Over the next several weeks, LA School Report will be publishing stories reported and written before the coronavirus pandemic. Their publication was sidelined when schools across the country abruptly closed, but we are sharing them now because the information and innovations they highlight remain relevant to our understanding of education. Author’s note: This school profile...

Over the next several weeks, LA School Report will be publishing stories reported and written before the coronavirus pandemic. Their publication was sidelined when schools across the country abruptly closed, but we are sharing them now because the information and innovations they highlight remain relevant to our understanding of education. Author’s note: CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger...

In recent days, dozens of Detroit parents — quarantined in COVID hotspots with one of the nation’s widest digital divides — have taken to their phones to demand Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer settle a lawsuit that found the state violated their children’s right to learn to read. Using the hashtags #RightToLiteracy and #settlethiscase, some are...

For a moment, the issues seemed insurmountable. Some 150 parent activists, all strong-willed veterans of battles with their respective education establishments, were gathered in a New Orleans hotel ballroom trying to hammer out statements of joint belief. It was important to arrive at precise wording, the organizers running the meeting told them, because the statement...

Quick — without looking it up on Google, can you define “edge-aversion”? Here’s a hint: It’s a decision-theory term describing what’s also known as middle bias. That is, a test-taker’s tendency to pick anything but the top or bottom option on a multiple-choice question. To a psychometrician, it’s a tell that the answer was a...

It’s college-touring season at my house, and I am a goopy mess. I’m a total sucker for all of it. The unblemished idealism of the day. The bright new horizon revealed by each literal door the student tour guide opens. Even the obligatory lunch in the dining hall, where I try not to think about...

As the new academic year gets rolling for California public schools, instructional materials are available for the first time that ensure every K-12 classroom has access to accurate and unbiased depictions of the sexual orientation and gender identity of historical figures. The state’s FAIR Education Act — FAIR stands for Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful —...

If you want to book a stay in Bainbridge Scott’s Airbnb in Los Angeles’s Montecito Heights neighborhood, you’d better plan well in advance. Listed as a “Rustic Studio with Private Garden Patio,” the hillside property boasts a terrace with views of the city, a classic clawfoot tub, and an extensive garden from which guests can...

*Updated June 21 If Tuesday night’s California gubernatorial candidate forum had been a debate, the hands-down winner would have been a slender 11-year-old in a mint-green dress shirt. “It really bothers me to see homeless people on the streets or kids begging,” Eric Dory, a fifth-grader from South Los Angeles who attends Open Magnet Charter...

Update:  Los Angeles County’s board of education on Tuesday denied Denon Carr’s charter application but urged him to make changes to the proposal and resubmit it as quickly as possible to either the Inglewood School Board or the state board. Carr says he will appeal, though he is not yet sure to which entity. For...