About Us
The California Policy Collaborative
Building peer-to-peer, policy-focused professional learning communities to last
Our Mission
The California Policy Collaborative’s mission is to build the policy knowledge, expertise of, and connections between policy staff through accurate and relevant content coupled with engaging, enriching, and fun experiences, all for the ultimate benefit of California’s children and communities.
About the CPC Approach
Welcome to the California Policy Collaborative (CPC) professional development pilot on the fundamentals of California’s TK-12 education policy.
It is our belief – grounded in the science of adult learning – that to successfully support professionals as they develop complex knowledge and skills it is essential for:
- Learners to be engaged shoulder to shoulder with peers who share similar obligations and constraints
- Content to be relevant to the current context and germane to learner’s role and responsibilities
- Learning experiences to provide the opportunity for individually paced, self-directed exploration of new material, along with the ability to apply acquired knowledge through engaging, inquiry-based group activities
- Learning environments to be intentionally structured, psychologically safe, skillfully facilitated, and available consistently over time.
Pilot Course
We are putting this belief to the test by launching a professional learning pilot. The pilot will support early career legislative staff as they develop core knowledge of California’s TK-12 policy framework, while strengthening essential skills necessary for participants to effectively impact State policy in their roles.
Cohort participants will have an opportunity to:
- engage with one another, senior staff in the Legislature, experts in the field, and stakeholders to explore the issues
- examine relevant data and utilize data tools to better understand the California context
- access timely data, peer reviewed research and case studies on TK-12 systems and discuss how this information can be used to inform policy development
- develop process and procedural capacity, especially as it relates to education legislation and investments
- delve into the relationship between policy and practice/implementation
To respond to the legislative calendar and develop an approach that will allow legislative staff to effectively participate in its design and implementation, the pilot is being executed during the legislative recess. An independent evaluation has also been commissioned to support real-time continuous improvement and to track the impact of the approach.
Our goal through this overarching design is to provide immediate benefit to legislative staff during the pilot process while, at the same time, building a stable infrastructure for ongoing collaborative support into the future. Ultimately, this work will add value by investing in the individuals who make governing in California possible – all for the benefit of Californians.
The California Policy Collaborative is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives. This work has been made possible by the generous contributions of the Stuart Foundation, Silver Giving Foundation, the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation and Sobrato Philanthropies.
The Team
Samantha is the Founder and Executive Director of the California Policy Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that works to build the knowledge, skills and networks of California’s policy influencers to effectively tackle the complex issues facing children in the state. As former Senior Managing Director for Education Policy at Children Now, Ms. Tran oversaw the organization’s birth-to-college-and-career education policy agenda, which included managing the organization’s comprehensive policy, advocacy, and communications campaign strategies on early learning and K-12 finance reform, accountability, system of support, workforce, data and dual language learners/English learners. She also was a strategic advisor on Children Now’s foster youth and health policy work and led cross-team Communities of Practice (CoP), including a CoP focused on the implementation of California’s Local Control Funding Formula and its multiple measures accountability system. Prior to joining Children Now, Ms. Tran was a senior research and policy consultant at the California School Boards Association (CSBA) where she provided guidance to governance teams on the implementation of state and federal law and regulations. She also was an independent contractor for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Governor’s Committee on Educational Excellence. Ms. Tran completed her B.A. in Communications at the University of San Francisco and her M.A. in Education Policy at Stanford University.
Samantha Dobbins Tran
Founder and Executive Director, California Policy Collaborative
Learn More About Our Courses
Find out more about our professional learning communities for California legislative staff using the link below.