Mónica García started this month’s school board meeting day with an 8 a.m. visit to one of her schools. At 9 she joined the board’s closed session meeting, eating her lunch while it extended right up to the public afternoon meeting. Between votes, she could be found talking to concerned parents in the hallway outside...

Last October, in perhaps the final triumphant moment of his administration, President Obama announced that America’s soaring high school graduation rate had risen, again, to an all-time high of 83 percent. Before he took office, the percentage of students earning diplomas languished for decades in the low to mid-70s; now the news was made still...

Philip Skarin walked a mile and a half to his little school in the Cahuenga Pass in 1930 from Mulholland Drive when it was just a dirt road. There were 16 students in his class at the school that was called Hollywood Park Elementary and opened in 1917. “I came to school barefoot because we...

The girl had already burst into tears when the bold, yellow letters on the man’s jacket came into focus: “Police.” Rómulo Avelica-González had just dropped off his 12-year-old daughter, Yuleni, at a Los Angeles charter school — as he did every morning — and was heading next to the school of his 13-year-old daughter, Fatima....

By Stephanie Kozofsky On a recent field trip, Paola told me that she has not seen her parents in four years. A senior, Paola has a 3.4 GPA, is on the flag football team and the varsity soccer team, and is taking a college course after school. Her love for this school, her education, and...

By Phylis Hoffman I was glad when I received tenure in LAUSD. I was also surprised. As a new teacher in LAUSD, I had no idea I was under evaluation for tenure until that moment. Suddenly, the code on my paycheck changed, notifying me I’d been granted the permanent status known as tenure. I’d been...

A united Supreme Court Wednesday set a new, more rigorous standard for special education services in the United States. The unanimous decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District will require school districts to offer individualized education programs “reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.” An attorney for the...

This morning, The 74 CEO Romy Drucker will be moderating a panel at the 24th annual California Charter School Conference in Sacramento about how the mainstream press covers, and occasionally distorts, America’s charter schools sector. You can stream the event live here, beginning at 10:45 a.m.: Ahead of the conversation, three of today’s panelists have published a special...

LA Unified is retaining a record-high 98 percent of its new teachers, according to a report presented Tuesday. But as administrative positions are cut, some are concerned that the district’s support staff for those new teachers will be spread too thin. “You are doing an amazing job with what you have,” school board member Richard Vladovic...

The final votes in the March 7 primary election have been tallied and the results show about 21 percent of the city’s eligible voters cast ballots, LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said Tuesday. Turnout countywide was 17 percent. Only one of the three seats up for election on the LA Unified school board was...