LA School Report

Every few years, an emerging technology shows up at the doorstep of schools and universities promising to transform education. The most recent? Technologies and apps that include or are powered by generative artificial intelligence, also known as GenAI. These technologies are sold on the potential they hold for education. For example, Khan Academy’s founder opened...

Los Angeles Unified is pushing ahead with district-wide lesson plans based on the science of reading even after state lawmakers rejected legislation requiring the curriculum. About half of the 434 elementary schools in the nation’s second-largest school system have already adopted lessons aligned to the phonics-based science of reading, according to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. The...

When elementary school teacher Kimberly Papa gave birth to her daughter, Margot, a little over a year ago, she wasn’t expecting much in the way of paid maternity leave. She knew that the majority of Americans don’t have access to it and certainly not those in her state of Ohio. While she could take 12...

To gauge the magnitude of global learning loss during the pandemic, a team at the World Bank examined data from the Program for International Student Assessment, which tests 15-year-olds in math, reading and science, from 2018-22. Among the report’s many notable insights is a counterintuitive finding about outcomes: In countries with the longest closures, high-achieving...

A common set of problems are keeping education leaders up at night: Will there be enough teachers to staff America’s schools? Can artificial intelligence enhance learning without deepening inequality? How can educators address the mental health crisis among young people? None of these have easy answers. New data confirm that these issues are top of...

The turbulent rollout of a new federal financial aid application could mean thousands of low-income students miss out on college this fall. But one person feels especially perturbed by the botched implementation of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Lamar Alexander — former governor of Tennessee, U.S. education secretary and Republican...

Blanca Paniagua was nervous.  The young adult was set to speak at a webinar about one of CalHope’s new experimental apps.  “I saw how many participants there (were)  and I was like, I’m about to use the app so it could calm me down,” said Paniagua.  But Paniagua had some strategies from the app —...

EarthDay.org started the battle for climate education April 22, 1970 — the very first Earth Day — and continues to fight for it 54 years later. Right now, the organization is working in every state in the country to provide free climate literacy resources for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Every child must be...

There are more than 180,000 unhoused people in California, and only half of them can be accommodated by the existing shelter system. That’s why Renee Wang, a rising senior at The Bishop’s School in San Diego, California, wanted to find a better solution. Her project, Rubix, inspired by the Rubik’s Cube and Lego, is a...

These are tough times for parents and caregivers. To raise a child in 2024 is to live with a heightened awareness of school’s social, emotional, and academic value to children’s short- and long-term well-being. As the United States continues to wrestle with the aftermath of pandemic-wrecked school years, as we struggle to respond with something resembling a coherent agenda for improving public education, the...