LA School Report

When the wind blows hard through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, water whips against the old brick walls lining the main street of Port Townsend. Since its founding as a Victorian seaport 90 miles north of Seattle, this picturesque town on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula has been home to generations of sailors and boat builders....

Special program for deaf and hard-of-hearing English learners closes reading, writing gap While deaf and hard-of-hearing kids often fall behind their peers academically, the challenge is even greater for those who are English learners. Like Centeno, many kids with hearing issues whose parents don’t speak English are not diagnosed promptly, according to experts. The delay in...

Back when Hillary Rodham Clinton was still an education innovator, the Democratic nominee, then the young first lady of Arkansas, brought to her adopted home state an inspired program called HIPPY, which coaches less-affluent parents who want to prepare their preschoolers for first grade. Former President Bill Clinton gave the program a much-deserved mention in...

The independent monitor for special education at LA Unified found violations at all 13 Preschool for All Learners (PALs) programs visited, according to a new report. LA Unified has been under federal oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement,...

Proposed federal, state accountability systems could again clash The Legislature required and the California State Board of Education is designing a multidimensional school accountability system that will incorporate measures of school climate and students’ readiness for college and careers. But, according to a new analysis, proposed federal regulations would, in effect, prohibit states from using...

This article wraps up our in-depth coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. For more analysis and backstage reports from Cleveland & Philadelphia, see our RNC and DNC archives. We knew from the first primary debates last fall that 2016 wasn’t likely to be the education election. Candidates had other pressing things to talk...

A court-appointed independent monitor (IM) of LA Unified’s special education programs estimates that the district’s plan to bring itself in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and disengage itself from federal court oversight is roughly $695 million short of what is needed, according to a new report. LA Unified has been under federal oversight since 1996 as...

CORE districts want state waiver to continue their work The six California school districts that designed their own school accountability and improvement model are asking the State Board of Education for permission to continue to develop their hybrid system in 2017-18 and beyond. The board will discuss and possibly vote on the proposal at its...

By Chad Aldeman Congratulations, Democrats, we made it through the nominating process without hearing much about what our nominee, Hillary Clinton, will do on education. Aside from a passing mention of tuition — and debt-free college for the middle class — Clinton’s historic acceptance speech last night continued the two-week convention trend of little to...

Parent and anthropologist Courtney Everts Mykytyn surprised some charter and traditional LA Unified educators at her lectures last weekend when showing that schools in Los Angeles and across the country are more segregated than at any other time in the nation’s history. Mykytyn noted that Latino and African-American students in LA Unified are more segregated...