Finally, a disturbing trend in education shows signs of reversal Despite increasing income inequality and the recession, the school readiness gap has narrorwed, a Stanford professor of poverty and inequality in education has found. From 1998 to 2010, the gap had narrowed — with both poor and wealthy children better prepared for kindergarten and poor students improving their readiness at a faster rate. “It’s not a...

LA Unified is wasting no time in getting students with poor or failing marks into its online credit recovery program at the start of the new school year. A district communications representative confirmed that credit recovery began right away for any student who earned a D or F in a course now being offered through the...

If El Camino Real Charter High School is stripped of its independent charter status, its teachers would lose their higher salaries and seniority and would have to start all over as new LA Unified employees, teachers have been told by union representatives. About 30 of the more than 150 teachers from the west San Fernando Valley high school attended...

  LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King signed off on new health benefits for teachers assistants and playground aides even though the agreement stated that it will help push district reserves into the red by half a billion dollars within two years. And the question in the document asking how the district would replenish those reserves was left blank....

Why was it the ACLU, not charter school overseers, who called out ‘illegal’ behaviors?  Dozens of charter schools have made changes to their websites, enrollment forms or recruiting materials in the month since the ACLU of Southern California alleged that one out of every five charters in California had a discriminatory admissions policy. The report initially identified...

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced Tuesday that it has donated $1 million to the city’s public libraries to fund technology purchases for the libraries’ after-school homework centers used by thousands of the city’s children and teens. The free after-school homework centers are located at 34 library branches throughout the city. The centers give students...

For the second year in a row, LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed the district’s traditional schools on California’s standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests, according to data released Monday by the California Charter Schools Association. The district’s magnets topped both.  The district’s independent charters saw 46 percent of its students meet or...

By Barbara Jones Los Angeles Unified’s popular magnet centers and schools outscored independent charters by double-digit margins on California’s new state assessments, and also beat statewide averages on the rigorous math and English tests, according to data released today. In the analysis of the Smarter Balanced Assessments, 61 percent of magnet students met or exceeded...

By Jane Mayer and Jesse Soza, Ed.D. Two previous articles in this series, here and here, have detailed the enormity and the complexity of the teacher turnover problem in our country: more than 1 million teachers entering and exiting the classroom every year, and somewhere between 40 percent to 50 percent permanently exiting within five. This lack...

California bill to extend school choice law faces allegations of inequity The “district of choice” law currently allows about 10,000 students across the state to enroll in 47 participating school districts without seeking the permission of their home districts, which are often loath to let them — and the funding attached to them — go....