The LA Unified school district made the rare move today of closing all of its campuses after receiving a terror threat. Superintendent Ramon Cortines has asked for police to search every building — a major operation considering the district has over 1,100 campuses. The move also comes as New York officials said they received a...

An email that threatened violence with “explosive devices, assault rifles and machine pistols” provided LA Unified officials today with the rationale for closing all schools across the district. Those details and others, which began emerging today, convinced city and school officials that closing schools was the more prudent action, especially in the aftermath of the...

New York City schools also received an email terror threat today, according to various media reports. But unlike the LA Unified school district, which closed all of its campuses this morning, New York schools remained open today. In fact, New York leaders are cracking jokes about the situation as LA Unified officials are closing roughly 1,000...

UPDATED All LAUSD schools were closed today due to a “serious threat” called into the district. The threat was not aimed at any specific school, but was judged credible enough for school officials to close all the campuses, which serve 643,000 students in 900 traditional and 200 charter schools. “This is a rare threat, we get...

By Josh Dulaney Lawmakers and academics met Monday at Cal State Long Beach to discuss helping English-learner students in the state get a high school diploma and go on to college. The Assembly Education Committee convened in the CSULB Student Union to learn more about roughly 1.4 million English learners who make up 22 percent of...

As the year winds down, the the seven elected LAUSD school board members have pushed almost everything off their calendars except for picking the next district superintendent. The selection process continued for eight hours yesterday, ending at 5:30 pm with plans to resume the deliberations at 8:30 am tomorrow. While the board is winnowing its...

By Chris Hofmann President Obama last week signed the most important education legislation in over a decade, the long-awaited reauthorization of ESEA and No Child Left Behind. The provisions of the law will have a profound effect on what school is like for my class of 26 fourth graders and will reverberate throughout the everyday...

By The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board When famed teacher Rafe Esquith was yanked from his fifth-grade classroom and an investigation was opened into possible sexual and financial misconduct, parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District— and the larger education world — gasped. Esquith was as iconic as he was iconoclastic. A winner of the National Medal...

With President Obama‘s signing the rewrite of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law yesterday, a new era of federal and state education policy has been ushered in. While the new law, Every Child Achieves Act (ESSA), doesn’t mean much for LA Unified in an immediate sense because it had already received a waiver from...