LA School Report

By Lida Jennings In many ways, Los Angeles is the birthplace of Teach For America. It was at University of Southern California 25 years ago that Wendy Kopp gathered 500 idealistic corps members for the very first summer training institute and launched them into teaching positions at high-poverty schools in Los Angeles and across the...

By Jeremy Loudenback In January, the Los Angeles Unified School District chose longtime local teacher and administrator Michelle King to head the nation’s second largest school district. The first African American woman to serve as district superintendent, King will oversee about 650,000 students at more than 900 schools across the city. LAUSD students include more...

As SAT enters a new era this week, students say the exam has improved The new version of the SAT aims more than ever to measure core skills taught in school, such as reading charts, analyzing evidence and applying algebra in mathematical problems. Washington Post, by Nick Anderson Disturbing cellphone video shows violent attack on...

Debate emerges over state actions needed to ease teacher shortages As California school districts grapple with a widening shortage of teachers, a policy debate has emerged about just how actively the state should be involved in trying to remedy the problem. EdSource, by Louis Freedberg When social and emotional learning is key to college success,...

School overcrowding is down and buildings are safer and updated. But according to a recent report, there’s still $60 billion worth of work needed on LA Unified schools. Since 1997 an unprecedented series of bonds approved specifically for school buildings to ease overcrowding has provided the district with $19.5 billion. While the district has completed 20,000 modernization...

LAUSD plans a Common Core makeover for its elementary report cards The report card changes are being proposed as part of a plan to better help parents track how well students are mastering the expectations spelled out in new sets of academic standards. The new report cards significantly expand the section rating students’ academic performance....

As the presidential primaries enter their hothouse phase, one 2016 election lesson is clear: the United States’ demographic shifts are more politically important now than in other recent contests. Of course, this new diversity has been coming for some time — much of it driven by immigration patterns and low birth rates among native-born Americans....

LA Unified announced this month that the district may graduate 80 percent of its seniors this year, a record high, but a growing number of critics say that record is suspect because online credit recovery courses are largely responsible for the achievement. The news of the potentially record-breaking graduation rate came mere weeks after a projection in...