Under pressure from the federal government, California is expanding a field test of computer-based assessments to test students in both math and English language arts, rather than just one subject area. A law recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, AB 484, (see story here) requires testing in only one subject. The change, announced yesterday by...

The LA Unified board’s recent 5-1 vote on Superintendent John Deasy’s performance evaluation, released by the district on Tuesday after requests from several media outlets, cast a curious light on board member sentiments during a period of enormous challenge and contentiousness. Two of the five votes were entirely expected: Monica Garcia and Tamar Galatzan are...

*Update: The district just postponed the event due to weather concerns. A new date has not been set. Nearly 400 special needs students at two dozen San Fernando Valley schools will finish up six weeks of athletic training tomorrow by competing in a day of soccer games hosted by LA Unified and the Special Olympics....

For the second year in a row, LA Unified is losing fewer teachers, and district projections indicate that the trend will continue through the current school year. Vivian Ekchian, the district’s Chief Human Resources Officer, told a committee meeting yesterday that the trend is largely due to more diligent work at the front end of...

A new survey shows how states are implementing data systems for evaluating students’ progress, but California, which has most public school students of any state, declined to participate this year. Patricia de Cos, Deputy Executive Director of the California State Board of Education, told LA School Report that her office was simply unable to fill out the requisite forms before...

Via Huffington Post | By Charles Kerchner Four years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District embarked on a bold, perhaps reckless, program called Public School Choice to allow charter school operators and other community groups to compete for running many of its schools. Thursday, a team of researchers from the University of Southern California,...

Via The Los Angeles Times | By Howard Blume L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy received a positive job evaluation last month from the Board of Education by a vote of 5-1 with one member abstaining, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced Tuesday. The district had previously refused to disclose the vote, but yielded this...

The LA Unified School Board meeting today was set to be carried live by LA School Report – at least the public part proceedings. But the live stream feed, scheduled to begin at 10:00 am when the regular board meeting convened, was not made available by the school board. The board has now retired behind...