By Eduardo Porter The wounds of segregation were still raw in the 1970s. With only rare exceptions, African-American children had nowhere near the same educational opportunities as whites. The civil rights movement, school desegregation and the War on Poverty helped bring a measure of equity to the playing field. Today, despite some setbacks along the...

Plan to boost charters splits L.A. Unified board Dividing lines quickly emerged over an ambitious plan to double the number of charter campuses across the city. Los Angeles Times Achievement gap points to ineffectiveness of decades of reforms Only 28 percent of African-Americans and 32 percent of Latinos who took the test in California met...

In a memo to all district employees yesterday, LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines re-emphasized support for transgender youth and employees. With new attention drawn to transgender issues spurred by the public transitioning of Bruce to Caitlynn Jenner and the Emmy-winning TV show, “Transparent,” Cortines not only offered a definition of common terms dealing with transgendered issues, but...

It may seem arbitrary, but there are usually half a dozen days off in the LAUSD school calendar that are called “Unassigned Days.” They are not for an official state or federal holiday, but somehow they usually coincide with a religious holiday. So, the first Unassigned Day of the year fell on Sept. 14 when teachers...

Steve Zimmer, president of the LA Unified school board, said today that plans by Eli Broad and other philanthropists to expand the number of charter schools in the district represents “a strategy to bring down LAUSD that leaves 250,000 kids vulnerable to damage.” A draft report of the plan appears show how the organizations involved...

By Sandy Banks When it comes to handling sexual misconduct by teachers, the Los Angeles Unified School District loses even when it wins. The district was let off the hook by jurors in a lawsuit filed by a middle school girl who’d been coaxed into sex, on and off campus, by her math teacher. The...

A record seven LA Unified educators  were among 16 who have been named Los Angeles County Teachers of the Year. They are now in the running for the California Teacher of the Year award. The state winner moves up to the national competition, which will be held next spring. “I am so proud of our...

About 50 high school students now spend one class a day learning state-of-the-art technology in robotics, drones, 3D printing, bitcoin, artificial intelligence and bio tech, along with cutting-edge practices in venture capitalism, crowd-source funding and other business practices. It’s all part of a first-year pilot program at Nava College Preparatory Academy in South Central that...

Jan Price heard that computers were coming to her kindergarten classroom at Galt Elementary School in Lake Balboa in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. She was scared. “It’s time for me to retire,” Price remembered saying. “I can’t handle this. I’m not technical at all.” That was a year ago. Now, the 71-year-old...

By Jill Barshay For those of us who worry that Google might be making us stupid, and that, perhaps, technology and education don’t mix well, here’s a new study to confirm that anxiety. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) looked at computer use among 15-year-olds across 31 nations and regions, and found that students who...