LA School Report

How important is K-12 public education to California voters as they choose a new governor this year? Very. And that sentiment is growing. Nearly two-thirds — 64 percent — of likely voters in a new survey called education “very important,” an increase from 58 percent four years ago when the same question was asked. A full...

If “A Nation at Risk,” the landmark report that launched the modern education reform movement 35 years ago, came out today, it would get a far different — and more polarized — reception, education leaders said Thursday. “Each [political party] would take different lessons or have different prescriptions, when in fact, what we need is...

The Reagan Institute’s Summit on Education, which opened Thursday in Washington, D.C., commemorates the 35th anniversary of the release of “A Nation at Risk.” The 74 is publishing a special series of articles, essays, and retrospectives about the release and the aftermath of the famous education report. See the full series here.  This 10-minute video tells the...

*Updated April 12 Driven by mounting urgency to improve struggling schools and widespread dissatisfaction with California’s school evaluation tool, LA Unified board members voted Tuesday to create an assessment framework that will allow parents to more easily compare schools as well as select the measures by which to evaluate them. The key difference from the California...

Every week, we sit down with Los Angeles parents to talk about their students, their schools, and what questions or suggestions they have for their school district. (See our previous interviews.) Sylvia Lopez’s oldest son was diagnosed with autism at an early age. James was in special education classes from preschool through middle school. But when he...

Test scores released Tuesday for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) continued a decade-long trend of stasis, with small improvements measured only for performance in eighth-grade reading. While states with disparate academic approaches have made some strides over the past few years — notably Florida and California — national averages have varied only slightly, despite...

*Updated April 11 Ruben Alonzo’s English learners in his Texas classroom were thriving. He believed in their potential the same way a teacher had once believed in him — a third-generation migrant worker who went on to MIT, Harvard, and Columbia University. His students were two miles from the Mexican border in Rio Grande, at...

Responding to years of pressure by Los Angeles community and education advocates, LA Unified next month may commit to funding schools based on a new ranking that gives priority to those with the highest-need students. Nearly $140 million in new funding is expected to flow to the district in the next two years as part...

Silvia Flores, a mother of two students at two LA Unified schools in South LA, wanted to learn more about how she can help her kids succeed in school. So she signed up for the Alliance for a Better Community’s Parent Advocate Training Program, where she learned about building a parent network and working with...