While some schools may wrestle with the best way to handle Snapchat on campus, Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, Calif., has much bigger Snapchat-driven decisions: what to do with the millions it netted from an early investment in the massively popular disappearing-image app. The private Brothers of Holy Cross institution invested $15,000 in...

A statewide public school rating system is available today, but some find it difficult to understand. Rather than having a simple one-number score, the new California School Dashboard Report uses a series of colors to rate various aspects of each school. Some community groups say that makes it hard for parents to compare schools. Former school board member...

California’s new school accountability report, or Dashboard, was launched Wednesday morning by the state Board of Education, and it’s supposed to more accurately represent the success and progress of California public schools. But it’s in beta-test mode right now, according to the state officials launching the Dashboard. For now, it’s only available in English and Spanish, with...

Giving her final fiscal report at LA Unified, Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly offered some good news about the budget for the nation’s second-largest school district. The district will be in the black at the end of this school year and next year, she reported to the school board Tuesday, and while a deficit is...

The second-largest school district in the country is looking at its unused real estate, closed schools and empty spaces as a potential way to offset an upcoming budget deficit. It seems like an easy solution, but LA Unified officials caution it’s not that simple. “If you are going to look at these assets to sell...

Marshall Tuck, who unsuccessfully ran against State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson in 2014, announced Monday he is running for the seat again. Tuck, who lives in Los Angeles, previously led Green Dot Public Schools, a network of independent charter schools, and Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a turnaround organization that oversees district schools....

To keep teachers from being poached across state lines and offset a serious teacher shortage, California lawmakers are looking at a first-ever proposal to exempt educators from state taxes for the next decade. While some states have no income tax, the bill would make California the only state in the nation to allow teachers who...

The Senate voted Wednesday to block Obama administration accountability rules governing how states rate and improve schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The move, which precludes the U.S. Education Department and newly confirmed Secretary Betsy DeVos from issuing any substantially similar regulations, will send even more power back to the states, already retaking the...

* UPDATE Alexandra Mangia joined about three dozen other parents from Los Angeles to ride a bus overnight to speak in Sacramento about the state’s new way to rate schools. In her one-minute speech Wednesday before the state Board of Education, she talked about how shocked she was to discover how low the test scores...

Americans woke Wednesday to morning news broadcasts reporting school closures across the country, prompted by female teachers who took the day off to celebrate International Women’s Day. But many more educators made it to class, using the occasion to teach valuable lessons to their students. The classroom conversations coalesced around celebrating International Women’s Day, as...