LA Unified posted a 92 percent decrease in the number of days lost to suspensions as a result of its Restorative Justice program and the district’s new approach to discipline. In the 2007-2008 school year, a total of 74,765 days were lost to suspensions, but that number plummeted to 6,221 in the 2014-2015 school year, according to a...

By Jeremy Loudenback As director of the School Mental Health unit at the Los Angeles Unified School District, Pia Escudero supervises more than 300 psychiatric social workers, clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals. She has also worked to create trauma-informed systems and therapeutic approaches in schools. Escudero was part of a team that helped...

The word “MiSiS” is not generally associated with happy endings at LA Unified, and neither is the district’s increasingly competitive relationship with its 221 independent charter schools, but that was the case earlier this month when the district and its charters announced they had reached an agreement on linking their student data systems to fulfill...

UPDATED * It’s official. Monica Garcia announced Tuesday to her supporters that she will be running to retain her seat on LA Unified’s school board. Meanwhile, fellow board member Monica Ratliff surprised many education and City Hall watchers last week when she quietly took out papers with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission to allow her to run for the...

A new report that analyzed how effective schools and cities are at closing the “achievement gap” between students from low-income families and their more advantaged peers found that nine of the top 10 schools in Los Angeles were independent charter schools. The first-of-its-kind Education Equality Index from Education Cities studied data from schools in the 100...

Members of the LA Unified School Board and the Los Angeles City Council joined last week with after-school program supporters, families and students to call for an increase in state funds. About 75 people gathered Friday outside L.A. City Hall in support of a resolution authored by City Council member David Ryu, chair of the...

Neighborhood councils in Los Angeles have served as easy and reliable sources of funds for public schools. The councils have $37,000 a year to dole out to the community, and many have set aside a portion of their budgets specifically for schools. But recently some of the councils have learned of a restriction that would tie their hands in...

By Iris Maria Chávez Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes, and no state has taken that message more to heart than California. Alone among the 50 states, California stopped reporting accountability ratings for public schools in 2013 and was the first state in the nation to hit pause on accountability. Now, with responsibility for...

When Andrea Schwartz first visited LA’s Clinton Middle School, the sight reminded her of “an insane asylum.” Paper airplanes and pencils dangled from the ceiling, and the hallways were stark white save for a sign demanding kids don’t run. The school, in Historic South-Central not far from USC, had been open for only five years, but it suffered...

Bernie Sanders isn’t the only progressive who is confused about charter schools. On the left, misunderstandings and mischaracterizations about non-traditional public schools abound, many of them spread by an educational establishment that fiercely guards its turf. One of the most popular misconceptions is that charter schools represent “takeovers” by wealthy corporate interests or rich conservatives...