LA School Report

A week before classes at Los Angeles Unified began earlier this month, attendance workers tasked with fighting chronic absenteeism fanned out across the city, visiting the homes of children to make sure they’d show up for the first day of instruction.  Knocking on the doors where kids had repeatedly missed school, the workers told parents...

Heading into a divisive national election, a new poll shows that when it comes to education, at least, Americans overwhelmingly agree that the next president should focus on two things: preparing students for careers and attracting top teachers who will stay in the profession. “There are clear priorities that overwhelming numbers of Americans on both...

In an era when partisan echo chambers have produced polarized public discourse and a politically aligned unwillingness to entertain inconvenient facts, clear investigative journalism is among the highest forms of public service. It’s also increasingly rare, with many media outlets struggling to find their footing in an era of financial, political and technological instability. More...

Depression and suicidal activity have decreased slightly for teens since 2021, but simultaneously there have been alarming increases in violence, bullying and school avoidance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, two in ten teens were bullied at school and one in ten did not attend due to safety concerns, 4%...

Correction appended Aug. 19 Tampon Tim? Try Teflon Tim. In the days since Vice President Kamala Harris tapped him as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — a popular former rural high school social studies teacher/football coach-turned-politician — has emerged, on education matters, as a master needle-threader. To wit: In 2023, with Democrats in...

Are U.S. public schools lagging behind other countries like Singapore and South Korea in preparing teachers and students for the boom of generative artificial intelligence? Or are our educators bumbling into AI half-blind, putting students’ learning at risk? Or is it, perhaps, both? Two new reports, coincidentally released on the same day last week, offer...

At lunch last school year, sixth graders at Bayside Middle School in Virginia Beach could be heard shouting “Uno” and tapping out sound patterns on a Simon game console. Getting students hooked on classic games is one way Principal Sham Bevel has tried to soothe their separation anxiety after the district banned cellphones two years...

A new online math program is flipping traditional math instruction on its head, doing away with instructions and celebrating mistakes. Teachers say Struggly, available for at-home or classroom use, is a game changer for K-8 students discouraged by math or having a hard time with traditional tasks because of language barriers or learning disabilities. In...

When 826LA development manager Alma Carillo finished a recent tutoring session with an LA Unified student, she was met with an unexpected surprise. “I remember after we bound his book and handed it to him, he stared at it, and then he looked up at me, and then he stared back and was like, ‘I...

This summer, everyone from homeschoolers to large urban districts like Los Angeles Unified is trying to process what artificial intelligence will mean for the coming school year. Educators find themselves at a crossroads — AI’s promise for revolutionizing education is tantalizing, yet fraught with challenges. Amid the excitement and the angst, and the desire to...