LA School Report

This article first appeared in Idaho Capital Sun The more things change, the more they stay the same, or so the saying goes. In January 2021, I wrote a column called “Talking to your kids about recent mob violence.” The recent tragedies in Uvalde, Texas, and several other states bring on the sad occasion to...

Jennifer Kottke has worked with LAUSD homeless and foster care youth for more than 20 years — but she has never seen chronic absenteeism among these students become the crisis it did  during the pandemic.  While nearly half of all LAUSD students were chronically absent during most of the the 2021-22 school year, the numbers...

Reading is freedom. It opens up the world.  In my day job as an education researcher, I know that too many kids never learn to read well. Kids who don’t learn to read fluently by 3rd grade will struggle as the material gets more complex.  That fact hit home this spring when I noticed my 8-year-old son had...

Enrollment in colleges and universities continued its steep plunge this spring, down 4.7% from a year ago. The nation’s higher education drop is worsening — but not for the reasons you might think. A newly released National Student Clearinghouse report shows total post-high school enrollment fell by about 685,000 students in spring 2022. In the wake...

It has been a long time since so many education issues have been so politically divisive, with sharp debates between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats about mask mandates, student sexual identity, and the role of race in the curriculum overtaking the routine work of educating students. But as school districts have decided how to...

A $50 million partnership between LAUSD and AT&T California to provide thousands of students with high speed internet access is drawing concern from advocates. When Los Angeles district schools went remote at the start of the pandemic, the school system’s digital divide was thrown into sharp relief — making clear many low income students lacked...

Despite a dramatic decline in suspensions as students moved to remote learning during the pandemic, Black children and those in special education were disciplined far more often than white students and those in general education, according to a recent New York University study. The report also indicates students’ behavior may have worsened this past academic...

Katie Boody Adorno taught middle school math for five years, both in the Kansas City Public Schools and as a founding teacher at Alta Vista Charter Middle School. It was there she realized that ed tech solutions weren’t all she had dreamed of and weren’t always ideal for her students. She wanted more say in...

A survey of more than 5,000 parents released today found education ranks high among their concerns ahead of the critical midterm elections — and that 82% would vote for someone outside their party if the candidate’s education agenda matched their own. The survey was conducted electronically in May by The Harris Poll on behalf of...

In May 2021, as efforts to ban books on LGBTQ topics from school libraries were gaining political steam, “Two Grooms on a Cake: The Story of America’s First Gay Wedding” was published. It is a children’s story about Michael McConnell’s 1971 marriage to a man, which was upheld as legal by the U.S. Supreme Court...