**California Legislature. (2025). Assembly Bill No. 181: Budget Act of 2025. LegiScan. Available on Dropbox.
Assembly Bill (AB) 181 restructures California’s state education governance by transferring executive and administrative responsibility for the California Department of Education (CDE) from the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to an Education Commissioner appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. The legislation also gives the SPI a seat on the State Board of Education and requires the commissioner to develop recommendations for a second phase of reform by October 1, 2027. The bill’s authors frame these changes as a response to longstanding concerns about fragmented leadership and a way to facilitate clearer direction, stronger accountability, and more coherent assistance to districts.
Please read the text under “Legislative Counsel's Digest” and “Section 1” for the purposes of our meeting. The full bill language is available at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB181/2025.
Cortez, S. & Kapphahn, K. (2026, March 18). The 2026–27 budget: Re envisioning state education governance. Legislative Analyst’s Office. https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2026/5165/2026-27_Re-Envisioning_State_Education_Governance_031826.pdf
Written before AB 181 was enacted, this report examines the bill as a proposal to transfer leadership of CDE to an appointed Education Commissioner. The report identifies many of the same governance issues Myung, Hough, and Marsh raise in their report (see the Challenges with California’s Current Education System readings). Unlike that piece, this piece frames its endorsement of AB 181 by describing other previous governance studies, past unsuccessful restructuring efforts in California, and other states’ governance structures. Several of this report’s recommendations were adopted into the adopted bill language.
**This document is a priority reading.