BOULDER, CO (February 19, 2026) — More than a decade after California enacted the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) to advance educational equity, the state’s lawmakers have begun to consider how to strengthen and modernize the policy to meet today’s challenges.
In a report released today by NEPC, Advancing LCFF Equity and Accountability, authors Michelle Renée Valladares, Jonathon Sawyer, and Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado Boulder outline important steps needed to strengthen the equity, effectiveness, and accountability California’s system, especially given the erosion of federal support for public schools. The report is grounded in recommendations from a group of knowledgeable and civically engaged Californians—education leaders, advocates, and community leaders.
While LCFF has helped connect funding to student needs, improve graduation rates, and increase local decision-making through Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), the stakeholders these researchers spoke with explained that further action is necessary to provide the state’s students with the learning opportunities they will need to succeed. Rather than replacing LCFF, the policy memo calls for refining and enriching the system to address persistent opportunity gaps both inside and outside schools.
Community participants identified four shared priorities:
1. Increase education funding and improve transparency.
Participants emphasized that current funding levels are insufficient to meet equity and quality goals. They urged higher base and supplemental grants, exploration of progressive revenue options, and clearer public reporting on how funds are allocated and how investments improve outcomes.
2. Strengthen LCFF’s equity framework.
The report recommends more accurate measures of student need, including updated poverty indicators, regional cost-of-living adjustments, and recognition of students facing multiple challenges. Participants also support expanding categories to better serve unhoused students and Native American communities while protecting resources for highest-need schools.
3. Build participatory and reciprocal accountability.
Participants emphasized that genuine accountability must flow both ways—up to the state’s leadership as well as down to schools. Stakeholders also called for transforming LCAP processes into genuine community engagement platforms where parents, students, and community members can easily track goals, monitor progress, and influence decisions. Improved templates, better school-level spending data, and expanded engagement initiatives would help ensure accountability flows both to and from state leadership and local agencies.
4. Align education policy with broader systems of care.
The report urges greater coordination between schools and other public systems, including those addressing housing, healthcare, nutrition, child welfare, behavioral health, and transportation. Participants point to existing initiatives, such as community schools and youth behavioral health programs, as models for building integrated systems that better serve the whole child.
The overall message of the report is clear: Progress achieved through LCFF provides a strong foundation, but sustained and equitable investment, along with accountability measures, community participation, and cross-sector collaboration, are essential to close opportunity gaps. The participants in this study called on state leaders to renew their commitment to LCFF and LCAP, to build an education system capable of meeting 21st-century needs. The next decade must ensure that progress becomes lasting, inclusive advancement for all of California’s students.
Find Advancing LCFF Equity and Accountability, by Michelle Renée Valladares, Jonathon Sawyer, and Kevin Welner, at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/LCFF