After reviewing preliminary results of the Smarter Balanced Assessments, LA Unified officials say the test scores are lower than what parents typically see but want them to know “it does not mean our kids are getting dumber.” Cynthia Lim, Executive Director of the Office of Data and Accountability, told the LA School Report today that parents should...

This is an oops moment. In recent stories about LA Unified’s search for a new superintendent to replace the soon-to-be-departing Ramon Cortines, we reported that no female has led the school district, drawing attention to the possibility that board President Steve Zimmer and his colleagues might want to make a little history in their next hire. That conclusion arose...

Major news outlets in the Los Angeles area did a “Los Angeles Unified heads back to school” story this week. But there was no unanimity among them on the number of students the district serves. Three local television stations — NBC, ABC and CBS — all pegged the number at roughly 550,000, likely ignoring students enrolled...

The California Assembly Appropriations Committee yesterday approved a bill that eliminates a graduation requirement that has prevented as many as 5,000 high school seniors from graduating through no fault of their own. SB 725 will eliminate the requirement that class of 2015 seniors pass the California High School Exit Exam, known as the CAHSEE. The...

By Corey Turner The defendants may be one southern California school district and its top officials, but an unprecedented, class action lawsuit could have a big impact on schools across the country. Today in Los Angeles, a U.S. District Court judge will preside over the first hearing in the suit against the Compton Unified School...

Angry parents protest after LAUSD send unvaccinated kids home As many as 100 students were removed from their classrooms and told to call their parents, according to protesters. ABC7 Getting to the ‘why’ of discipline disparities What happened at a rural high school was, according to a new guide to school discipline, the starting point...

On the first day of school yesterday as he visited a school in his district, LA Unified board president Steve Zimmer encountered an unexpected issue: Parents at Vine Street Elementary in Hollywood were complaining about the tents, mobile homes and the homeless people living on the street behind the school. “I know, I saw that while coming into...

The first day of school went off yesterday without a hitch for LA Unified’s MiSiS system, a huge improvement over last year’s rocky start that caused so much disruption across the district. The My Integrated Student Information System allowed 23,110 users to log into the system and handled the schedules of 439,756 students, according to...

State politicians and educators are scrambling to cope with the fallout after the abrupt cancelation of an exam by the California Department of Education left over 5,000 high school students across the state — 492 of them in LA Unified –unable to graduate, despite having completed all other necessary course work. The California High School...

By Eric Westervelt Ah, back-to-school season in America: That means it’s time for the annoyingly aggressive marketing of clothes, and for the annual warnings of a national teacher shortage. But this year the cyclical problem is more real and less of a media creation. There are serious shortages of teachers in California, Oklahoma, Kentucky and places in between....