May 2007

To celebrate our 30 successful years, the EdSource board of directors and staff hosted our first-ever anniversary party for 70 invited guests in May 2007.

The main event of our 30th Anniversary celebration was a moderated roundtable discussion featuring California’s current and two former Superintendents of Public Instruction (SPIs): Jack O’Connell, Bill Honig, and Delaine Eastin. Moderating the panel was Davis Campbell, president of the EdSource board and himself a former deputy SPI under Superintendent of Public Instruction Wilson Riles.

Campbell asked each panelist to identify their single biggest challenge as SPI and the one accomplishment they were proud of most. Other topics the SPIs addressed included standards and student achievement, assessment, school finance reform and where they thought the recent "Getting Down To Facts" research would lead, and governance of the state’s education system.

We saluted three of the very first EdSource board members and one of the original volunteers, Penny Howell, who later came on staff to write many of our early publications. She spent years reviewing and critiquing our reports for clarity and provided support to the Ed-Data Partnership website. We also recognized our three founding organizations (the California branches of PTA, League of Women Voters, and American Association of University Women), former and current board members, and other individuals who have contributed to our strategic growth.

Executive Director Trish Williams paid tribute to the high standards set by early EdSource pioneers, then detailed the agency’s remarkable growth and accomplishments in the second half of its existence. She noted, “Just surviving 30 years is sometimes a significant feat, but once you get past those initial hurdles, the agency can either coast into a comfortable maturity—or it can kick up some dust.” At EdSource, the dust has yet to settle.

In the past 15 years, the organization has produced 150 reports, disseminated about 1.2 million copies of them, continued to host successful annual Forums, helped start and support the groundbreaking Education Data Partnership website, and launched EdSource Online, which currently has nearly 600,000 visitor sessions annually and more than 13,000 individuals on its email bulletin list.

In addition to maintaining these important programs, in the last four years, EdSource has become ever more entrepreneurial, undertaking new and significantly different work to further meet its mission. We played multiple roles in connection with the "Getting Down To Facts" research project, including conducting a study of our own in partnership with School Services of California and drafting lay summaries of each of the more than 20 other studies. We created a third website in the fall of 2006, www.californiaschoolfinance.org, and that site was rolled back into the redesigned EdSource website in September 2008.

Over the past three years, EdSource has served as project lead on a multiyear collaborative research project called Similar Students, Different Results, and its subsequent extended analyses, most recently on English learners. In the Spring of 2007, we worked with external research staff on two different reports—on high school curriculum and charter school performance. All these projects have provided EdSource a chance to play a more proactive role and to partner with highly respected researchers from universities and other institutions.