LA School Report

Rafe Esquith may or may not be LAUSD’s best classroom teacher, but he’s certainly one of the most well-known — at least outside of LA. His familiarity comes largely thanks to his own writing (including a new book coming out this year) and others like Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews writing about him as...

This is a guest commentary from veteran Oklahoma City high school teacher John Thompson, who writes about school reform issues at the Huffington Post, This Week In Education, and other outlets: NPR’s Rachel Martin, in Superintendent’s Effort To Do Right By His Kids, nailed the essence of LA Superintendent John Deasy’s zealotry, as well as the hubris...

If you haven’t listened to it already, check out this NPR interview with LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy from last week — taped at the Aspen Ideas Festival just before the LAUSD School Board meeting. [Or, you can read the transcript here.]: In the interview, Deasy addresses criticism of his work and acknowledges the many stress his...

It’s still a waiting game for LA Unified and eight other California school districts who have yet to hear if their revised No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver application will be given the thumbs up by the US Department of Education in Washington. The nine districts, known as California Office to Reform Education (CORE), are...

The LA Times‘s Howard Blume reports this morning that newly elected School Board President Richard Vladovic has been “cleared of wrongdoing after an internal investigation into whether he acted improperly in connection with sexual misconduct allegations against a teacher at a Wilmington school.” That would be Robert Pimentel, the 57-year-old teacher at De La Torre Elementary...

Here’s Mayor Garcetti talking about his support for the launch of LA’s Promise Neighborhoods, a new $30 million federally-funded program to provide “wraparound” (comprehensive) social services to needy families in Hollywood and Pacoima: Previous posts: “Promise Neighborhoods” Finally Launch in LA; LA Wins $30M Federal Grant; Local Groups Join Up for School Improvements

A new initiative called Los Angeles Promise Neighborhoods, six years in the making, finally launched this month. Headed by the Youth Policy Institute (or YPI), it aims to serve 18,000 kids in two neighborhoods — Hollywood and Pacoima — and hopes to expand even further in the future. The idea behind LA’s Promise Neighborhoods is...