Michelle King announced a record 75 percent graduation rate at her first State of the District address as superintendent of LA Unified, “a district on the move,” she proclaimed Tuesday.

King noted that the 75 percent rate is based on “preliminary data” as she addressed 1,500 principals, assistant principals and district administrators at the annual kick-off to the school year, held at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

“We are a district on the move,” King said after her speech, when asked what she wants the general public to know about the second-largest school district in the country. “The movement and trajectory is from the earliest youth, pre-K and not just stopping at high school but through college. Right now our preliminary data shows that the class of 2016 is at 75 percent graduation. It Is supposed to be as high as we can get it. It is better than we’ve done in the past. Last year was 72 percent, and we’ve exceeded that.”

The graduation rate jumped nearly 3 percentage points over last year despite a new requirement that students pass a rigorous college-prep curriculum in order to earn a diploma. The slate of classes known as the “A-G curriculum” qualifies students to attend California’s public universities.

Michelle King at her first State of the District address.

She added, “This is exceeding expectations of those who said our students couldn’t do it. Today we say our students can and will thrive to meet the standards to be college-ready.”

The theme of King’s address was “A District on the Move,” and she introduced a promotional video of the same name showing the district’s successes. She also emphasized that “we’re in it together,” and she peppered her speech with more than a dozen names of principals and administrators in the audience that she congratulated for their successes.

Among those she called out included: California’s National Distinguished Principal Marcia S. Reed of 186th Street Elementary School in Gardena; teachers Anthony Yom and Sam Luu and Principal Jose Torres of Lincoln High School who helped every student pass the demanding Calculus Advanced Placement examinations; and Hesby Oaks Leadership Charter Principal Movses Tarakhchyan who required all of his staff to learn CPR and then saved a cafeteria worker when she collapsed this year.

“Together we are turning the tide in a district on the move,” King said. “We are at our best when we are unified and working together as a team.”

All of the school board members except Ref Rodriguez and Richard Vladovic attended the speech, held one week before the Aug. 16 start of school. School board President Steve Zimmer gave a rousing introduction, calling King “not only the best but most qualified leader in public education in the United States.”

Zimmer thanked his fellow board members, school police and principals for their response to the terrorist threat that closed down the schools on Dec. 15. “We hope that never happens again, but if it does, LA became the model on how we all come together and work together and be strong together in the face of danger.”

Marcia Reed, in white sweater, was one of the principals honored by Michelle King.

King noted safety as a top priority. “As I talk to parents, one topic that continuously emerges is school safety in this time when the headlines are dominated by tragedy and violence. Our students, families and employees want to feel safe, and I am committed to ensuring that they do.”

King also announced:

• Preliminary results of last year’s Smarter Balanced Assessments show that some math and English scores have improved by as much as 7 percent.

• Nearly 200 Title III coaches for English learners have been added.

• 1,000 classrooms in bungalows will be replaced this year with new, modern classrooms.

• Linked Learning will expand to 20,000 students.

• 16 new magnet schools will start this year, including firefighter academies at Wilson and Banning high schools and the very first robotics magnet at Mulholland Middle School.

• There have been 20,000 fewer days lost to suspensions over the last three years thanks to the district’s restorative justice program.

• Nearly 90 programs will offer Arabic, Armenian, Mandarin, Korean and French this year, and multilingualism will be required throughout LA Unified.

• The district is working on a plan to allow more students to earn community college credits while they are still in high school.

• A landmark academy for gifted students and gifted students with autism is coming to the district.

• The district has distributed more than 342,000 instructional technology devices and will expand online gradebook pilots to 54 schools this year, with full districtwide implementation planned for the 2017-2018 school year.

• Students will receive more support. A specialized counselor will be assigned this year to high-needs high schools, helping students stay on track to graduate, while college and career coaches support struggling middle schools. Additional resources will be dedicated to help English-language learners, who make up nearly one-third of LA Unified’s enrollment.

King’s speech brought the principals to their feet for a standing ovation at least three times. Many of the administrators arrived on buses provided by the district, and they divided up afterward into groups such as “new principals” and other groups for professional development training.

Some of the biggest applause and whoops from the crowd came when King discussed “decentralization” and allowing “greater decisions to be made by the school community.”

King touted her “listen and learn” tour, the successful relocation of two schools during the Porter Ranch gas leak and the “Promising Practices” forum with charter and traditional educators which she wants to make a biannual event.

She pointed out that the “district is facing a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars and we need to prioritize investments in what gives greater results,” and added, “We are spending more money than we are taking in.” She pointed out that the people in the audience could help by making school more attractive, because the district could save $42 million by raising the attendance rate by 1 percent. She pointed out that around Garfield High are banners on Atlantic Boulevard of successful high school graduates, and that keeps students wanting to come back.

She gave props to Kim Bruno, the teacher who created a play about the LA riots at the Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, Shelby Sims, who transformed Western Avenue Elementary School into a technology hub with an annual technology fair, and Garry Joseph at Millikan Middle School who won a Fulbright Award  to connect students with those in India to collaborate on a science fair.

She also honored longtime activist Scott Folsom who died last week, calling him “the conscience of the district” and saying he would be truly missed.

The Garfield High JROTC color guard and cadets brought out the flags at the opening of the ceremony, the Verdugo Hills High School choir sang, Danielle Rawles from Westchester Enriched Science Magnet High recited the Pledge of Allegiance and Eileen Garrido from Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts sang the National Anthem, receiving a standing ovation.

“It is critical that we continue the momentum of all these efforts through the year,” King said. “We have to keep it moving.

“All students can succeed.”

To be labeled “on track” a student need only be enrolled in the required A-G courses, and if these failing grades do not improve to at least a D by the end of the semester, these roughly 6,400 seniors would not be eligible to graduate on time — which would drop the current projected graduation rate from 68 percent to 48 percent.

Frances Gipson, LA Unified’s chief academic officer, said a number of actions have been taken to get extra help and resources to the students who are failing a course, and the district is still hopeful that last year’s record graduation rate of 77 percent will be surpassed.

“We are seeking to exceed last year’s expectations, that is our goal,” Gipson told LA School Report. 

Due in part to a $15 million credit recovery program that has been aggressively implemented this school year, the projected A-G completion rate has risen steadily, up from 54 percent in January and 63 percent in February to now stand at 68 percent. District officials in February predicted LA Unified may graduate 80 percent of its seniors, which would be an all-time record.

Gipson said the extra help being given to seniors failing an A-G course include having counselors meet with the students and letters sent to the student’s parent or guardian. School counselors “have met with all students in the class of 2016 that are currently on-track but received a fail at the 10-week mark to discuss intervention and supports needed to pass and stay on track,” according to an April 18 memo to Superintendent Michelle King from Gipson and Carol Alexander, director of A-G Intervention and Support.

As far as if the 20 percent failing an A-G course was cause for concern, Cynthia Lim, executive director of LA Unified’s Office of Data and Accountability, said that it was hard to determine what the number meant because “this is new. We’ve never had A-G as a graduation requirement before, so this is all new.”

Gipson added that the 20 percent number “is relatively consistent with past patterns we have seen with students in terms of, as you think about your own child or your friend’s children, there are always those who may be getting a D or an F and we need find out why they may be getting a D or an F. Is it because of attendance? Is it because they need extra tutorial support? Are they not turning in assignments? Do they need extra assignments? I think there are multiple pathways we can explore.”

The credit recovery program was enacted by the school board this fiscal year to help offset a potential graduation crisis, as this year is the first time the A-G courses are required for graduation. The courses, if all are passed with a C or better, would make students eligible for acceptance in California’s public universities, although seniors only need to get a D in order to graduate.

Before the credit recovery program began across the district in the fall, the projected graduation rate was 54 percent, a steep decline from last year’s all-time high of 77 percent.

The credit recovery program involves getting seniors not on track to take extra coursework on weekends, after school and during holiday breaks. Many of the courses are online and only require students to demonstrate basic proficiency in the subject, which has caused some to question the academic rigor of the online courses. The district and Gipson have previously defended the academic value of the courses.

Over spring break in late March, the district enacted the “Spring Plus” program at 15 high schools that provided resources and dedicated staff to get students back on track, according to Gipson and Alexander’s memo. The program has continued on Saturdays since spring break and is scheduled to be completed May 28. Attendance has varied depending on the day, but 313 seniors showed up at the 15 high schools on the first Monday of spring break.

According to the April 4 memo, 21,729 seniors are currently on-track to complete their A-G requirements, but 6,428 — or 30 percent — received an F at the 10-week mark. There are 4,746 seniors off-track by one or two courses, 1,455 off-track by three or four courses and 3,878 off-track by five or more courses.

In June, when facing the stark graduation projections due to the coming A-G requirements, the school board lowered the required grades in A-G courses from a C to a D for the class of 2017. (The class of 2016 could always receive D’s for graduation.) The A-G courses, which were first conceived and passed by the board in 2005, are aimed at getting more LA Unified students into California’s public universities. Despite the lowering of the bar, the district has made significant progress since 2005, according to a March 7 memo by Gipson and Alexander that showed 48 percent of all LA Unified high school students are passing their A-G courses with C’s or better.

“This shows tremendous growth since the class of 2005, when only 18 percent graduated meeting the A-G course requirements with a C or better,” the memo stated.

The report, which highlights how many students are on track to complete their “A through G” courses required for graduation, shows that since the end of the fall semester, every traditional high school in the district not on a 4×4 block schedule has improved its projected completion rate. (Statistics on the handful of schools on the non-traditional 4×4 schedule, which allows students to take more classes, will be more accurately compiled after March 21.)

The school-by-school breakdowns were put together in part so that the district can flood extra resources to the schools that need it most and have helped identify schools that will take part in a special credit recovery session over spring break, according to Carol Alexander, director of the district’s A-G Intervention and Support.

“We are piloting some different programs and looking out right now, as we pilot these, we are really seeking out best practices and learning from the field what’s working and not working,” Alexander said.

Broken down by board district, the report gives each school a color coding of red, yellow or green, with green indicating a completion rate of over 70 percent, yellow indicating a completion rate of 69 to 50 percent, and red indicating a completion rate of less than 50 percent. As of Feb. 29, 63 schools with a traditional schedule were marked green, 42 were yellow and four were red.

All had made improvements since the fall, and some with dramatic results. For example, the Sonia Sotomayor Learning Academies Los Angeles River School jumped from a red 42 percent to 69 percent, and Sun Valley High from 32 percent to 60 percent.

“We are looking at matching if not increasing the graduation rate we experienced last year,” Alexander said.

Click here to see a school-by-school breakdown by board district: BD1, BD2, BD3, BD4, BD5, BD6 and BD7.

During the upcoming spring break, 12 schools that are either in the red or low-yellow category will be organizing a special credit recovery session offered through the adult education department and also paid for through its budget, and not through the $15 million credit recovery program. Other high schools will also be offering special spring break credit recovery sessions through the $15 million program, Alexander said.

“Across the board, all of our high schools are putting their arms around our students and utilizing spring break,” Alexander said.

In the report,  LA Unified’s Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson pointed to the “personalized” approach the district has been taking to A-G completion, meaning each school has an A-G report on each student and has contacted each student off track to offer corrective credit recovery options.

“I want to underscore that the personalization of efforts with our leaders, teachers and counselors is what is improving the opportunities for the class of 2016,” Gipson wrote.

The district’s massive credit recovery program was enacted this school year to help counter-balance a graduation crisis that would have likely occurred without it. This year is the first graduating class that will need to fulfill a lineup of courses called “A through G” that make students eligible for acceptance to admission to California’s public universities if they get a “C” grade or higher.

As a result of the higher standards, the projected graduation rate this October was 49 percent. Around the same time the district began to offer seniors special credit recovery courses — many of them online — that help them make up credits they previously failed through an accelerated program taken during free periods, after school, on weekends and on breaks.

Due to the success of the credit recovery program, the projected graduation rate has jumped officially to 63 percent, with district officials predicting last year’s record-high rate of 74 percent will likely be matched or exceeded.

Despite its success, the credit recovery program is not without its detractors, as some academic scholars and institutions are questioning the rigor and value of the courses. Gipson has defended the value of the courses as academically sound.

Alliance College Ready High School 16 Principal Carmen Vazquez and some of her students.

Melissa Campos says senior year is a breeze for many of her friends and former teammates attending neighborhood high schools in Los Angeles Unified.

Many of them get out for “work study” after a few periods of electives, she said. They are done with math, science and foreign language classes, and there are no AP courses on their schedule. Few have had a single conversation about college applications with anyone at their school.

Not so for Melissa, who is facing her most challenging year yet at Alliance College Ready High School 16, a public charter in the Westlake neighborhood just west of downtown LA. She’s got AP Physics, pre-calculus, a special class in college-readiness skills and weekly meetings with her college counselor to refine essays and applications.

“Going to this school has really given me an identity,” said Melissa, who came to this country from Mexico in fourth grade and now is applying to several University of California schools and selective private colleges. “It’s given me goals and structure, and I have a determination about my future… to make a better life for me and my parents.”

Here’s another thing that going to Alliance has given Melissa and nearly all of the 1,766 seniors attending an Alliance high school: Assurance they are on track to graduate having passed the A through G college preparatory courses with a C grade or better.

This assurance has taken on a heightened importance recently, after LAUSD officials recently acknowledged in an earlier exclusive story that nearly half of their students were not on track to graduate because they have not completed or passed the now-required A-G courses. Credit-recovery courses, many of them online, and an “all hands on deck” command from the new superintendent have boosted that number to nearly 2 in 3 seniors on track, according to LAUSD figures released last week.

With just over three months to go until commencement ceremonies, LAUSD is now scrambling to fix their looming graduation crisis for the more than 12,000 seniors who are deemed “off track.” One fix was to lower the passing bar, so that students could pass their A-G requirements with a D, a bar too low for college admission. The other is with the $15 million credit recovery program, where students take online courses after school and on weekends to earn credits for advanced algebra or chemistry courses they failed or never took.

Alliance—the largest public charter network in Los Angeles with 12,000 students on 27 campuses— projected that more than 90 percent of its 1,766 seniors are on track to graduate this year. This tops the senior on-track rate at even the most selective magnet schools in LAUSD. Every Alliance graduate must pass with a C, and 95 percent of them are accepted to college, according to officials.

Other charter networks provided similar data about their A-G preparation and graduation rates.

PUC Charter Schools has about 400 seniors at five high school campuses, and about 94 percent are expected to graduate with a C or better in all of their A-G requirements. Overall, the network’s high schools have a four-year cohort graduation rate averaging about 91 percent across the five campuses.

Green Dot operates nine charter high schools in Los Angeles and has taught A-G requirements since its founding 16 years ago. Last year, of the 1,713 high school seniors network-wide, all of whom took A-G courses, 89 percent graduated with a D or higher, and 59 percent graduated with a C or above in these courses. Many Green Dot schools are different than other charters in that they “turn around” chronically struggling LAUSD schools and keep all of those schools’ enrolled students.

Alliance College Ready High School 16 student Melissa Campos (Credit: Alliance)

A smaller network, Camino Nuevo, reported that 138 of 140 seniors at two high school campuses are on track to graduate with a C or better in all A-G requirements

The disconnect between the graduation rates of charters and traditional high schools comes at a sensitive and embarrassing time for the district.

The school board issued a symbolic vote last month against a plan by the Broad Foundation to dramatically increase the expansion of charters. The teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, recently approved a 33 percent increase in dues to give them more money to fight “billionaires (who) are trying to cripple unions” by expanding charters. And charter leaders are pushing back, arguing in a letter signed by 21 charter operators that the district is unfairly blocking expansion of even the most successful charters.

Melissa doesn’t pay much attention to the politics behind her school choice. She doesn’t care about the comments she gets from her former soccer teammates from nearby Belmont High School, where her Alliance classes were held until the school moved to a newly built campus this year. According to district data, only 56 percent of seniors at Belmont are on track to graduate.

Melissa knows she easily could have been one of those statistics in a different high school, like the ones in her neighborhood of Crenshaw.

She’s got a strong GPA, but she still struggles to improve her reading, with English being her second language, and math doesn’t come easy to her. She doesn’t test well, and sometimes she lets personal problems distract her from her schoolwork. In middle school, she was considered “one of the smarter students,” but she said she just “went along with the pack” and no one pushed her to do better.

“This school, when you need help, they are always there for you,” she said.

With only 100 seniors, Alliance 16’s staff has the ability to offer that kind of personal support, which is important but not always enough to get a struggling student to—and through—college. Principal Carmen Vazquez said many of her students come to her high school reading four or five years below grade level, so the school keeps a relentless focus on the student’s Lexile scores, a test which measures reading ability.

Mastering college-level material is a formidable challenge for many of her students and others in many LAUSD schools, so she knows her staff can’t ease up on the literacy push even in these waning months of the senior year. Vazquez is also skeptical that an 11th-hour push for course completion—which is what’s happening in many traditional high schools—will give students the skills they need to succeed.

“We have a four-year plan for a reason. You can’t get it together in the senior year because it’s too late at that point,” she said. “Our goal is to support our kids all the way through college.”

So even in Melissa’s physics class, where students are reviewing the concept of momentum, she is getting a mini lesson in literacy and American government. Teacher Maya Bakshi pivots the conversation to the 2016 presidential election, asking the students to describe what this headline means: “Is Ted Cruz losing momentum?” The students scribble down their ideas, and then there is a brief discussion about the Iowa Caucus and the Republican Party’s immigration platform. Then Bakshi flips on a YouTube video of MC Hammer performing “Gaining Momentum” and the class pivots back to science.

The single-minded push to college starts in Alliance middle schools, so the idea of waiting until high school—let alone senior year—to make up for academic gaps is incomprehensible to teachers.

“What I love about working in a school like this is because we’re small we can respond quickly,” said Joan Wicks, a sixth grade humanities teacher at Alliance Skirball Middle School in Watts, a midlife career changer who counts herself as one of Skirball’s veteran teacher after six years teaching there. “Every one of our children deserve a place where they can come and learn.”

Tamajai Dampeer, a Skirball eighth-grader, said he’s come to appreciate the very public attention on literacy and achievement at his school. Students’ Lexile score improvements are posted on hallway bulletin boards, and teachers talk to him about his progress all the time. If students don’t do their homework, they are held responsible, with detentions.

“When I went to Gompers (his neighborhood elementary school), they didn’t really seem to care about our academic efforts,” he said. “When a kid didn’t do their homework, no one paid any attention. Here, I feel like everybody’s watching. I actually have to compete with the other students here.”

Tracy Dell’Angela is managing editor at Education Post and formerly a longtime education journalist at the Chicago Tribune. This article was published in partnership with Education Post.

An LAUSD progress report released this week shows the projected A though G completion rate for the class of 2016 has risen to 63 percent. (Credit: LAUSD)

LA Unified appears to be making significant progress on its projected graduation rate this year through a “very personalized approach,” with a new report stating the district may even surpass last year’s record rate of 74 percent.

A January progress report obtained by LA School Report showed that only 54 percent of seniors were on track to meet their “A though G” course requirements for graduation. That report included all data from the fall semester but did not include any from the district’s $15 million credit recovery program, which began in late fall. But now a new progress report including some data from the credit recovery program shows that 63 percent of seniors are on track to complete their A-G courses.

According to the report released Friday, 17 percent of seniors are missing only one or two courses. With the credit recovery program making progress on getting many of them into the courses they need, “there is optimism,” said LA Unified Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson.

“These two predictive bands (63 percent + 17 percent) could potentially result in exceeding the 2014-15 graduation rates, with higher expectations. We continue to provide additional pathways through our A-G recovery efforts as we continue an ‘all means all’ performance mindset,” the report states.

Recent internal progress reports obtained by LA School Report show only 54 percent of seniors are currently on track to meet their “A through G” course requirements for graduation, but the reports also show the problem is spread throughout the district, as 55 of its 59 traditional high schools with more than 200 students show a projected graduation rate behind last year’s districtwide rate of 74 percent.

LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King recently issued an “all hands on deck” call to flood as many resources and support as possible to schools and students in need. And it appears the help will be needed nearly everywhere, as the progress reports show there is little variation in the projected A-G completion rate between LA Unified’s six local districts. The South District has a projected 52 percent A-G completion rate, which is the lowest, while the West has the highest at 56 percent.

Filtering out small schools, continuation schools that focus on struggling students and special education schools, LA School Report identified 59 high schools with a senior enrollment over 200 students. Among those schools, only five of them are ahead of last year’s graduation rate of 74 percent.

Some schools are significantly behind. Dr Maya Angelou Community High School and Roosevelt High are the district’s two lowest performing schools for A-G completion, both with 37 percent of seniors on track to graduate. Fremont High (39 percent), Dorsey High (41 percent), Verdugo Hills High (43 percent) and Cangoa Park High (44 percent) are also near the bottom. (See above graphic for the bottom 15 schools for A-G completion.)

The top performing schools for A-G completion are Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (89 percent), King-Drew Senior High Medicine and Science Magnet (88 percent), Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies (82 percent), Francisco Bravo Senior High Medical Magnet (81 percent) and Orthopaedic Hospital Senior High Medical Magnet (79 percent).

The projected A-G numbers do not include the district’s $15 million credit recovery program, which is being implemented on a wide scale. While district leaders have reported a high level of participation, is still unknown to what level students are passing the courses.

Local District South Superintendent Christopher Downing reported that nearly every student in his district short of A-G credits has been enrolled in the program, which is ongoing.

“We feel it is going very well,” Downing said. “Our credit recovery efforts are ongoing and they are across the district on a weekly basis. We’re looking at student progress in our courses and identifying students who are struggling and offering additional support to our schools.”

Despite the stark numbers of the current projections, Downing stressed that he believed the credit recovery program was going to make a significant impact on graduation numbers.

“Just to be clear, I think [the graduation rate] is going to shake out well across our district,” Downing said. “Superintendent King has emphasized that the graduation of our students is a focus for the district. I’m sure you are aware her motto is, ‘All hands on deck.'”

The number is slightly up from the previous year’s 80.2 percent, but it still leaves California 31st among states and Washington D.C. in high school graduation rate.

The improvement of the state’s graduation rate is on par with LA Unified, which has seen consistent growth the last few years.

Gaps still remain when it comes to white and Asian students compared with other ethnic groups. White students graduated at a rate of 87.7 percent and Asian students had a 90.0 percent rate, compared with 75.7 percent for Hispanics and 78.1 percent for blacks, although the numbers were up for all groups.

Compared with other big states, California was ahead of New York (76.8 percent) in overall graduation rates, but behind Texas (88 percent) and Illinois (83.2 percent).

“The hard work of America’s educators, families, communities and students is paying off. This is a vital step toward readiness for success in college and careers for every student in this country,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement. “While these gains are promising, we know that we have a long way to go in improving educational opportunities for every student –- no matter their zip code — for the sake of our young people and our nation’s economic strength.”

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The Los Angeles Unified School District faces legal claims from at least 189 students and parents. Nearly half of them, 92, have filed lawsuits individually or in groups. USA Today

Study: High School Grad Rate Highest Since ’76
California, the nation’s largest public school system by enrollment, led the nation in new graduates in 2010, turning out almost 405,000. It also produced the most dropouts: almost 93,000. AP

LA Teachers Union Endorses Multiple Candidates for the Same Seats
In an unusual move, the United Teachers Los Angeles on Wednesday endorsed eight candidates who will face off for two seats on the L.A. Unified school board. KPCC

15 Candidates Means a Crowded Ballot for LAUSD Board Election
Fifteen candidates, including two incumbents, met Wednesday’s filing deadline to run for three seats on the Los Angeles Unified board in the March 5 primary. LA Daily News

L.A. Unified Aims to Settle Miramonte Lawsuits by End of January
Lawyers for the Los Angeles Unified School District announced Thursday that by the end of January the district intends to settle 189 legal claims filed in connection with lewd-conduct charges against a former teacher at Miramonte Elementary School. LA Times
See also: Huff Po

Watch: LAUSD Eyes Lower Graduation Standards to Curb Dropouts
The nation’s second-largest school district may be forced to backtrack on its plan to raise its academic standards. CBS

LAUSD Schools Face Challenge of Making Arts Part of the Core Curriculum
Arts advocates and educators are excited that the Los Angeles Unified School District Board voted unanimously in October to make arts a “core subject.” But making that desire a reality is complicated. KPCC

Pasadena Unified Suspends Top Construction Official in Billing Investigation
Pasadena Unified’s school board suspended its top school construction official Wednesday as it looks into allegations of overbilling by building contractors. KPCC

Survey Finds High Superintendent Turnover in Large California Districts
During a period of eroding financial stability, many of the state’s largest districts also faced leadership instability. EdSource

Retired LAUSD Chief Seeks Dismissal of Sexual-Harassment Lawsuit
Lawyers for retired LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines want a judge to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the educator made unwanted sexual advances to a mid-level employee, saying the male plaintiff failed to file an appropriate claim with the district before going to court. LA Daily News

An L.A. Unified Road Map
A six-year study provides a wealth of information on how to recruit, assign, pay and, when necessary, lay off teachers in ways that help students most. LA Times Editorial

LAUSD ‘Jails’ Fill With Teachers as Misconduct Complaints Rise
They call it “teacher jail” – the administrative offices where nearly 300 Los Angeles Unified educators accused of misconduct spend months on end reading, blogging or texting. LA Daily News

Charter Proponents Focus On Shutting Down Failing Schools
On Wednesday morning, NACSA head Greg Richmond will join New Jersey Schools Commissioner Chris Cerf and California charter schools advocate Jed Wallace at Washington D.C.’s National Press Club to announce a new campaign, “One Million Lives,” that aims to crack the whip on the duds. Huff Po

School Funding Changes Debated at Educators Meeting
Educators at a private meeting Tuesday sounded off on an expected proposal to increase state financial support to disadvantaged school districts. KPCC

High School Grad Rates Tell a Tale
Let’s assume, for sake of argument or column-writing, that the fundamental task of any public school system is to maximize the number of students who graduate from high school and are ready to either enter the workforce or further their educations. Sac Bee