A groundbreaking summit that plans to share best practices between LA Unified traditional school and charter school educators is at capacity with more than 350 people signed up for the Saturday event planned by Superintendent Michelle King. From the moment she was appointed to the position in January, King said she planned to find ways to...

By Peter Cunningham  In the spring of 2009, newly-elected President Barack Obama took a meeting in the Oval Office with civil rights leader Al Sharpton. Reverend Sharpton told the White House he wanted to talk about education so Education Secretary Arne Duncan also attended. Sharpton also brought along an unlikely guest: former House Speaker and GOP...

(Cleveland, Ohio) — During a special forum organized around the Republican National Convention, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker offered some unexpected advice on the best way to sell school choice measures – talk about improving traditional schools too. “People who truly believe in education, they recognize greatness whether it’s coming from a charter school, a choice...

A new RNC dispatch from Peter Cunningham, executive director of Education Post: If Republican conservatives stand for one thing above all else when it comes to public education, it is local control. Just as some conservatives see tax cuts as the only answer to an ailing economy, some also see local control as the antidote to...

By Max Marchitello The Veep-stakes are over! The pick is in. Mike Pence, the sitting governor of Indiana, will run as Donald Trump’s vice president. Although he has only been governor for a few years, Pence also served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Putting those records together, Bellwether Education Partners’ Max Marchitello takes stock of what...

Democrats added a misleading reference to standardized tests to the party platform over the weekend, requiring they meet a reliability standard that doesn’t actually exist. “[W]e believe that standardized tests must meet American Statistical Association standards for reliability and validity,” the amendment reads, saying this would “strike a better balance on testing, so that it...

It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s views on education (and, to be fair, many other policy areas) remain a mystery. But he won’t be the only one on display at next week’s convention proceedings in Cleveland. (Bookmark our coverage of the RNC over at our #EDlection2016 live blog) Along with vice-presidential pick Mike Pence, several of the announced speakers...

*UPDATED LA Unified will begin demolition Monday at the first of two schools to be razed in the West San Fernando Valley. But no new construction is planned, leaving empty lots in residential neighborhoods. The Oso Avenue and Highlander Road elementary schools have sat mostly empty for more than 30 years, becoming eyesores and a source of...

Garfield High School will forever remember its revered math teacher Jaime Escalante and now so will the U.S. post office. The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday unveiled its new forever stamp honoring the late East Los Angeles math teacher. A Bolivian immigrant, Escalante taught calculus at Garfield High from 1974 to 1991. He was recognized...

By Caroline Bermudez The great Joan Didion rose to literary fame chronicling her love-hate relationship with her native California. In Where I Was From, she unleashed a cool invective about the state’s less than firm grasp of reality that still applies today: “A good deal about California, in its own preferred terms, does not add...