LA School Report

More districts in L.A. County taking less punitive approach to truancy A growing number of school districts and public agencies in Los Angeles County have joined a campaign to take a less punitive and more holistic approach to truancy — and education officials insist it’s paying off. School officials from all over the county held...

If you’re not an online subscriber to the New York Times, you might want to max-out your free monthly quota (of ten stories) today. The Science Times section, entitled “Learning What Works,” focuses exclusively on education with a look “beyond the alarming headlines about science and math achievement.”  One article, “Fewer Topics, Covered More Rigorously” reports...

Nearly two-thirds of California voters said students should be tested in every grade to ensure that they are progressing, a new PACE/USC Rossier Poll shows. The strong majority contradicts calls in Sacramento to reduce standardized testing. The poll found that only 22 percent of voters said California should cut back on testing. “Most of the political...

In iPad Project, Key Need Emerges Los Angeles school officials are acknowledging a new looming cost in a $1-billion effort to provide iPads to every student: keyboards. Officials so far have not budgeted that expense, but they said the wireless keyboards are recommended for students when they take new state standardized tests. If keyboards were...

Davis Guggenheim, the director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman, has a new film coming out — Teach, a two-hour documentary premiering Sept. 6 on CBS (which means Time Warner cable customers may not be able to watch it). The film follows four public school teachers throughout the school year, including Joel Laguna, a 10th grade AP World...

The fight over the $2 billion LA Unified is getting under a new state funding program moves onto a public stage at 5:30 tonight when Superintendent John Deasy meets with a community group at Inner City Struggle in Boyle Heights. As the first of three scheduled meetings this month sponsored by CLASS, a coalition of community...

Los Angeles Unified made a marginal improvement on California standards tests while for the first time in at least a decade, the state score dropped, according to results released today by the state Department of Education (CDE). For LA Unified students, the annual Academic Performance Index (API) shows a three point increase over last year,...