We read 806 of California’s adopted 2025-26 LCAPs, 758 school districts, 40 county offices of education, and 8 charter schools, and turned every one into structured data. The result is The State of the LCAP: 2025-26, our first annual report on what California’s local control plans actually say.
Together, these plans document $35.6 billion in planned spending for just over four million students. The report walks through what a typical plan looks like, where the dollars go, how self-reported outcomes are tracking one year into the three-year cycle, and how the field handled the template’s two hardest requirements: the Equity Multiplier and increased or improved services.
A few of the findings:
- The culture of honesty is real. 98% of districts name at least one place a goal fell short, in their own words.
- Attendance recovery is outpacing academics. Most plans are keeping pace on attendance and behavior targets, while about two thirds are behind pace on academic ones.
- The strict IIS standard is a capacity problem, and it lands heaviest on the smallest districts.
The full report is free to read online, with a PDF edition to download and share. One email a year: sign up at the end of the report and we’ll send next year’s edition when it ships.