By Christopher J. Nellum
When people ask about EdTrust-West’s impact over the last 25 years, they often expect to hear about a particular policy victory, legislative win, report, or campaign. Yet behind every victory is a relentless, long-term commitment to reshaping public education across our state. Those accomplishments matter, and they have helped create new opportunities for students across California.
As I’ve reflected on our first quarter century, however, I’ve found myself returning to a different conclusion. The policies matter. The outcomes matter. But the real story behind our impact is the organization’s ability to repeatedly take on difficult challenges, help move systems toward better solutions, and remain engaged long enough to ensure those solutions benefit students.
Over the years, California’s educational landscape has changed dramatically. New challenges have emerged, old challenges have evolved, and public priorities have shifted. Through those changes, EdTrust-West has remained adaptable to an evolving education landscape while keeping our focus on improving opportunities and outcomes for students. While the issues have changed, our core approach to driving systemic progress has remained remarkably consistent and impactful.
The Approach Behind the Impact
Looking across our history, I see three roles that have consistently defined our work and helped drive lasting progress for students.
1. We Identify Challenges Others Overlook
Many of the barriers students face are hidden in data, embedded in systems, or accepted as inevitable. One of EdTrust-West’s most important responsibilities has been helping California see those barriers clearly and understand who they affect.
Through research, community engagement, partnerships with educators, and a relentless focus on evidence, we work to bring clarity to challenges that might otherwise remain invisible. Our goal is not simply to document problems. It is to create the understanding and urgency necessary to solve them.
2. We Help Turn Solutions Into Action
Identifying a challenge is only the beginning. Real progress requires turning concern into action.
That means bringing together educators, advocates, researchers, policymakers, students, and families to develop solutions that are grounded in evidence and informed by real-world experience. Over time, EdTrust-West has developed a unique ability to connect research to practice, elevate voices that are too often excluded from decision-making, and help shape solutions that can improve outcomes for students.
3. We Stay Engaged Until Students Benefit
Success is often defined by a law being signed, a budget being approved, or a new initiative being launched. Those milestones matter, but they are rarely the end of the story.
Students benefit when opportunities become real, implementation challenges are addressed, and systems remain accountable for results. That is why implementation and accountability have always been central to our work. Staying engaged long after the headlines fade often determines whether a promising reform becomes a meaningful improvement in students’ lives.
Together, these three roles have enabled EdTrust-West to adapt to changing challenges while remaining focused on the same goal: creating better opportunities and outcomes for students.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Over the last 25 years, EdTrust-West has worked on a wide range of issues affecting students across California. While the challenges have changed, our approach has remained consistent: identify barriers, help shape solutions, and stay engaged long enough to ensure those solutions benefit students.
Much of that impact can be seen across three areas that are fundamental to student success:
- expanding access to opportunity,
- improving students’ educational experiences, and
- strengthening the systems responsible for delivering results over time
The examples below are not intended to capture the full scope of our work. Rather, they illustrate how the same approach has driven change across different issues and different moments in California’s educational history.
Expanding Access to Opportunity
For 25 years, EdTrust-West has worked to ensure more students can access the opportunities that support college success, economic mobility, and long-term achievement.
Expanding Access to Early College
The Challenge
Students from historically underserved communities were significantly less likely to have access to opportunities to earn college credit while still in high school.
How EdTrust-West Responded
We helped expose those disparities through research, elevated the issue in public and policy conversations, worked with partners to shape solutions that expanded access, and remained engaged as those changes were implemented.
What Changed
California expanded dual enrollment opportunities, creating new pathways for students to build momentum toward college success before graduating from high school.
Helping More Students Afford College
The Challenge
Far too many students were missing out on financial aid because they lacked the support necessary to navigate complicated application processes.
How EdTrust-West Responded
We helped make the problem visible through public data tools and advocacy, supported policy changes designed to increase completion rates, and worked directly with educators and practitioners to strengthen implementation.
What Changed
Tens of thousands of additional students completed financial aid applications, increasing access to resources that can make college more affordable and attainable.
Improving Students’ Educational Experiences
Improving outcomes requires more than access. Students also need high-quality learning experiences that prepare them for success in school, college, and beyond.
Expanding Access to High-Quality Math Learning
The Challenge
Too many students lacked access to rigorous, high-quality math instruction, limiting opportunities for advanced coursework, college success, and future careers.
How EdTrust-West Responded
We elevated the issue through research, public engagement, and policy advocacy, helped shape statewide guidance, and advocated for the resources and supports necessary to help educators implement changes effectively.
What Changed
California adopted stronger approaches to math instruction and invested in implementation efforts designed to improve learning opportunities for students across the state.
Strengthening Systems to Deliver Results Over Time
Students succeed when the systems around them are equipped to provide resources, accountability, transparency, and long-term support.
Directing More Resources to Students With the Greatest Needs
The Challenge
California’s education funding system did not consistently direct resources to the students and communities facing the greatest barriers.
How EdTrust-West Responded
We helped build the case for reform through research and coalition leadership, supported the development of a more equitable funding system, and continued working after its adoption to strengthen accountability and implementation.
What Changed
California fundamentally changed how public education funding is distributed and created stronger expectations around how those resources are used to support students.
Making Student Success Visible Through Better Data
The Challenge
California lacked a comprehensive way to understand how students moved through education and into the workforce, making it difficult to identify barriers and evaluate progress.
How EdTrust-West Responded
We helped elevate the need for a statewide data system, worked alongside partners and policymakers to shape its development, and have remained engaged in efforts to ensure the system remains transparent, accessible, and useful.
What Changed
California established the Cradle-to-Career Data System, creating new opportunities to better understand student pathways and strengthen accountability over time.
Looking Ahead
The challenges facing California students in the years ahead will not look exactly like the challenges we have tackled over the last 25 years. New opportunities will emerge, new barriers will arise, and the education landscape will continue to evolve.
What gives me confidence is not that we can predict what comes next. It is that EdTrust-West has spent twenty-five years building the capacity to take on difficult challenges, bring people together around solutions, and stay engaged until students benefit.
When I think about our greatest accomplishment, I don’t think first about a particular report, policy, or campaign. I think about an organization that has demonstrated, again and again, its ability to help create lasting change for students.
That capacity is what made our impact over the last 25 years possible, and it is what positions us to meet whatever challenges come next.
