Mike Morhaime, the co-founder and president of Blizzard Entertainment, has bought a home in a gated Rancho Mirage community for $2.25 million. The hacienda-style estate, built in 2003, opens to a gated drive that ends at a circular motor court. The more than one-acre property includes a main house and three casitas that combine to offer seven bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms in just under 6,300 square feet of living space. Among features is a two-story great room with a stacked stone fireplace, a wine room and a kitchen updated with an island and a wrap-around bar. The master suite has his and hers quarter bathrooms and walk-ins. Pocket glass doors extend the living space outside, where patios surround a resort-style swimming pool with a waterfall feature.

Home technology was a leading must-have among homeowners last year and will continue to be in 2017. Same with outdoor living spaces, pops of color, old looks making new comebacks, and a continued drive toward customization. Millennials entering the housing market in increasing numbers are driving the changes, but so are baby boomers wanting to stay in their upgraded homes for as long as possible. Cooking is a social activity, and homeowners want spacious, open kitchens and seamlessly connected outdoor living spaces. "Traditionally, we see outdoor landscaping as the most popular project undertaken by homeowners," said Matt Craig, research insight analyst for the Home Improvement Research Institute.

More than three million students across California traded in pencils for computers to take their standardized tests last school year. You might have read about the statewide results of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress: More than half of the state's public school students in grades 3 to 8 and 11th grade failed to meet benchmarks for college readiness. The test is new and considered harder than previous ones -- and scores did increase from 2015, the first year scores were reported. But they remained low -- and certain groups, such as black students, lagged behind. Some schools and districts performed very well.