With the end of the school year nearing, students are celebrating as they move up to the next grade level. But not all parents are sure their kids are ready. Fewer than 4 in 10 LA Unified students are reading at grade level, even fewer are at grade level in math. But parents can’t hold...

They were educators, not baristas, and copies of How Bear Lost His Tail lined the wall rather than promotions for the Ultra Caramel Frappuccino. But on a recent Friday afternoon, the staff of Coney Island Prep Elementary School in Brooklyn engaged in the same activity nearly 175,000 Starbucks employees will participate in today: racial bias...

*Updated May 29 A week from today is California’s primary, and four candidates are running for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. LA School Report interviewed all four on what makes for a high-quality school, how to engage parents, how to help the lowest-performing schools, why they’re running, and more. Here are edited highlights from each...

Steven Ireland is one of four candidates running for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. Ireland, 59, was the last to enter the race. He is nonpartisan, has never run for office before, and is running as “the parent candidate.” The only position he has held in education was PTA president at Toluca Lake Elementary School,...

Lily E. Ploski is one of four candidates running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. She is running as an independent. Ploski, 44, was raised in public schools in Orange County and Riverside County and attended community college at Diablo Valley College in the Bay Area, where she found her life’s passion to work in...

*Updated May 29 Tony Thurmond is one of four candidates running for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. Thurmond, 49 and a Democrat, is in his second term representing Richmond in the state Assembly. He was born at Ford Ord in Monterey. After his mother, a Panamanian immigrant, died when he was 6 years old, he...

*Updated May 21 Marshall Tuck is one of four candidates running for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. He spent two years as educator-in-residence at the New Teacher Center, from 2015 to 2017. The Santa Cruz-based nonprofit seeks to improve student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers, experienced teachers, and school leaders. Previously, he led...

*Updated June 21 If Tuesday night’s California gubernatorial candidate forum had been a debate, the hands-down winner would have been a slender 11-year-old in a mint-green dress shirt. “It really bothers me to see homeless people on the streets or kids begging,” Eric Dory, a fifth-grader from South Los Angeles who attends Open Magnet Charter...

Even before he stepped onto the stage at Tuesday evening’s forum for gubernatorial candidates on children’s issues, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa let it be known that schools would be at the forefront of his statewide agenda. “I will be California’s education governor,” he told LA School Report backstage on the campus of Los...

Three California gubernatorial candidates — Antonio Villaraigosa, John Chiang, and Delaine Eastin — joined a Tuesday evening forum to discuss critical issues facing the state’s 9.1 million children — particularly education — at a nonpartisan community event hosted by three Los Angeles-based nonprofit organizations in partnership with LA School Report, which is powered by The...