LA School Report

Teachers and principals across the nation are breathing a bit easier as a second grueling year winds down. Yet, the carefree summer days on the horizon may simply postpone the reckoning that educators will face next fall: How to ensure COVID-era students bounce back next year, recovering lost learning and narrowing gaping disparities in achievement....

With an unprecedented rise in the number of youth identifying as LGBTQ — and equally unprecedented efforts to curtail their rights — a leading national advocacy group is calling on the U.S. Department of Education to add the sexual orientation and gender identity of students and teachers to the data collected in the National Assessment...

Recognizing a growing movement for parent rights in education, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Tuesday announced the creation of a new “Parents and Families Engagement Council.” The council will include representatives from 14 organizations that advocate for giving parents a voice in their children’s education — including families involved in charters, homeschooling and private schools....

In the last three weeks, the United States has witnessed babies starving because of a nationwide shortage of infant formula and young students murdered in their elementary school. If you believe these atrocities will spark a comprehensive moral or policy response from our elected federal leaders, you are mistaken. Even if Congress acts, a neutered...

Miah Cerrillo was one of the first children Dr. Roy Guerrero saw when he entered the emergency room at Uvalde Memorial Hospital on May 24. A pediatrician, he’s known the fourth grader since she was a baby and underwent the liver surgeries that saved her life. Both testified Wednesday before a House Oversight Committee addressing...

A year ago, school districts wrote plans for how they were going to use their share of the $122 billion in American Rescue Plan money. Fast forward to today, and information is starting to emerge about how schools are actually spending their windfalls. Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools in Massachusetts has already spent all of its nearly $400,000...

Learning loss during the pandemic may have exceeded the damage inflicted on New Orleans students by Hurricane Katrina, according to a recently released study of standardized test scores. Setbacks in math achievement exceeded those for reading, and achievement gaps between comparatively rich and poor schools expanded dramatically. As the United States approaches the end of...

High school grade point averages have been on an uphill climb since 2016. But that doesn’t mean students are better prepared for college-level work. Their scores on the ACT, a college entrance exam taken annually by 1.7 million students, haven’t budged, according to a report released earlier this month. Between 2016 and 2021, the average GPA for...

California Superintendent Tony Thurmond issued a challenge to the state’s school districts last week to ensure third graders become strong readers by 2026. “We’re asking you to take a pledge today,” he said during the May 20 Zoom session, providing a link for participants to sign. Other elements of Thurmond’s agenda include library cards for 100,000 children,...

When I was a school superintendent in New York City, I would often run into my students outside of class. One particular eighth grader had a daily ritual of buying food from the local corner store following a long day of lessons and after-school sports. Looking at his crumbled bag of hot-flavored chips, fruit snacks...