“Evidence is closed,” Judge Rolf Treu pronounced from his seat in Superior Court today, thus drawing the curtain on two months of testimony in Vergara v. California. Since Jan. 27, lawyers representing nine students-as-plaintiffs and their adversaries — the state and its two powerful teachers unions — the California Federation of Teachers and the California...

UTLA is headed in a new direction —  mostly veering to the left. Despite a low turnout, Union Power candidates claimed victory today, with wins in nearly every leadership position within UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers union. The progressive group — which plans to call for a strike if a new teacher contract can’t be...

The defense in Vergara v California called its final witness to the stand today, a nationally-recognized expert on education policy, who provided testimony that heavily supported all the state laws under challenge in the case. Throughout the day, Linda Darling-Hammond, who teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, said unequivocally that the California laws...

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan came to Los Angeles today to shine a light on a White House initiative that takes a holistic approach to helping kids learn. Duncan joined LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy and a group of teachers, students and leaders of the Youth Policy Institute at a community center in Hollywood. The...

The battle to influence the Los Angeles Unified School board on how to spend Governor Jerry Brown’s new Local Control Funding Formula budget boost and statewide tax revenues for education continues to rage on. Parents, educators and community organizers rallied outside of LA Unified headquarters today before a special school board meeting primarily focussed on...

The Los Angeles Unified School District is losing an average of 2.6 percent of students attending traditional public schools — that’s about 56,000 kids — and it’s costing the district hundreds of millions dollars each year. By the current formula, which calculates how much money goes to districts based on student attendance, about $292.4 million will...

Superintendent John Deasy works too much. So much so, that he rarely takes time off for vacation. As a result, the Los Angeles Unified School board voted at its monthly meeting yesterday to pay him for up to 24 days of unused vacation time, the equivalent of nearly $30,000 added to his annual salary of $330,000, according...

Another LA Unified school is under threat of closing. The Academy of Environmental and Social Policy (ESP) is hosting a Back to School/Save our School event tonight to help fend off efforts to shut it down or relocate it because of shrinking enrollment, As one of the district’s Partnership for Los Angeles schools, it is...