As LAUSD high school English teacher Jason Torres-Rangel finishes his second year at Theodore Roosevelt High School he looks back on a time filled with accomplishments.   In October, he was named one of five 2023 California Teachers of the Year, and nominated as California’s representative for the National Teacher of the Year competition.  Torres-Rangel, who...

During a heated Senate confirmation hearing in July 2021, civil rights attorney Catherine Lhamon made clear her goal to confront longstanding, dramatic racial disparities in school discipline at a moment when racial inequities — in policing, education and society more broadly — were at the center of the national discourse. She’d done it before, to fanfare...

Every day, adults are tasked with supporting young people showing behavioral changes or experiencing a mental health crisis. The problem? Many are unprepared to do so. It’s a challenge Deborah Offner came up against so often, as a consulting psychologist for schools in and around Boston, she decided to write a guide. Urgency is only...

Since being named a 2023 California Teacher of the Year, Bridgette Donald-Blue said kindergarteners she has never taught have eagerly approached her in the hallways at Coliseum Street Elementary School. They will say, “Hey Ms. Blue, you’re a teacher leader, I have you as a screensaver on my iPad, we watched your video at home,”...

It was the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that brought Shannon Watts to action. From her Indiana home, the former communications executive and stay-at-home mother of five created a Facebook group for women who supported heightened gun laws. What began as a modest community on the social media platform quickly grew into the political...

For years, LA Unified has struggled to increase its college enrollment rate for high school graduates, which has hovered around 60%. Now, three organizations are working with students in LAUSD high schools to increase the district’s college enrollment, with strategies such as helping students write college essays, hear from professionals, and be mentored through high...

In the fall of 2011, having hurriedly finished The Bee Eater, a book about Michelle Rhee’s tumultuous turn at the helm of D.C. Public Schools (hurriedly because Rhee got the ax when her protector-mayor got voted out of office) I was looking for a really, really fresh approach to public education, especially schools that serve poor...

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says attendance at district schools has improved this school year – but one local board district has had a dramatically higher rate of chronically absent students.    In the 2021-2022 school year, 55.4% of students in Board District 2 (BD2) were chronically absent, according to the LAUSD Open Data portal. It was...

They might not want to hear it, but it’s true: Students assigned to teachers with tougher grading policies are better off in the long run, research suggests. According to a paper released last fall through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, eighth- and ninth-graders who learned from math teachers with relatively higher performance standards earned better...

The pandemic accelerated a yearslong decline in the mental health of the nation’s children and teens. The number of young people experiencing sadness, hopelessness and thoughts of suicide has increased dramatically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response, states, cities and school districts are using COVID-19 relief dollars and their own money to...