By Steven Singer | Gadflyonthewallblog I was teaching my classes. I was grading assignments. I was procrastinating. I should have been working on my class rosters. My principals wanted me to calculate percentages for every student I had taught that year and submit them to the state. How long had each student been in my...

LAUSD school board, City Council race highlight today’s election Lacking a high profile race, such as a mayoral contest, the general municipal election is expected to draw less than 10 percent of registered voters. KPCC Polls open: L.A. voters to decide one council, three school races Three incumbents on the L.A. Board of Education are...

* UPDATED If Ref Rodriguez wins election tomorrow, he’s got no friend in Steve Zimmer. Rodriguez is the challenger in the race for LA Unified school board District 5 against Bennett Kayser, easily the most heated of the three board elections. A loss by Kayser could shift the ideological balance of the seven member board...

A new federal class action lawsuit accuses the Compton Unified School District of failing to adequately address the issue of childhood trauma in its schools, a violation of the federal rights of its students and staff. The lawsuit was filed by Public Counsel, a public advocacy law firm, and the private firm, Irell & Manella LLP. Mark...

Hello, out there. Yoooohoooo. Election tomorrow. Anyone paying attention? Six finalists are competing for three seats on the LA Unified school board, and the biggest question may be not so much as who they are or what do they stand for, but how many people care? Despite millions of dollars in outside spending and concerted...

By Jane Meredith Adams The Statewide Special Education Task Force, which toiled for more than a year before producing a 220-page report in March, was recognized in Gov. Jerry Brown’s May revised budget with $60.1 million in proposed funding for several of its recommendations, most prominently increasing access to early interventions for children with special...

There were precious few debates that featured a head-to-head matchup of the candidates facing off in Tuesday’s runoff election for LA Unified school board. But anyone still looking to make up their mind might want to check out the candidate questionnaire organized by #LAYouthVote, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles sponsored group that recently registered several thousand...

As the final weekend approaches before Tuesday’s runoff elections for three LA Unified board seats, Ref Rodriguez, the challenger in District 5, leads all candidates with the largest number of individual campaign contributions, 51, at the maximum amount allowable, $1,100. No surprise, then, that he leads all six candidates in money raised since the March...

LA Unified has only one of the nation’s top 100 public high schools, but quite a few of the top charter schools, according to U.S. News & World Report. Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies ranked as the 84th best public high school in the nation, and 14th best in the state on the publication’s annual...

By Andrew Ujifusa The largest state K-12 system in the nation is reformulating its accountability system. Where are things headed for California? A May 7 discussion at the state Board of Education may provide some key clues. The state’s in the process of moving away from its traditional accountability system, which has been in place since...