Building a tool to define ‘adequately-funded’ education California’s second-largest school district is almost ready to answer a question that has prompted legal challenges across the nation. SI&A Cabinet Report Head of LAUSD schools in northeast SFV to expand bilingual programs Local Superintendent Byron Maltez started his new position overseeing 118 schools in the northeast San...

Editor’s note: In the LA Times yesterday, Diane Ravitch argued passionately that the future of public education in Los Angeles depends on whom the LA Unified board selects as its next superintendent. She wrote, “The ideal superintendent would have the courage, and the support of the board, to resist those who seek to undermine and...

By Clifton D. Parker California’s tough new vaccination law is legally sound and will serve as a model for how to keep children healthy, Stanford professors say. On June 25, California Gov. Jerry Brown approved a new state law (SB277) that substantially narrows exceptions to school-entry vaccination mandates. In doing so, California becomes the third...

Carl Schafer works to get CA to enforce its own arts education law Carl Schafer has spent the last three years lobbying to get arts instruction to every student in the state. KPCC Finally some help from the feds on ELL with disabilities The special education system in many schools is plagued by over- or...

For anyone bemoaning current trends in state public education, hold your complaints, at least until tomorrow. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has scheduled an event downtown at the LA Area Chamber of Commerce to unveil “a new action plan,” that his office says will provide “the steps to take in the next four years...

By Lenore Skenazy Back in 2009, the parenting site Babble listed the top 50 “mom” blogs in America—funniest, most fashionable, etc., and “most controversial.” That would be my blog, Free-Range Kids. Then it was voted most controversial again, a year later. What crazy idea was I pushing? Don’t vaccinate your kids? Clobber them when they cry?...

State’s top education official plans new accountability system to rate schools Torlakson said he will announce the creation of a committee to formulate a new accountability system for evaluating and rating schools. Los Angeles Daily News Commentary: What LAUSD needs in its next superintendent The Los Angeles Unified School District has at most a year...

By EdSource Staff Legislators who headed out of town on Friday for a month have already decided the fate of many key bills. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed, including a much debated child vaccination law that eliminates the personal belief exemption to school-required vaccinations. All of the bills to rewrite the teacher evaluation law have...

L.A. superintendent: ‘When it comes to student safety, we are going to choose students over adults every single time.’ Los Angeles schools superintendent Ramon C. Cortines e-mailed me Monday night with a reaction to my latest column. Washington Post Teacher training course aims to boost students’ college readiness Nearly 5,000 teachers across the state in...

LA Unified’s new board president, Steve Zimmer, had a recent chat with Politico, and some of his comments reached its Education Morning Edition today. Nothing surprising until the final paragraph, when he expresses his hope that the selection of a new superintendent to replace the soon-to-be-leaving Ramon Cortines doesn’t “devolve into another ground war over schooling,...