LA School Report

LAUSD watchers began speculating about who the next School Board President might be almost as soon as the results of the March 5th LAUSD primary election were known. The issue gained further immediacy when the School Board voted 4-3 this Tuesday to limit the term of President to two years. Unless the Board votes to waive the...

A new report out from a Washington DC think tank closely associated with the Democratic Party takes a look at the history of “mayoral control” of big-city school systems in which City Hall runs a district rather than an independently elected Board of Education. According to the report, written by a pair of academics from...

Sen. Padilla Drops His Teacher Dismissal Bill Two days after Assemblymember Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, introduced a bill that would make it quicker and potentially cheaper to fire teachers, Sen. Alex Padillo, D-Los Angeles, has shelved his controversial version of a teacher dismissal bill and signed on as a principal co-author of hers. EdSource L.A.’s Mayoral...

In a new KPCC radio interview that aired earlier today, Mayor Villaraigosa surprised nobody touting his record on education — claiming to have doubled the number of schools at 800 and above in the API (academic performance index), for example — and taking aim at the notion that LAUSD should have an independent elected School...

On Monday, Mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel gained the endorsement of the powerful LA County Federation of Labor — an umbrella group of county unions. Greuel is supported by nearly every large union in the city (with the exception of UTLA). But, intriguingly, it was a member of the UTLA leadership, Gregg Solkovits, who helped convince...

Mark it on your calender: Important voter registration and vote-by-mail deadlines are coming up for Los Angeles’ May 21 runoff election for the District 6 seat on the LAUSD School Board: May 6, 2013 (Monday): The last day to register to vote in the May runoff election. (If you still haven’t registered, go here to register to vote...

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy has expressed great enthusiasm for the 10-district effort to win a so-called “waiver” from some aspects of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which sets accountability rules and governs the distribution of billions in education funding from Washington.  California State Board of Education members recently voted in support of the effort,...

Incubator School in L.A. Sparks Discord Over Location, Teachers The pilot middle school, which is slated to open next year but lacks a site, will teach students how to launch a business in addition to academics. LA Times Sun Valley’s Francis Polytechnic High to Convert to Innovative Pilot School Francis Polytechnic High in Sun Valley...

On Friday, LAUSD sent out an announcement about the new teacher evaluation program that the district and the teachers union agreed to earlier this year, clarifying its position on the use of student achievement data. Now, UTLA is denouncing the district memo for “attempt[ing] to discredit UTLA’s internal materials to our membership while also continuing...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is likely to be remembered for his efforts on behalf of public education in Los Angeles. But will he be considered effective and successful or not? The initial verdicts are starting to come in, and they are predictably mixed. On Tuesday, KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez produced a generally negative view of the Mayor’s accomplishments,...