LA School Report

The historically positive views toward public schools took a hit during the pandemic, according to poll results released earlier this month. In 2019, 60% of Americans graded their schools an A or a B. But after more than two years of disruption, 52% give those marks in the latest Education Next survey, which has measured...

Lavinia Aguião is feeling the pressure as a single mother and educator in Washington, D.C. as surging inflation cuts into her back-to-school shopping budget. “I feel like the most expensive thing is literally clothing, new backpacks and lunchboxes,” Aguião said of her search for supplies this month. Aguião is not alone in feeling the pinch....

Gifted programming, already uneven across the country and prone to racial discrimination, has yet another blind spot: twice exceptional students.  These advanced learners, who may also receive special education services, can languish academically, their skills overlooked. The same holds true for low-income children, students of color and those learning to speak English.  Experts say most teachers have only limited...

With August underway, America’s kids have begun nervously counting the days until vacation ends, while their parents are eyeing back-to-school sales and carpool schedules. But the education policy world is still soaking in the glories of summer — or, more precisely, summer school. New research released last month has offered persuasive new evidence of the...

Embattled education technology vendor Illuminate Education has become the first-ever company to get booted from the Student Privacy Pledge, an unprecedented move that follows a massive data breach affecting millions of students and allegations the company misrepresented its security safeguards. The Future of Privacy Forum, which created the self-regulatory effort nearly a decade ago to...

The spotlight was on Los Angeles Unified school superintendent Alberto Carvalho Monday when he delivered his first back-to-school speech, promising “accelerating change” across the district.   “Community reform by nature does not have to be protracted or slow, it can be quick,” said Carvalho in his prepared remarks at the event titled “Imagine the Possibilities” where...

There’s an old conversational set piece in the lively world of early education policy that goes something like this: a study comes out showing that pre-K programs do a solid job of raising children’s knowledge and skills, and even improve kindergarten readiness, but seem to be less effective at producing higher third-grade reading scores or some other...

Marco Chavez presses a foot-long piece of bare wooden siding into a gap along a window and pulls the trigger on his drill. Chavez, 17, a recent graduate of College Bridge Academy, a charter high school in the city of Compton in Los Angeles County, steps back and nods while his instructor watches him. This...

Students who miss at least 10% of school days are more likely to face reading difficulties by third grade, less likely to earn a high school diploma and are at higher risk of juvenile delinquency. There’s a word to describe when students surpass this troubling threshold: chronic absenteeism. It makes intuitive sense. Students who spend less time in the classroom...

A year ago, Miriam Calderón was leading the U.S. Department of Education’s work in early-childhood, a time when $400 billion in new federal funding for programs serving young children still seemed within reach. Now she’s working on the outside, hoping Congress passes a bill with a small fraction of that amount. While the Senate once...