Antero Garcia, Andre Anderson-Thompson, Nallely Beulah Aceves-Romero, Linda Darling-Hammond, H. Alix Gallagher, Danielle M. Gomez, Shira Haderlein, Laura E. Hernández, Elizabeth Huffaker, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Douglas Knecht, Susanna Loeb, Anna Maier, Beth Meloy, Misbah Naseer, Morgan S. Polikoff, Jeremy Prim, Estefania Rodriguez Sanchez, Deborah Stipek, Walker Swain, Lisa Towne, Maisha Winn, and Lawrence Winn
California has developed expansive goals for students. State and local frameworks invoke academic achievement, equity, college and career readiness, civic engagement, and student well-being. Families and communities add their own vision: education as a pathway to opportunity, a space for curiosity and identity, and a place where children feel safe and known. Developmental research reinforces these broader aims, pointing to the importance of relationships, belonging, and meaningful engagement with ideas and the world.
The distance between these goals and how they function in practice is substantial. When researchers examined more than 7,000 goals that California districts set through their Local Control Accountability Plans, the median measurability score was zero. Fewer than 8 percent of goals included explicit numeric targets, and more than 20 percent were duplicated verbatim across agencies. California’s formal goal-setting system often produces statements of intent that are weakly connected to measurable outcomes, clear strategies, or the conditions associated with student learning.
This brief draws on multiple Getting Down to Facts III technical reports to examine how goals for students and schools are understood and implemented across California, focusing on five interrelated areas: whole-child development, the connection between goals and measurement, the distribution of educational opportunity, the alignment of instruction with developmental science, and the conditions that enable learning. Across these areas, a consistent pattern emerges. California’s goals are often clearer at the level of aspiration than at the level of definition, support, and realization, and the consequences of that gap fall unevenly, with historically underserved students and families bearing the greatest burden.
Key Findings
1. Current definitions of student success in California are narrower than those reflected in family perspectives and developmental research. California’s current system defines student success primarily through academic indicators. Families and research, however, point to a broader set of conditions associated with learning, including safety, belonging, identity, relationships, and connections to community.
2. California’s stated goals are often weakly connected to measurable outcomes and instructional practice. California has developed multiple mechanisms for articulating goals, particularly through LCAPs and accountability systems, but these often lack specificity, measurability, and alignment with practice. As a result, goals often function more as compliance artifacts than as drivers of instructional improvement or system learning.
3. Educational opportunity and quality remain uneven across student populations and local contexts. Access to high-quality learning experiences varies significantly across socioeconomic, geographic, and institutional contexts. These disparities are visible in academic outcomes, resource access, and the quality of instructional environments.
4. Research on learning and development emphasizes dimensions of instruction that are not consistently reflected in current practice. Developmental science and family perspectives suggest that strong learning environments support inquiry, creativity, identity exploration, and engagement with real-world issues, not only content mastery. These dimensions, however, are inconsistently integrated into current instructional models.
5. Many of the conditions associated with student learning are not consistently present across California’s schools and systems. Student success depends on enabling conditions such as safe environments, strong relationships, effective communication with families, and the capacity to deliver on stated commitments. These conditions vary widely across districts and programs, contributing to uneven experiences and outcomes.
