The Social Justice Humanitas Academy in the San Fernando Valley has been honored as one of seven winners of the 2015 National Community Schools Award for Excellence as a result of the school’s huge spike in graduation rates. The award, which is granted by the The Coalition for Community Schools, highlights schools that successfully partner with community organizations to...

Parents of students at 20th Street Elementary in Central LA have unanimously approved a district proposal to turn around the low-performing school, starting next year. As a result, the local parent union is dropping plans for a school-wide take over under the state Parent Trigger law. The deal with LA Unified ensures that all of...

By Molly Knefel Last week, President Obama issued an executive order to regulate the use of military equipment within local police departments, as part of an ongoing effort to address police violence in communities of color. Images of officers rolling through the streets of Ferguson – and, more recently, Baltimore – in armored tanks pushed the issue...

Despite a state budget flush with extra billions for education, Gov. Jerry Brown is receiving criticism from some early education advocates for a “strikingly minimal” approach to early education funding. In response to the growing body of evidence of the importance of preschool, a coalition of academics, lawmakers, community leaders and business leaders has created...

By Nita Lelyveld The STEM Academy of Hollywood is perched above eight lanes of traffic on the 101 Freeway. Its classroom windows offer the high school engineers a bird’s-eye view of some of Los Angeles’ most enduring woes. Too many cars. Too much cement. A freeway system that slices through neighborhoods, leaving them uninviting to...

With the third and final phase of LA Unified’s Breakfast in the Classroom rollout ending today, district officials are now assessing how to minimize the amount of wasted and uneaten food left behind. Already, new procedures are in the works for the start of the new school year in August, said Laura Benavidez, the program’s...

By Rob Lapsley Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in California and will continue growing. Half of all children under 18 in California are Latino. The demographic change impacts just about every aspect of our society, none more critically than our economy. With this young and growing population, California has a consumer market and...

There are more children living in poverty today than there were two decades ago. Charter schools are ubiquitous, popping up in more neighborhoods all over the country. And the achievement gap between white students and nearly everyone else is shrinking. Those are a few of the key findings in The Condition of Education 2015, a...

Last month, leaders from Students Matter held a conference call to rail against several bills in the California legislature that the group deemed “anti-Vergara.” Today the group is claiming a partial victory over Assembly Bill 753 after the Assembly Appropriations Committee voted to hold it in committee, essentially killing it for the current session. The bill would...