LA School Report

This story originally appeared in The Chronicle of Social Change In the eastern suburbs of Sacramento County, Kamika Hebbert keeps a watchful eye for signs of how an unstable environment affects young minds. There’s the restlessness that comes with worry about biological parents and siblings. The thousand-mile stare that comes with trauma. The mouthing off...

As a New York Times reporter, Holly Carter was struck by the rapid disappearance of foreign news bureaus in America. Carter worried that the loss of those agencies would lead to a drastic shortfall of informed citizens, which she said could be “dangerous” for a functioning democracy. As a mother, Carter was growing frustrated by...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report The representative bodies of United Teachers Los Angeles have voted to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. UTLA is the first teachers union to endorse a 2020 presidential candidate, which is more of an issue than whether...

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. Michelle Torres never planned to become a teacher but her own struggles as a college student made her realize that through...

A child’s educational foundation begins at home — no matter what that house may look like. Socioeconomic class and racial identity do not determine how committed parents are to their child’s success, because families and dedicated school leaders come in all colors and tax brackets. But let’s be real: Being white and wealthy does open...

As the country’s largest four-year public university considers adding a fourth-year math/quantitative reasoning requirement to its admissions standards, new data obtained by The 74 shows less than a quarter of L.A. Unified seniors last year took such a class. About 23.5 percent of seniors — or 8,472 of 36,124 — were enrolled in a fourth-year...

In a Nov. 4 commentary on LA School Report, Jeimee Estrada, the executive director of Educators for Excellence, presents a rational and compelling set of reasons why growth data should be the basis for measuring schools and students. Especially important is her focus on how the use of growth data better serves students on the...

“Why can’t we just teach kids to add numbers anymore? It seems like 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4 these days.” As an educator, I have encountered this conversation in parent-teacher conferences, with my chiropractor, and numerous times at parties and on airplanes, to name just a few occasions. People want to know why students...

After years of growth, the future of California’s charter sector is in doubt. With the passage of Assembly Bill 1505, which places numerous restrictions on the expansion and operation of charter schools in the Golden State, opponents of charters have claimed their biggest prize since the 2016 election when President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, replaced...

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. Teaching low-income Latino students in East Los Angeles didn’t happen by chance for Mercedes Jimenez, a third-grade teacher at KIPP Iluminar...