We are excited to share with you Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation’s 2016 Community Report. This community report is an opportunity for our organization to share the exciting work that we have undertaken this past year, as well as celebrate some of our achievements. When we take on a new project, we look to see how we fit in as convenors, communicators, and catalyzers of new strategies and how our past experiences, relationships, and successes can be brought to bear on the outcomes of the initiative. This year, we highlight three projects--the Accountability and Continuous Improvement Task Force, the California [...]

CDE Foundation Receives $2.25 Million to Accelerate the Development of Digital Tools for Teacher Learning and Collaboration REDWOOD CITY, CA—On Tuesday, November 2, the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation (CDEF) announced it has received a $2.25 million award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to support teacher collaboration and resource sharing across California. Last August, CDEF partnered with the California Department of Education (CDE) and technology company Declara to launch the Collaboration In Common (CiC) platform and support the state's #GoOpen campaign. CiC provides a social network for professional learning communities that provides tools and resources to promote sharing and collaboration between [...]

After two years of exploration and learning, as as part of the work to successfully implement the state's updated standards, we are excited to announce that Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation is working with Declara, in partnership with the California Department of Education, to launch Collaboration in Common (CiC), California's new collaboration, professional learning, and resource sharing platform. CiC represents the next phase of California's remodeling project to improve our K-12 public education system. You can learn more about CiC and California's participation in the U.S. DOE's #GoOpen Initiative, which CiC helps make possible, in the State Superintendent of Public Instruction's [...]

SACRAMENTO – State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today congratulated the educators, school administrators, and labor leaders who participated in the Spring 2016 Labor-Management Initiative symposiums. The final Spring session was held last week for districts in the South Bay Area and San Jose, following earlier sessions in Southern and Central California. More meetings are planned for the next school year. A total of 98 school districts and county offices of education have participated since the first symposium in May 2015. “I want to thank all the outstanding teachers, administrators, school board members, and other education leaders who came [...]

On January 20, 2016, several leaders of the CA LMI presented on labor-management collaboration at the California Educator Excellence Summit, an event designed to help local education agencies improve their professional learning systems. The panel, titled The Power of Labor-Management Collaboration in Transforming Districts, Schools, and Teaching, focused on how labor-management collaboration can help advance educator excellence in California. Echoing messages shared by partners at the May 2015 Symposium, Wes Smith, Executive Director of the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), and Eric Heins, President of the California Teachers Association (CTA) talked about their organization’s commitment to labor-management partnerships and why [...]