On July 8, 2026, Californians Together provided comment on two items, differentiated assistance and accountability, at the State Board of Education meeting. The following sections reflect our comments on items discussed by the board.
Differentiated Assistance
After months of study sessions and stakeholder discussions, the longstanding differentiated assistance conversation finally came to a head. As a refresher, the State Board of Education (SBE) has been tasked with a statutory requirement to update differentiated assistance and direct technical assistance criteria by July 15, 2026.
After the most recent California Practitioners Advisory Group meeting, we were appreciative that they incorporated our recommendation of including red and orange on the English learner progress indicator (ELPI) within their data runs and criteria recommendations. The State Board of Education elected to adopt Scenario B as the new differentiated assistance criteria, which requires at least two red state indicators in each of the last three years on the California data dashboard, as well as the same indicator and same student group.
Californians Together was unable to support Scenario B, or any of the final criteria recommendations, given that none of them actually rethink the system of support. We also do not yet know how many LEAs would be eligible for differentiated assistance, partially due to their ELPI scores for long-term English learners (LTEL).
We formally requested that, before any new system is implemented, this data be analyzed as soon as we have the third year of available data to assess how LTELs might be impacted. With our equity partners, we also recommended adding an additional “minimum performance threshold” for each of the indicators, which would make LEAs eligible if their performance is significantly lacking over three years on any one indicator for student groups.
While we did not see the outcome we wanted, we will continue to track and monitor the implementation of these changes, and engage wherever we can.
State Accountability Report Card
For the second item, we were in support of SBE’s efforts to reduce administrative burdens by pre-populating the data required in the School Accountability Report Card. Alongside our LCFF equity partners, we also recommended adding reclassified fluent English proficient and LTEL students to the relevant student groups, enabling parents and communities to see the successes of each English learner student group. Since this item was a consent item, there was no discussion or further insights provided by the SBE.
We would like to extend a special thanks to Sally Fox, Patty Chavez, and Linda Kaminski for providing public comment and uplifting our concerns with the differentiated assistance criteria. Thank you so much for all of your engagement and advocacy, it has made all the difference.
The next State Board of Education meetings are scheduled for September 9-10 and November 12-13, 2026. We will continue to attend and provide any relevant updates on both.