LA School Report

  City Year Los Angeles, an education-focused nonprofit, is hosting its annual kick-off event tomorrow morning at City Hall, with the guest list expected to include Mayor Eric Garcetti and LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy. The event celebrates the dedication of 282 young City Year leaders who will provide individual support and attention to students across...

U.S. secretary of education opposes California’s testing plan The nation’s top education official threatened Monday to withhold federal funds if California lawmakers approved pending legislation to revamp the state’s standardized testing system. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued the warning as AB 484 awaits a full vote of the Assembly and state Senate.  LA...

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today that the state will defray costs of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) test fees for more than 129,000 low-income students across California. The $10.8 million, which will be distributed to school districts, represents nearly a third of the total funding distributed to states under the...

An emotionally-charged debate erupted at the last school board meeting over the co-location of a charter on the campus of an elementary school in Boyle Heights. Parents of public school students at Lorena Street Elementary School were furious that the school was forced to relinquish space to accommodate Extera 2, a charter school, because of Proposition...

Meeting tomorrow for the second time in the new school year, the LA Unified school board will plunge back into a thorny debate over how to spend millions of new dollars flowing into the district from the state. It might not be pretty. Superintendent John Deasy is expected to respond to the board’s June directive to...

LAUSD revives effort to reopen four blighted West Valley schools Under pressure to provide classroom space to popular charter schools, Los Angeles Unified plans to seek proposals to redevelop and lease four long-closed campuses in the Woodland Hills area that could cost up to $80 million to restore. Daily News Zimmer wants new rules for campus...

Michelle Rhee, the former Chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools and a lightning rod for education reform, played to her audience of LA area teachers during a panel discussion last night at the Los Angeles Central Library, telling them that teachers need to be part of any debate about reform. “I definitely think that teachers...