*UPDATED A California Administrative Law judge has issued a number of rulings in the year-plus legal battle between Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and the LA teachers union, UTLA. Friday’s rulings on several complaints that were brought to the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) were mixed, with some in favor of the independent charter school operator and some...

“If he was in the average school he was in before, he’d be on the street,” testified the father of a 16-year old-boy. “This is what these online schools provide — the comfort to know their kids are not going to become hoodlums, or do drugs. … He has a future, a future I didn’t...

Remember when teacher evaluations were the subject of controversy in LA Unified? Not anymore Only a few years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s system for evaluating teachers’ job performance was the subject of legal disputes, full-blown lawsuits and bitter fractious debate between district leaders and the teachers union. Not anymore. By Kyle Stokes,...

While community leaders and independent charter schools are calling for an end to random student searches and metal detector wanding at LA Unified, LA School Report has learned that a routine random search at a high school in the district recently yielded a loaded gun. A source close to the search said that the student...

A rift in the Democratic Party over education policy comes into sharp relief one day before California’s primary election as a record $28 million has been spent by outside groups on state races, one-third coming from groups supporting charter schools. On one side, traditional Democratic players, including the California Teachers Association, are aligning themselves with candidates who have committed...

I’m still trying to make sense of the buckshot attack on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation published by the Los Angeles Times editorial board last week. The Times shoehorned a remarkably honest letter from the foundation about the challenges of education philanthropy into a smear of Gates’ work. But it’s clear the editorial board didn’t...

El Camino High principal moonlighted as NBA scout, billed travel to school David Fehte, principal and executive director of El Camino Real Charter High School, charged his school-issued American Express card for flights, food and hotel stays that align with college basketball games associated with a second job he had as an NBA scout. By...

I have all sorts of principles for guiding my thinking about education. But my grand, unifying theory, the thing that determines how all the other stuff hangs together, basically rests on two claims: 1) there are enormous systemic inequities built into American public education, and 2) the decentralization of U.S. political institutions makes rapid policy-driven...

Cost of suspensions is high for students who drop out after discipline, report finds Putting a cold financial price tag on the impact of school discipline practices, researchers have calculated that a 10th-grade California student who drops out because of suspension could end up costing the public $755,000 in lost tax revenue and increased health...

This is part of an LA School Report series taking an in-depth look at the different categories of schools that exist within the massive LA Unified school district. (Read more on affiliated charters: A successful model on its way out? and The elementary school-turned-affiliated charter that became so popular parents fake their addresses) (Read the series on magnet...