We openly speculated here at LA School Report less than a month ago that Steve Zimmer appeared in position to be elected the next LA Unified school board president in July. Not so fast, Kemosabe. Board President Richard Vladovic’s tenure is set to expire in July due to a two-year term limit, but that may no longer...

By Susan Dynarski There is widespread concern over threats to privacy posed by the extensive personal data collected by private companies and public agencies. Some of the potential danger comes from the government: The National Security Agency has swept up the telephone records of millions of people, in what it describes as a search for...

California’s new education budgeting process, known as Local Control Funding Formula, was designed to shrink the achievement gap among students by funneling more money to schools’ neediest pupils, but a year-long study of LA Unified shows the district has so far failed to fulfill that mission. The report by UC Berkeley and Communities for Los...

As part of a broader effort to fight declining enrollment due to students leaving in droves for charter schools, the LA Unified board voted this week to reconfigure its communications department to also include a marketing arm that will produce brochures and short videos highlighting the achievements and attributes of its schools. The idea behind the...

By Dian Schaffhauser Digital natives aren’t as tech-savvy as they think they are — at least, not according to their bosses. American millennials (those between the ages of 16 and 34) may be the first generation that grew up with computers and Internet access, but all that time spent glued to a small screen hasn’t translated...

LA Unified released a new $7.1 billion budget today that shows a big increase for next year, marking the second year the district will receive funding increases in the hundreds of millions due to higher state revenues. But despite the added injection of cash —the general fund will grow by more than $700 million over...

The LA Unified school board unanimously approved $79.6 million in bond funding on Tuesday to help fix the problematic and glitchy student data computer system known as MiSiS, but it also agreed to do some soul searching as a result of the expenditure. The request for the funds from the district came with a unanimous...

By Emma Brown From Rand Paul on the right to Elizabeth Warren on the left, members of the Senate education committee pushed aside their policy disagreements earlier this spring when they voted unanimously in favor of a bipartisan revision to the widely reviled No Child Left Behind law. But key differences remain to be resolved in both...

There are no easy take-backsies within the second largest school district in the country but it appears that at least some LA Unified school board members are hoping for a time-out before moving ahead with the Ethnic Studies resolution adopted in the fall. An analysis of the initiative by the district budget office estimated it...

Schools that took part in the national City Year program are more likely to see jumps in their students’ standardized math and English scores, according to a new report. The program, which last year had 150 schools in 22 cities participate, was active in 25 LA Unified schools. (Check out the attached video from September,...