The California Assembly Appropriations Committee yesterday approved a bill that eliminates a graduation requirement that has prevented as many as 5,000 high school seniors from graduating through no fault of their own. SB 725 will eliminate the requirement that class of 2015 seniors pass the California High School Exit Exam, known as the CAHSEE. The...

By Corey Turner The defendants may be one southern California school district and its top officials, but an unprecedented, class action lawsuit could have a big impact on schools across the country. Today in Los Angeles, a U.S. District Court judge will preside over the first hearing in the suit against the Compton Unified School...

On the first day of school yesterday as he visited a school in his district, LA Unified board president Steve Zimmer encountered an unexpected issue: Parents at Vine Street Elementary in Hollywood were complaining about the tents, mobile homes and the homeless people living on the street behind the school. “I know, I saw that while coming into...

The first day of school went off yesterday without a hitch for LA Unified’s MiSiS system, a huge improvement over last year’s rocky start that caused so much disruption across the district. The My Integrated Student Information System allowed 23,110 users to log into the system and handled the schedules of 439,756 students, according to...

State politicians and educators are scrambling to cope with the fallout after the abrupt cancelation of an exam by the California Department of Education left over 5,000 high school students across the state — 492 of them in LA Unified –unable to graduate, despite having completed all other necessary course work. The California High School...

By Eric Westervelt Ah, back-to-school season in America: That means it’s time for the annoyingly aggressive marketing of clothes, and for the annual warnings of a national teacher shortage. But this year the cyclical problem is more real and less of a media creation. There are serious shortages of teachers in California, Oklahoma, Kentucky and places in between....

It was already the end of the first day for most LA Unified schools today, but for Superintendent Ramon Cortines, the day was far from over. At 2:30 p.m., he stopped in and thanked the MiSiS computer team for avoiding the computer crisis that occurred at the opening of school last year. “The biggest reason that it...

In response to a critical story by the Associated Press that concluded the Clean Energy Jobs Act (Proposition 39) has failed to meet its stated goals, two of the campaign’s co-chairs said the program needs more time to benefit schools. “It’s irresponsible and more than a little misleading to prejudge a long-term, multi-year program this...

* UPDATED One day before LA Unified’s traditional schools opened, students at ICEF Vista Elementary Academy, a charter in Del Rey, began their classes, greeted yesterday by teachers and administrators — and about a dozen protesters who told them they were not wanted and should go somewhere else. It was also the first day ICEF had moved...

LAUSD School Board president Steve Zimmer discussed the superintendent race on KNX News Radio this morning and mentioned Chief Deputy Superintendent Michelle King as a potential “top candidate” to replace Ramon Cortines. While on his way to Vine Street Elementary School to kick-off the school year, Zimmer was was asked in the interview about potential...