The Legislative Analyst Office releases

Improving Academic Success for Economically Disadvantaged Students

Despite efforts by the state to improve the academic performance of economically disadvantaged (ED) students, with 40% of all categorical spending geared towards such programs, these students still perform well below both California and national ED students.

There are many programs set up to address the barriers to receiving and achieving a quality education for ED students, like Head Start, but there is no overarching authority which is held accountable for the path and success of these students.  Additionally, once students are identified as ED, funding is uniform, ignoring the number of factors and their severity confronting these students.

The LAO has made several recommendations that do not increase the overall cost to these programs, but instead strategically redeploys existing funding to address the barriers themselves and not the symptoms.  The first step recommended is for the state to fund an independent study that controls for factors like parental involvement and education level that were not included in previous studies.  Further steps recommended include the combination of multiple streams of funding sources into one Opportunity to Learn block grant, improved data systems that track all of the extenuating factors, and data gathering techniques.

To read more, please follow this link: http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/PubDetails.aspx?id=1905.