This year California has won the highest honor for a state in education innovation, and we couldn’t be prouder.
This week the Education Commission of the States gave California the 2022 Frank Newman Award for State Innovation, “in recognition of its coordinated approach to educating all students from preschool to postsecondary, with explicit attention toward whole-child supports and services, as well as its historic financial investments to ensure educational equity.”
That includes innovations like:
- The Local Control Funding Formula, recognized as one of the nation’s most equitable formulas.
- Large investment to scale before- and after-school programming.
- Expansion of the Cal Grant scholarship program, which benefited an additional 100,000 community college students last year.
- Funding to construct affordable student housing
- $115 million to expand zero-cost textbooks and open-educational resources.
Among other initiatives, like Calbright College: the nation’s first statewide, fully online, community college district, and a national leader in career focused, Competency Based Education.
“[W]e believe there is no other state doing as much to advance educational equity for its neediest students as California is doing today,” the award letter read.
The award will be presented at the 2022 National Forum on Education Policy in July.
The recognition is amazing, but more important is the knowledge that California is on the right track, advancing educational equity for the students who need it most.
