We’ve been busy

One of the pleasures of writing about California’s education system is there is always more to learn. Policies evolve. Public opinion shifts. Conditions change. New organizations appear, with fresh insights and voices. Meanwhile, each new school year brings new handoffs, as organizations bring new people into leadership roles.

What’s new in Ed100

Summer tends to be a “quiet” season for us when it comes to connecting with PTAs, districts and community leaders. We use the time to refresh our ~100 core lessons about California’s education system. It’s a big, ongoing challenge to keep each lesson up to date in English and Spanish. (You can find the date of the last update in small print at the bottom of every lesson, above the reader comments.)

We often revise our lessons — and some blog posts — without fanfare. If a change is fairly minor, we don’t trouble you with it. We only send you an email once a week, after all, so we have to make choices.

We thought it might be useful to share a mid-year roundup of what’s new in Ed100 so far in 2024. This post highlights some of the bigger updates.

Education Funding, Finance, and Resources

Ed100 Chapter 8 focuses on the connection between money and education. We invest major ongoing effort to keep our lessons in this chapter up to date.

Ed100 Lesson 8.1
California skimps on education

Lessons 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 are some of the hardest ongoing work we do. They explain why money matters for education, how it is used, where it comes from, and why California is so different from other states. All of these posts have been freshly updated.

Inflation distortion

Inflation is an ongoing challenge in writing about money in education, because dollars mean different things in different years. Old posts about education costs can be deeply misleading if they aren’t adjusted! (The first chart in Lesson 8.1 make this point visually.) To address this challenge as consistently as possible, we maintain a massive public data model, which underlies all the charts you see in our posts. Each chart on Ed100 includes the associated lesson number in the footnote.

Operational funding for schools in California is profoundly determined by the economy, filtered through the rules of Proposition 13, Proposition 98, and the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Lessons 8.4 and 8.5, both freshly updated, explain how those systems work. It’s authentically complicated stuff, but vitally important for school community leaders to understand.

In the Ed100 blog
The 2024-25 education budget

The budget for the 2024-25 school year demonstrated how powerfully Proposition 98 defends education funding in a down year, as Carol explained in our blog.

Most money for schools is determined through LCFF, but not all of it. We updated Lessons 8.6 and 8.7 to explain how categorical funds fit in, and we changed Lesson 6.8 to reflect the newest big state categorical program, Arts Education.

In the Ed100 blog
What are Basic Aid districts?

Only a small fraction of California students (3% or so) attend public schools in Basic Aid districts, where local property taxes overflow the amount they would receive from the state through LCFF. Why bother learning about these non-LCFF districts? Because doing so helps clarify how LCFF works. This post also celebrates the deft political leadership that used a moment of crisis to create a funding system that works very well.

Many community leaders want to bring more operating resources to their schools. How can they do it? We just updated lessons 8.9 and 8.10, which thoroughly explore this question from bake sales to parcel taxes and school foundations.

New court decisions in 2024 have clarified that communities have fresh options for parcel tax funding… if they can get organized enough to use the initiative process. How do initiatives work in the new rules? We have updated Lessons 8.10 and 7.6 to explain it. (This lesson also includes fresh information about the going cost of a signature on a petition. Take a guess before you look. It helps explain why signature-gathers are so friendly.)

Money is also crucial when it comes to capital funds for school facilities, which we explain in Lesson 5.9. This lesson has been freshly updated along with a blog post focused on Proposition 2, the upcoming $10B state school bond measure on the November ballot.

Programs and priorities

Although most of our update work this year has been focused on money matters, there’s a lot more. Here are some of the other posts we have added or updated this year so far:

What do gifted students need? There is no significant state or federal funding for gifted programs. This post explains why, and what districts can do if they want to.

Are charter schools good or evil? This important post extends on Lesson 5.5, also updated, which explains what charter schools are and how they are created.

Trump, Biden, and public education. Events overtook this post, but it remains relevant as a comparison of Republican and Democratic policy priorities in education.

Education and the environment. Schools are big, energy-hungry structures. They shouldn’t be. In this post, Mary Perry explains what to do about it.

Flunking democracy. Civic education is one of the core missions of universal public education. There is evidence that we are doing a terrible job of it. This post explains what could be different.

How to choose a college. We updated our popular post about the college application process with new data about the impact of Early Action (EA) and Early Decision (ED).

What is public censure? School board meetings have become much saltier over the past few years. One symptom is the increased use of censure resolutions. What are they, and why does it matter? This post explains.

Schools are like businesses. This post suggests a useful way of thinking about the analogy between schools and businesses. For example, who is the manager in this analogy? Are you sure?

The school closure checklist. Enrollment in California schools is declining, in some areas quickly. Some schools will have to close — the math is unavoidable. What’s the process, and who’s in charge? As this post explains, it’s quite a maze.

The battle over ethnic studies. California high schools must begin offering courses in Ethnic Studies by no later than the 2025-26 school year. Some are selecting a “liberated” curriculum that doesn’t follow state guidance. Here’s what you need to know.

Also on our minds

Ed100 is an independent project under the fiscal sponsorship of Full Circle Fund. We don’t have a board. Should we? If we go for it, we’ll need help, some funding, and a process. If this is something you have ideas about or want to contribute to, please contact me.