By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board When famed teacher Rafe Esquith was yanked from his fifth-grade classroom and an investigation was opened into possible sexual and financial misconduct, parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District— and the larger education world — gasped. Esquith was as iconic as he was iconoclastic. A winner of the National Medal...

By Nicholas Melvoin If members of the LAUSD Board of Education are curious as to why the district’s enrollment is declining, they should review how the district treated parents over the last few days in the Playa Vista and Westchester neighborhoods for some clues. In a tale that is unfortunately all too familiar to many LAUSD...

By David L. Kirp The No Child Left Behind law will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history. With a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress has overhauled federal education policy. The law’s successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, is headed for the president’s desk, and he has signaled his intention to sign it. (He did,...

By Jill Barshay Andreas Schleicher, an international education expert based in Paris, attended a summit at the White House last month and left feeling frustrated by the anti-testing backlash in this country. “I listened to several presentations. You got this impression, if they would only get rid of tests, everything would improve,” said Schleicher, who oversees the...

By Roger Altman and Robert Hughes Are the student achievement scores at charter schools too good to be true? Every year, urban school districts across the country release test scores showing dismal student proficiency in math and reading, especially for students in poverty. At the same time, parents in those same cities often hear claims...

It’s getting down to crunch time: Thanksgiving . . . Christmas . . . Last day on the job for LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines. By next week, names for his replacement will begin to flow with a list of candidates that could include such well-regarded figures from across the county as Rudy Crew, a former Chancellor of...

By Kerry Cavanaugh I am the parent of a Los Angeles Unified School District student, and I get robocalls from the district probably two times a week. These are not calls from my son’s elementary school. These are recorded messages from various district officials, informing me of some meeting or workshop or that parents should fill out some...

By Ama Nyamekye What makes a great school? This fundamental question has been lost in a heated debate about a draft proposal spearheaded by the Broad Foundation, the most controversial part of which includes a plan to accelerate charter school growth in LAUSD. This idea has sparked concern and curiosity among parents, community members, philanthropists...

The more you hear about attempts to improve the nation’s schools, the sorrier you have to feel for the kids. After years of “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” initiatives, national test scores dived deeper into failure and mediocrity in the last reading. In a stunning reversal, the Obama administration, a tireless...

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board In school superintendent searches across the nation, parents, teachers and the public tend to rank educational “vision” as the No. 1 attribute required for a new leader. But in online surveys and focus groups in Los Angeles Unified, vision came in at a weak ninth, according to the executive...