LA Unified has won a $13 million federal grant intended to expose low-income students to college. The grant will span over seven years and benefit 2,000 students currently in the sixth- and seventh-grades, according to City News Service. The schools involved in the grant are Berendo Middle School, the Helen Bernstein Complex, Le Conte Middle...

The LA Unified school board’s sudden decision to hold a closed door session next week grew out of a Sept. 17 email request from Monica Ratliff to Board President Richard Vladovic, in which she expressed her desire to “discuss the current personell (sic) matter.” The reference was to Superintendent John Deasy, whose performance evaluation is...

Getting safely to and from school can be tricky in a rough neighborhood. To make it easier, City Attorney Mike Feuer launched a pilot program earlier this month at four LA Unified elementary schools, aimed at keeping kids safe. The Neighborhood School Safety Program targets schools in areas with high “quality of life” crimes, including...

As part of a plan to increase pressure on LA Unified as it negotiates for a new contract, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) is planning monthly “actions” to take place on campuses around the district. In preparation for the actions, which are to begin in October, UTLA is dubbing Tuesday, Sept. 30 as “Big Red Tuesday,”...

The LA Unified school board has scheduled a last-minute closed-door meeting next week to discuss its top employee, superintendent John Deasy. Sources tell LA School Report that the meeting was called to give the seven school board members a chance to discuss what criteria they would like to include in the superintendent’s upcoming annual performance...

A new study confirms conventional thinking, that an online literacy gap is emerging among students in America, with lower-income students lagging behind their more affluent peers in the ability to navigate the Internet and use it to enhance their studies. According to the New York Times, the study, led by Donald J. Leu at the...

With around 50,000 students participating, the first Los Angeles Summer of Learning is being hailed as a success by officials involved with the program. Modeled after a similar program launched last year in Chicago, Summer of Learning provided access for LA Unified students to 100 learning opportunities, online and in person, at LA parks, libraries,...

While LA Unified is still wrestling with the final kinks in MiSiS, it is already developing MiSiS 2.0. “This time we’re involving users in the conversation early on,” Ron Chandler, the district’s Chief Information Officer, told the school board’s Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Committee yesterday. As for the current system, which tracks student progress and...

As a boy, Kevin Murchie saw the award-winning film “Stand and Deliver,” the true story of Jaime Escalante, the Garfield Senior High math teacher who inspired his Latino students to overcome gang violence and poverty in east Los Angeles. A Caucasian boy growing up in the upper class community of La Cañada Flintridge, Murchie said there...

The LAUSD Curriculum and Instruction committee will meet today at 4:00 p.m. In addition to a variety of items on the agenda and in the supporting committee materials, an update on the MiSiS project will be presented. For the meeting agenda, click here. There are five supporting materials for the meeting: California Emerging Technology fund – click here,...