LA School Report

As part of a plan to increase pressure on LA Unified as it negotiates for a new contract, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is planning monthly “actions” to take place on campuses around the district. In preparation for the actions, which are to begin in October, UTLA is dubbing Tuesday, Sept. 30 as “Big Red Tuesday,”...

Volunteers can help frame Common Core tests Teachers and others from California have until Friday to sign up for a crowd-sourcing exercise that will help determine how questions will be scored on the new Common Core tests students will take next spring. Edsource L.A. school board to meet Tuesday; likely to discuss Deasy’s future The...

The LA Unified school board has scheduled a last-minute closed-door meeting next week to discuss its top employee, superintendent John Deasy. Sources tell LA School Report that the meeting was called to give the seven school board members a chance to discuss what criteria they would like to include in the superintendent’s upcoming annual performance...

A new study confirms conventional thinking, that an online literacy gap is emerging among students in America, with lower-income students lagging behind their more affluent peers in the ability to navigate the Internet and use it to enhance their studies. According to the New York Times, the study, led by Donald J. Leu at the...

With around 50,000 students participating, the first Los Angeles Summer of Learning is being hailed as a success by officials involved with the program. Modeled after a similar program launched last year in Chicago, Summer of Learning provided access for LA Unified students to 100 learning opportunities, online and in person, at LA parks, libraries,...

While LA Unified is still wrestling with the final kinks in MiSiS, it is already developing MiSiS 2.0. “This time we’re involving users in the conversation early on,” Ron Chandler, the district’s Chief Information Officer, told the school board’s Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Committee yesterday. As for the current system, which tracks student progress and...

As a boy, Kevin Murchie saw the award-winning film “Stand and Deliver,” the true story of Jaime Escalante, the Garfield Senior High math teacher who inspired his Latino students to overcome gang violence and poverty in east Los Angeles. A Caucasian boy growing up in the upper class community of La Cañada Flintridge, Murchie said there...

Brown shoots down charter boundary restriction An attempt by the Legislature to limit a charter school’s ability to locate outside the borders of its authorizing school district has been struck down by Gov. Jerry Brown. S&I Cabinet Report Newport schools considering ‘snow days’ during heat waves After an oppressive heat wave left students sweltering in...

The LAUSD Curriculum and Instruction committee will meet today at 4:00 p.m. In addition to a variety of items on the agenda and in the supporting committee materials, an update on the MiSiS project will be presented. For the meeting agenda, click here. There are five supporting materials for the meeting: California Emerging Technology fund – click here,...

During his first State of the Union speech at the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) leadership conference last week, President Alex Caputo-Pearl promised that the union was “gearing up for this fight” as he works to negotiate a new contract with LA Unified. Near the end of his remarks, as if to prove he wasn’t just talking tough, he announced...