*Updated May 2 Austin Beutner is ready to make hard choices to bring about change. “It starts with culture. LA Unified has to become an institution that looks at each issue with the mindset ‘We can do this’ and is willing to change to achieve that objective,” the new superintendent said Wednesday at his introductory...

The elected leaders of Los Angeles’s public schools sent a strong signal Tuesday that LA needs bold leadership, choosing Los Angeles businessman Austin Beutner as superintendent of schools. Beutner is both an insider and an outsider. He has deep ties in Los Angeles and a demonstrated commitment to civic service. The former investment banker served...

The principals of 227 struggling Los Angeles schools may be about to get a coveted freedom: the ability to hire the teachers they believe will best educate their students. As common-sense as that sounds, it’s not currently the case at the LA Unified School District, nor at most school districts nationwide. Today, all LA Unified...

Military-connected students — about 1.3 million of them in the United States — face a host of problems their civilian peers don’t. They move six to nine times in the course of their K-12 careers, forcing them to deal with everything from different GPA calculations and course offerings to missed opportunities to try out for...

Although America’s children spend most of their days in classrooms, many of their parents find our school systems surprisingly intimidating. Between issues of curriculum and assessments, of equity and choice, of discipline and technology, and of career training and soft skills, the conversations about designing, monitoring, and perfecting classroom learning can quickly become so complex...

On May 15, California gubernatorial candidates including Antonio Villaraigosa, John Chiang, and Delaine Eastin will discuss the most critical issues facing the state’s 9.1 million children at a forum hosted by three Los Angeles-based nonprofit organizations in partnership with LA School Report, which is powered by The 74. The Chronicle of Social Change, the Children’s Defense Fund-California, and The Children’s...

How important is K-12 public education to California voters as they choose a new governor this year? Very. And that sentiment is growing. Nearly two-thirds — 64 percent — of likely voters in a new survey called education “very important,” an increase from 58 percent four years ago when the same question was asked. A full...

If “A Nation at Risk,” the landmark report that launched the modern education reform movement 35 years ago, came out today, it would get a far different — and more polarized — reception, education leaders said Thursday. “Each [political party] would take different lessons or have different prescriptions, when in fact, what we need is...

The Reagan Institute’s Summit on Education, which opened Thursday in Washington, D.C., commemorates the 35th anniversary of the release of “A Nation at Risk.” The 74 is publishing a special series of articles, essays, and retrospectives about the release and the aftermath of the famous education report. See the full series here.  This 10-minute video tells the...

*Updated April 12 Driven by mounting urgency to improve struggling schools and widespread dissatisfaction with California’s school evaluation tool, LA Unified board members voted Tuesday to create an assessment framework that will allow parents to more easily compare schools as well as select the measures by which to evaluate them. The key difference from the California...