The California State Board of Education’s (SBE) March 11-12 meeting included two study sessions on topics related to the developing state Portrait of a Graduate/Learner and the role of differentiated assistance (DA) in the Statewide System of Support, as well as the adoption of a Personal Finance Curriculum Guide and changes to several indicators and other factors on the California School Dashboard.
Study sessions
Portrait of a Graduate/Learner
The board received updates on progress made toward the adoption of a statewide Portrait of a Graduate/Learner — a comprehensive set of school- or local educational agency-level aspirations for what every learner will know and be able to do when they graduate from California’s K-12 system. Updates were provided by the West Comprehensive Center, managed by the American Institutes for Research, and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE), which recently concluded gathering feedback from stakeholders through listening sessions and a survey on the topic (results are available here).
According to the CCEE, survey responses were collected from 54 of California’s 58 counties, representing broad geographic reach across the state. Only four small, rural counties — Alpine, Lassen, Plumas and Sierra — had no respondents.
Among the survey’s findings:
- Nearly 70 percent of respondents favored “Portrait of a Learner,” which emphasizes the ongoing journey of learning that applies to students at all levels and continues throughout life, over Portrait of a Graduate, which emphasizes the end goal of what students should know and be able to do when they complete their K-12 education.
- Critical thinking was far and away the most commonly selected skill, with nearly 60 percent of respondents including it in their top five, outpacing the second-ranked competency by more than 23 percentage points. Students, parents, educators, administrators, community members, researchers and industry partners were largely in agreement that the ability to ask questions, analyze information and think carefully is the foundational skill students need.
- While no other competency included in the survey garnered such broad consensus, several received support from more than a third of survey respondents, including communication (36.1 percent), problem-solving (35.6 percent), perseverance and adaptability (31.6 percent), character (31 percent) and collaboration (30.3 percent). According to the CCEE, these five competencies, together with critical thinking, may represent a core set of foundational skills that stakeholders view as essential for all learners.
- Additional competencies that received between 19-25 percent support in the survey included global citizenship, growth mindset, ability to value varied perspectives, academic proficiency, self-awareness, creativity, economic literacy and health and wellness.
- Some competencies showed more variation depending on respondents’ perspectives. LEA leaders and support staff emphasized collaboration and communication skills; industry and workforce partners placed higher value on character, adaptability and problem-solving; community members and researchers showed stronger support for global citizenship and the ability to value varied perspectives; and students demonstrated stronger interest in practical or personally relevant competencies such as creativity, health and wellness, leadership, and college and career navigation.
CSBA Legislative Advocate Carlos Machado commended the board’s commitment to ensuring the portrait remains a guiding “North Star” rather than a new mandate for LEAs. However, he noted in a submitted statement, CSBA believes there is an equally pressing need for a state-level “Portrait of Support” to guide the state’s own operations.
“Just as the Portrait of a Learner seeks to bring coherence to student competencies, California requires a coherent state-level operations and support plan,” Machado explained. “Currently, school district and county boards must navigate a fragmented landscape of piecemeal programs, one-off grants and disconnected reforms. What California lacks is strategic alignment between education programs. We urge the SBE to apply the spirit of the portrait, based also on coherence, vision, and purpose, to state-level operations. By adopting a ‘support, not dictates’ philosophy, the state can move toward a model of coherence over chaos.”
Discussion around that disconnect was continued by Board President Linda Darling-Hammond, who summarized a discussion she was a part of during a February legislative hearing about redundant reporting requirements and disjointed governance structure.
“We want to explore how to deepen and expand that alignment of applications and funding systems for related programs,” she said. “The Department of Education has done a report looking at places where that could be done more widely in different areas of the funding system and greater coordination across currently disconnected education sectors. There is a new coordinating council, the California Education Interagency Council, that will try to bring together the TK-12 system, each of the higher ed sectors and the labor department to really look at our needs in this new economy and how to align efforts.”
Darling-Hammond concluded that there seems to be emerging areas of consensus on what a state portrait should include, and that discussion will continue at the board’s May meeting.
Differentiated Assistance and Statewide System of Support
Building on the discussion from its November 2025 study session, the board continued its work on updating the eligibility criteria for differentiated assistance and intervention that must be made by July 15, 2026, pursuant to Assembly Bill 121.
The bill charged the State Board to take a more comprehensive look at the performance criteria for DA for LEAs, taking into consideration the recommendations from a 2022 state-funded WestEd evaluation of DA and the need to appropriately focus resources and supports where needs are the greatest. That report found that as a result of the pandemic, a substantial majority of districts would likely be identified for DA, and that this number would overwhelm the system in terms of staff capacity to provide support. There are currently about 400 districts identified for DA in California.
This latest study session included a presentation from the California Department of Education (CDE) providing an overview of DA and how it fits into the Statewide System of Support and the current criteria for DA eligibility, as well as a review of the CCEE Statewide System of Support Core Working Group: Recommendations report from co-facilitators and co-authors Jason Willis and Heather Hough. Ventura Unified School District Superintendent Antonio Castro provided insight into how state policy and county office of education‑led support can enable the conditions that improve outcomes for school districts.
Willis and Hough explained that a handful of common challenges emerged in interviews and meetings with Working Group members and education leaders across the state related to the Statewide System of Support. For example, many noted that supports often miss the biggest challenges LEAs are facing, identification for technical assistance is confusing and overwhelming, supports lack coordination and consistency, DA support varies across counties with little accountability for quality or effectiveness, and a lack of a formal escalation framework leaves the system without a clear mechanism to respond when students are not being adequately served because of persistent dysfunction.
To address these issues, six recommendations outlined in the report call for establishing clear goals, aligning agencies and initiatives, refining identification and diagnostic processes, ensuring the quality of technical assistance, creating a transparent escalation pathway when improvement does not occur, and embedding continuous learning throughout the system.
“Together, these shifts aim to reduce reliance on compliance and to emphasize and incentivize shared responsibility, sustained focus, and continuous improvement, so that every level of the system shares responsibility and accountability for improving teaching and learning,” the report states. “At the core is the idea of reciprocal accountability: if we expect schools and districts to deliver better outcomes for students, every level of the system must also take responsibility for creating the conditions that make improvement possible for the professionals in schools and districts.”
CSBA’s Machado called out the unique issues experienced by very small school districts throughout the state, where the performance of just a few students can significantly impact Dashboard results and the support received from the state.
“The SBE must ensure that updated criteria account for this volatility and provide a fair reflection of school performance in small-school settings,” he said in a submitted statement. “Under the current accountability framework, many governing boards of small school districts oversee high-need student populations that remain invisible to the state’s DA criteria. Because these districts often fail to meet the minimum n-size threshold for specific student groups, they are frequently bypassed for formal support, even when significant achievement gaps persist. This technically leaves local boards in a difficult position, where they are held accountable by their communities for student outcomes but are denied access to the resources of the statewide system of support. Any changes the SBE considers should ensure that the size of a district does not determine the quality of support its students receive from the state.”
Learn more about DA and how it impacts LEAs in the fall 2025 issue of California Schools magazine.
Dashboard updates
At the board’s January meeting, the SBE approved the 2026 Accountability Workplan as part of its annual review process for the California School Dashboard — which requires the board to evaluate state and local indicators and performance standards to identify and implement updates guided by newly available data, research findings, legislative changes and stakeholder input.
In response to discussion from that meeting, CDE staff provided recommendations to the board related to the College/Career, Suspension Rate, English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics and Science indicators, Dashboard Alternative School Status (DASS) and Priority 1 Teacher Assignment Data. (Details about each recommendation are included in attachments one through six of the agenda item.)
The board approved proposed revisions to the Suspension Rate Indicator five‑by‑five for long-term English learners detailed in the agenda item and removed grace periods from the participation rate calculation for the ELA, Mathematics and Science indicators.
The board was poised to adopt updates to the application-based DASS criteria, including a revised credit-deficient definition and requiring a minimum enrollment in the school of more than 30 days, but opted to move forward with existing criteria so that any school pending new application-based status can be authorized for 2026. The board plans to discuss this matter further at the May meeting.
Following significant back and forth, the board decided to hold off on any changes to the College Career Indicator (CCI) until its May meeting, at which point the board will continue discussion on the topic. CDE staff had recommended the board approve specific definitions of internship, student-led enterprise and simulated work-based learning for inclusion on the CCI, as well as the State Seal of Civic Engagement as a plus metric in combination with either meeting University of California/California State University course requirements or successful completion of a career technical education pathway. However, nearly every member of the SBE expressed concern related to some factor of the CDE’s proposed changes.
In other SBE news:
- The board approved the adoption of the Personal Finance Curriculum Guide, which is intended to support implementation of the graduation requirement in personal finance established by AB 2927. Commencing with the graduating class of 2030–31, students must complete a stand-alone one-semester course in personal finance in order to graduate from high school, and that such a course must be offered to high school students beginning in 2027–28.
- The latest round of Career Technical Education Incentive Grant allocations were approved for fiscal year 2025–26.
The next State Board meeting is scheduled for May 12-13. View the full meeting calendar.