LA School Report

In just the last five months, L.A. Unified’s number of homeless students has climbed by more than a thousand. The district has identified 17,494 homeless students as of Tuesday — up from about 16,200 students reported in November and about 17,280 reported one month ago, according to data provided by school board member Kelly Gonez. The...

This is an excerpt from the new Richard Whitmire book The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America. See more excerpts, profiles, commentaries, videos and additional data behind the book at The74Million.org/Breakthrough. Standing outside a lecture hall on a hot August Tuesday here at the University of California, Los Angeles,...

*Updated April 9 L.A. Unified’s newest way to share information about how students and their schools are performing is coming up short for parents who find the online site “very frustrating and disappointing.” Last fall, the district launched its Open Data Portal, a school accountability site with data about academic performance, graduation and college-going rates,...

*Updated April 12 Less than half of L.A. Unified’s Class of 2019 are eligible for the state’s public universities, the latest district projections show. As of March, 49 percent of the district’s 34,734 prospective graduates are on track to pass all of their “A-G” college preparation courses with Cs or better. This means that less...

Once again, March Madness builds to a crescendo this weekend, with the “Final Four” basketball bouts set to dominate the Saturday spotlight. For many sports fans, this is an excellent time to debate what it takes to be a winner on the court — but for those of us focused on the country’s schools and...

A fresh look at the college success records at KIPP and other major charter networks serving low-income students shows alumni earning bachelor’s degrees at rates up to four times higher than the 11 percent rate expected for that student population. The ability of the high-performing networks to make good on the promise their founders made...

*Updated April 8 Maeve Sanford-Kelly was in middle school in 2016 when Bill Cosby, Brock Turner and the Access Hollywood tape associated with then-candidate Donald Trump dominated headlines. Distraught but motivated, she worked with her mom, Maryland state lawmaker Ariana Kelly, to write and pass legislation requiring students to learn about consent in middle and high school....

Sex education is getting more attention in the wake of the #MeToo movement, particularly the need to teach students about consent. What students learn about sex and sexuality during school varies widely from state to state and even from classroom to classroom. But this spring lawmakers in a handful of states are trying to pass...