Author: Heather Kemp

California LEAs ramp up support for multilingual learners

April is National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month — a time to recognize efforts local educational agencies are making to uplift the cultural and linguistic assets of K-12 students.  The ability to speak more than one language is increasingly being celebrated and encouraged in education. California’s English Learner (EL) Roadmap Policy, State Seal of Biliteracy program and the launch of the federal Being Bilingual is a Superpower initiative are some recent examples of steps being taken to support high-quality language programs.  

Report looks at how school structures impact math education

Data from the RAND American Mathematics Educator Study on three factors that may impact K-8 students’ math education, are covered in the report Elementary and Middle School Opportunity Structures That Factor into Students’ Math Learning: Findings from the American Mathematics Educator Study, released by the […]

CDE covers the basics of Prop 28 as funding begins to reach schools

Ahead of Arts Education Month in March, the California Department of Education hosted a webinar on how local educational agencies can put Proposition 28 funds into practice. Referred to as the Arts and Music in Schools (AMS) Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act, the legislation was […]

CCEE meeting highlights Statewide System of Support Resource Hub, other tools

During the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence’s first board meeting of the year on Feb. 29, staff presented the Statewide System of Support Resource Hub, which provides information on state-funded initiatives meant to boost student outcomes and support educators, and other tools available to local […]

California’s school finance spending is a mixed bag, researchers find

Hundreds of billions of dollars are distributed annually to more than 13,000 school districts across the country. But do states’ school finance systems, which are largely in charge of K-12 funding, provide adequate and equitable monetary resources? Rutgers University, the University of Miami and the […]

U.S. student-to-school counselor ratio improves but still misses recommended rate

The student-to-school counselor ratio improved 5.6 percent nationally between 2021–22 and 2022–23, but there is still work to be done to reach the recommended rate of 250:1, according to data released by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) in February. In 2022–23, the student-to-counselor ratio […]

Federal edtech plan serves as a call to action for closing digital divides

The U.S. Department of Education recently published its 2024 National Educational Technology Plan, A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design and Use Divides.. The plan, which was first released in 1994 and most recently updated in 2016, frames the three divides the […]

California introduces free behavioral health apps for families, young people

A duo of free web- and app-based tools offering families with children or young adults ages 0-25 one-on-one sessions with live wellness coaches, wellness exercises, a library of multimedia resources and access to peer communities moderated by trained behavioral health professionals, were launched by the […]

Brief explores the immigration system’s impact on school communities

As of 2019, roughly 7 percent of all children in the United States — an estimated 5 million young people under age 19 — lived with an undocumented family member, most often a parent. The effects of immigration enforcement actions on Latino children of undocumented […]