Education — 2026-10-13 (partial)

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the assembly education website under informational hearings So you can pull those up yourselves Some of the data points are small but probably be hard to see from the audience in the room You may proceed when ready Thank you Good afternoon My name is Iwunze Ugo. I'm a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute dedicated to informing and improving public policy in California. Thank you for inviting me to provide testimony today. Just over a decade ago, California overhauled the state's education system with a new funding. You may need to pull the microphone closer to you. Just over a decade ago. You can actually pull it and move it towards you if you need to. The whole thing. Oh, the whole thing. Yeah, there you go. There we go. Okay. Just over a decade ago, California overhauled the state's education system with a new funding formula, state tests, and more. Funding has nearly doubled since 2013, and the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, has allocated a larger share of those revenues to districts with more high-need students, specifically low-income students, English learners, and foster youth. The state also saw student achievement improve initially, but as I'll discuss today, the story has been complicated. The Smarter Balanced Assessments, often called the SBAC tests, are given to students in grades 3 through 8 and 11 on English language arts and math. The tests were first administered in the spring of 2015, and over the first years of the new tests, student proficiency rates steadily improved with gains both overall and for high-need students. The shares of students meeting state standards rose each year, going from 34% in 2015 to 40% in 2019. Then the pandemic interrupted that progress. The state tests were canceled outright in 2020 and only administered to one in four students in 2021. It wasn't until 2022 that we could see how students had fared since the pandemic, and the results were sobering. Math proficiency rates had fallen seven percentage points, with just 33% of students meeting state standards, erasing all of the progress made since the tests were introduced. Since then, California has made progress, albeit slowly. Proficiency rates still increased by two percentage points in 2023, and one percentage point each in the two years after that. Scores are still below where they were just before the pandemic, and broader concerns with student performance remain. Less than half of students meet standards, and there are persistent achievement gaps across student groups. California has long trailed the national average in math, but over the last two decades, the state made substantial progress. And while scores everywhere fell during the pandemic, California's decline was smaller than the nation overall and other large states, further narrowing the gap. Despite that progress, math remains a particular challenge. Students often struggle more with math than English, and the subject is a gateway to high-demand fields like science and engineering. One reason math can be particularly challenging is that its content is cumulative. Students move from arithmetic into increasingly complex material, like algebra and geometry, with each step building on what came before. A student who struggles to understand polygons, shapes, for example, doesn't leave that difficulty behind as they move from one year to the next. The challenges compound when it's time to learn about angles and further still when advancing to sines and cosines. And this is evident in the pattern of test scores as well. Proficiency rates generally fall as students move through higher grades. This has been the case in nearly every year of the state tests and on the national exams as well. Another consistent disparity emerges when we look across the distribution of test scores. Although math performance improves generally especially before the pandemic, high-performing students made larger gains than lower-performing students, widening the gap between them. The pandemic exacerbated these differences with lower students experiencing more severe setbacks Though scores have recovered since then That recovery has been slow and uneven and in some of the higher grades gains among lower students have been smaller widening those gaps even further. Lower-performing students aren't necessarily disadvantaged students, but when we look at outcomes across student groups, we see many of the same disparities. About two-thirds of Asian students are proficient in math, and about half of white students are, compared with just one in four Latino students and one in five black students. Boys also perform slightly better than girls in math, the reverse of the gender gap we see in English. We see similarly large differences by income. 26% of low-income students are proficient in math, compared with 58% of students from moderate to high-income families. And those differences by income persist within racial and ethnic groups. Low-income students' proficiency rates are about 18 to 28 percentage points lower, with larger gaps among white and Asian students. California has been working to address these disparities. The LCFF allocates about $15 billion to increasing or improving services for high-nate students, roughly 20% of funding under the formula. And research from before the pandemic found that the added funding boosted achievement for targeted students. Of course, test scores are only one measure of how students and schools are doing. We see similar disparities on the English portion of the SBAC test and on the California Science Test, and even beyond testing into other outcomes like graduation rates and chronic absenteeism. The disparity in math, however, presents a particular challenge, because gaps can compound as students move into more advanced material, and math is foundational to a growing range of high-demand college majors and career pathways. As California's economy continues to change, with advanced technologies reshaping the skills required to do many kinds of work, closing these gaps will be increasingly important to making these opportunities available to all of the state's students. Thank you.

Thank you very much to the both of you for your testimony today. We have been joined by colleague Assemblymember Bonta. Would you like to make an opening statement? Do you have any questions? Okay, so first question I have, Dr. Ugo.

I think it's a little bit of both. California, of course, has its particular experience, but it's in a broader national trend. We saw the effects of the pandemic being very widespread with school closures, distance learning, and a host of disruptions even beyond education that really transformed the experience for California students and around the nation. Looking at the national scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which allows us to compare trends over time across states, we saw that California had long lagged the nation going back to 2003, near like the bottom third of states. Over the last few decades, though, the state has made substantial progress, catching up to both the national average and other large states like New York, Texas, and Florida. However, and then with the pandemic, when that hit, fortunately for California, I guess you could say, declines were experienced across the board, but California's declines were a bit smaller, which allowed the state to catch up even further to where it now is at about the national average.

Yeah, there's a challenge. One, funding has increased substantially since the local control funding formula was passed in 2013. That's a combination of rising state revenues. We had the tax extensions from Proposition 30 in 2012, and then just the general improvement from the recovery from the Great Recession. So there has been an increase in state spending on education. But, of course, education is a very expensive proposition, right, with staffing costs and all that it takes to educate the state students. So within rising funding rates, there's also been these persistent challenges. And then we did see some evidence of the funding allocations in the LCFF improving the outcomes, both generally, but then specifically for the high-need students targeted with additional funding through the supplemental grants and the concentration grant. And, however, as is the story coloring a lot of this, the pandemic really put the brakes on a lot of that progress, right? We had seen like I mentioned growth for high students in particular from 2015 up to 2019 and then real specific setbacks for high students after the pandemic really reversing a lot of that progress So what that tells us is that there is some evidence that the state approach could work this idea of targeting funding to high-needs students and obligating districts to increase or improve services for high-needs students in order to improve their outcomes. And unfortunately, with the setback of the pandemic, a lot of that work remains, And that's to say nothing of these longstanding gaps that we've seen between low-income students, between black and Latino students over time.

Perhaps. That is a challenge with funding, and especially the way California's funding system is structured. We do see some volatility with just the way in which California's revenue picture is heavily reliant on the income tax, for example, which swings more compared to something more stable like the property tax that is used more in other states. So we do see some baseline volatility in the amount of resources available for education in California, although things like Proposition 98 and the sort of base funding for education does help with stability there. And then on the part of districts, when it comes to funding the programs that are meant to improve services for students, and we've seen some successful programs, things like teacher coaching, some of the responses to the pandemic with the ESSER grants, for example, those have been helpful. But there's an added challenge with stability. We saw those COVID funds expire, and districts having implemented very successful programs now have to scramble to find out how to sustain them. So there is, again, this evidence that things can work, but finding a way to do it sustainably, consistently over time has been a challenge in and of itself. Thank you for that.

Yep.

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. Thank you for your question, Chair Patel. I think there's a few things that research points us towards that can be helpful to mitigate the fact that we don't have an equitable distribution of fully qualified or fully prepared teachers. Many of the teachers are actually early career, so they're working towards getting their credentials, which kind of reinforces the importance of something like math coaches to provide, you know, a little bit more of a leg up in terms of pedagogy and instructional practices that go alongside high quality instructional materials to help improve student outcomes. Other things that we have seen in the research have an outsized impact are things like high dosage tutoring. So relationship, trust-based, one-on-one or small group kind of interventions that allow students to build on their skills, to build their confidence in math have a huge effect. There are also interventions on things like chronic absenteeism that can really help move the needle on downstream things like both math and literacy learning. So I think those are some of the kind of main inputs that are helpful in a situation where at equilibrium we're dealing with really high rates of turnover that kind of feed that lack of highly qualified teachers in these districts. Certainly, math as such a foundational course of study where you're building one day upon the other when you have chronic absenteeism, that could really be debilitating for a student's ability to learn and grasp concepts and then build upon them week after week after week especially when things move pretty fast in some math classes Specifically to go out on a limb a little bit here certainly coaches and more one intensive tutoring is great.

Oh, it's such an of-the-moment question. I appreciate it. I had to go there. Yeah, of course. And there's been some really interesting research coming out just in the last couple weeks. that suggests some of it from Stanford, which I'd be happy to share after the fact. But it shows two sides of the same coin. So on the one hand, there's potential for digital tutoring that has AI components to have a positive impact for students. That being said, it seems like usage is a real barrier. So in kind of randomized control trials with these products, often kids are not logging on or using them for the amount of time that it would be necessary to move the needle. and they tend to be most useful when they're paired with a support from a teacher or tutor who is kind of helping be an accountability buddy and to scaffold the learning that the AI is providing. And then there's also been recent evidence that shows that some of the AI products embedded in things like Khan Academy have shown no change on student outcomes. So I think it depends both on the product and how it's applied. Yeah. I know I've seen kids, you know, it's their body language or their facial expression that might hint to a tutor or a teacher that there's actually confusion going on where an AI may not be able to pick up that level of confusion.

these students who frankly need it the most? What can we do better? So I think there's a, there's a couple of things. I think coupling increased funding with an understanding of the differential costs that come with student needs, I think is really critical. So understanding, you know, not just that these districts are getting more, but what would adequate or full funding look like in these districts? We may be funding them more per pupil and still falling far short of what estimates would suggest we should be funding, which then leads districts to kind of make really difficult choices between things like paying teachers competitive wages and, you know, funding these additional programs and interventions that are also really high impact. So I think that kind of having to make those trade-offs is part of the issue. I think it's also incredibly important to pair that type of funding and financial support with an accountability system that meaningfully both supports and puts responsibility on our schools and districts for moving the needle tied to goals that they share and that can kind of streamline and align those efforts. So it's a complex question with multifaceted, I think, solutions to address it.

Thank you. I wanted to just dive in a little bit around the issue of both highly credentialed and professional learning opportunities within the context of math and reference a study you all probably are very familiar with, the MET Project of 2013. where 3,000 teachers were evaluated in different subject matter areas and observed, and we have tens of thousands of hours of teacher observation video captured. One of the things that my understanding from that study that came out pretty clearly was that the subject matter expertise or basic knowledge of, particularly for math, was a significant factor in whether or not they would perform better in terms of their teacher effectiveness. Do you have a sense of whether we should be looking differently around the idea of professional learning and credentialing, particularly for math, given the fact that it seems that math knowledge is pretty critical? that may not happen through credentialing programs and may not happen through exclusively or may not happen through ongoing professional learning.

Yeah, I think it, in part, I think that we should be careful not to kind of conflate or confound the idea of coaching, helping to make sure that basic kind of substantive knowledge around math skills are being developed. You know, you're not necessarily addressing the underlying challenge. Oh, no. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

That's an excellent point. Are you aware of any programs that are more focused, particularly math, around the math skill development?

Should we be thinking differently about the kind of differentiating coaching, professional learning based on grade levels?

And the presentation here, I think, doesn't necessarily differentiate or get into the depth of kind of different, you know, early elementary, elementary, middle, high school, in terms of the kind of inequity in terms of learning gains that exist. Is that information that you have available to you?

And then, do you have any analysis that links early literacy to early numeracy in that there are perhaps higher levels of numeracy and math skills when there are school districts or individual students that perform better in early literacy? I think you made a point earlier about it's a little cliche, but I think it's true that as you're younger, first you learn to read and then you read to learn. And we do see that connection between your reading performance and your math performance early on. There's a link there, right? You need to understand, you need to be able to read the word problem to get it right, for example. and I think one thing that this also points out especially as we're thinking of early numeracy is having the systems kind of be aware of that context, right? It's not enough to just have the word problem be about popcorn or something, right? There needs to be attention to and sometimes there's the sort of cultural awareness of the content of the word problems where what it takes to understand the question isn't just knowing how to move the numbers around. It's knowing what this thing is about. And we see this with English learners, for example, and other kinds of math testing for younger students. There's the math of it, I suppose, but then also how you present the content and that being much more sensitive to the variation across students in terms of what kind of background they're bringing to that experience.

No questions at this time, but I just appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion. I think it's really critical and thank you both for being here to open it up.

Yeah. And I'm going to talk about sort of the issue of how we bring together the things we've done in math to a coherent policy and set of practices that could really move the needle. You've already heard about the challenges in math achievement statistics over recent years. I will say that over the last three years since we adopted the math framework, we have begun to turn around the lows of the pandemic. So we've had gains on our state test the last three years. And in the most recent NAEP tests, we had a gain larger than the average national gain on fourth grade. So we're making some headway, but we have a long way to go. You've already heard about that. And clearly, there are many things that factor in. I'm going to talk about three areas. The first of them is the ability to give every student qualified and well-prepared teachers. The staffing issues that we have in California. It's a strong relationship between teachers preparation and student achievement. In fact, in one California study, the largest impact on negative impact on achievement was having a large share of underqualified teachers, teachers who don't have a full credential. That constitutes about 40% of new math authorizations each year. So we're not staffing our class. These means people are hired. 40% of the people who were hired with authorizations did not have either any preparation or have not completed their preparation. This is also inequitable. So some of the inequalities are closely tied to the inequitable distribution of teachers.

We can build that brighter future without high quality math instruction Ms Wright Good afternoon and thank you Chair and members for including the mathematics community in today hearing The California Mathematics Council or CMC is a statewide organization serving educators, leaders, students, families, and communities. With thousands of members, we are committed to improving mathematics learning, believe in the brilliance of every math learner, and advocate for equitable access to rigorous, engaging mathematics. Today, I want to share the vision in the spirit of the 2023 mathematics framework, a framework that really centers students. And I'm going to focus specifically on chapters one and two. So let me start with the three dimensions of systemic change, which are asset-based approaches, active engagement, and cultural and personal relevance. So here's what we know. Students do not come in as blank slates. They bring lived experiences and funds of knowledge, wonderful experiences around mathematics from home, from being outdoors, and even from play. This means valuing what students know and the assets they bring rather than focusing on what they lack. For multilingual learners, assets includes their languages, their experiences, and ways of thinking. This is the asset-based approach, which is our first dimension. The second one, we know to learn math, students need to experience it. They need to explore, ask questions, and be curious. The second dimension focuses on actively engaging students through investigation and connection. Meaningful investigations help students see themselves as doers of mathematics. Simply repeating steps can make math feel like a set of rules without meaningful connections. Through active engagement, students can internalize what they are learning and develop a deeper understanding. The third dimension is cultural and personal relevance. We all have culture, home, community, and even school culture. Students need to see themselves in the mathematics and experience learning that is relevant to their lives. What matters to them, their families, and their communities? How can those things become a part of the foundation of mathematical learning? So you see these three dimensions, they help us think about the changes we need across our system. So what would it look like if the framework was implemented across California classrooms? Well, first, teaching around big ideas. You would see students making connections across grade levels. They're exploring quantities, relationships, and patterns. Math becomes a connected set of ideas that students continue building on, not isolated skills. Second, open and engaging tasks. In this classroom, you would see students thinking, persevering, exploring, collaborating, and investigating questions like, is this a better deal? They draw on their experiences, use different representations, and choose tools to make sense of the problem. There's lots of talking, lots of sharing, and lots of mathematical thinking. The third, teaching towards social justice. You would see all students positioned as mathematicians, not just a few. You would also see students using mathematics to understand their world. What do the numbers tell us? What do they reveal? Students might notice there's only one swing for 60 students. They could investigate, collect data, and write letters to the principal asking for more swings. Here, they are using mathematics to examine access to play and advocate for a fair opportunity. Fourth, inviting student questions and conjectures. You would hear students wondering and making predictions similar to a hypothesis in science. I wonder if adding two more swings can make a difference, or do we need five? Students have room to ask questions, investigate their ideas, and revise their thinking. Fifth, reasoning and justification. You would see students checking whether answers make sense and hear them explaining why You might hear that doesn make sense What if we try this Students might compare approaches and consider one another reasoning Sometimes something looks like an error to us, but when a student explains, we see thinking we hadn't noticed. And honestly, this is one of my favorite things to witness when I visit classrooms. And it's amazing because I always just, they're brilliant thinkers and brilliant thinking is something we didn't even see. So those are known as the five components of equitable and engaging mathematics teaching. You can find both the three dimensions and the five components in chapters one and two of the framework. So think about your experience in mathematics. Does this sound like your math classroom? Because it doesn't sound like mine in my experience or my kids' experience. So really this is a shift in mindset. It's about empowering students to think independently, to see themselves as mathematicians, and to prepare them for college career and civic life. So many educators, parents, and community support the framework, and they feel inspired. They feel motivated when they learn about its vision. But here's what we are hearing. I need support. I need to see it in action. I need a thinking partner. I want to try it, but I need feedback. How do I know if I'm doing this right? Where do I find those kind of tasks? So you see, that inspiration needs to be met with opportunities to practice, reflect, and grow. So to make this vision a reality, we need, and you've heard it several times already, sustained investment in professional learning, mathematics coaching, teacher preparation, and high-quality instructional materials. And that's just to name a few. So this is how the Framework's Promise becomes students' everyday experience. We recognize there are different grants and initiatives around mathematics, and we thank you, truly, including MPLP, which Linda mentioned, which is the mathematics professional learning partnership with the math project and the county offices. And this is about building capacity of math leaders across California. But as Linda mentioned, it still doesn't guarantee we have coaches, and that's really a missing piece. So we can train as many leaders as we can across the state, but without coaches, what's the impact? So we need sustained investment in mathematics coaching, similar to literacy coaches. Finally, CMC has collaborated with Ed Trust West and Californians together to create a math policy agenda. We're excited to put that into your hands and ask for your support in making the framework's vision a reality across California. Thank you for your time. I'm happy to answer questions and would welcome opportunities to share more or even invite you to see this work in action.

Yeah, you know I'm not shy. Thank you for your presentation today, highlighting the challenges that we're facing, as well as outlining comprehensive strategies to help us move forward. I know that improving math education is a passion of yours. It's actually a passion of mine as well as a former research scientist. And I appreciate all the work that you've done, and I do appreciate that the framework is being well-received across districts throughout the state of California. both in schools in communities as well. So I wanna highlight that because that's a really great thing. I do wanna note that we will be hearing more thoughts on future directions from our third panel as well. So I'll have questions there as well. I'm curious that whether you think that our recent changes in the governance that we've done through AB 181 will help address some of the persistent sticky challenges we've been facing around being focused on math instruction, whether that's through coaches or efforts around high-dose tutoring or whatever, just the vision and the focus on this. Will this governance restructuring help us? Will the coherence help us?

Right now, the department is not organized around curriculum expertise, for example, in various areas. Yeah, I certainly see a lot of potential to do good work through that governance restructuring. You mentioned specifically that LPI has ongoing work on effective teacher preparation programs as well as effective math teachers. Are you able to share any early findings from that work with us here today? Particularly, are there any practices that help close some of those achievement gaps that we heard about in our first panel?

Thank you for that. I can definitely imagine that working really well. before you fall further and further behind, we catch you up right away. It seems to be a good way to keep those. It's an alternative to tracking, too.

I know there's a California initiative right now on secondary redesign. In that process of looking at secondary redesign, has there been any focus or attention specifically on math instruction and what we can do differently as we look at secondary redesign? It hasn't been like an official or formal part of it, but it is a part of the discussions that go on in schools,

And you talked about time in math. Are there any conversations in secondary redesign around whether we should stick to the semester bell schedule or whether we would look at something like a trimester or quarter system? Or are conversations around that still ongoing?

Certainly. Ms. Wright, I have some questions for you as well. As I was looking through the prepared documents, I've noticed that we switched to having school as TK through 12. There's not much mention of TK. We started kindergarten with the framework. Are we learning a lot of math as TK students, and should we bridge that policy space for TK?

Can I put my state board head on for a second on the curriculum question? Yeah. The state board is authorized to adopt the curriculum framework for K through eight, but not for TK. So that's actually separate. However, in the Department of Education, they are supporting the learning about curriculum options for TK. And so there is a lot of work that's going on, even though it's not in the K through eight framework. So certainly age appropriate learning through music. We all know that you learn math through music or through art. There are ways to learn many ways, just playing even with the number of apples you have in your basket, right? In the play kitchen. The department is also encouraging the use of the developmental results, DRDP, developmental profile, which includes a math strand, and it does begin in preschool. So the various things you'd hope that the preschoolers are doing to build their knowledge is part of what it gets attended to in the schools that use that framework. Yeah. I've heard from many teachers about how frustrating it is to have these swings from new framework and new curriculum adoption, but also that sometimes they don't get the level of support from the state that they would like to see in implementing guidance on implementing how to choose new instructional materials, for example, has been a really hot topic. When we talk about high quality instructional materials from a teacher's perspective, what does that mean when we talk about adopting that curriculum? We ask for teachers, often they're busy teachers already, teacher leaders to come together to review, what, 50-something different options. How do we help support them through that process? Yeah, that's a great question because it's happening all over California. Because with a new framework comes a new adoption. There's new textbooks, curriculum development. Developers are there from the beginning, listening, taking action immediately. And what we know and recognize is that that first wave back in 2010, 2011, we still have textbooks that are 10 years old. And we have a lot of people supplementing and using other resources, not even using their textbooks. And so the challenge right now is, you know, which books can I trust? And then we're already hearing of the adoptions that are taking place and teachers literally saying, oh, I'm going back to my materials over here. I'm going back to these things. And those are real statements. These are real teachers. And I think it's maybe a comfort. And so with the new materials, really thinking about high quality materials and not just materials, right? I could talk about this for hours. So let me just focus on multilingual learners, right? So if you're thinking about high quality materials, you're going to see very specific supports for our multilingual learners, but you're also gonna see in the materials that we value the thinking of our multilingual learners. think about it as, oh, deficit thinking. We're thinking, how do we fold in all students to use language to express themselves and to think about mathematics, right? You're going to see different language routines embedded in the text. You're going to see, a lot of times we look for language objectives, but you're going to see those throughout the lesson and not just a one-time thing. Assessments are going to include language and not just the math. So it's hard because you have to build capacity of educators and teachers and committees. And part of that is understanding the framework, I feel. And so we can jump into an adoption committee and say, okay, it's time to look at textbooks. But we haven't even built their capacity around the framework, number one, but also about what is considered high quality and what is it that we're looking for. so and everything I stated earlier is a lot of what you want to look for in the new curriculum but it's still a shift it's still a shift and so teachers they they're starting instead of an I do we do you do model which typically is like I model you watch me then we practice together and then you do on your own very typical traditional classroom now you're looking at textbooks where says okay ask kids it's very open like a little more open right but what you're doing is you're inviting students in. You're inviting them to bring themselves into the math, and then we're going to build on that knowledge that they already have. And so that's a shift in how I'm teaching. I've always taught with the I-DO model, for example. I mean, I taught for nine years. But so I think that the support will come from, obviously, professional learning. And we keep saying this over and over, but having support, and that is going to come from a coach. I served as a coach for honestly over 15 years. And so I know what my role was. And I can't say that I was perfect and made everyone's magic happen everywhere, but it sure, the interactions I had and the things that were said to me as far as my support and how people were able to grow and how I was able to grow makes a difference in how students are going to experience mathematics. And so I do think it's so critical that whether it's adoption or instruction or mindset shift, that we need support all across the board. Yeah, and I can say that from some studies that show on the foundational learnings of mathematics, there's still some need in the curriculum, the adopted curriculum does show some need for memorizing the facts because it helps you access your math faster. And having some of that in your long-term memory is helpful for students as they build upon math. And so I understand that there will be this big picture, dreaming big and having conversational math, but some components of it are still doing the math and some of the basic fundamentals of math. And so this framework seems to be tying those two things together a lot better so that the math that they're learning can actually be applied in context, which makes it more interesting and applied towards bigger ideas. And I think that's going to make it a lot more relatable, not only to the students receiving it, but to the educators teaching it. The worry I have is that in our smaller districts where there isn't as much capacity for administrators to be supportive because they're wearing many hats at the same time. Or in our rural communities where it's more difficult to find those math coaches, how are we going to help support them? Because that's like 50% of our school districts. and it a substantial number of our districts that are smalls and rurals and struggle with finding the capacity to implement this So I looking forward to seeing that I think it was million in our state budget for math coaches this year And I think that going to be really helpful to those districts that need that assistance. Yeah. And my first thing comes to mind is like, you know, we have technology and there's some opportunities for there to be some communities of practice through, you know, through the use of Zoom. And because I know there's lots of rural areas, but We are even, with the MPLP grant, which you've heard about, looking at communities of practice across different county lines and using technology like Zoom, for example, so that we can collaborate and so that we can kind of coach each other up. And so there are opportunities that I guess we could be really mindful, like how can we make that happen? Because I do believe everyone deserves that support. And then to what you mentioned about the math, that is absolutely, we want students to be flexible with numbers. And that is, like you said, just kind of folding the framework with some of what we know about mathematics. Math is still at the center. Yes. Right? But it's how we experience math and how we can take math beyond that classroom, beyond that worksheet, and actually apply it in career, college, and civic life. And so, yeah, we want folks to enjoy math and to see the beauty of math. And I think the framework can kind of do that for us, really change that. And you also mentioned how the importance of family engagement, the role family engagement plays in a student's interest in math or capacity to learn math. Can you explain a little bit more about what you mean by that? How many hours do you have? Well, I mean, my colleagues probably have questions too, but. You know, people, if you know me, you know, I'm always going to bring this up. And since you've asked, like my parents came from Mexico. My dad was a farm laborer, still working. He's 70 something, I think eight. So I grew up on ranchos. I grew up around oranges and lemons, right? And so lemon trees, hundreds and acres of them. I learned so much math at home. That's my greatest math hero. That's my math teacher. He only had a sixth grade education. Yet that's where I learned my math. That's where I learned my love for math. And so families really, again, don't give themselves enough credit for the math that they use every day, really influence us and shape us into how we see education, how we see ourselves, and how we see mathematics. And so I think we need to value our families, value their work, value what they teach at home and what the kids are learning at home from their families and include them as experts in the classroom. I heard a teacher say, I'm going to bring in the parents and have them. They can record a video. They can come in and they're going to introduce fractions to the students. Well, yes, of course, because they are experts. And so really valuing students' thinking, valuing just how they make sense of the world, and then if their children can see that, it really does build a stronger math identity, I think. So, yes, family engagement, families at the center are critical and important, and I am a testament of that. Yep. We learned a lot of our math at home, too. It's interesting how we don't necessarily fully realize that there's a lot of math going on at home when it's embedded. To my colleagues, any comments or questions you wanna put in?

I think there's the, on the curriculum alignment question, I think the point that you made is that we have new curricula that do meet the standards. And they, as you said, Chair Patel, they are both and, they both open up the subject and make sure that there's fluency and so on. But it's a big shift. So to get coherence, I think we need to be sure that we've got the intensity and extensive extensiveness of coaching and professional development that reaches everyone. Right now we're reaching some places and not others. And the importance of the coaches that's been noted is that they're there day by day. They're not going away. They're in the school. In Alabama, I mentioned that, Bill, every school is getting a math coach, and if they have more than 900 students, they get two coaches. And they're just doing it across the board. We would benefit from something that is much more intentional around that. We're much bigger, and we have many more places to worry about, but we might take the lowest-performing schools in math and really ensure that they have all of the things that are needed, the coaches, the interventions, the high-stakes tutoring, all of that, and really I would say not only do it but then study it and then scale more of the practices up. The other thing is that we have to deal with the shortages and eliminate them, and we've been making progress on that. But again, in the highest need places, we have so many teachers, and even with math coaching, you'll hear people say, I can't afford to take my one good teacher out of the classroom and make them a coach, because where am I going to get another one? So getting that pipeline to really work, and as I say, it's been very encouraging. the last few years we had a real increase of and much of that increase is residents who go to the higher need communities in greater numbers We just need to continue to do that at scale That will allow us then to be sure that not only are there qualified teachers in the classrooms. The last thing I'd say, and I really appreciated your question about preparation, it's a low cost investment to fix preparation compared to what it costs to try to fix the practice of tens of thousands of teachers later in the field. You know, fixing the preparation programs in a couple hundred places versus 10,000 school districts is, you know, a bargain. And we did in literacy sort of articulate, here's what you need to be able to do here. the performance expectations, all the programs underwent, re-review to be sure that they had the pieces in place. So I do think that that's an often ignored but high leverage way to get coherence from the beginning rather than having to retrain people once they're in the field.

I mean, they really are critical. and I was able to teach some of those and bring in the framework, and that was the past framework. And it really made a difference and changed a lot of, I mean, really trying to get help with that anxiety. I do think the teacher prep programs is something that we really need to give attention to. I think you'll see a big difference and an impact in a positive way. We certainly need our teachers to feel like they're ready to enter the classroom to teach higher level math or even basic foundational math. Whether it's multi-subject or single subject. Not just to teach it, but to enjoy teaching it. Yeah, because, you know, you have to kind of re-engage math in a new way to come out and be enthusiastic as well as competent in teaching. Yeah. Yeah. Any other comments?

My name is Alix Gallagher, and I am the Director of Education Policy and Outcomes at Policy Analysis for California Education, or PACE, and a co-author of the research I will discuss today. The first step toward what children need in mathematics to have control over their lifelong destiny is high-quality instruction that is coherent year-to-year and aligned with California's rigorous standards. As part of Getting Down to Facts 3, we interviewed 94 superintendents from a random sample of districts selected to reflect different regions and district sizes. We also interviewed 32 state, county, and other education leaders and visited 12 districts to interview principals and teachers. To our knowledge, this is the single largest representative set of data in California about what districts are doing and what they need with respect to TK8 math. Across almost 250 interviews, everyone we interviewed was working hard to do their job to the best of their abilities, and all face challenges. What clearly stood out from these data is that California's expectations for mathematics instruction substantially exceed the support districts receive and, therefore, their capacity to meet them. Improving children's experiences in math requires the state to close that gap. We found that district leaders recognize the importance of mathematics, but struggle to give it sustained attention. And I put up a slide of the dashboard, because that is one of the ways that we show districts what is important And as you can see there are lots of dials When asked an open question about their district top priorities nearly two did not name math Leaders described competing initiatives and reporting requirements that made it difficult to maintain a clear instructional focus. District leaders also reported that many elementary and middle school teachers entered classrooms without the content knowledge and teaching skills to teach math in ways aligned with state standards in the math framework. Across the United States, teacher preparation programs typically integrate content knowledge, teaching skills, and clinical practice over a multiple-year program. A Getting Down to Fact study found that 55 percent of new teachers in states other than California come through multi-year programs. Only 9% do in California. Another recent study found substandard credentials have more than tripled since 2013. Our predominant post-baccalaureate preparation model is more costly for candidates than preparation models common in other states. Some candidates may be foregoing preparation entirely because of this cost. Once hired, few teachers find strong support for building their skill in teaching TK-8 mathematics. One in five districts offered no TK-8 grade mathematics-specific professional development learning in the 2024-25 school year, and even when it was available, participation was almost always voluntary. Equally problematic is what the remaining 80 percent of districts offered. Professional development in mathematics was typically done through after-school workshops that teachers could opt into. Decades of research have shown that one-shop workshops are both expensive and ineffective. The current system produces uneven and inequitable student learning because few districts support their teachers in ways that research shows supports instruction. Guidance for curriculum adoption is another gap. Leaders describe the difficulty of translating the state's mathematical framework, mathematics framework, into classroom instruction and choosing among a long list of approved materials, almost 40 approved titles for K-8 math in the most recent state adoption. Other states provide clear examples of how a state agency can transparently select a few titles best aligned with the standards and incentivize their adoption by funding aligned professional development that helps teachers use those materials well. Lastly, no state entity is accountable for ensuring districts get the support they need and what high-quality support is available typically comes through grants and fee-for-service. Districts pieced together support from various state entities, math initiatives, nonprofits, and vendors. The supports they found most helpful were those that provided sustained engagement for an entire grade level or school, often including instructional coaching that provided feedback for teachers and supported their collaborative learning. And yet this was rarely what districts received. So what should the legislature do with these findings? The legislature needs to lead the charge to improve quality, redefining the state role in local control as one where the state supports districts ability to make effective local decisions. Mike Kirst, the central architect of our current system, has come to the same conclusion. First make improving student outcomes in mathematics and explicit sustained state priority Align funding and support with that priority and reduce reporting requirements that consume time without helping districts improve. New initiatives will have limited benefit if they simply add another demand to an already crowded agenda. Second, establish clear responsibility for ensuring that every district receives high-quality instructional support aligned with their needs and tailored to local context. Funding, supports, and accountability for outcomes must be aligned so the state, regional entity, and local district are all held accountable for making the system work for kids. Third, improve the state's guidance on instructional materials. Simplify local selection processes by identifying a small set of stronger options, explaining their strengths and limitations, and pairing them with implementation support. Clearer guidance can preserve local choice while reducing the work each district must undertake on its own. Finally, and you've now heard this across the panels, strengthen teacher preparation. Expand integrated four-year pathways that combine a bachelor's degree and teaching credential and offer extensive clinical experience. Fund them such that future teachers enter the teaching profession without debt. Early mathematics improvement depends on what districts can sustain across classrooms and over time. California should expect districts to improve student learning, and the state should take responsibility for ensuring that districts have the support needed to do so. Thank you for the opportunity to share your findings, our findings, and I welcome your questions.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today and the future of the early mathematics instruction in California, Chair Patel, members of the Education Committee. My name is Stephen Kellner. I represent California Education Partners. I'm an experienced educator, school leader, and former California District Superintendent. As you've already heard, the math kids master in their earliest years is one of the strongest predictors of how they'll achieve academically and even whether they'll graduate from high school. At my organization, California Education Partners, we work hand-in-hand with over 100 districts across the state to build internal capacity and strengthen systemic outcomes for students. Our partners tend to be the small and medium-sized districts that don't have the team or the resources of large urban districts. They often need clarity from the state about goals for students and need support to achieve those goals. Small and medium-sized districts educate over half the students in the state, but are often overlooked in policymaking. As California seeks to strengthen student learning and math, our focus must extend beyond individual teacher practice to build coherent systems in each district. Too often, early math instruction remains fragmented across transitions between early learning settings and elementary schools, as well as from grade to grade. We have seen that when we support districts to build coherent instruction from grade to grade, students succeed. The findings from the most recent getting down to facts, as you just heard, reinforce this reality. There is an important role for state leaders to play in ensuring that districts have clear goals for student learning and the capacity and sustained resources they need to achieve those goals. While California's system has and should continue to emphasize meeting local needs with local control, opportunities exist to solve problems that are better solved at the state level. Achieving lasting progress in early math is both a governance and an implementation challenge Meaningful advancement requires active alignment across three key pillars First, state actors setting clear goals, providing stable resources, and enabling the structural conditions for success. Second, local boards of education establishing policies that prioritize early math, maintain accountability, and hold space for systemic improvement over short-term fixes. And finally, district superintendents and staff executing a focused, dedicated strategy that creates coherence between grade levels from transitional kindergarten through third grade. When state policy, local board governance, and administrative leadership are aligned, school districts can build sustainable infrastructure that they need to elevate early math achievement. California has taken bold policy steps in recent years. However, most of the hard work remains to make these policies a reality inside every single classroom. Too often, state-level action has been viewed as a finish line when it's actually just the beginning of a long relay race. So first, supporting high-quality TK. Expanding TK creates unprecedented access, but expanding access alone will not improve math outcomes. The policy must now focus on curriculum alignment, as you've heard today, and developmentally appropriate high-quality P3 math articulation so that TK learning seamlessly connects with kindergarten through third grade. Second, reform state board approval of mathematics framework and curriculum. Again, the speakers have been pretty consistent on this. The state needs to recommend fewer high-quality curricula. This year, by our count, 63 possible math curricula were approved. It's impossible to design follow-up supports to implement this number of curricula. Meanwhile, as you've also heard, other states pick just a few curricula and build systems needed to support and implement them well. And finally, focus on local leadership. Elevated state focus on early learning, whether through our new education commissioner, specialized divisions, or targeted P3 initiatives, provides critical visibility. Yet administrative appointments are only as impactful as the implementation support delivered directly to county offices of education and local school districts. In short, state mandates and structural additions create the target. Local systemic capacity provides the results. To secure a strong mathematical foundation for every child in California, state policy must continue to invest in building system-level capacity at the local level. We urge the committee to support policies that incentivize P3 coherence, foster stronger governance alignment, and provide districts with the resources needed to turn state-level policy baselines into sustainable classroom successes for every student. Thank you for your time and for your leadership.

Thank you. Thank you. Technology is amazing, really. Testing, testing. Testing, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Please proceed when ready. From our display, it shows that you're still muted. Can you hear me? Hi, Chair. I can hear you on our end. We just can't hear the panelists on her, on her end. Okay, well, while we figure out the technical difficulties that are going on behind the scenes, maybe we can go to some questions for our panelists in the room right now.

I think it's an excellent question. It is clear that AB 181 is groundbreaking legislation and puts us in a much better position. but it's also not the end result in and of itself. And so I think a few of the things that would be really important to do, you know, instead of having short term initiatives, you know, we heard actually across both both Dr. Kellner and myself, we talked about the importance of district capacity and the fact that as as a kid, If you have one teacher who's very engaged in math and has gotten framework trained and teaches in all the ways we heard about in the preceding panel, and the next year the teacher has not done that and is not confident in math, the learning trajectory that we want for kids that should ultimately culminate in kids who are prepared to enter whatever careers they want with confidence in their knowledge and skills, that doesn't happen. And so the key needs to be to focus really on a long-term play for building capacity. And part of that is probably thinking when you're funding initiatives, we analyze the different initiatives, and we found that few of them focused on districts. We have initiatives that build the skills of individual teachers, and those can create teacher leaders, and they're not bad. There are others that focused heavily on family engagement. And as we heard in the preceding panel, that is important. So we not saying those initiatives nothing to fault with those initiatives but there a gap And the gap is the fact that very few of those initiative dollars focus on building district capacities and the organizations, districts, and schools. That's where there's the potential to make sure kids have a coherent experience year after year. So we want to elevate the importance of thinking in a systemic way. We also noted that there's no entity that it's responsible for supporting districts to improve in math. And on the one hand, there are 58 county offices that are either locally elected or appointed. They are the main regional entity. Somehow we need to make sure there is regional capacity. And it's probably unreasonable to expect every county office to have an incredible depth in every single area. But thinking about what it looks like to make sure

Yeah. And I think listening to what you've just said, I think there's a lot of consistency also with the concerns around. we don't see local districts having math as a local priority. If your local leadership isn't well-trained in mathematics instruction, they may also not see that as a priority. And so that lack of coherence between what the local district leadership thinks and prioritizes translates into maybe reduced resources available to that classroom teacher. release time, priority budgeting on coaching, et cetera, et cetera. It can go in many levels So I think that interesting that that coherence question is not really necessarily only focused on state coherence but actually internal to a local school district and then passing through that county as well So thank you for those insights for sure.

Thank you. I think this is one of those instances where it's unfortunate to kind of be old. Well, just I feel like I'm in a serious kind of deja vu moment. I think a lot of what you have talked about today, we were talking about 25 years ago. I had to think about the age of my youngest child when we were talking about district level reform, making sure that we were having a prioritization around math, mathematics in particular, making sure that there was alignment between, you know, schools, districts, counties, and the state, utilizing our county offices of education as regional centers with particular expertise. Like, these are all things that we've literally been talking about for 25 years. and I don't know if you're as impatient as I am about the fact that we're having a 25-year-old conversation. What in the world are we going to do that's going to be different in this moment in time so that my daughter, who is now 27, and literally she is the one I mark time by around having these conversations, so that she isn't the 50-year-old sitting having that same conversation?

We do have our online presenter now. I have one final question for you, though. This just triggered a thought. We also have unified school districts. We have elementary school districts, high school districts, secondary school districts. When we talk about coherence, you're talking grade level to grade level. But do we see coherence disruption when we talk about transitions between an elementary district and a high school district? And are there ways to improve that? Do you want to take that one on? I happen to know Dr. Kelner knows something about this. So thank you.

Thank you for that. We are going to go now to our online presenter and then we'll come back for questions.

Yes. Okay, great.

Thank you so much for being with us, Mrs. Fisher. Appreciate the insights on what other states are doing and the progress that they're achieving. And we look forward to seeing what that five-year report looks like. Thank you. A question I have for you before I come back to you, Dr. Kellner. The Alabama New Mercy Act has done a great job of improving mathematics scores across the board, but in your testimony, you mentioned that it hasn't yet been able to shrink that gap between the highest and the lowest performing schools. Based on early implementation data, do you have any thoughts on why that gap is still so persistent?

If you change the variables through the experiment, it confounds the data. That is also part of math instruction. So thank you for pointing that out. It does help us put a good focus point on it. Going back to you, Dr. Kellner, you had mentioned specifically that the local capacity for doing this instructional leadership might be lacking in some places. Can you tell us how the state can support our local school districts and their leadership so that they can have capacity? I'm going to ask you to be brief because we are running up on time.

Thank you for that. Appreciate it. It gives us something to think about policy-wise. That concludes our third panel. Appreciate you being with us here today and for your thoughtful discussions. You know that I'll be looking at this report very in depth. Page nine was particularly impactful for me. It's the visual of all the different agencies that work together, including our county offices, to deliver education for our students. It is a jumbled org chart. Thank you. We'll now move on to public comment. We'll welcome public commenters. you may step up to the microphone and we ask that speakers speak for only one minute. Identify yourself, please, as you come forward.

Good afternoon, Chair Patel.

Before stepping away, can you please identify yourself for the record? Identify yourself for the record.

Thank you. Thank you. And as we draw to a close of our hearing today, I want to leave our listeners with some final thoughts. First of all, thank you to our panelists and our public commenters and my colleagues for bringing their insightful comments and thoughts and their input to today's hearing. We're starting off this hearing in a way that we're prepared for the next legislative cycle with some good information to make sure our policy is timely. I'd like to also note that while LCFF spending has significantly increased over the last decade, math proficiency outcomes have not. And that is the real core of our challenge. Are we budgeting our values and our priorities appropriately? We take these remarks today as guideposts for us working forward to be stewards of a system that makes math proficiency a reality for all California students. That is my goal, and I think that's the goal of all the panelists that were here today to present to us. Thank you for your attention for today's long hearing, and hopefully we'll see some good things come out of it. Have a good evening. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.