Southern California charter schools challenge State Board’s denial in court

On Nov. 1, 2023, Vista Charter Public Schools (Vista) filed a lawsuit against the State Board of Education (SBE) challenging its decision to affirm the denial of its charter petition by Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the Los Angeles County Board of Education […]

2020–21 Civil Rights Data Collection shows persistent opportunity and access gaps for underrepresented students

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on Nov. 15 released new civil rights data from the 2020–21 school year, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) since the 2017–18 school year. Accompanying the data are […]

New resource calls on state support for small and rural LEA cybersecurity

The State Educational Technology Directors Association’s (SETDA) Cybersecurity & Privacy Collaborative — a network that includes Microsoft and the K12 Security Information eXchange (K12 SIX) — published guidance on Oct. 17 detailing how state agencies and other support organizations are empowering their smallest school districts […]

IQC approves schedule for math instructional materials adoption, application for reviewers

At its final meeting of the year, the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) on Nov. 15 approved matters related to the 2025 California Mathematics Instructional Materials Adoption process. The schedule of significant events, online instructional materials review application, and draft content standards and evaluation criteria maps […]

SBE takes nuanced look at chronic absenteeism, assessment data and more

During its final meeting of 2023, the California State Board of Education adopted revisions to the Local Control and Accountability Plan template and instructions, and discussed results of recently released statewide testing and absenteeism data. In October, the California Department of Education released the results […]