LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti were on hand today to help 288 City Year Los Angeles members kick off a year of service in LA schools during a high-energy ceremony on the south lawn of City Hall. The ceremony began as the City Year members, dressed in matching yellow...

The state today released the latest California High School Exit Examination results, and the news for LA Unified is either encouraging or disappointing, depending on your point of view. The percentage of district 10th-grade students who passed the on their first attempt, remained at near-historical highs, according to state figures showing that 68 percent of...

While state teacher unions are spending time, energy and money fighting the landmark Vergara v. California ruling through appeal, one group of teachers in Los Angeles is helping shape what a post-Vergara world could look like. In a presentation yesterday at the California Community Foundation, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined L.A.-based teaching policy fellows with...

Guess what: The two candidates for State Superintendent for Instruction — incumbent Tom Torlakson and challenger Marshall Tuck — debated Wednesday night, and almost no news outlets covered it, including LA School Report. No matter, here’s the video. It starts at the 11 minute, 43 second mark and runs an hour, 38 minutes.  

United Teachers Los Angeles opens its annual Leadership Conference today, and strike talk will be a prominent theme. As part of the three-day gathering at the Concourse Hotel at LAX, local union leaders will hear from union chiefs from other cities who used the threat of a strike to get a new labor agreement. They’ll...

LA Unified officials said today they anticipated the concerns raised by an independent report on the district’s one-to-one iPad program, which found that schools are not using the devices to teach the new Common Core curriculum. What’s more, said Bernadette Lucas, director of the District’s technology project, they were thrilled to get the bad news....

LA Unified’s ambitious plan to get computer tablets into the hands of its 650,000 students just received its first evaluation, producing decidedly mixed results. In a 95-page report from the American Institutes for Research (AIR), a Washington, D.C. research group hired by the district to evaluate the Phase 1 rollout of the program, students and...

Teachers are responding with enthusiasm to a website that helps them find grant money for classroom projects and professional development, according to the LA Fund for Public Education, the non-profit that launched the program last spring. Called Grants HQ, the website puts hundreds of millions of dollars in educational grants online in one place and is...

Via LA Times | by the TImes Editorial Board At L.A. Unified, tensions are high and crisis is in the air. The relationship between Supt. John Deasy and the school board that oversees him is at what is perhaps an all-time low. Deasy is again muttering about quitting; others are grumbling that he should be...

More than 13,000 LA Unified employees of labor groups that struck new contract deals with the district are receiving a 2 percent lump sum payment this week. Among those that found the extra bump in their bank accounts are members of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), which includes school principals, assistant principals, administrators...