LA School Report

Quick — without looking it up on Google, can you define “edge-aversion”? Here’s a hint: It’s a decision-theory term describing what’s also known as middle bias. That is, a test-taker’s tendency to pick anything but the top or bottom option on a multiple-choice question. To a psychometrician, it’s a tell that the answer was a...

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success. Rosalie Reyes has always been proud of her Latin origin. Her parents are from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report As difficult as it may be to believe nowadays, when teacher unions deem charter schools their mortal enemies, there was a brief period of time when they took a different approach. Affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers once created their...

Walk into almost any classroom in America, and you’ll find at least some students who’ve fallen behind the academic standards for their grade — meaning they’re at risk of not learning everything they’ll need to be ready for college and the lives they want to lead. Helping these students get back on the path to...

What happens to traditional school districts when charter schools come to town? Do they offer families new, high-quality educational options and help spread better teaching techniques? Or do they represent unwanted competition, swiping students and funding from districts until academic performance begins to suffer? It’s a debate that divides much of the education community and...

In 2013, attorneys at the California Innocence Project, weighed down by a backlog of casework, turned for help to an unusual group: humanities students at High Tech High Chula Vista, a nearby charter school. The students, all juniors, trained on a past case handled by the San Diego nonprofit, which reviews pleas from prisoners who...

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success. Diego López has been part of the Los Angeles Unified School District since he began his education in a Head Start...

A majority of Americans hold a positive view of K-12 public school principals, who are typically seen as caring and trustworthy. How about tech executives, journalists and members of Congress? Not so much. A Pew Research Center survey released Thursday found that Americans hold mixed views about the job performance of people in positions of power,...

For many families, searching for a high-quality early education program can be a challenge. Aside from very real issues of cost and convenience, parents must consider a wide range of factors that will impact their children’s learning and development. And there is a catch — many of the key factors are not ones that families...

In early 2011, when Maryland and other states were adopting the Common Core State Standards, teachers in the Baltimore City Public Schools were starting to grumble. “The materials in a lot of districts fell woefully short of the new standards,” said Sonja Santelises, now Baltimore’s superintendent. “[I was] hearing classroom teachers rightly point out that...