In 1920, the
California State Legislature's Special Legislative Committee on Education conducted a comprehensive investigation of California's educational system. The report recommended the consolidation and centralization of all these entities under the jurisdiction of a single California Department of Education, and also to clarify the exact relationship between the existing State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Therefore, on May 31, 1921, the legislature enacted a bill creating such a department, to be headed by a Director of Education, and which also concurrently made the State Superintendent of Public Instruction the
ex officio director of the new department. (The sole entity exempt from the new department's jurisdiction was the
University of California, because of a 1886 court case involving control of the
Hastings College of the Law.) Among the various entities thus integrated were the State Normal Schools, which lost their boards of trustees, were made subordinate to the department's deputy director for the Division of Normal and Special Schools, and were renamed State Teachers Colleges. This created a rather bizarre administrative situation from 1921 to 1960. On the one hand, the department's actual supervision of the presidents of the State Teachers Colleges was rather minimal, which translated into substantial autonomy when it came to day-to-day operations. The State Teachers Colleges were renamed State Colleges in 1935, but retained the same legal status. They finally regained full administrative autonomy after the recommendations of the
California Master Plan for Higher Education were signed into law as the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, which created the State College System of California (now the
California State University) and authorized the appointment of a board of trustees and systemwide chancellor who would be independent of the department. In 1967, the state's junior colleges (which had largely developed as extensions of existing high school districts at the local level) were renamed community colleges and organized into a new system called the
California Community Colleges, and that system was then authorized to have its own board of governors and systemwide chancellor who would also be independent of the department. Since 1967, the department has been focused on regulating and supporting local school districts which directly provide the bulk of
K-12 primary and secondary education throughout the state, as well as operating the state's three special schools and three diagnostic centers in support of
special education. ==Ethnic studies==