Charter schools are the object of intense national debate. They shouldn’t be. The data show that public charters are a good investment. In five studies that we’ve conducted during the past several years, we’ve compared traditional schools and charter schools in a diverse roster of U.S. cities where a substantial portion of families are choosing...

Californians are divided in their general views on charter schools, according to a new statewide survey. Most are in support of parents having the option to choose charters, but there’s also a high level of concern that charters divert state funding from traditional schools. Nearly half — 49 percent — of all adults surveyed said...

Rodney Robinson, a history teacher at a Virginia juvenile justice center, plans to use his new platform as 2019 National Teacher of the Year to highlight the school-to-prison pipeline and the need for juvenile justice reform. Much like last year’s selection of Mandy Manning, a teacher of refugee and new immigrant students, Robinson’s win, announced Wednesday,...

*Updated April 23: Board members voted unanimously on Tuesday without debate to pass an amended resolution forming an independent taxpayer oversight committee if the parcel tax passes in June. All board members were co-sponsors. As the L.A. Unified school board on Tuesday considers an independent oversight committee to sway residents to greenlight the district’s first-ever parcel tax, staunch opponents...

*Updated April 23 Parents and community advocates are divided on L.A. Unified’s Measure EE, a parcel tax on the June ballot that would raise about $500 million a year over a 12-year period for schools. However, a common thread connects them: They agree schools need more funding, but there’s also “distrust” over whether the district would...

Michael Danielson gives students in his ninth-grade media literacy class a simple piece of homework each night: Pay attention. The assignment is meant to prod them into thinking critically about the countless messages that bombard them every day. They report back to their teacher and classmates at the start of each class with “media literacy...

Scott Warren wants civics to be the most exciting class in school. That’s why his organization Generation Citizen helps schools adopt action civics, a school-based approach to civics education that empowers students to find a problem in their community and work together to solve it. Warren started Generation Citizen in 2009 when he was a...

Business, marketing, tourism and manufacturing make up more than half of U.S. jobs — but students in high school probably don’t know that. Only one-quarter of the career and technical education classes students take are focused on these industries, according to a new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C....

Heejae Lim, founder of TalkingPoints, an app that translates text messages from educators into a parent’s home language, likes to tell a story of a San Francisco middle school principal. The administrator wanted to connect with the parents of a Spanish-speaking student at risk of failing. He tried visiting the family at home twice, to no...

In just the last five months, L.A. Unified’s number of homeless students has climbed by more than a thousand. The district has identified 17,494 homeless students as of Tuesday — up from about 16,200 students reported in November and about 17,280 reported one month ago, according to data provided by school board member Kelly Gonez. The...