresh. Currently, most policies designed to integrate nutrition programs run from CalFresh to school meals. Building robust, two-way connections could help counties and the state better achieve the goals of these programs so more children have access to adequate, nutritious food.

Report

Math Placement in California’s Public Schools

By Niu Gao, Sara Adan

Last year, the California Legislature passed a new law—the California Mathematics Placement Act—to address widespread concern over equity in the math placement process. The law is aimed at improving the measurement of student performance in order to move more students successfully through the high school curriculum. In this context, we surveyed California’s school districts during the 2015–16 school year to examine their placement policies right before the law took effect and to identify district needs for technical assistance while implementing the new law. We found that:

  • Districts need help in determining how to proceed. Because the law leaves many details open to local interpretation, many districts are unsure about how to handle certain key elements. Teacher recommendations are a good example. Our survey indicates that the majority of districts have relied on recommendations as an important factor in determining placement. But the law now restricts their use. Improving the law’s clarity is critical going forward.
  • Despite uncertainties, most districts are implementing the new law. Among our respondents, 86 percent reported having a systematic math placement policy. Sixty percent said they are somewhat or very familiar with the new law. Among these districts, 51 percent said they were already in compliance and 42 percent reported revising their policies for compliance purposes.
  • Across districts, there is a strong need for valid, reliable, and objective performance measures. This need applies both to assessing student performance and to evaluating district policies. Districts with the largest gains in student course outcomes over a 10-year period provide some insight. These districts are more likely than others to emphasize test scores, math GPA, and overall GPA when assessing student placement. They are also more likely to use end-of-year math grades to evaluate district placement policies.
  • Districts face a number of other challenges. Districts’ concerns range from handling parental expectations, to needing evidence-based performance measures, to creating better policy alignment within and across schools. In addition, equity issues and staffing shortages present ongoing challenges for many districts.

We recommend several actions for helping districts comply with the law and improve their math placement process. These include establishing evidence-based measures, refining the approach to teacher recommendations, and identifying effective placement protocols. In the longer term, districts would benefit from using student data to improve equity issues and from increased staffing, especially in rural and high-need districts.

Report

College Readiness in California: A Look at Rigorous High School Course-Taking

By Niu Gao

Recognizing the educational and economic benefits of a college degree, education policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels have made college preparation a priority. There are many ways to measure college readiness, but one key component is rigorous high school coursework. California has not yet adopted a statewide college readiness requirement, but a growing number of school districts—including Los Angeles Unified, San Jose Unified, Oakland Unified, San Diego Unified, and San Francisco Unified—now require students to complete the rigorous coursework, called the "a–g courses,” that are necessary for admission to the University of California (UC) and the California State University (CSU) system.

In this report we look at participation and performance in rigorous high school courses among California high school students, both overall and across demographic and racial/ethnic groups. While enrollment in rigorous courses has been increasing, particularly among students who are traditionally underrepresented in higher education, a large majority of California high school students are not taking the courses that can prepare them for college. Forty-three percent of high school graduates in 2015 completed the a–g requirement, and 27 percent of high school graduates in 2013 passed an advanced placement (AP) exam. Participation in advanced math, biology, chemistry, and physics courses is also low. In particular, only 30 percent of high school juniors and seniors enrolled in Algebra II and smaller shares enrolled in chemistry (28%) and physics (10%).

As they monitor the progress of public high schools in preparing students for college, state policymakers and districts need to focus on indicators such as a–g completion, benchmark course-taking, and end-of-course exam (EOC) results. We also recommend tracking performance across student groups to help schools and districts address gaps in achievement and provide educational resources to students who need them most.

blog post

Video: Upgrading Technology in California Schools

By Linda Strean

When it comes to upgrading technology in California schools, money and training are big challenges. But leadership and collaboration are powerful tools that can help schools make progress.

Report

Upgrading Technology Infrastructure in California’s Schools

By Patrick Murphy, Niu Gao

As California schools move into online testing and online learning, an adequate technology infrastructure is no longer an option, but a necessity. To fully benefit from digital learning, schools will require a comprehensive technology infrastructure that can support a range of administrative and instructional tools. An earlier PPIC report found that most schools need significant technology upgrades in order to accommodate online learning. What upgrades do schools need most, and how much will they cost? How can policymakers help ensure that all students have access to 21st-century learning tools?

This report describes findings based on new statewide data. First, schools need high-density wireless networks, increased bandwidth, and overall network infrastructure upgrades. The challenges are greater in large schools, mostly because of the high cost of wireless networks for large groups of users. Second, IT staffing continues to be an issue in most schools. Only a third of schools have staff onsite to support desktop and local network configuration.

To estimate the costs of upgrading technology infrastructure, we created two scenarios. Our baseline scenario—which includes minimum bandwidth for digital learning, one device for every two middle- and high-school students, and one IT staffer for every 300 computing devices—would cost an additional $1.5 billion over the next three years. Our target scenario—which involves additional bandwidth and one device to every middle- and high-school student—would cost significantly more: $3.8 billion. In either scenario, staffing costs are more than 60 percent of the total.

As the state explores ways to address these ongoing technology needs, we offer several recommendations. First, continue and maintain sustained funding for technology investment, particularly for staffing. Second, provide targeted technical assistance to address severe staffing problems. Third, to ensure that all students have full access to digital learning, take advantage of federal funding and explore innovative partnerships with private sector to cover the cost of home broadband access for students from lower-income families.

Report

High-Need Students and California’s New Assessments

By Laura Hill, Iwunze Ugo

The 2014–15 school year was the first in which the Smarter Balanced assessments (referred to here as the SBAC) were administered statewide. While educators and policymakers agree that multiple measures over multiple years are the best way to gauge student, school, and district performance, the first-year SBAC results provide an important baseline for assessing implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs).

These results may also have implications for the evolution of accountability measures at the district and state levels—especially in relation to high-need students. The California State Board of Education has not yet devised a replacement for the Academic Performance Index (API), which was suspended in the 2014–15 school year. Districts have developed goals and measures in their LCAPs but the rubrics that state and the county offices of education will use are not yet in place. In the meantime, a close look at the results of the first year of testing can help us track achievement gaps between student groups and identify districts and schools with the largest tasks ahead.

One of the major goals of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) is to help districts address a long-standing achievement gap between high-need students—economically disadvantaged students and English Learners (ELs)—and other students. However, we find that the test score gap is larger for 4th-grade EL and economically disadvantaged students when measured with the SBAC than with the state’s prior assessment (the California Standards Test, or CST). Generally speaking, as the share of high-need students in a district or school increases, the proportion of students meeting the standards falls. However, when we compare results across demographically similar schools and districts, we find that some schools performed better than expected.

Results for English Learners are particularly useful for local and state policymakers as they implement new EL standards and consider how to revise reclassification standards. Notably, in a relatively large number of schools, no EL students scored at or above the standards for English language arts (ELA) and math. In the past, 30 percent of districts required ELs to meet the ELA standard on the CST to be reclassified.

Our main conclusion is that high-need students are far behind other student groups—indeed, they may be farther behind than we thought. Schools and districts can use this analysis to take stock of their implementation of the Common Core and their progress toward their LCAP goals for EL and economically disadvantaged students. And schools and districts with large gaps—especially those performing below expectations—can find examples of similar districts and schools that exceeded expectations.

blog post

Students Struggle on Test of New Standards

By Laura Hill, Iwunze Ugo

On California’s first statewide tests aligned with the Common Core standards, 40% of fourth-graders scored proficient or better on the English Language Arts (ELA) test and 35% did so in math.

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