A court-appointed independent monitor (IM) of LA Unified’s special education programs estimates that the district’s plan to bring itself in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and disengage itself from federal court oversight is roughly $695 million short of what is needed, according to a new report. LA Unified has been under federal oversight since 1996 as...

By Chad Aldeman Congratulations, Democrats, we made it through the nominating process without hearing much about what our nominee, Hillary Clinton, will do on education. Aside from a passing mention of tuition — and debt-free college for the middle class — Clinton’s historic acceptance speech last night continued the two-week convention trend of little to...

Parent and anthropologist Courtney Everts Mykytyn surprised some charter and traditional LA Unified educators at her lectures last weekend when showing that schools in Los Angeles and across the country are more segregated than at any other time in the nation’s history. Mykytyn noted that Latino and African-American students in LA Unified are more segregated...

The year was 1993. President Bill Clinton had just beat Republican incumbent George H. Bush and the first family was facing an early political test: Where would they send Chelsea Clinton, their 12-year-old daughter and only child, to school? On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton had portrayed himself as an ardent supporter of public education. He...

LA Unified school board member Monica Garcia announced on her Twitter and Facebook accounts recently that eight district high schools will benefit from three Talent Search Federal Grants from the U. S. Department of Education in the amount of $908,160.00 annually for the next five years. The grants will be administered by the the University of...

By Hailly T.N. Korman The DNC kicked off last night with two parallel stories of immigration that are meaningful, especially for those closely watching education issues. Karla Ortiz — a 10-year-old American citizen — spoke along with her mother, Francisca Ortiz, who is undocumented. Another speaker, Astrid Silva — identified on the schedule simply as “DREAMer”...

By Caroline Bermudez Reflexive opposition to Teach For America (TFA) is commonplace and the arguments against the organization are recycled regularly: Corps members are ill-prepared, they don’t stay in the profession, or they primarily teach at charter schools. It’s rare to come across fresh or fair takes on TFA, much less from someone who is a...

*UPDATED The candidate challenging LA Unified board President Steve Zimmer for school board has raised more money early on in the March 7 election campaign than the incumbent did in his entire re-election bid three years ago, according to city campaign finance records. Nick Melvoin announced this week that as of the June 30 filing deadline,...

As the California Supreme Court considers whether to take up an appeal of an appellate court ruling in Vergara v. California, which has been extended to Aug. 22, the advocacy group that brought the landmark case will be in a Northern California courtroom Friday for a hearing on a case involving teacher evaluations. Last year Students...

By Kaitlin Pennington Yesterday, my Bellwether Education Partners colleague Andy Rotherham wrote on this blog that “as long as the Democrats don’t burn the place down, it’s going to be hard for them to have a worse convention than the GOP just did.” Well, it came close. The Democratic National Convention delegates didn’t seem to get...