By Eilene Zimmerman Andrea and I sat cramped around a little two-top table at a Starbucks near her apartment, materials from her U.S. government class spread out before us. The handouts were photocopied news articles about teenagers pursuing The American Dream, the topic of an essay Andrea was writing. There was the Somali “Lost Boy”...

The LA Unified school board is scheduled to meet today at 2:30 p.m. The meeting will primarily be dedicated to discussing the budget and LCAP spending, and many guest speakers are expected. Board member Monica Ratliff will also introduce a resolution that would extend the term limits of the board president from two years to...

With the national mood trending toward schools solving more and more of their students’ social problems, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute takes a look at the issues that schools alone cannot solve but depress student performance. What kind of services public school districts should provide and the problems they should solve seems...

By Sam Stein & Jason Cherkis The aftermath of school shootings is now all too familiar. The shock of the breaking news, the scenes of school evacuations, the ensuing political debate and the inevitable inaction. And for Ed Burke, the wave of new customers. As CEO of the Massachusetts-based company Bullet Blocker, Burke sells one...

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines today unveiled a plan to phase out the School Readiness Language Development Program (SRLDP), a specialized program serving 10,000 low-income four-year olds, and expand transitional kindergarten. Cortines’ strategy represents a complete overhaul of district services by 2016-17 for thousands of the early education students who often begin school at a...

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...