Leaders from major parent groups brought school board members their recommendations for improving parent involvement in LA Unified. Topping their list is a centralized Parent Advocate office and website for their concerns, they told board members of the Early Childhood Education and Parent Engagement Committee on Tuesday. Other  recommendations include involving parents in every principal search committee and providing resources and training. One...

Massive loss of preschool seats looms for LA County A new report estimates that the economic toll on Los Angeles County from the loss of funding for thousands of preschool seats later this year will be almost $600 million annually. By Deepa Fernandes, KPCC Outdoor programs play supporting role for state’s new science standards, EdSource...

To help understand the California Office to Reform Education’s (CORE) new school accountability system, LA School Report recently logged and listed all 714 LA Unified schools by their score top to bottom. We also calculated the average of all the schools and discovered the mean score was 60. Below are breakdowns of LA Unified’s elementary schools with the...

The recent utility increases approved by the city will sock LA Unified with $24.2 million more in costs, but the school district is already working on ways to save money. Solar panels, water recycling, light bulb replacements and other programs will help off-set some of the extra costs of water and power, said District Chief Facilities...

On Thursday, a three-judge Court of Appeal overturned a trial court’s decision in the case of Vergara v. California, upholding the state’s existing education laws in a ruling of significance for millions of public school students in the state and across the country. (Read more about the sharply divided reactions after the ruling). The real implications of Thursday’s decision, however,...

California Virtual Academies: Is online charter school network cashing in on failure? A growing network of online academies, operated by a Virginia company traded on Wall Street called K12 Inc., is failing key tests used to measure educational success. By Jessica Calefati, San Jose Mercury News 5 reasons Granada Hills Charter is vying for its...

When LA Unified and five other school districts unveiled a new school accountability system in February, it represented California’s first significant move toward incorporating more than just test scores while also valuing how well the neediest students are performing. The School Quality Improvement Index, which was developed by the California Office to Reform Education (CORE), is...

An Airbnb for school choice! The Tesla of curriculum! A Fitbit that tracks student learning! We’ll find out if these are real pitches at the 2016 ASU GSV Summit in San Diego this week — probably not — where an impressive gathering of entrepreneurs, policy leaders, superintendents and investors will convene to discuss ideas aimed...

It was bound to happen sooner or later. In implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act, the nation’s new education law, the odds were high that the U.S. Department of Education would issue a regulation meant to protect the rights of poor children (for instance), that congressional Republicans would interpret as the department’s effort to chew...

Retiree benefits become a flashpoint between charters, traditional schools Financial challenges are all-but-universal in the education world, and retiree benefits are particularly costly. The latest battle is over who should pay for an employee’s health benefits after retirement. LA Unified’s unfunded liability for employee benefits has escalated to $13.6 billion. By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times...