LA School Report

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...

An obvious educational rule of thumb is that in order for students to learn at school, they first have to show up. But with millions of children counted “chronically absent” each year, a new report argues that educators can improve attendance by first making their schools more welcoming places to attend. The report, released Tuesday...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report There isn’t much to occupy California’s teachers unions politically for the rest of 2019, but that only allows them to accumulate more funds for what promises to be a very busy 2020 on the campaign trail. Choosing a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President,...

Updated and corrected, Sept. 20 As California this month expanded a statewide ban on suspending younger students for defiant behavior, lessons on how this increasingly sweeping school discipline reform may play out can be found in Los Angeles, which barred such suspensions on an even broader scale six years ago. Previously in California, “willful defiance”...

Competency-based education has seen its fair share of champions over the past decade, offering the promise of a new architecture of learning. As the competency bandwagon continues to get more crowded, however, there is a critical — and too often ignored — through line between competencies and connections. My recent book, Who You Know, focused...

While kids were running through sprinklers and eating popsicles this summer, a handful of education researchers crunched the numbers about their principals. Reports released this summer offer new insight into America’s school principals, from their racial diversity to how turnover affects student achievement. The new papers add to a growing body of research about principals...

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. Guillermo Lopez has one expectation for all his students, including the ones with the most challenges to learn, and that is...

It was a busy, if often frustrating, summer for the Trump administration’s many efforts to destabilize U.S. immigration policies. Federal judges ruled in August that, under a longstanding legal agreement, the administration was required to provide detained children at the border with “edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste.” So the administration announced that it...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report You have to give California’s public employee unions credit for their dogged determination to undo Proposition 13, the state’s landmark property tax limitation initiative approved by voters in 1978. Forty years of failed attempts and tens of millions of dues dollars spent without even managing...

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. *Updated With the purpose of promoting an inclusive school culture, where all students feel safe, Maria Duarte is leading a study...