User:Californiapoliticslover142/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
California State Board of Education

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
My research topic is on California's education finance formula, the local control funding formula (LCFF). A critical component of contextualizing the local control funding formula is understanding California's complex education governance framework. My topic focuses on providing policy reforms to improve LCFF. In order for LCFF to be substantively improved, California must also increase its technical capacity. Much of the State's technical policy and governance capacity is set by the California State Board of Education. Given the critical role the State Board of Education has on my research topic, I thought it would be interesting to see what information I could gleam off of the CA State Board of Ed's wikipedia page.

Evaluate the article
The wikipedia page for the CA State Board of Education was significantly shorter than I thought. However, it makes sense given the niche nature of this institution. As we learned in the Wikipedia training modules, pages that contain more info typically are classified as 'notable.' For various palpable reasons, the wikipedia page for the CA State Board of Education would not be classified as notable.

Content wise, the page is quite lacking. Comprehensive wikipedia pages generally begin with a lead section, and separate sections and headings below. This wikipedia page had no additional sections out of a lead section. The entirety of the page is two paragraphs: both of which provide a purely descriptive function of the CA State Board of Ed. There is significant history to the State Board, so it is interesting there is not more sections devoted to additional heads. However, the description and content is up to date and the powers they purport the SBE to hold are consistent with current State laws. Although, it is clear the page does lack in content breadth, and could be improved with more information about the history, background, and relevance of the California State Board of Education. The page could certainly be further expanded in terms of content.

The tone of the article/page was great. It was very much in line with Wikipedia's values. The tone was one of objectivity, and the content was purely a restatement of empirical facts.

This article certainly lacked in sources and references. The only visible text citation was an external reference connecting to the official website of the State Board of Education. There is a phlethora of information out there by various leading academic institutions and think-tanks that have conducted research on the CA SBE. There certainly could have been more sources and cited used on this wikipedia landing page.

The organization and writing quality of this article is excellent. There are no images and media provided in this article. There exists no talk page discussion on this article either.

Overall, this article does an excellent job at conveying a single purpose: the responsibility and job of the CA State Board of Education. Across other metrics of evaluation --- like media, sources, discussion boards, etc... --- this article fell on deaf ears. However, it is important to note that this article was flagged by wikipedia as a stub; meaning it was an article deemed too short and incomplete to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject. Given this, there exists ample opportunity to further expand on this page and topic. This is clearly an under-developed wikipedia article that lacks substantive encyclopedia coverage; however, in the little content they do provide, the context is exceptional. In fact, one could gather this article draws its strengths in brevity and clarity. Any individual unfamiliar with California education policy could immediately read the two paragraphs (in the article) and walk away with a pretty broad level understanding of the importance of the California State Board of Education. In short, more information and content needs to be added to this article. But it has a fantastic foundation!