Despite the LA Unified school board reversing itself and denying El Camino Real High School’s attempts to develop two long-closed elementary school campuses in the west San Fernando Valley, the leader of the CHIME Institute told LA School Report he is not concerned the board will shut down his school’s plan to develop another closed campus in the...

The word “MiSiS” is not generally associated with happy endings at LA Unified, and neither is the district’s increasingly competitive relationship with its 221 independent charter schools, but that was the case earlier this month when the district and its charters announced they had reached an agreement on linking their student data systems to fulfill...

A new report that analyzed how effective schools and cities are at closing the “achievement gap” between students from low-income families and their more advantaged peers found that nine of the top 10 schools in Los Angeles were independent charter schools. The first-of-its-kind Education Equality Index from Education Cities studied data from schools in the 100...

LA Unified and its 221 independent charter schools have reached an agreement on the court-ordered requirement that charters sync their student data information systems with the district’s massive MiSiS system. The agreement calls on the district to develop an interface solution that will allow data systems at charter schools to communicate with MiSiS but allow...

Three Los Angeles charter school students were among the winners of $2,000 scholarships awarded at the 23rd Annual California Charter Schools Conference this week. The 10 recipients of the Susan Steelman Bragato Scholarship Award have “a passion for community service and for reaching their educational dreams,” the California Charters Schools Association (CCSA), which hosted the...

The California Charter Schools Association handed out nine Hart Vision Awards Tuesday at the 23rd Annual California Charter Schools Conference, and five of them were given to schools or leaders from the Los Angeles area. Among the winners at the event, which is taking place Monday through Thursday at the Long Beach Convention Center, was The CHIME Institute for Charter...

LA Unified has so many different kinds of schools, it’s hard to keep them all straight. With such varied terms as affiliated charter, independent charter, magnet school, pilot school, continuation school, option school and others, it can be a challenge to understand what they are, what they offer and how they differ.  This is the first part...

LA Unified’s $15 million credit recovery program has already been making a big impact on its projected high school graduation rate this year, and a school-by-school breakdown report released by the district shows that the progress is across the board. The report, which highlights how many students are on track to complete their “A through...

LA Unified Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian faced an angry and skeptical group of West Hills residents Thursday evening as she presented the district’s plan to redevelop a long-shuttered and dilapidated elementary school into a high school serving 500 students. The anger stemmed from the school board’s sudden cancellation last month of a plan that had...

LA Unified announced this month that the district may graduate 80 percent of its seniors this year, a record high, but a growing number of critics say that record is suspect because online credit recovery courses are largely responsible for the achievement. The news of the potentially record-breaking graduation rate came mere weeks after a projection in...