Budget cuts, staffing reductions and school consolidations are coming to Los Angeles Unified as the cash-strapped district works to balance its shrinking budget, a top school official said.  LAUSD’s chief financial officer in an interview last week said declining enrollments and the end of pandemic relief funds have forced the district to take cost-cutting measures.  ...

The Los Angeles Unified School District has seen some impressive academic results over the last few years. But in pursuing those gains, district leaders have led themselves into a financially unsustainable position. Its most recent proposed budget contains the blunt admission that, “L.A. Unified currently has a structural deficit whereby in-year expenditures exceed in-year revenues....

Education policy and Hollywood rarely intersect.  But when filmmaker Rob Reiner latched onto the science about how young children develop, he not only used his moviemaking platform to convince the public of the importance of kids’ early years, he became a real-life policymaker to champion the cause.  After successfully steering the passage of a 1998...

By the time the morning bell rings at Rosewood STEM Magnet, Urban Planning and Urban Design, Monika Heidi Duque has already been in her classroom for hours — reviewing lesson plans, setting out materials, and greeting students by name.   Duque, who has taught at the award-winning, urban planning-themed LAUSD elementary school in West Hollywood for...

This article is published in partnership with WIRED. It was in physical education class when Laila Gutierrez swapped out self-harm for a new vice.  The freshman from Phoenix had long struggled with depression and would cut her arms to feel something. Anything. The first drag from a friend’s vape several years ago offered the shy teenager a new...

America’s public education system is well overdue for a strategic shift in how we help students discover their talents and navigate toward their futures. While most high school career pathways and vocational programs are well-intentioned, research consistently shows that the majority of young people start solidifying their essential identity, their interests and their sense of their...

Daily student absences rose 22% among more than 100,000 children living in California’s rural Central Valley in the weeks following January 2025 immigration raids, according to a newly peer reviewed Stanford University study. The findings span the early weeks of the second Trump administration. Since that time, immigration enforcement has escalated dramatically, particularly in Democratic...

Los Angeles schools have lost thousands of immigrant students for years because of the city’s rising prices and falling birth rates — and now that trend has intensified after the “chilling effect” of this year’s federal immigration raids, district officials said. This school year, the Los Angeles school district has lost more than 13,000 immigrant...

When I first arrived at Monte Vista Elementary over 20 years ago, it was evident that the school was full of dedicated students and teachers. But the numbers told a different story. Many children entered with limited early literacy and numeracy skills, and as a result, overall performance ranked near the bottom of the district...

When The 74 started looking for schools that were doing a good job teaching kids to read, we began with the data. We crunched the numbers for nearly 42,000 schools across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and identified 2,158 that were beating the odds by significantly outperforming what would be expected given their student...