The Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA) and the Public Interest Law and Policy Program (PILPP) at UCLA are funded to conduct strategic research, coalition building, and coordination for a statewide campaign to inform the California public about the quality of education within the state.  The Campaign seeks to promote fundamental change in the state's governance, funding, and accountability mechanisms to ensure that all California students have an opportunity to succeed in a rigorous, standards-based education system.  Co-managed by Professors Jeannie Oakes and Gary Blasi of UCLA, the California Campaign for Educational Adequacy and Equity interweaves three strategies and related product streams:

• A strategic research effort to generate information that frames the problems in the state's current system and points to potential remedies.   
•  A constituency-building effort that engenders the support and action of a wide array of civic, professional, advocacy, and grassroots organizations in response to current conditions and the need for state and local remedies.  UCLA works directly with leaders in organizations such as ACORN, Californians For Justice, and the Community Coalition to design information tools that are directly relevant to parent and student outreach efforts, and that build the capacity of these organizing groups to use and understand the “on-the-ground” implications of academic research.
• A public engagement and media communications effort aimed at increasing understanding about California's K-12 public school crisis and building the public will and capacity to respond constructively.  UCLA staff, in collaboration with a number of public relations firms, has analyzed existing public opinion data and conducted statewide focus groups exploring the contours of Californians’ views on public education.

Over the past few years, the campaign has provided research and research capacity building to a broad-based coalition of California education reformers—including community-based organizations, youth organizations, and civil rights advocates, as well as education professionals.   The focus of this work has been on  understanding the condition of California schools, analyzing the impact of an array of state policies on those conditions, and developing the capacity to engage in research-informed public deliberation and policy making (both directly and through the use of communications) toward a more adequate and equitable public education system.  We invite you to view some of this work at Just Schools California.

UCLA's role within our California portfolio is to provide ongoing communication and a point of coordination among the various grantee organizations that work on statewide issues.