Ever since LA Unified vaulted from a looming graduation crisis to potentially breaking its graduation record last school year after implementing a wide-scale online credit recovery program, questions have been raised about how much students are actually learning. The apparent ease with which the district was able to substantially boost the number of diplomas it handed out...

Superintendent Michelle King will present her strategic plan for LA Unified to the school board on Tuesday, a 16-page document outlining three years’ worth of goals and expected improvements but lacking specific details on how to accomplish them. This is the draft of a long-anticipated plan that is supposed to address academic improvements and budget...

A new website has launched that encourages thoughtful discussion about issues involving LA schools and school board elections. The new site, www.voteLAUSD.com, is run by Loren Bendele, a technology entrepreneur who co-founded coupon website www.savings.com.  Bendele, a father of two, said he first thought of the idea about eight years ago when he became interested...

By John Fensterwald Sending a strong message endorsing the school accountability system adopted by the State Board of Education, Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have placed more emphasis on standardized test scores in measuring school and district performance. In a message issued Saturday in vetoing Assembly Bill 2548, Brown credited the state board for...

Schools throughout the LA Unified school district joined more than 90,000 groups worldwide on Thursday to celebrate Character Day and talk about how to develop character strengths.   Although it’s impossible to tell exactly how many classrooms dealt with Character Day activities, Susan Ward Roncalli of the district’s Social Emotional Learning division said she was busy traveling...

In Los Angeles, a young man talked about selling drugs for cash because his family needed the money. In Portland, where stealing from local grocery stores is normal behavior for some school-age locals, a young woman explained the benefits of failing school — you repeat a grade — or being locked up in jail. Across...

*UPDATED LA Unified is facing a budget deficit that will increase to nearly half a billion dollars within the next three years primarily due to declining enrollment and increased pension and healthcare costs. Last weekend, the Los Angeles Times, CALmatters and Capital Public Radio published the first of a series of stories examining the effects...

By Brenda Gazzar The governing board of El Camino Real Charter High School revised its fiscal policies Wednesday night in its latest effort to placate Los Angeles Unified School District concerns about liberal credit-card spending by school administrators and inadequate board oversight. The meeting of the El Camino Real Alliance board, which took place in...

The school board just made Daniel Jocz’s job a lot harder. Jocz, who is a National Teacher of the Year finalist and the 2016 California State Teacher of the Year, already has to record lectures and give homework to cover five chapters of American history over the summer. He does that so his students can...

See previous interviews by The 74: Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Senator and Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, University of Michigan economist Susan Dynarski, Harvard Education School Dean Jim Ryan. Full 74 Interview archive here. As superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, John Deasy laid out an ambitious vision for improving schools. Today, his supporters say...