For Ivey Steinberg, the last straw occurred when her son, Jack, who uses a wheelchair, was left on the second floor during a fire drill at a public school. She needed to find a school that treated her son like all the others, and she found WISH (Westside Innovative School House) Charter. Then, she helped create...

The LA Unified school board is holding a meeting today scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. Among the items up for discussion is an expansion plan for Playa Vista Elementary that has many parents angry to the point they staged a protest yesterday. There are also nine new charter schools applications, including El Camino Real K-8...

A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) finds that not only is California behind most other states and the nation on enacting policies that support effective teaching, but it has also slipped from its already low position of a few years ago. The 2015 State Teacher Policy Yearbook report, released today, gives California...

* UPDATED The LA Unified school board continued its search for a new superintendent early this morning, moving into another closed session after a one minute open meeting that might have been the shortest in district history. Joining the seven board members in the private session were Hank Gmitro and Darline Robles of the search...

By Jill Barshay Andreas Schleicher, an international education expert based in Paris, attended a summit at the White House last month and left feeling frustrated by the anti-testing backlash in this country. “I listened to several presentations. You got this impression, if they would only get rid of tests, everything would improve,” said Schleicher, who oversees the...

Parents and students at Playa Vista Elementary staged a protest today over an unexpected change in the district’s Westside expansion efforts that directly affect Playa students. Some families held a “sit out” and kept their kids out of school. The LA Unified school board is scheduled to vote tomorrow on an expansion plan for Playa that also involves...

* UPDATED Applications for six new charter schools will come before the LA Unified school board at its meeting tomorrow, the biggest wave of requests since the Broad Foundation proposed a plan to expand the number of charter schools in LAUSD. In addition, eight other charters are seeking renewals. While the board will not vote on...

Great Public Schools Now, the outside group seeking to expand the number of LA Unified schools serving students in high-poverty neighborhoods, has released a list of district schools — most of them charters — that represents “the kinds of schools” the organization intends to replicate in the years ahead. The new group, an outgrowth of...

By Roger Altman and Robert Hughes Are the student achievement scores at charter schools too good to be true? Every year, urban school districts across the country release test scores showing dismal student proficiency in math and reading, especially for students in poverty. At the same time, parents in those same cities often hear claims...

It’s a week since the school board set criteria for the next LAUSD superintendent, but that didn’t stop about 100 parents, students and community advocates from weighing in on what kind of person they think the candidate should be. A group from South Los Angeles and the Eastside gathered at district headquarters yesterday to campaign...