Former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who once attempted to take over LA Unified and later founded a public school network, criticized the state’s new accountability system Wednesday at a panel discussion with education experts. The event, “A for Accountability: A Report Card on California’s New Public-School Assessments,” was sponsored by CALmatters, Southern California News Group...

By Sonya Heisters There is a growing, and arguably overwhelming, array of ways to measure school performance. Many researchers and policymakers say that we’ve been measuring the wrong things and, in some cases, I think that those naysayers are on to something. Then, in Thursday’s California State Board of Education meeting, the board unanimously adopted a new accountability system that, in...

Despite calls for creating an overall rating, the California State Board of Education on Thursday approved a new evaluation system for schools that will display outcomes on a number of measures moving away from a system that relies on standardized test scores. More than 100 speakers signed up to address the 11-member board during the...

*UPDATED A contingent of LA parents, armed with a petition of about 420 signatures, will ask the state Board of Education this week to adopt a summative rating to evaluate schools in addition to a number of proposed measures that move beyond ranking schools solely based on test scores. The Board of Education is expected...

By Iris Maria Chávez Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes, and no state has taken that message more to heart than California. Alone among the 50 states, California stopped reporting accountability ratings for public schools in 2013 and was the first state in the nation to hit pause on accountability. Now, with responsibility for...

By Richard Whitmire Recent big-dollar donations from pro-charter philanthropists leave traditional educators sputtering: Why don’t they just donate their money to us? Good question, and one that was raised in Los Angeles recently in light of a possible huge gift from philanthropist Eli Broad and others that appears headed mostly to charter schools. LAUSD board...