Eric.ed.gov – Year 1 State Report: California

The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) examines how college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards are implemented, whether they improve student learning, and what instructional tools measure and support their implementation. Established in July 2015 and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, C-SAIL has worked closely with its five partner states–California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas–to explore their experiences with CCR standards-based reform, particularly regarding students with disabilities (SWDs) and English language learners (ELLs). This report examines how the state of California is continuing CCR standards implementation during a time of transition. For the purposes of this report and in keeping with C-SAIL’s focus, the concentration is on implementation of California’s English language arts (ELA) and math standards. Drawing on interviews with four key state officials across various offices in the California Department of Education (CDE), this report synthesizes and analyzes those responses using the “policy attributes theory” (Porter, Floden, Freeman, Schmidt, & Schwille, 1988), a theoretical framework positing five attributes related to successful policy implementation (specificity, authority, consistency, power, and stability). The report is organized around six focal areas–standards and curriculum, assessment, professional development, students with disabilities (SWDs), English language learners (referred to in this report by the CDE term English learners, or ELs), and communication and outreach. The authors report on each focal area through the lens of each policy attribute to help readers see how state officials identified areas of strengths and challenges related to standards implementation in California.