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How Los Angeles Unified Slumped On The Latest Federal Tests

The nation’s second largest school district isn’t exactly coming roaring back from the pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly called the nation’s report card. But the Los Angeles Unified School District also isn’t lagging behind either, according to the federal measure of math and reading skills, which, among other things, is...
By Ben Chapman | February 20, 2025
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How Artificial Intelligence Could Change Schools & Change How We Test Students

Among other distinctions, Kristen DiCerbo can lay claim to being one of the first people on the planet to come face-to-face with the educational potential of generative artificial intelligence. In the fall of 2022, months before the public got a glimpse of ChatGPT, DiCerbo, a learning scientist and chief learning officer at Khan Academy, got...
By Greg Toppo | February 19, 2025
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How A South Central L.A. Elementary School Built A Culture of ‘Family’

It is a sunny Friday afternoon in South Central LA, music blasting through the speakers at Figueroa Street Elementary School as nine-year-old Alan runs around the playground with friends, a smile across his face. “Everyone is very nice to me, and I feel like I belong here,” said Alan, a third grader. “I feel like...
By Katie VanArnam | February 13, 2025
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Kept in the Dark: Inside a Trio of Los Angeles School Cyberattacks

Kept in the Dark is an in-depth investigation into more than 300 K-12 school cyberattacks over the last five years, revealing the forces that leave students, families and district staff unaware that their sensitive data was exposed. Use the search feature below to learn how cybercrimes — and subsequent data breaches — have played out...
By Mark Keierleber | February 11, 2025
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After the Fires, LA Teachers Are Experiencing ‘Secondary Trauma,’ According to One Expert

After a natural disaster like the Los Angeles wildfires, teachers are often a first line of support for children processing trauma — but teachers can also experience what expert Stephen Hydon calls secondary traumatic stress. In this interview, Hydon, who serves as the director of the School and Educational Settings specialization program at USC’s Dworak-Peck...
By Daniella Lake | February 6, 2025
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Demand for Immigration Legal Services Spikes At California Colleges

This story was originally published on CalMatters. As President Donald Trump begins his second term with a declaration of a national emergency at the southern border and a steadfast pledge of mass deportations, California’s colleges and universities have been holding workshops and partnering with legal service nonprofits to help undocumented students on their campuses stay...
By Delilah Brumer & Mercy Sosa, CalMatters | February 5, 2025
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USC Professor Warns of LA Fires’ Trauma Impact for Children

Firefighters have now contained deadly wildfires that just after the new year devastated whole swaths of Los Angeles. Schools are reopening and, for some families, life is returning to normal. But the historic blazes, which in January prompted the emergency closure of the nation’s second-largest district and burned some schools completely, made a lasting impression...
By Ben Chapman | February 4, 2025
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Will New Bond Funds Be Enough to Rebuild LA Schools?

This story was originally published on CalMatters. It’ll be a while before Los Angeles can fully assess the damage to its schools from this recent spate of fires, but a few things already seem certain: rebuilding will take a long time, it will be expensive, and it may sap the statewide fund for school repairs. At least a...
By Carolyn Jones, CalMatters | February 3, 2025
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Online Censorship in Schools Is ‘More Pervasive’ than Expected, New Data Shows

This story was originally published on CalMatters. Aleeza Siddique, 15, was in a Spanish class earlier this year in her Northern California high school when a lesson about newscasts got derailed by her school’s internet filter. Her teacher told the class to open up their school-issued Chromebooks and explore a list of links he had curated from the...
By Tara García Mathewson, CalMatters | January 30, 2025
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New NAEP Scores Dash Hope of Post-COVID Learning Recovery

Hopes for a post-COVID academic recovery were dashed Wednesday morning with the publication of new federal testing data for elementary and middle schoolers. Newly released scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, show that both fourth and eighth graders have lost ground in reading — not...
By Kevin Mahnken | January 29, 2025