Despite recent media reports that the arts are doing poorly at LA Unified schools, the director of the district’s arts programs, Rory Pullens, said quite to the contrary, things are better than they have been in a long time; it’s just that nobody knows it. “We are really encouraged and really excited about what’s been...

After years of rising graduation rates, LA Unified is facing a stunning reversal this year, with recent estimates showing that no more than 49 percent of seniors are on pace to receive a diploma in 2016. But there may be a chance to avoid the sudden drop. With graduation rates growing steadily over the last four...

The state Board of Education today approved a settlement in a lawsuit brought on behalf of students who lost valuable learning time because they were placed in classes that lacked any instructional value. Under the agreement reached in Cruz v. State of California, the state will provide immediate assistance to six high schools, including three...

By Lillian Mongeau What if you were told that your child didn’t qualify for a spot in second grade because he didn’t have freckles? Ridiculous, right? But there’s a law on the books in California that is exactly this arbitrary. Aspen Erickson, 5, is a kindergartener at Lakewood Elementary School in Sunnyvale, California, one of...

The Los Angeles Times today listed former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as having a “medium chance” of becoming a finalist for the job of next superintendent of LA Unified. As the district’s search moves into a phase for identifying potential finalists, the story features a list of 43 possible candidates, based on what it called “interviews...

An LA Unified anti-bullying campaign for at-risk youth that includes an innovative arts program culminated today in an emotional speech by a father, whose 11-year-old son killed himself after being bullied. Students, teachers, even police officers had tears in their eyes at Bret Hart Preparatory Middle School. For some of the officers, it got personal....

At a time of high employment demand for computer experts, fewer than half of LA Unified’s 98 traditional high schools offer computer science classes. “We could have students go through LAUSD without any access to computer science at all,” Suyen Moncada-Machado, a district instructional specialist told a district board committee yesterday as part of a...

By Eduardo Porter Here’s the good news: American schools may not be as bad as we have been led to believe. Ah, but here’s the bad news: The rest of American society is failing its disadvantaged citizens even more than we realize. The question is, Should educators be responsible for fixing this? The perennial debate about...

LA Unified 2nd graders will be taking a California comprehensive science test when they reach 5th grade in 2019, and district science coordinators are already gearing up for it, according to a presentation before the school boad’s Curriculum, Instruction and Educational Equity Committee. But it’s a huge undertaking. District officials leading the effort told the committee that...

In its latest chess move opposing a massive charter school expansion plan spearheaded by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the LA teachers union, UTLA, is planning citywide picketing at schools across LA Unified next Tuesday. The picketing would be the latest in a series of actions by the union since the plan was announced...