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Video: Analyzing the Standardized Test Results

California’s public school students did much better the second year they took new standardized tests, and the state is catching up to others that use the same Smarter Balanced tests. PPIC researchers Iwunze Ugo and Laura Hill take a close look at the test results in a new report, Student Achievement and Growth on California’s K–12 Assessments, which Ugo presented at a Sacramento briefing last week.

The researchers used two years of results to assess early implementation of two major statewide reforms—the Common Core curriculum and the new finance system that targets additional funding toward low-income students, English Learners, and foster youth. The PPIC report looks in depth at the test results for English Learners and economically disadvantaged students and finds that achievement gaps are not closing. Of particular concern are the districts and schools experiencing both low achievement and low growth in achievement between the first year and the second year of testing. This suggests that students who were already lagging their peers could be falling further behind.

The researchers conclude that struggling districts may need more guidance from the state—and might also look to schools and districts that have had success with high-need students.

Learn more

Read the report Student Achievement and Growth on California’s K–12 Assessments

Highly Educated Workers See Strong Job Gains

Recessions and recoveries have the power to reshape our economy and workforce. In California, the latest recession and recovery have had very different consequences for workers based on their educational attainment levels. During the Great Recession, most job losses occurred among less educated workers, and the subsequent recovery has seen stronger gains for highly educated workers.

After declining to a nadir in 2010 with the Great Recession, the number of employed workers in California has grown substantially, increasing by 1.6 million among adults of prime working age (20 to 64) between 2010 and 2015, according to data from the American Community Survey. During the recovery, the rate of employment growth has been highest for workers with a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree (see chart). Even though high school graduates have also fared relatively well in the recovery, they suffered the most in the recession and recent gains have still not offset the job losses they sustained from 2007 to 2010.

These employment gains reflect the changing nature of our economy. Many of the fastest-growing occupations rely on highly educated workers, such as software developers, computer scientists, and management analysts. But other fast-growing occupations depend on less educated workers, such as taxi drivers and chauffeurs (including those that work for Lyft or Uber) and food preparation workers. Overall, occupations highly dependent on college graduates—those in which a majority of workers in 2010 had at least a bachelor’s degree—experienced a much faster rate of growth (14.1%) than occupations less dependent on college graduates (9.6%).

The changing nature of the state’s economy has also created regional winners and losers. The Bay Area, with its highly educated population, led the state in employment growth, adding more than 400,000 workers overall from 2010 to 2015, with college graduates making up 75% of those job gains (see chart). In contrast, the rate of employment growth was lowest in the San Joaquin Valley, where the demand for and supply of highly educated workers is relatively weak. In the Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley, college graduates accounted for only 20% and 17%, respectively, of employment gains.

California’s recovery from the Great Recession highlights the importance of the state’s higher education systems in providing meaningful economic opportunities for workers. Rather than being diminished by the most recent recession and recovery, a college education has emerged as an even more important determinant of labor market success.

Learn more

Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Better Information Can Help the Environment

We know that California’s aquatic species are at risk from a host of stressors and that drought pushes them closer to the brink. Yet there are significant gaps in our understanding of key factors affecting ecosystem health that make it difficult to effectively manage water for the natural environment. Good practices from other dry places offer lessons for protecting our struggling species and improving conditions in troubled ecosystems.

Water accounting―tracking how much is there, who has claims to it, and what is actually being “spent”―can provide a clearer picture of how and when to allocate water for the environment. Other states have improved their water information systems and reduced environmental problems.

For example, the Colorado Water Conservation Board has a network of high-tech stream gages to monitor freshwater ecosystems. These gages send text or email alerts to state environmental water managers within minutes of approaching low-flow conditions. Staff can respond quickly by requesting an evaluation of priority water needs among local water users and, where possible, shifting water to meet environmental needs.

By comparison, California lacks stream gages on half of the rivers and streams that support critical habitats. This makes active management of environmental water during droughts very difficult, if not impossible, in many parts of the state.

Better accounting can also help us prepare for drought, rather than just respond to it. Making better use of water during average and wet years can stabilize or enhance at-risk ecosystems. This increases their resilience to drought.

For example, drought-prone Victoria, Australia, uses sophisticated water accounting tools to coordinate environmental flows for all types of water years. Victoria also collects and organizes information on a number of critical ecological indicators for thousands of miles of streams and wetlands. This inventory informs Victoria’s short- and long-term decision making about where and when water will be most beneficial to ecosystems and thus helps build drought resilience.

California has a significant body of research on freshwater ecological indicators, but the information isn’t organized in ways that make it readily useful to environmental water managers.

Managing water for the environment is more than a technical challenge. It’s a social process that relies on complex decisions made by water users, regulators, and other stakeholders. Examples from other arid regions suggest that this social process is improved by having access to accurate and timely information. Strengthening water accounting in California is key to improving our ability to manage water for the environment and building the social license necessary to act. Before the next drought pushes more freshwater species to the brink, we would be wise to follow the lead of other semi-arid regions and invest in accounting systems that improve our understanding and management of our rivers and streams.

Learn more

Read the report Accounting for California’s Water (July 2016)
Read “Three Lessons on Water Accounting for California” (PPIC Blog, August 8, 2016)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center

Video: Taking the Pulse of Californians’ Views of Schools

California public schools serve more than 6 million children, more than half of them economically disadvantaged and nearly a quarter of them English Learners. Achievement gaps across socioeconomic and demographic groups of students persist despite significant progress on state standardized tests in recent years.

The state has taken steps to address these challenges by changing its school finance system and its curriculum. Implementation of these reforms is proceeding against a backdrop of uncertainty at the federal level. The annual PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Education examined the views of state residents generally and public school parents, in particular, of this rapidly changing environment.

The survey finds that most Californians and public school parents alike give their local public schools a grade of A or B. At the same time, majorities in each group see the current level of state funding as inadequate. Most Californians say that the wiser use of existing funds is at least part of the formula to improve school quality. In this context, majorities of residents and public school parents favor providing parents with tax-funded vouchers to send their children to any school they choose.

Asked about the impact of stepped-up federal immigration enforcement, most residents and parents express concern about the effects of these efforts on undocumented students and their families. Majorities say they favor their local district declaring itself a “sanctuary safe zone” to indicate that it will protect its undocumented students and their families.

Learn more

Read the PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Education
Learn more about the PPIC Statewide Survey

Testimony: Accurately Assessing College Readiness

Olga Rodriguez, research fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center, testified before the Senate Education Committee in Sacramento today (April 19, 2017). Here are her prepared remarks.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning. My name is Olga Rodriguez and I am a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. PPIC is a nonpartisan policy research organization and does not take positions on legislation. My comments are based on research we have conducted at PPIC on California’s community colleges.

As you heard during last month’s remediation hearing, every year, California’s community colleges identify hundreds of thousands of students as not ready for transfer-level courses in math and English. Since these courses are required to transfer to a four-year college, students deemed underprepared are placed in developmental (also known as remedial or basic-skills) courses to prepare for college work. These placement decisions have profound effects: a sizeable portion of students in remedial classes never earn a degree or certificate, or transfer to a four-year college. Our study finds that 80% of entering students take at least one developmental course in math, English, or both, and most of those students never complete a college-level math or English course.

Despite the critical role of assessment and placement, there is little clarity about how colleges across the state assess and place students into math, English, and English as a Second Language (ESL) sequences. Prior studies conducted in California relied on a small sample of community colleges and examined policies in place before 2010. To help fill this information gap, in spring 2016 we surveyed all 113 community colleges in the state; 82 of the colleges participated in the survey. They reported on the assessment and placement policies used to place students into transfer-level math and English as well as the highest level of ESL during the 2014–15 academic year. The broad goal of the survey is to provide policymakers and practitioners with a descriptive landscape that will improve understanding of the policies used across the state to assess and place students into math, English, and ESL courses, prior to the implementation of reforms associated with the Common Assessment Initiative. I describe our findings below.

  • First, colleges vary in how they identify college-ready students. We find that the use of assessment tests is widespread; 100% of colleges reported using assessment tests for math, English, and ESL placement. However, there is variation in the types of tests used and how they are used. Over half of colleges used the Accuplacer for placement into math and English courses; the Compass, which was taken off of the market last November due to poor predictive validity, was the most commonly used assessment test for ESL (33%), and was used by over 20% of colleges for math and English. It is very important to note that even when colleges use the same test, they apply different rules for the minimum scores that qualify as college ready. For example, while more than half of colleges reported using the Accuplacer test to assess college readiness in math, cut scores ranged from 25 to 96 out of 120. A student with a score of 58 (the median score used by colleges) would be deemed college ready at half of these colleges, but not at the other half. The lack of consistency means that access to college courses—credit-bearing courses that students need in order to transfer to four-year colleges—is determined not only by students’ performance on the test, but also by the policies at the college where they enroll. This wide variation may be especially challenging for the 40% of students who eventually enroll in more than one community college campus, as they could be deemed college ready at one college but referred to remediation in another. These policies end up undermining opportunities to transfer between campuses and provide mixed signals about what it means to be ready for college-level courses. Furthermore, assessment and placement practices have implications for equity. Students of color are more likely to attend colleges that set higher math cutoff scores, which means these students have less access to the math classes they need to advance.
  • Second, the use of multiple measures continues to be sparse and unsystematic. In California, the use of other measures in addition to placement exams (known as multiple measures) is mandated by law—in fact, research shows that measures such as high school achievement data do a comparable or better job at predicting college success. But while assessment tests were standard practice, there was substantial variation in the types of other measures used across colleges and across subjects. We find that the majority of colleges used additional criteria to determine placement into math (94%) and English (90%), but just over half did so for ESL (52%). Colleges used, on average, three measures to assess and place students in English and math courses, and two measures to assess and place students into ESL courses. Additional measures included high school GPA, grades in prior English and math coursework, results from the Early Assessment Program (EAP), and counselor or instructor recommendations, among others. Overall, the use of high school records was more common for math and English, but much less so for ESL. In addition, while some colleges used multiple measures in a systematic way for all students, up to 30% of colleges only used multiple measures if students requested it or challenged their placement. Uneven implementation of multiple measures may aggravate inequities if students with cultural and social capital are more likely to take advantage of these policies.
  • Third, assessment and placement in ESL needs more attention. Each year, about 30,000 students (6% of incoming community college students) enroll in ESL, and these students may be especially disadvantaged by current policies. Compared to English and math, in ESL, fewer colleges offered exemption opportunities (28% offered none at all in ESL vs. 4–5% in English and math) and test preparation activities (40% offered practice tests in ESL vs. 70–74% for English and math). Additionally, our findings suggest that a lower proportion of colleges used high school achievement data for ESL placement, indicating that English Learners may not be benefitting from one of the most promising methods of improving placement accuracy.
  • Finally, ongoing reforms aim to promote more consistent and accurate placement policies. With the support of the governor, the legislature, and the system office, a significant amount of resources have been devoted to improving assessment and placement at community colleges. The Common Assessment Initiative, for example, will establish a shared assessment system. Our survey finds that over 80% of colleges reported having discussions about the Common Assessment Initiative for English and math; just under 80% of colleges did so for ESL. Still, colleges will have the autonomy to set their own rules for placement, and that’s a cause for concern if the inconsistencies described above continue. The Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) is a collaborative effort led by Cal-PASS Plus and the RP Group to support colleges in implementing multiple measures in a more consistent and effective way. About half of colleges reported having discussions about multiple measures, and those that did frequently did so as part of their participation in the MMAP. Collaborative efforts such as this one can help ensure consistent placement policies across the state’s community colleges.

In sum, assessment and placement policies should help students reach their academic goals—not stand in the way of those goals. As colleges work to enhance the efficacy of developmental education, implementing evidence-based practices that accurately assess students’ college readiness will be critical. A more equitable and efficient system for assessment and placement is a vital step in helping all students achieve their academic goals.

Debate over How Special Education Is Funded

Last month the state Department of Finance held meetings in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Fresno, and San Mateo to get input on improving special education, the state’s largest K–12 categorical program. The Department of Finance asked PPIC to kick off these meetings with a presentation of findings and recommendations from our recent report on special education financing. The report calls for folding state special education funding into California’s new Local Control Funding Formula as a means of improving local flexibility and accountability. Currently, state and federal funds are distributed to regional administrative entities known as Special Education Local Planning Areas (SELPAs).

The one consistent theme at the public meetings was a call for more money from local educators and parents. Beyond that point of agreement, though, these discussions did not lay out a clear path for the state to follow in its effort to improve services for disabled students.

Our report is not the only one to call for major changes in special education. A study published by the Statewide Task Force on Special Education in 2015 concluded that California’s special education program suffers from “systemic dysfunction.” It says that, too often, students miss opportunities to grow because they are served in separate programs outside the regular classroom. The task force encourages changes at both the state and local level to integrate special education with the programs that serve nondisabled students. The report also recommends earlier services to children with disabilities, an integrated state and federal accountability system for special education, and more funding for local programs.

The Department of Finance staffers made it clear that the reports were a starting point, and that they were looking for suggestions about how to make special education more effective and efficient. Many who attended the meetings argued that special education is underfunded by both the state and federal government. Many also commented on the need to improve the way infant and preschool services for children with disabilities are funded.

PPIC’s recommendation to send funds to districts rather than SELPA was mostly opposed by the educators, parents, and administrators who spoke at the meetings. These participants often voiced support for SELPAs, and worried that our recommendations would hurt small districts or the network of regional services that SELPA funding supports. Larger districts, on the other hand, noted that they may bear a disproportionate cost of these small district subsidies and regional services. Several parents also voiced concerns about the proposed shift in funding, because they believe district administrators are less supportive than SELPA staff.

The meetings demonstrated the difficulty of developing a funding system that will be effective in every district in our large and diverse state. They underscore the logic behind the Local Control Funding Formula: Improving performance requires giving school districts greater control over critical program and funding decisions, but that control must be balanced by a broad accountability system and monitored by parent and community oversight. As we argued in our report, only school districts can address the systemic dysfunction of California’s system, and the state needs to give them the control and accountability to do so.

With the March outreach meetings concluded, the ball is in the Brown administration’s court. It will be worth watching whether the governor proposes any program changes during budget discussions later this year or in next year’s budget.

Learn more

Read the report Special Education Finance in California

 

Commentary: What Did We Learn from the Drought?


This commentary was published in the Sacramento Bee on April 13, 2017.

Governor Jerry Brown has declared the drought over. What did we learn over five years of drought that that could help us better manage the next one? The drought brought some hard lessons and gave us a glimpse into a challenging future. Record warm temperatures—comparable to those predicted by many climate scientists for later this century—made drought management harder. Improving drought resilience in this increasingly challenging climate will require a number of policy improvements. These six policy changes could help.

Read the full commentary on sacbee.com.

The Growth of College Promise Programs

A majority of Californians believe that college affordability is a big problem for the state, according to the PPIC Statewide Survey. Low family incomes and the high cost of living have made it difficult for many students to pay the full price of college. This is true even though California’s public colleges and universities have some of the lowest tuition levels in the country and the majority of community college, UC, and CSU students receive grants to cover the cost of tuition. Policymakers have taken notice of the public’s concerns.

Many local governments, school districts, colleges, and business communities have been addressing the issue of access and affordability through “promise programs.” The “promise” label has been adopted to represent a wide range of programs that share at least two specific characteristics: they are limited to individuals in a particular geographic area, such as a city or school district, and they provide some level of financial support for postsecondary education. Nearly 80 promise programs have been launched nationwide since 2001. In California, according to WestEd, 23 of these programs have been created since 2008—13 of them in the past two years.

The most well-known California-based promise program is the Long Beach Promise, which offers all public school students in the district a tuition-free first semester at Long Beach Community College. It also guarantees admission to Long Beach State University for students who complete required college preparatory courses with the necessary grades.

College promise programs often couple financial incentives with extensive outreach to middle-school students and improved student services like tutoring and counseling. In California, the vast majority of these programs are focused on getting students to enroll in community colleges—most offer one semester of free community college tuition and do not provide enrollment guarantees to a four-year college.

While it’s important to ensure that students who might not otherwise consider college be given incentives to attend, the state’s biggest challenge is ensuring that college students stay in school and earn a degree or certificate. Only about half of California community college students receive an associate degree or certificate, transfer to four-year schools, or complete 60 transferable units within six years of enrolling. There is some anecdotal evidence that promise programs improve college-going rates, but they do not seem to boost college completion. In order to improve completion rates, programs may need to provide support services for participants who have entered college.

More generally, the wide range of program designs makes it difficult to assess their effectiveness—even within California, promise programs have different residency requirements, eligibility criteria, grades of entry (middle school vs. freshman year of high school), financial awards, support services, and levels of financial sustainability. Defining the basic elements of promise programs and developing effective standards for program design and implementation will help ensure their future success.

Learn more

Read the PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Higher Education
Visit the PPIC Higher Education Center

Wetlands at Risk from Federal Rule Change

The federal government’s Clean Water Act includes dozens of regulations to reduce water pollution. But it doesn’t include a clear definition of what types of water systems it covers. The Trump administration recently ordered federal agencies to begin the formal process to repeal an Obama-era rule—called the Waters of the United States rule. We asked Richard Frank, an expert in California environmental law and a member of the PPIC Water Policy Center research network, what President Trump’s executive order could mean for wetlands in California and beyond.

PPIC: What was the purpose of the Waters of the United States rule?

Richard Frank: It was intended to fix ambiguity in the Clean Water Act relating to federal jurisdiction over wetlands and water pollution control. In recent years it was left up to the courts to figure out if a specific waterway was covered. There’s wide agreement that this kind of case-by-case litigation is an uneconomic and inefficient way to address the problem—going all the way to the US Supreme Court.

PPIC: What aspects of the rule are controversial?

RF: From the time the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972, the issue of what is a wetland has been far and away its most controversial aspect. For many years the agricultural community, developers, and business interests have complained that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, which jointly administer the wetlands provisions of the Clean Water Act, have been excessive in their assertion of jurisdiction over wetlands. It’s a Goldilocks situation: farmers and developers thought the agencies were too bold. Environmental interests complained they weren’t robust enough in interpreting what a wetlands is. The statute doesn’t provide a lot of help—it’s based on a terribly imprecise definition.

PPIC: What will happen next?

RF: The president directed EPA and the Corps to withdraw the Waters of the United States rule, which had not yet gone into effect. The tougher question is will it be repealed or replaced, presumably by a narrower definition of wetlands? In the meantime, there will be no regulatory guidance at all for at least a year or two. From a public policy perspective this is the worst possible outcome—we’re left with an ad hoc process that is time consuming, expensive, and unpredictable in its outcome.

PPIC: How does this affect California?

RF: The rule would have provided greater protection for California wetlands. Some might argue that the cow’s already out of barn, since the state has already lost 90% of its historic wetlands and 95% of its coastal wetlands. For the next couple of years, at least, that additional protection for our remaining wetlands is removed, unless the state steps up in some way.

In the meantime, I’m confident that the wetlands protection provisions of the federal Clean Water Act will remain the most controversial and heavily litigated provision of this bedrock environmental law for the foreseeable future.

The good news is that the state already has broader authority than do federal regulators. California actually has the power to regulate wetlands more broadly than the federal government. But despite having a strong clean water law of its own, California currently lacks a comprehensive state system of wetlands regulations that could fill the current regulatory gap left by the president’s repeal of this rule. I hope and expect that the State and Regional Water Boards will fill this regulatory vacuum in the near future.

The Clean Water Act’s wetlands protection program has had another important effect over the past 45 years: it has raised public awareness about the many positive societal values wetlands have, from providing increased flood protection and cleaner water to providing essential wildlife habitat.

Learn more

Read “A State of Water Independence” (PPIC Blog, January 4, 2017)
Visit the PPIC Water Policy Center’s ecosystems resource page

Remaking the Salton Sea

The Salton Sea—California’s largest lake—faces an environmental crisis. The already-shrinking desert lake will receive less water starting next year, which will accelerate the exposure of toxic dust along its shore, increase its already high salinity, and reduce a food source and habitat for hundreds of bird species that rely on the lake.

The sea, which was created by a break in a Colorado River irrigation canal in the 1900s, for decades relied on irrigation runoff from local farms for sustenance. In recent years, the sea received a temporary water source arranged as part of a Colorado River water trading agreement that is sending some irrigation water to cities on the Southern California coast. But these temporary flows are slated to end in January 2018, after which inflows to the lake will decline.

Various proposals to restore the sea over the years were deemed too costly (both in dollars and water). Now, a recently released 10-year plan by the state proposes to address both dust and habitat problems for a price tag of $383 million—down from earlier, longer term restoration plans that were projected to cost as much as $9 billion. The plan will include farm runoff to the sea through a new canal and new bird habitat areas.

We talked to two experts who have a long involvement in trying to resolve this complex water challenge: Fran Spivy-Weber, who as former vice chair of the State Water Resources Control Board was involved in multiple programs to address the sea’s problems, and Lester Snow, who has worked on the sea for more than a decade in his various capacities in the state’s water agencies and most recently on behalf of the Water Foundation. Both are members of the PPIC Water Policy Center’s advisory council.

“For so long, nothing was done. Now there’s a realistic plan that can help guide expenditures,” Spivy-Weber said. “It’s not a gold-plated plan. The state is trying to create something that does the job as cost effectively as possible.”

Dust has been “a sleeping giant of a problem that brings serious public health risks,” Snow said. The region has some of the highest asthma-hospitalization rates in the state, and dust from the sea has worsened already bad air quality. “I believe the lake’s dust problem is now getting the attention it needs, with a number of legislators now focusing on it.”

The plan is to build thousands of acres of shallow ponds to cover the dust-prone exposed shore; these will double as wildlife habitat. In other areas, hillocks will be built to stop blowing dust—an approach that has worked at Owens Lake, which dried up from overuse after its source was diverted to Los Angeles.

Because California has lost nearly all of its riparian and wetland habitat over the past century, the Salton Sea is now a critically important stop for birds migrating on the Pacific Flyway. “Many species of birds adopted the sea as a critical part of their migration path, so maintaining its habitat functions is important,” Snow said. More than 400 species rely on the lake, some of them endangered.

The state plan has a 10-year scope, which Spivy-Weber noted will make it more adaptable to changing conditions. “If you tried to do a long-range plan you’d probably have to change it at 10 years anyway,” she said. “Let’s get started and show some real progress, and start to think about how to address things like how quickly the sea is receding, how the cost of water is changing, and what we want to do about developing the large geothermal resources in the region.”

Spivy-Weber said the plan’s success depends on sustained interest from Sacramento. “We’ll need the next administration to be as interested and as flexible as this one has been in implementing plans and appropriating money. It’s also incredibly important that the legislature makes the Salton Sea as a priority and ensures that some funds go into projects for the sea every year.”

The multi-state commitment to improve management of the Colorado River brings momentum to the effort. Arresting the sea’s decline is tied to an agreement on sharing the river’s over-allocated waters. “We need to bring rational water management to the Colorado River, and live within our means,” Snow said. “The Salton Sea is a linchpin to our sustainable management of this important resource.”

Learn more

Read recommendations from the state’s Salton Sea Task Force
Read California’s Water: The Colorado River (from the California’s Water briefing kit, October 2016)