Via The Nation | By JoAnn Wypijewski  Iris Stevenson hurt no child, seduced no teenager, abused no student at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. This is what her supporters say in rallying outrage that this exemplary teacher has languished for months in the gulag of administrative detention known as “teacher jail”: she doesn’t belong there....

More than 40 education and community groups signed a full-page ad that ran in today’s Los Angeles Times, urging the LA Unified school board to provide more support for high needs students in the up-coming budget. The ad appears a day before a board meeting when issues of the budget will be a large part of...

State’s new computerized exam tryout plagued by glitches New state standardized exams, given for the first time on computers this spring, really have been a test. But not always a test of math and English. Students had trouble logging on; then many were logged off, sometimes for inactivity while they read lengthy passages. Some devices...

LA Unified has claimed a second victory in a major academic competition. Marshall High School won the 2014 U.S. Academic Decathlon Online competition, scoring 39,461 out of a possible 48,000 points. The win follows El Camino Real Charter High School’s victory in the 2014 U.S. Academic Decathlon championship last month. Marshall represented California in the...

Via the Los Angeles Times | By Stephen Ceasar An initiative intended to foster a college-going culture in East Los Angeles will grant guaranteed admission to Cal State L.A. to certain students at Garfield High School and East Los Angeles College, officials announced Thursday. The collaborative program, named “GO East LA: A Pathway for College...

LA schools’ new parent advisory group grapples with $6.8 billion budget In a Sammy Lee Elementary’s auditorium in Koreatown, 50 parents are combing through the Los Angeles Unified School District’s proposed budget for next year, a 33-page draft of a document called the Local Control Accountability Plan. Inside, bullet points a swath of complex policy...

SEIU Local 99, the union of cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, special education assistants who work for LA Unified announced today it is seeking a minimum of $15 an hour for all workers who currently earn less than that and a 15 percent raise for all workers who earn more. The union thus became the...

You think you have problems with the implementation of Common Core? Have a look at a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a human rights organization that tracks groups engaging in hate and bigotry to further their causes. The report, “Public Schools in the Crosshairs,” examines the far right’s efforts to eliminate...

Rialto school officials apologize for Holocaust assignment What started as an eighth-grade critical-thinking writing assignment has become a source of relentless controversy for Rialto school officials, who apologized profusely and publicly this week for asking that students consider whether the Holocaust was created for political gain or didn’t happen at all. The assignment, developed by...

*UPDATE At least two candidates running for the LA Unified school board may be skirting campaign finance laws by sending campaign literature to voters without proper disclosure. The candidates, George McKenna, a retired administrator, and Rachel Johnson, who serves on the city council of Gardena, are competing in a large field to fill the open...