This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday proposed paring down the responsibilities of California’s elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction and shifting more power to the State Board of Education. “California can no longer postpone reforms that have been recommended regularly for a century,” Newsom said, referring to...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. The past few years, California has been all about the ABCs, 1-2-3s and the wheels on the bus, investing more than $5 billion in early childhood education. But kindergarten, a staple of elementary schools for more than a century, remains optional. Despite nearly...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. A few months ago, a high school English teacher in Los Angeles Unified noticed something different about his students’ tests. Students who had struggled all semester were suddenly getting A’s. He suspected some were cheating, but he couldn’t figure out how. Until a...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. At CART High near Fresno, there is no gum stuck to the floor. The saffron-yellow walls are unmarred by graffiti. Toting laptops, students file calmly down spacious, light-filled hallways to classes like biotechnology and digital marketing. There’s no fighting, no shouting, no bells....

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. This fall, every high school in California was supposed to offer ethnic studies — a one-semester class focused on the struggles and triumphs of marginalized communities. But the class appears stalled, at least for now, after the state budget omitted funding for it...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. As California intensifies its fight with the Trump Administration, the race for the state’s top schools job is becoming ever more crowded. Today, former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon formally entered the race to succeed Tony Thurmond as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. He...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. California after-school and summer programs will get some of their funding back after the federal government said on Friday that it would restore grants it had previously withheld. But the money is contingent on states complying with Civil Rights laws – a cudgel...

This was originally published by CalMatters. In Kern County, the first rule in counting homeless students is not saying “homeless.” Instead, school staff use phrases like “struggling with stable housing” or “families in transition.” The approach seems to have worked: More families are sharing their housing status with their children’s schools, which means more students...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. When Brigitta Hunter started her teaching career, she had $20,000 in student loans and zero income – even though she was working nearly full time in the classroom. “We lived on my husband’s pathetic little paycheck. I don’t know how we did it,”...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. A bill that could reshape literacy education in California elementary schools cleared a major hurdle in the Legislature this week after dueling sides reached a compromise that provides funding for phonics-based instruction but stops short of requiring it. The compromise between English learner...