In case you were otherwise occupied yesterday when Gov. Jerry Brown was delivering his State of the State address, here’s what he had to say about education. With respect to education, the strong economic recovery and the passage of Proposition 30 has allowed us to increase spending on public schools and community colleges from a...

Governor Jerry Brown today signed Senate Bill 725 into law, allowing close to 5,000 high school seniors across the state to graduate without passing a now-cancelled high school exit exam. The governor signed the bill without comment, his office said. Brown’s signature brings to a close a problem that began in May, when the California Department of...

State politicians and educators are scrambling to cope with the fallout after the abrupt cancelation of an exam by the California Department of Education left over 5,000 high school students across the state — 492 of them in LA Unified –unable to graduate, despite having completed all other necessary course work. The California High School...

Seven education bills are currently awaiting the signature or veto of Gov. Jerry Brown – and before too many more stack up, we thought a review was in order. For more check out Edsource’s EdTracker, a tool that follows the ins and outs of education legislation in Sacramento. “Willful defiance” bill AB 420 would limit the...

While editorial boards at most of California’s major newspapers all reacted favorably to Judge Rolf Treu’s ruling in Vergara vs. California, and a USC poll showed that a strong majority of California voters oppose the state’s tenure and layoff policies for public school teachers that the court ruling struck down, Gov. Jerry Brown nonetheless appealed...

In his State of the State address today, Gov. Jerry Brown spent a few minutes talking about public education in California. Here’s what he had to say: “Last year, I spoke of the principle of subsidiarity, a rather clunky word that nevertheless points to a profoundly important principle, namely that in our federal system there...

A new proposed statewide ballot initiative that would allow school districts to fire employees accused of abusing children or selling drugs to children has been submitted for certification and could go before voters a year from now. LA School Report has learned that the initiative, called “Stop Child Molesters, Sexual Abusers, and Drug Dealers from...

One parent wanted more counselors. Another wanted more security personnel. A student came forward with a friend and said, “You’re spending all that money on iPads. We’d prefer you spend it on nurses and librarians and can you please fix the bathrooms.” This was Tuesday night, in the auditorium of Burroughs Middle School in Hancock...

Governor Jerry Brown’s veto of AB 375, a bill that would have amended California’s teacher dismissal process, doesn’t mean the effort is dead. “The governor still wants to do something,” LA Unified’s chief lobbyist, Edgar Zazueta, told LA School Report. “I do see there will be one, if not several, efforts to do this next year. Hopefully we’re...

Under mounting pressure, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a controversial bill originally meant to make it easier to dismiss teachers for abusive or inappropriate behavior. In a veto memo, Brown said he “share[s] the authors’ desire to streamline the teacher discipline process, but this bill is an imperfect solution.”