LA School Report

April 3 and 4 marked the last two of four “acceleration days” for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The optional extra tutoring was designed to help make up for instruction lost during COVID school closures. Of course, things didn’t work out as planned. United Teachers Los Angeles voted to boycott the extra...

In the fall of 2011, having hurriedly finished The Bee Eater, a book about Michelle Rhee’s tumultuous turn at the helm of D.C. Public Schools (hurriedly because Rhee got the ax when her protector-mayor got voted out of office) I was looking for a really, really fresh approach to public education, especially schools that serve poor...

The latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are devastating: Nearly 60% of teenage girls report feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness. Thirty percent said they seriously considered suicide. Among LGBQ+ youth, that number rises to almost 50%. A critical aspect of addressing this youth mental health crisis is ensuring that young...

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says attendance at district schools has improved this school year – but one local board district has had a dramatically higher rate of chronically absent students.    In the 2021-2022 school year, 55.4% of students in Board District 2 (BD2) were chronically absent, according to the LAUSD Open Data portal. It was...

If you’ve ever read a science fiction story, you know the dangers of time travel. Someone returns to the past and alters something that completely remakes the present and the future, usually with disastrous effect. So it went last month with Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. Carvalho was forced to shutter schools...

They might not want to hear it, but it’s true: Students assigned to teachers with tougher grading policies are better off in the long run, research suggests. According to a paper released last fall through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, eighth- and ninth-graders who learned from math teachers with relatively higher performance standards earned better...

The pandemic accelerated a yearslong decline in the mental health of the nation’s children and teens. The number of young people experiencing sadness, hopelessness and thoughts of suicide has increased dramatically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response, states, cities and school districts are using COVID-19 relief dollars and their own money to...

Los Angeles parents demanded higher quality education for their children in the third year of pandemic learning, with an emphasis on recovering social-emotional and academic learning skills. In a poll conducted in the 2021-22 school year by GPSN and the Loyola Marymount University Center for Equity for English Learners, parents expressed the need to close...

The GOP-led House on Friday passed a bill that would force schools to offer parents far greater transparency about what their children learn, but that Democrats argue could lead to book bans and discrimination against LGBTQ students. The Parents Bill of Rights passed 213 to 208, with five Republicans voting against it. “Teachers unions and education bureaucrats...

Developing… A day after the end of a 72-hour strike that saw LAUSD custodians, cafeteria workers, teacher aides, special education assistants and bus drivers represented by Service Employees International Union Local 99 walk off the job, the school district announced an agreement on a new contract that “significantly increases salaries for close to 30,000 members.” ...