LAUSD ordered to pay $6M to 2 boys molested by Telfair teacher Two teenage boys were each awarded more than $3 million Thursday from Los Angeles Unified as compensation for being sexually abused in a Pacoima elementary school. CBS-LA.com 8,000 LAUSD students who failed exit exam eligible for diploma The students are those who failed...

By Louis Freedberg Against the backdrop of enthusiasm regarding new reforms underway in California, from the Common Core to the Local Control Funding Formula, the just-released scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, brought a brush with reality. Mirroring national results, scores in California on 4th-grade math dipped by 2 points and...

District accountability plans mushroom in size and complexity The burgeoning size of the LCAPs is raising questions about whether after just two years in existence they are turning into a daunting bureaucratic exercise. EdSource, By Michael Collier and Louis Freedberg L.A. teachers weigh in on discipline in reaction to South Carolina case The South Carolina...

By Joshua Leibner As LAUSD searches for a new Superintendent, there has been a call not to “politicize” the process by people who mysteriously or calculatingly believe that the job itself isn’t political. Well let’s disabuse everyone of that notion right now. There is nothing in human experience more political than Education. Whatever education you and I...

LAUSD fires lawyer (again) who blamed student for sex with teacher Veteran attorney W. Keith Wyatt will no longer handle cases for the nation’s second-largest school system, the district confirmed Tuesday. Los Angeles Times, by Howard Blume A backgrounder on the Alliance — UTLA dispute The PERB sued Alliance College-Ready Public Charter Schools and its...

A majority responding to the latest LA School Report poll said the biggest challenge facing the new LA Unified superintendent is the Broad Foundation’s charter expansion plan, which could drain enrollment. More than 50 percent of respondents chose it as No. 1. The second most popular answer expressed a bit of cynicism, as 18 percent chose: “Yikes,...

By Nicholas Melvoin In decrying the recently leaked memo outlining a plan to create more high-quality public charter schools in our city, LAUSD School Board President Steve Zimmer said: “This is not an all-kids plan or an all-kids strategy…it’s very explicitly a some-kids strategy, a strategy that some kids will have a better education at a publicly-funded school…[t]he conversation should be...

LA Unified board will consider outside superintendent search committee A group of civic leaders has pressed the school board repeatedly on the issue. Los Angeles Times, by Howard Blume LAUSD’s building program transforming neighborhoods An ambitious construction program by L.A.’s Unified School District has dramatically altered the look of several of the city’s neighborhoods in...

Daniel Jocz, a social studies teacher at Downtown Magnets High School, is one of five people named today by Tom Torlakson, State Superintendent of Public Education, as 2016 California Teachers of the Year. Jocz is the only winner from LA Unified. “The teachers we are honoring today are dedicated, energetic, innovative and very effective,” Torlakson...

By Lizette Alvarez MIAMI — When protests from parents and teachers erupted against the new Common Core tests here, Florida thought it had a solution: It dropped the tests. But it abruptly switched sources for the exams, hoping the substitute would be more palatable. Now, nearly six months after students finished taking their exams, Florida...