LA School Report

Despite the availability of new COVID-19 tests that are faster and more cost-effective, significant barriers to universal testing in schools remain. To date, the absence of quality COVID-19 tests has forced superintendents and principals to rely on a combination of masking, screening for symptoms, social distancing and good hygiene practices. Although testing has always been...

Since COVID-19 upended American life, story after story has highlighted students with disabilities falling behind and families bringing lawsuits to force schools to serve students with special needs. Schools struggle to consistently engage students with disabilities in distance learning, and attendance is often lower for these students than for any others. Virtual learning, by and large, is not working for students...

New Jersey this year missed out on prom, college tours, and the usual pomp and circumstance of graduation because of the pandemic. But thanks to a devoted local middle school teacher, these 12th-graders retained one rite of passage very unique to their suburban town: reading a letter from their sixth-grade selves that took them back...

President-elect Joe Biden might have won the White House, but his expansive education plan will soon hit a Congress that has far fewer Democrats than envisioned under the “Blue Wave” forecast prior to the election. Democrats’ hopes for flipping the Senate now largely depend on capturing two seats in Georgia that won’t be decided until...

Californians have long complained that the state doesn’t adequately fund education. But last week, they still opted not to amend a 40-year-old property tax formula that could have added roughly $4 billion a year to the state’s education budget. Proposition 15 divided the state in half, with official results released Wednesday showing it fell 51.8...

Under California’s Local Control Funding Formula, the San Diego Unified School District’s highest-needs schools generated $1,468 more per student in 2016-17 than the average amount generated across all district schools. Yet, according to our new study, once that money passed through the district, those same neediest schools wound up receiving $127 less per student than the...

This essay originally appeared on the FutureEd blog. As schools grapple with longstanding racial inequities brought into sharp focus by recent cases of police brutality and the coronavirus pandemic, one problem stands out: Black girls often face both racial and gender bias in the nation’s classrooms. An analysis of national U.S. Department of Education 2015-16 civil rights data...

Updated Nov. 9 Charter school supporters and teachers union backers each won a seat on Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board Tuesday after a campaign that again set records for spending. Incumbent Scott Schmerelson, who was endorsed by United Teachers Los Angeles, is expected to hold on to his seat representing District 3 despite...

Voters in Los Angeles passed Measure RR, a $7 billion bond to update and improve school infrastructure and technology, according to projections by the Los Angeles Times and others. The measure had about 71 percent voter support in “semiofficial” results posted Wednesday. The measure will raise property taxes on residents of Los Angeles Unified School...

Updated The effort to reinstate affirmative action in California officially failed Wednesday, with the no vote staying at 56 percent.  Ward Connerly, who led the effort to pass the original ban in 1996, tweeted that voters “said to the Legislature and all who want to impose ‘equity’ race politics on California, NO, NO, NO! We are...