Research to Fuel Systems Change: The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools
By John McDonald
November 14, 2025
“We have an obligation as a country and as a research institution to understand the connections between race and income and education and communities, to identify and conduct research that will help to right the wrongs of the past and move the needle forward,” says Joseph P. Bishop, executive director, UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. “If we’re not doing that, if we’re just replicating the current state of the world, then what’s the research for? What is the research for it’s not for the betterment of humanity and kids?”
The work of the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools (CTS), a research organization Bishop co-founded in 2017 with then-UCLA Professor Pedro Noguera, is addressing the pressing needs of school systems and impacting the educational world with tangible, action-oriented research.
Joined by UCLA Professors of Education and CTS faculty co-directors Tyrone Howard and Lucrecia Santibañez, Bishop is engaged in a range of projects that, “reach beyond the schoolhouse,” to understand challenges, strengthen practice, and shape effective policies. Since its inception, CTS has published more than 40 research publications and partnered in dozens of projects with educators and community members.
“Our role as an educational research organization is to develop knowledge and understanding of critical issues affecting learning and opportunity, and to share that information in ways that inform educational practice and policy to benefit students and transform schools,” Bishop says.
“At its heart, our work is about changing the lives of kids by understanding who they are, the schools they attend, and the communities they live in, and using that knowledge to make things better,” adds Howard. “Our research examines the most important topics in the world of K-12 education today and uses what we learn to focus on systems change at the local, state, and federal level.”
The research is focused on students who historically have not been served well by public school systems. As a thought partner, CTS aims to help systems think differently, looking at ways to get health, education, child welfare, transportation, housing and other agencies and organizations to work together to better support students learning and well-being. To do that, the CTS team works collaboratively with partners across the education ecosystem to fuel systems change, conducting what they describe as “humanizing research” that elevates the voices of the students, families, and community members, especially those too often unheard in education decision-making.
CTS uses its research to validate effective practices, helping school systems transform educational practice, pedagogy and learning environments, and they use what they learn to inform and shape policy, offering specific recommendations for transformative work in schools.
Perhaps what sets the research of CTS apart though is their approach to how they act upon and share their work.
“Someone once said to me that a lot of researchers spend 80 to 90% of their time researching and analyzing their work, and then maybe 10% thinking about recommendations and communications,” says Bishop. “We spend a lot more of our time thinking about how we can translate rigorous research into something that somebody can actually use. And we give a lot of thought to the development of specific, actionable recommendations. The underlying theory of change guiding our work is that we can’t assume that people will care about our research. We have to figure out creative ways to make our research relevant to as many people as possible.”
One of the ways that CTS generates conversation about their work is through the strategic use of design and graphics in their reports in print and online. These visuals are used to illustrate the research and make it accessible to a broad audience. CTS uses numerous communications channels to share the work, including email and social media, webinars, and with the news media. The CTS podcast, “Among Us: Invisible Experiences Impacting Youth,” plumbed the stories of young people experiencing foster care and the impact on their learning and opportunity, attracting thousands of listeners.
Effective messaging is critical to the effort.
To underscore the importance of effective communications, Bishop points to their research publication, “State of Crisis, Dismantling of Student Homelessness in California,” an analysis of data from the California Department of Education, which reports that 269,269 students in K-12 throughout California experienced homelessness in 2018-2019. To illustrate the crisis, CTS used the familiar image of Dodger Stadium, which can hold up to 56,000 people. In the report, CTS said that California could fill the stadium with students experiencing homelessness almost five times, accompanied by a photograph of the storied ballpark. The image resonated, generating extensive news media coverage and capturing the attention of state and local policymakers.
“We connected the data to a visual people understood and could relate to,” says Bishop. “That’s part of our secret sauce; we are always trying to make our work understandable and accessible.”
The research of CTS is focused around three strands: Equitable School Systems, Positive, Healthy Learning Climates, and Prioritizing Historically Marginalized Students.
One early report, “Beyond the Schoolhouse,” published in 2019, set the stage for their research on marginalized students, and the approach of CTS to their work.
Focusing on more than 100,000 Black students in Los Angeles County, the research highlighted the overrepresentation of Black students among those who are underprepared for college, subject to punitive forms of discipline, and are chronically absent from school. The report also showed that a disproportionate number of Black students in Los Angeles County attended schools the state had identified as “low performing,” places where critical resources such as school counselors and highly qualified teachers were often in short supply.
The research contends that while considerable attention has been focused on schools, far less has been directed at addressing the out-of-school factors that influence a child’s development, or the social and economic conditions in the neighborhoods where they live. Saying, “we must do both,” the report details the “accumulation of disadvantage” across various educational, health and social indicators and their interaction with the academic and developmental outcomes of Black children in Los Angeles County. The researchers conclude that the failure to recognize how poverty, health, and educational performance are related has made it more difficult for education policy to have a positive impact on the needs of the most vulnerable children.
That larger look across systems and a wide array of factors can also be seen in the Center’s work on Equitable School Systems. In the California Educator Diversity Project, a series of research reports and activities, CTS researchers examine equity gaps, opportunities and challenges across the educator pipeline to help better recruit, prepare, develop and retain a talented and racially diverse workforce. For example, in “California’s Teacher Education Deserts: An Overlooked & Growing Equity Challenge,” CTS profiles nine rural border counties in California. Examining geographic location, economic status, and education attainment rates, the research shows that these regions face unique challenges in recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers and provides insights into the profound impact these factors have on a county’s teacher supply. The report provides evidence-based recommendations to address teacher supply issues in these regions.
In another project, CTS partnered with the California Teachers Association (CTA) and Hart Associates to conduct and analyze a survey of 4,632 TK-12th grade teachers in California. The details reveal alarming findings related to job satisfaction and outlook, teacher retention, and diversity and inclusion within the work environment of schools. In the survey report, “Voices from the Classroom: Developing a Strategy for Teacher Retention and Recruitment,” teachers across California say they are feeling acute levels of stress and job dissatisfaction, and are considering leaving the profession. The findings underscore significant challenges to teacher retention and the recruitment and preparation of aspiring teachers, especially teachers of color.
In its focus on Positive, Healthy Learning Climates, CTS is supporting the scale-up of community schools in Los Angeles County. Partnering with the Los Angeles County Office of Education and The LA Trust for Children’s Health, CTS has formed a Regional Transformational Assistance Center (R-TAC) to support Los Angeles County schools as they establish or sustain a community schools model. As the research partner for the R-TAC, the Center is investigating implementation strategies and providing technical assistance to grantees as they develop processes for monitoring progress. CTS is helping the R-TAC and grantee schools interpret and assess their data as they implement the California Community Schools framework.
In these and other research projects it is important to underscore the collaborative and supportive approach that guides the work of CTS.
“In our work we have moved from just publishing and putting out research to doing more integrated work with school districts, county offices of education, state partners, institutions of higher education and others,” says Geneva Sum, communications director for CTS.
“We are trying to create true partnerships and collaborations with educators, school leaders that help them to address critical issues, not just putting out findings from a study and basically saying, you take it and do what you want with it,” she adds.
CTS has also recently published several important projects. In a new policy brief, ”Unlocking Opportunities: How Dual Language Immersion Can Promote Equity and Integration,” Professor Santibañez and colleagues examine the progress, promise and challenges of dual language immersion programs in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The researchers contend that the programs offer a powerful vision for education and the opportunity to advance equity and learning. However, as programs grow in popularity, they face concerns over equitable access, particularly for historically marginalized communities. The programs, originally designed to serve language-minoritized students, are increasingly vulnerable to gentrification.
“The Dual Language Immersion programs are really a bright spot for the Los Angeles Unified School District,” Professor Santibañez says. “Yet as these programs gain traction within the school choice landscape, they may disproportionately attract more affluent, English-dominant families, shifting resources, teaching practices, and cultural priorities to reflect their needs—which could happen at the expense of the communities the programs were meant to prioritize.”
While much of the research of CTS has been focused on local districts and challenges in California their work is increasingly national in scope, looking at critical issues and examining broad patterns among historically marginalized student groups.
For example, researchers at CTS joined with scholars from across the United States and England this past year to author a series of research papers exploring the impact of COVID-19 on school-age children and the implications for the future of education. The findings were published in late September in a special issue of the Teachers College Record research journal at Columbia University.
The lead paper, “The COVID Effect: Unlocking the Education Potential for a Generation of Learners,” by Bishop and Howard, explores how various systems shaped the development and well-being of young people during the crisis. The research makes clear that the pandemic exacerbated longstanding structural inequities that were intensified under emergency conditions. Inequities in remote learning conditions were widespread.
“COVID-19 exposed deep-seated inequities that have plagued the nation for decades. The disparate impact expanded these inequities, furthering the divide between students of color and their peers and the schools they attend,” says Howard. “At a time when the nation’s schools are more racially and culturally diverse than ever before, the consequences have national ramifications.”
As it looks to the future, CTS is continuing to engage and collaborate with a wide range of educators, researchers, community members and organizations to understand, document and share best practices and policy strategies focused on helping systems to fundamentally change the way they support student learning, health and well-being.
CTS is looking to deepen and expand its research on “Highly Mobile Youth,” an effort to assess the needs and patterns of HMY in geographic regions across the United States, with a focus on student populations including those experiencing homelessness, foster care, the juvenile justice system, and migratory youth. There will also be more work to understand and address the impact of COVID-19 on student learning and equity.
“We are trying to transform systems that serve young people, to do research that can help systems to think differently. But research is a tool, not the end-all be-all to solve problems. There’s a shared responsibility for the health and success of kids. We must be part of a larger ecosystem of people who are trying to change the world,” concludes Bishop.
“Until the patterns radically change for young people and gaps in equity and opportunity are resolved, then this is our charge as a public research institution–to do whatever we can in our power to change the conditions, change the rules of the game, to document and use our research to change what we are seeing. And until that happens, we’ll keep doing the work we’re supposed to be doing.”
