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Teacher spotlight: Telfair Elementary’s Rita Ontiveros on being a ‘positive rock’ for low-income and homeless students, the need for more nurses and counselors, and what’s really happening in a kindergarten classroom
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Antonucci: What does it take to resign from a California teachers union?
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SEL in the House: Democrats approve millions in landmark federal funding for social-emotional learning in bill that now faces test in Senate
The Morning Read
Your Daily Roundup of LAUSD news from across the web | 07.17.19
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California charter school regulations pass Senate Education Committee after marathon session and intervention by Gov. Newsom
After a seven-hour hearing and in a room inundated with advocates in color-coordinated T-shirts, the California Senate Education Committee narrowly passed two bills this week that will more strictly regulate charters, including giving local districts greater leeway to deny charter applications. The sharply contested bills split the committee 4-3, with state Sen. Steve Glazer, a...
By Noble Ingram | July 12, 2019
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In new legal complaint, parents say LAUSD is failing to ensure high-needs students are getting the funding they deserve
L.A. Unified and its county overseers have failed to ensure that high-needs students are receiving the more than $1 billion annually they are due in state funding, a new legal complaint claims. So the complaint, filed Thursday on behalf of two L.A. Unified parents, is asking the state to force the district to be more transparent in...
By Taylor Swaak | July 12, 2019
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Biden-Harris exchange makes busing a surprise focus of 2020 campaign. How will it affect the debate over integration?
So are the Democrats going to bus kids across town to integrate schools, or what? That’s the question that has captivated the political media the last two weeks. While the Trump administration has careened from one news cycle to the next, absorbing damaging headlines on everything from its treatment of detained migrants to the president’s...
By Kevin Mahnken | July 10, 2019
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Commentary: When success is not enough — charter schools delivering better outcomes for low-income students still target of progressive ire
“Video games are bad for you; they’re distracting,” says one kid. “They’re too violent,” says another. It’s jarring to hear middle-schoolers talk down on-screen entertainment, but the boys in this Bay Area classroom are doing their level best — and in Spanish, no less. To be sure, they’re practicing taking positions and marshaling evidence as part...
By Conor Williams | July 10, 2019
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Silicon Valley-funded startup AltSchool ends management of its private lab schools but invests in growing national network of partner schools
The education startup AltSchool, founded in 2013 by two Silicon Valley alumni, has announced that it’s breaking from the chain of four private microschools it operates in the Bay Area and New York City. The schools are known for their tiny class sizes and emphasis on “student-centered learning,” which tailors curriculum to each individual student’s...
By Noble Ingram | July 9, 2019
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Antonucci: NEA rejects many California delegation proposals for its national agenda
Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. The National Education Association held its annual Representative Assembly in Houston last week. Six thousand delegates, representing teachers and education support workers in every state, met to debate and vote on the national union’s budget and agenda for the 2019-20 school year. The delegation from the California...
By Mike Antonucci | July 9, 2019
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Lawmakers are trying to end a weird quirk of California’s charter school sector. Here’s why the state is so unusual
California legislators are considering a change to education law that would address a peculiar and controversial feature of the state’s charter school sector. The proposed fix is dredging up long-standing issues around how the state permits and oversees schools of choice. At present, California school districts have the option to authorize charter schools that don’t...
By Kevin Mahnken | July 8, 2019
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Controversial bill that would make local districts sole authorizers of charter schools moves to a public hearing in the California Senate
A controversial charter school regulation moving through the California legislature will take its next step Wednesday when the state Senate Education Committee holds a public hearing that’s expected to draw crowds of supporters and opponents of the state’s large charter school sector. Assembly Bill 1505 would grant local districts sole authority to approve or deny...
By Noble Ingram | July 8, 2019
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Commentary: With SB 614, California is in danger of going backward on literacy and teacher qualifications
Children do not just figure out how to read on their own because the human brain is not wired to read. We know that children can learn how to talk naturally by being talked to, by being surrounded by speech. The same is not true of reading. Scientific research has repeatedly shown that the reading...
By Ruth Green | July 2, 2019
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LAUSD Superintendent Beutner relieved as Supreme Court blocks census question on citizenship, says district faced potential loss of $20 million
Education advocates were hopeful but still concerned after the Supreme Court ruled the Trump Administration — for now — cannot add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. “The Supreme Court’s decision to not include the citizenship question in the 2020 census is the right thing for public education,” L.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a...
By Carolyn Phenicie | June 28, 2019
