LA School Report

Ever since LA Unified vaulted from a looming graduation crisis to potentially breaking its graduation record last school year after implementing a wide-scale online credit recovery program, questions have been raised about how much students are actually learning. The apparent ease with which the district was able to substantially boost the number of diplomas it handed out...

Trying to get right with LA Unified, El Camino charter school hands down discipline, policy changes The board of El Camino Real Charter High School has disciplined at least one employee and enacted a long list of changes to its financial policies amid questions from LA Unified officials about “seemingly exorbitant, personal and … improper” transactions made...

Superintendent Michelle King will present her strategic plan for LA Unified to the school board on Tuesday, a 16-page document outlining three years’ worth of goals and expected improvements but lacking specific details on how to accomplish them. This is the draft of a long-anticipated plan that is supposed to address academic improvements and budget...

A new website has launched that encourages thoughtful discussion about issues involving LA schools and school board elections. The new site, www.voteLAUSD.com, is run by Loren Bendele, a technology entrepreneur who co-founded coupon website www.savings.com.  Bendele, a father of two, said he first thought of the idea about eight years ago when he became interested...

By John Fensterwald Sending a strong message endorsing the school accountability system adopted by the State Board of Education, Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have placed more emphasis on standardized test scores in measuring school and district performance. In a message issued Saturday in vetoing Assembly Bill 2548, Brown credited the state board for...

California’s National Distinguished Principal Marcia Reed of LAUSD talks about her school’s successes Marcia Reed, principal of 186th Street Elementary School in Los Angeles Unified, was honored this month as a 2016 National Distinguished Principal by the National Association of Elementary School Principals. The association recognizes one outstanding principal in each of the 50 states...

Schools throughout the LA Unified school district joined more than 90,000 groups worldwide on Thursday to celebrate Character Day and talk about how to develop character strengths.   Although it’s impossible to tell exactly how many classrooms dealt with Character Day activities, Susan Ward Roncalli of the district’s Social Emotional Learning division said she was busy traveling...

In Los Angeles, a young man talked about selling drugs for cash because his family needed the money. In Portland, where stealing from local grocery stores is normal behavior for some school-age locals, a young woman explained the benefits of failing school — you repeat a grade — or being locked up in jail. Across...

When your charter school closes 3 weeks into the year, where do you go? In West LA, you have options The students were heartbroken, some parents suspected the worst. When the City High School board decided last week to close its independent charter school after 13 months, it left the 120 students scrambling to find...

*UPDATED LA Unified is facing a budget deficit that will increase to nearly half a billion dollars within the next three years primarily due to declining enrollment and increased pension and healthcare costs. Last weekend, the Los Angeles Times, CALmatters and Capital Public Radio published the first of a series of stories examining the effects...