LA School Report

The Los Angeles Unified school board faced long hours of personal and emotional pleas yesterday on a vast array of issues, including how to spend $837 million in money directed to helping low-income students, children in foster care and English learners. A parade of community members addressing the board at the end, each speaking for...

Via The Los Angeles Times | By the Editorial Board A new study out of USC and the University of Pennsylvania finds that value-added measurements — a way of using student test scores to evaluate teacher performance — aren’t a very good way of judging teacher quality. This isn’t the first study to cast doubt...

In revised budget, Governor details 30-year plan to fix teacher pensions Gov. Jerry Brown is predicting that the state will take in $2.4 billion more in revenue in 2014-15 than initially estimated, but highly expectant education leaders won’t get a piece of it to implement the Common Core state standards or make a down payment...

Mayor Eric Garcetti and LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy, along with several private groups, today announced new  citywide initiative to keep youth engaged in learning this summer, the Los Angeles Summer of Learning. The program provides access to 100 learning opportunities online and in person at LA parks and libraries, LAUSD schools and museums and cultural institutions,...

Sixth in a series of profiles of candidates for the LA Unified’s open District 1 board seat. Community and union activist Hattie McFrazier, one of seven candidates on the ballot for LAUSD’s District 1 board seat, has worked in LA Unified for more than 30 years, giving her what she believes is a firm grasp...

Via the Los Angeles Daily News | By Monica Garcia, Beatriz Maria Solis and Maria Brenes Schools have long served as trusted and safe places for community and families to gather. In addition to being places where parents entrust their children for education, schools have inherent connections to communities as parent centers, polling places, and...

Today the Los Angeles Unified School Board tackles a hefty agenda that includes hammering out details of next year’s budget in a meeting that could extend late into the evening. While there’s no vote on the budget until early summer, the board has been hearing from community and labor groups on how to allocate new money from...

LA Schools budget debate: more teachers, custodians, health services The Los Angeles Unified school board is scheduled to discuss Superintendent John Deasy’s 2014-2015 proposed budget at its meeting Tuesday – and it promises hours of debate over long lists of competing wants. Board members commended the superintendent’s $6.8 billion proposal when it was released last...

Sometimes it takes a rally to get things done. Nearly 200 parents and their children from Bright Star Stella and Bright Star Secondary gathered on Saturday to campaign for a new charter school in West Adams. The families have identified an abandoned facility that they want turned into a new school that would house all...

Via The Nation | By JoAnn Wypijewski  Iris Stevenson hurt no child, seduced no teenager, abused no student at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles. This is what her supporters say in rallying outrage that this exemplary teacher has languished for months in the gulag of administrative detention known as “teacher jail”: she doesn’t belong there....