Resources for Educational Options Programs

Attendance Improvement
A California resource addressing three elements that reinforce regular school attendance: prevention, early identification, and intervention.

Behavioral Intervention Strategies and Supports
We can keep students in school and hold them accountable. Research on student engagement, academic success, dropout and graduation rates has shown the need to replace punitive discipline practices.

California Association of Youth Courts
With a restorative justice and trauma-informed focus, Youth Court volunteers help teen offenders to be accountable for their actions, reflect on their poor choices, identify their personal strengths and commit to repairing damage done, while restoring relations with families, schools and communities.

California Center for School Climate Past Event Recordings
The California Department of Education (CDE) initiative operated by WestEd, provides free trainings on school climate and data use to local educational agencies in California.

CDE Facebook Page
A resource including webinars and news postings related to current educational issues and events.

CDE Press Educational Resources Online Ordering
California publications that provide educational materials and resources on content standards and curriculum frameworks.

California Healthy Kids Resource Center
An educational center to promote literacy in the classroom and investing in staff development, lower-risk behaviors, and resiliency.

California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS)
A longitudinal data system used to maintain individual-level data including student demographics, course data, discipline, assessments, staff assignments, and other data for state and federal reporting.

Career Technical Education
A California resource providing studies and integration of core academic, technical, and occupational knowledge.

Character Education
Resources to build and develop character in youth; supports the core values of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.

Community of Practice and Collaboration Network for Educators
The CDE, in collaboration with the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, has launched California Educators Together, an online platform designed to streamline communication between educators and allow them to access and share a vast library of content, resources, strategies, and supports. When a teacher joins California Educators Together, the site organizes them in relation to their job assignment and roles and places them within their education agency (site/district/county). A personalized dashboard based on this profile helps users see communication from teams and their selected subject and grade level groups. Users can share lesson plans, curriculum, and other resources with each other in addition to accessing resources for such topics as literacy and mental health and event updates from their respective school districts.

Coronavirus Response and School Reopening Guidance
Information and resources regarding CDE's Coronavirus (COVID-19) response efforts, including the guidance document for safely reopening schools for the 2020–21 school year.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy builds upon the Asset-Based Pedagogies that came before it but presents the need to not only affirm and connect to students' cultural backgrounds, but also to sustain them through schooling.

DataQuest
DataQuest provides meaningful data and statistics about California's transitional kindergarten (TK) and kindergarten through grade twelve (K–12) public educational system that supports a wide variety of informational, research, and policy needs. Summary and detailed data reports are available for multiple subject areas at the school, district, county, and state levels.

Educational Counseling
California educational support for schools and programs to promote strategies to plan, implement, and monitor training in counseling and social services for students.

Equity
Fair outcomes, treatment, and opportunities for all students. Ensuring equity in education is a necessary component in narrowing the achievement gap. Teachers and school leaders ensure equity by recognizing, respecting, and attending to the diverse strengths and challenges of the students they serve. High-quality schools are able to differentiate instruction, services, and resource distribution to respond effectively to the diverse needs of their students, with the aim of ensuring that all students are able to learn and thrive.

Flexible Learning Environments (PDF)
School and learner-centered classrooms  should be designed to accommodate different teaching and learning formats to facilitate modern learning methods that prepare students for college, careers, and citizenship in the twenty-first century.

Help for Students in Crisis
Resources for addressing mental health and wellness while school sites are closed.

Instructional Time and Attendance Accounting
For questions related to instructional time and attendance accounting, email the CDE School Fiscal Services Division at attendanceaccounting@cde.ca.gov.

Learning for Justice
A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group, that fights discrimination and awards grants for activities promoting diversity, peacemaking, community service, and other aspects of tolerance education.

Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP)
The LCAP is a tool for local educational agencies (LEAs) to set goals, plan actions, and leverage resources to meet those goals to improve student outcomes. This page provides resources to support the planning, implementation, and evaluation of an LCAP.

Mental Health
Provides strategies, resources, and training in psychological and mental health issues, including coping with tragedy, crisis intervention and prevention, school psychology, and suicide prevention.

Mentoring
California informational resource providing materials, articles, names of organizations, and contacts for mentoring programs.

Multi-Tiered System of Supports
A framework that aligns Response to Instruction and Intervention with the California State standards and the systems necessary to ensure academic, behavior, and social success.

Restorative Practices and School Discipline
Restorative practices can contribute to the development of a positive school climate, discipline, and absenteeism policies that are humanistic and inclusive, while increasing student voice and engagement.

School Fiscal Services Division
Apportions funds to LEAs and guides LEAs from the state level on fiscal solvency, audit resolution, and financial reports.

Search Institute
A nonprofit organization that conducts research pertaining to the positive development of youth for building assets, providing resource materials, and staff development opportunities.

Social and Emotional Learning
Guidance and resources for supporting social and emotional learning.

Social and Emotional Support in Distance Learning
Guidance and resources for educators, educational leaders, and families/guardians in K–12 schools, to provide social and emotional supports during distance learning.

Supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ+) Students
Provides instructional guidance, law, and policies for local educational agencies to support LGBTQ+ students and provide safe learning environments that protect the health and safety of LGBTQ+ students.

University of California, Los Angeles Center for Mental Health in Schools and School/Learning Projects
Mission is to improve outcomes for students by helping districts and their schools enhance how they address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students by providing information and links for leaders and practitioners to access a range of no-cost resources developed by us and others.

WestEd
A research center providing research on development and implementation of community-based services and prevention programs.

Workforce Readiness Excerpts from the 2020 Perkins State Plan (DOCX)
Students in continuation education, opportunity education, county community and court schools, district community day schools, and those incarcerated by the California Division of Juvenile Justice may be overcoming attendance and/or behavioral challenges. It is important to have a framework of supportive interventions that are designed to be educational and developmental, rather than be punitive, particularly when these supportive interventions are considered within the larger context of workforce readiness. School counselors, social workers and others with pupil services credentials also play a role in supporting student access to career technical education coursework.

Youth Perspectives: The Importance of Caring Relationships at School
California Center for School Climate’s Youth Advisory Team shares their perspectives on how positive relationships at school have impacted them, how adults can support safe and supportive learning environments, and what adults should know about being a student today.

Zero Dropouts for California Research Summary
A summary of the 2007 Zero Dropouts for California research paper that contains information regarding the dropout crisis; recommendations for the State, counties, districts, and the CDE; and an extensive bibliography of resources. Also, includes a link to the Zero Dropouts for California research paper.