On March 17, Assemblymembers Dr. Darshana Patel (D-San Diego), Rhodesia Ransom (D-Tracy) and Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) joined CSBA CEO & Executive Director Vernon M. Billy, CSBA President Dr. Debra Schade and Hope Elementary School District Superintendent Melanie Matta at the Capitol to unveil the SOS for Student Achievement: Close the State Accountability Gap campaign and related legislation. The campaign aims to improve overall student performance, close achievement gaps and establish comprehensive state-level support for local school districts and county offices of education.

“Students only get one chance at school, and we have to make it count. Delivering for students requires bold leadership and a willingness to change the status quo,” Schade said. “As education leaders, we must challenge outdated practices, and elevate new solutions.”

Billy noted that the bills aren’t a handful of disconnected proposals — something that has become far too normalized. “Collectively, these bills establish a unified, sustainable approach to establishing the state as a true partner with local educational agencies and ensures we have a well aligned education system,” Billy said.

The SOS for Student Achievement legislative package includes:

• Assembly Bill 2225 (Patel), which would convene educators, families, researchers and policymakers to develop a comprehensive statewide plan to close achievement gaps.
• AB 2149 (Garcia, D-San Bernardino), which would require the Legislative Analyst’s Office to annually evaluate how well the state budget and its education policies align with the statewide plan.
• AB 2514 (Ransom), which would establish a public dashboard to track the state’s progress in implementing the achievement gap plan and to provide transparent data about whether state programs are helping improve student outcomes.
• AB 2202 (Muratsuchi), which would establish a Closing the Achievement Gap Commission under the State Board of Education to monitor state programs and strengthen coordination across California’s education system.

“So often, our discussions of the achievement gap focuses on the outcomes at individual schools or in a particular district without examining the underlying issues, without examining the conditions and systems that complicate these efforts to improve student outcomes,” said Patel, who serves as the Assembly Education Committee chair. “For a state like California, one that prides itself on innovation, opportunity and leadership, this is not acceptable and it’s not sustainable. And that’s why we are here today. To begin the process of bringing coherence and alignment to California’s system of education governance so the state can properly support local schools and close achievement gaps.”

Ransom said her experiences working with public schools gave her a window into the different opportunities students encounter. “I saw firsthand how gaps and opportunity can impact students and communities, how resources at one school would be able to advance students, but completely different resources focused on the same goal in another school did not advance those students,” she said. “For many families across California, especially in the Central Valley, these disparities are not just abstract policy debates. These are realities that are affecting our classrooms, our schools and our students’ futures. That’s why transparency and accountability are a very important part of this work. If we are serious about closing the achievement gap, then we must also be serious about measuring the progress and being transparent about the results.”

Muratsuchi spoke about the importance of aligning state systems, including by creating a Closing the Achievement Gap Commission under the State Board of Education. “The point of this package is to make sure that the state goals, the state funding and the state accountability are aligned with our local school districts to be more cohesive, make sure that we’re all on the same team and we’re all rowing in the right direction,” he said.

Matta provided a local perspective and highlighted the challenges small districts face. “From where we sit in our school districts, the challenge is that LEAs are asked to deliver better outcomes with a state system that is too fragmented, overlapping and absolutely inconsistent,” she said. “It shows up when funding streams are disconnected from one another and it’s extremely difficult to braid the funding around a single student-centered strategy. It shows up when new initiatives arrive on different timelines with different expectations and different reporting structures and different definitions of success… And it shows up even greater for small school districts like mine where I served as the superintendent, principal, and last week was serving students in the cafeteria. It shows up when districts are held accountable for results, but the state is not held equally accountable for whether or not it’s providing what we need to actually make a difference for the students that we serve.”

Find out more about the SOS for Student Achievement: Closing the State Accountability Gap campaign at csba.org/studentachievement.