Report of the Working Group on Student Learning

In 1960, California took a bold step by developing a master plan wherein every qualified and interested California resident was guaranteed tuition-free access to higher education. The Master Plan for Higher Education has been reviewed each decade since 1960 and, despite changes in California’s economic and demographic circumstances, the original Master Plan has remained remarkably intact. In 1973, however, the Legislature augmented the state’s master plan with student diversity goals to foster a higher education community that was representative of the demographics of the state and of high school graduates. In 2000, the Legislature set an even more ambitious goal: Extend the reach and promise of the master plan by bringing the state’s schools, colleges, and universities into a more cohesive, learner-focused system—from kindergarten, through all levels of the University experience, and beyond–that guarantees a quality education to all Californians.

California schools and universities must prepare a student population that is increasingly large, increasingly diverse, and increasingly low-income. Without high-quality^[1] education, it is doubtful that California students can thrive, compete, and contribute in an economy more and more driven by technological work, international markets, geopolitical tensions, and social complexity. Without a well-educated citizenry, the state’s economic and civic future will be far less than what it could and should be.

Over the past two decades, legislators and educators have worked hard to update tried-and-true approaches to education in response to new demands that include the increasing diversity of our population, technological advances, workforce changes, global competition, and the need for an active and engaged body politic. The legislature’s next logical step is to bring the Pre-K, K-12 and postsecondary levels together into a cohesive system with quality guarantees at all levels. Such a step will require far more than a refinement of the tried and true. It will require the legislature’s firm commitment to a coherent set of policies that challenge fundamentally the educational status quo.

A Master Plan that accomplishes this ambitious goal must make student learning the focal point of policy decisions about a host of complex issues, including standards, assessment, teacher education, college admissions policies, governance, funding streams and institutional turf issues, to name just a few. Only with a focus on learning can we create a system that enables all Californians to develop knowledge, understandings, skills and dispositions necessary to sustain a democratic society and a desired quality of life. In what follows we lay out a set of learning goals for all students as the focus of the state’s Master Plan and education policymaking.

Importantly, the power of the 1960 Master Plan was its framing of the state’s educational promises to Californians and the State’s will to deliver on those promises. Similarly, the challenging learning goals we recommend are to be seen as educational promises to Californians, not educational burdens to be borne by their children. California’s record is clear: so long as the State has kept its educational promises, its students have met the state’s highest hopes for their learning; when and where California’s will and educational infrastructure have slackened, students’ performance and opportunities have similarly fallen.

The sobering reality of California’s education system is that too many of the state’s schools can neither provide nor promise the conditions whereby the State can reasonably and fairly ask students to learn to the highest standards. In 2002, California ranked 46^th among states in the adequacy of educational resources it provides, earning the state a grade of “F” on Education Week’s annual report card of educational quality. The decades-long under-commitment of resources has left the system’s capacity unable to provide students high-quality opportunities to learn. This is perhaps most dramatically evidenced in the state’s inadequate and unevenly distributed supply of qualified teachers. If Californians embrace the learning goals we set forth—embrace as promises to be kept rather than demands to be enforced—the education system can emerge from a surreal world in which resources are largely out of line with needs and requirements. The goals we outline here must guide new standards for educational resources, conditions, and opportunities. We must be vigilant that these goals are not adopted simply as obstacles that students must overcome.

The Student Learning Working Group (SLWG) offers ten sets of recommendations for how California’s new Master Plan should restructure the state’s schools and universities into a coherent, integrated PreK-University educational system that is equitable, well-resourced, and of the highest quality. These recommendations will require changes in many aspects of current school operations, including school structures, how staff and time are allocated, teaching strategies, and the ways in which adults and students are organized for instruction. Reforms like these cannot be accomplished by mandate. They require investments in the capacity of schools, colleges and universities to reflect upon and analyze their practices and to develop alternatives that can transform curriculum, teaching, and assessment.

Our proposals must be linked to all of the elements of the education system that have been the focus of the six other Working Groups. To create an educational system that makes student learning the highest priority, we recommend that the recommendations of the other groups be aligned with the learning recommendations we outline below. Many of the recommendations will require legislative action. Hence, not all of the recommendations will or can be implemented immediately. For these recommendations to be effectively implemented, it will require a long-term plan of the phasing in of strategic investments in the schools, colleges and universities.

In the more than 40 years since the first Master Plan, we have learned a great deal about the policies, practices, and resources our recommendations require. The task now is to develop the political will to act on what we know and to make the long-term investment that is required. This asks quite a lot of Californians—“sacrifice” is not too strong a word. Yet, the imperative cannot be denied or misunderstood: California’s public schools must provide all children with the educational experiences they require to develop the knowledge and problem solving abilities that are essential for productive and meaningful lives, work, and participation in democratic society.

• ensure the necessary resources, equal educational opportunities, and learning experiences
• require a coherent curriculum
• expect and enable all schools to be staffed by qualified professionals
• hold each level of the education system accountable to the state’s citizens, families, and students.

State policies must ensure that all students have the learning conditions and opportunities they need to complete secondary school prepared for and able to choose among a wide range of postsecondary education and career options. While decisions about what constitutes a high-quality education is not a state function alone, the State should identify core outcomes for all students, regardless of background or ability or needs.

The Student Learning Working Group recommends the above four learning goals, expecting the education system to elaborate and enact them in ways that are consistent with the recommendations in the remainder of this report. We place particular emphasis on numeracy and literacy as foundational skills, and as such, the State must assure that all students can meet these literacy and numeracy standards. We call for all students to attain oral and written proficiency in two languages. This goal is closely associated with individuals’ cultural enrichment, the competencies required of citizens in a culturally diverse state and increasingly global society, and California’s economic competitiveness. We realize that reaching this goal will require developing a teacher workforce with knowledge and skills in multiple languages. Yet, we view this recommendation as building on an unmatched opportunity, given the state’s linguistic diversity. Public opinion polls make clear the widespread support for students learning a second language, particularly in view of the increasingly global society and economy. Given the wealth of language resources among California’s population, the state is uniquely poised to adopt this challenging, but critically important goal. Finally, we emphasize acquisition of deep knowledge in essential school subjects. This goal reflects the clear need for all students to learn principles on which critical and creative thinking are based.

The state’s current content standards for K-12 are a first step toward meeting this state obligation (although they require modification to address our goal of proficiency in two languages). However, without carefully matching standards for content and student performance to standards for the resources and opportunities needed to meet them, the state risks presenting its students with little more than a list of unachievable goals. To ensure a realistic matching of goals and resources, the assessment of student achievement must be accompanied by the equally rigorous monitoring of resources and opportunities. Further, timely learning supports at the moment when students require them should replace the remedial programs and retention policies that are triggered by students’ failure. These latter practices remove students from high-achievement trajectories and have been shown repeatedly to retard students’ progress and achievement rather than enhance it. ^[3] Further, there are realistic, practical alternatives to remediation and retention that do not disadvantage students.

For many individuals, the social trend and personal requirement to pursue multiple careers in one's life makes adaptability in employment as important as any initial set of career skills, certification, or degrees. In brief, California’s schools cannot depend on a single “pipeline” that leads from early school successes through the university, with students opting out at various points along the way. California's education system must offer multiple entry and re-entry points appropriate to individual and civic needs and available throughout adults’ lives.

Additionally, in many California communities, particularly low-income neighborhoods of color, community institutions provide important educational experiences, support the public schools, and assist families in making the transitions critical for school, college, and university success. Therefore, implementing effective education policies cannot exclusively be dependent on the schools. The state legislature will need to provide incentives to create and support formal partnerships between families, schools, youth development organizations, local government, and the full array of social institutions and organizations that contribute to the personal and academic development of young people.

The recommendations that follow detail how the state can and should set challenging goals and curriculum, guarantee opportunities to learn, ensure fair and useful assessment, and establish systemic processes of accountability and review. We also recommend a short-term intervention to increase the access to the University of California for student in the state’s most disadvantaged schools.