High school counselors can be the secret weapon in winning admissions for first-generation college applicants.

Going into Tuesday’s LA Unified school board meeting, three-for-three was the Charter School Division’s recommendations against two new charters and a renewal. In the end, it went the other way, with two votes going in charters’ favor (a new school plus a renewal for the Partnership to Uplift Communities) and one vote postponed (a new charter...

  In dual votes Tuesday about a long-vacant school in the west San Fernando Valley, the LA Unified school board halted a charter school that was previously proposed for the site and instead allowed a district school to pursue it. The school board gave a unanimous thumbs-up for Hale Charter Academy to pursue a proposal to develop a performing...

The LA Unified school board is scheduled to hold an open session meeting today at 1 p.m. Items up for discussion include a vote on the closed Highlander campus in the San Fernando Valley, which El Camino Real wants to develop into a K-8 campus. There will also be votes and public meetings on several charter school applications and...

*UPDATED A number of charter school operators across LA Unified say the district and its school board are turning up the heat on them to an unbearable degree while using the Charter Schools Division and Office of Inspector General to make approval and renewals of charter schools increasingly difficult. They claim there has been an increase...

* UPDATED The LA Unified school board is expected on Tuesday to deny more applications for new charter schools and charter renewals than they may approve. This is the first time the recommended denials exceed approvals since the new configuration of the school board was seated last July. Already, the board has denied as many charters in...

  By Kathy Kantner, Rachel Greene and Juan Jose Mangandi Readers of LA School Report’s coverage of the Feb. 2 meeting of the Board of Education’s Early Childhood Education and Parent Engagement Subcommittee can be forgiven if they only perceived the heat in the boardroom but not the light. It would be unfortunate, however, if LA School Report’s overly...

By Richard Whitmire Recent big-dollar donations from pro-charter philanthropists leave traditional educators sputtering: Why don’t they just donate their money to us? Good question, and one that was raised in Los Angeles recently in light of a possible huge gift from philanthropist Eli Broad and others that appears headed mostly to charter schools. LAUSD board...

Parents representing some of the most important advisory committees to the LA Unified school board lodged a litany of complaints this week about a lack of connection with the district. Long distances to meetings, inconvenient times, police intimidation near meeting sites and a lack of consideration of the parents’ advice were some of the complaints brought...

Arne Duncan’s administration of the Education Department saw plenty of notable accomplishments: billions of new dollars for preschool, a rewrite of the country’s primary K-12 education law, and a record high school graduation rate. Yet for all he achieved in his seven years, Duncan said he’s disappointed to leave office without having made sufficient progress...