At a recent town hall held by Great Public Schools Now, Myrna Castrejón, the leader of the nonprofit seeking to expand excellent schools in Los Angeles, waded into the audience of parents, community members and LA Unified officials to ask what kind of schools they wanted for their kids. One parent whose son has a...

Groups that support charter schools and education reform spent millions in the 2016 election cycle, and it seems it paid off as several candidates they backed appear poised to be heading to Sacramento in December. Education reform independent expenditure committees, like EdVoice and the California Charter Schools Association, spent 10 times more in the general...

*UPDATED Parents and supporters of charter school students on Friday delivered a lawsuit to the Huntington Park City Council and Mayor Graciela Ortiz in response to the council’s recent enactment of a one-year ban on new charter schools in the city’s limits. The lawsuit was filed Thursday by the California Charter Schools Association in Los Angeles County Superior...

By Kathleen O’Connor When Jumoke Hinton-Hodge was elected to the board of the Oakland Unified School District eight years ago, the district was emerging from state receivership after a $100 million bailout, the largest in California’s history. At the same time, enrollment in city schools was declining, the Great Recession was in full effect, and...

Data provided by the California Charter Schools Association. Note: Orange is a charter school; purple is a traditional school. The California Charter Schools Association on Tuesday released its first ranking of every public charter and traditional school in the state. Each school is ranked from 1 to 10 as a statewide rank and a “similar...

In an effort to counter the misconception that charter schools don’t accept special needs students, the California Charter Schools Association released a report Thursday highlighting how 10 charter schools in the state serve students with disabilities. The qualitative study included best practices based on interviews with charter school leaders and staff and focused on how...

It was supposed to be a simple primer on the Charter School Petition Authorization Policy at a committee meeting, but it ended up bringing up new issues and old problems. Scott Schmerelson expressed consternation that his fellow board members often go against the recommendations of the Charter Schools Division staff as well as the superintendent...

Mary Najera didn’t even know what a charter school was when she applied to the first Green Dot Public School, but within two years it had transformed her son who was on the brink of falling into a life of gangs and drugs. Najera told her family’s story Tuesday evening at a town hall event...

Imagine a school that has 97 percent of its students receiving free or reduced-price lunch. It is 98 percent Latino. Sixty-two percent are English-language learners. Despite these challenges, the school is thriving. On the Smarter Balanced Assessment, 54 percent and 50 percent of its students met or exceeded performance standards in English language arts and...

*UPDATED LA Unified is struggling to define its role in overseeing charter schools as the numbers of academically strong charters continue to grow across the nation’s second-largest school district. LA has the most independent public charter schools overseen by a single district and usually approves most petitions. But this week a record number of charters,...