LA School Report

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, used his state of the union speech Friday night to call for a raise in union dues of $19 a month, an increase he said would enable the union to prepare for future challenges “greater and more dangerous” than those of recent years. Reminding members that UTLA has not...

By The Editorial Board Five years after California’s parent-trigger law was passed, it has not had the dramatic effect on public schools that its proponents hoped it would. Yet it is already at a crossroads in its young life. The law, passed in haste in 2010 in an effort to empower parents at lower-performing schools,...

Is the Friedrichs case an ‘existential threat’ to the teachers’ unions? The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Friedrichs vs. California case next year, giving it a chance to strike down union “agency fees.” Education Next Neighbors push back against private schools’ plans to expand Elite private campuses throughout the Los Angeles area are...

For more than a year, students, parents, community groups and even LA Unified members, themselves, have demanded greater transparency in how the board conducts the business of the nation’s second-largest school district. Too often, critics say, the board moves with no apparent effort to broaden the conversation or even allow the public to watch the...

The LA Unified board endured a long and unusual protest last night as about 50 students demanded specific actions to get military-style weapons out of the hands of district school police. The students, some of them wearing bullet-proof vests, chanted for 20 minutes at the start of a meeting — “Back to school, no weapons”...

The LA Unified board voted last night to start the search for a new superintendent by issuing a request for bids to firms that would aide in the selection process. The move is the first step toward identifying candidates to replace the current superintendent, Ramon Cortines, who has expressed a desire to step down by...

By Fermin Leal More than half of high school juniors and seniors across the country don’t feel they’re ready for college and careers, even though these remain top goals for students, according to a survey released Thursday. Results from a multi-year College and Career Readiness survey of 165,000 high school students conducted by YouthTruth, a San Francisco-based nonprofit,...

Revised AP U.S. history standards will emphasize American exceptionalism The move comes after significant pushback from conservatives who claimed the redesigned course fpainted American history in too negative a light. Newsweek San Diego Unified’s had some dark days with solar Despite its struggles with solar so far, the district is preparing to ramp up its...

* UPDATED LA Unified decided not to live-stream any of the meeting. The LA Unified school board is meeting today at 6 p.m. The board will first meet in open session before moving into a closed-door meeting, in which the discussion includes how to search for a new superintendent. Only the open session will be...

For all the criticism they might endure, California education officials are rarely accused of being unqualified for their jobs. That’s not quite the case in Alabama. The state’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, is under fire for filling a vacancy on the state’s board of education with someone who lacks any credentials or background in education....