Thousands of teachers across the country have walked out of classrooms this year to demand better wages and more school resources. And Los Angeles could very well be next. But a new nationwide poll shows that support for teachers doesn’t necessarily translate to their unions. The poll, conducted by USA Today and Ipsos Public Affairs,...

Los Angeles Unified is increasing supports for students and their families as new data reveal more about LGBTQ students’ emotional harm in school. According to data presented at last week’s school board meeting, 56 percent of LGBTQ high schoolers in the district have been bullied at school, and 60 percent have seriously considered suicide. The...

As the new academic year gets rolling for California public schools, instructional materials are available for the first time that ensure every K-12 classroom has access to accurate and unbiased depictions of the sexual orientation and gender identity of historical figures. The state’s FAIR Education Act — FAIR stands for Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful —...

LA Unified board members were jolted last month when a top county official showed up unannounced to say, You’re spending more money than you make and the savings you’ve been living off of are about to run out. It got worse this Tuesday, when she came back and brought a top state official with the...

What will we do with our kids if the teachers go out on strike? To find answers to that question, about two dozen public school parents gathered Monday morning at a prominent Latino community organization in downtown Los Angeles. They had invited a teachers union representative to their monthly meeting so they could learn more...

LA Unified’s seven school board members — or six for now — make vital decisions impacting more than 570,000 students. Parents, community members, and the general public want their concerns to be heard, but what’s the best way to connect with the board members? Besides email and phone, there are board meetings most Tuesdays with...

Two of the oldest questions in Western education, going back to the ancient Greek philosophers, are: What is true? And how do you know? Thousands of years later, as superstition and pseudoscience have been replaced by conspiracy theory and ideological dogma, finding answers to those questions is as thorny as ever. The modern heirs to...

If you don’t count high school student body president, Aimy Steele has never held political office. But as a teacher and school administrator, she’s run classrooms and schools, and now she’s running to represent her district in North Carolina’s state house of representatives. Steele and thousands of teachers around the country got a taste of...

Los Angeles Unified has a multimillion-dollar problem: kids aren’t coming to school. And it’s particularly bad among their youngest students. New district data show that 1 in 4 kindergartners misses 15 or more days of school each year. “I couldn’t believe that when I heard that,” Diane Pappas, the superintendent’s senior adviser, told board members...

Following strikes this spring in which teachers in six states demanded higher salaries, a new poll finds a sharp uptick in Americans’ support for increasing educators’ pay. The national poll, last week by the journal Education Next, which has been surveying Americans on high-profile education issues for more than a decade, also found growing support for...