By Francisco C. Rodriguez and Thomas F. Rosenbaum  We oversee two very different institutions. The Los Angeles Community College District is a network of community colleges that serves 250,000 students of all ages. The California Institute of Technology is a private university in Pasadena, with a few thousand undergraduates and graduate students dedicated to exploring...

By James L. Woodworth The ultimate goal for an education system is to enable individuals to become happy, engaged, productive members of society. Unfortunately, at this time, measuring happiness, productivity, and civil contribution of individuals is difficult. Tracing those measurements back to the schools attended by an individual is practically impossible. Thus, researchers and other...

These two responses are to a commentary posted Wednesday by David Tokofsky: Response by Evelyn Aleman Macias “Is it realistic to expect that the kids who would have been dropouts in years past will all be getting Cs or better in college preparatory courses?” is the line that stood out for me when I read...

By Jane Mayer and Jesse Soza, Ed.D. Los Angeles Unified School District alone employs 27,747 teachers, which doesn’t account for the thousands more employed by charters (typically younger and more likely to burn out) or private school teachers. Based on statistics, more than 11,000 of these highly passionate and well-educated members of our society will...

By Jane Mayer and Jesse Soza, Ed.D. Teacher turnover in the United States is a silent epidemic — one that is eroding the core of our schools. Every year, over 1 million teachers enter and exit our classrooms, and in Los Angeles alone, 40-50% will leave the profession entirely within five years. This creates unstable...

By Jane Mayer and Jesse Soza, Ed.D. Two previous articles in this series, here and here, have detailed the enormity and the complexity of the teacher turnover problem in our country: more than 1 million teachers entering and exiting the classroom every year, and somewhere between 40 percent to 50 percent permanently exiting within five. This lack...

By Jennifer Pullen Tens of thousands of people, including Los Angeles Unified School District Board President Steve Zimmer, participated in a “walk-in” last week to show support for traditional public schools at a time when they are facing increasing pressure from — and loss of students to — charter and private operators. Staged in partnership with local and national...

By Araceli Morfín and Raúl Ruíz Tomorrow, the LAUSD school board will ratify the 2015-16 budget, along with the district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), increasing an investment in restorative justice to $7.2 million from $4.2 million. This increase is timely, as the work of restorative justice has been immensely impactful in our LAUSD schools at...

An open letter from four members of the Community Coalition Youth Leaders to the LA Unified school board, which is considering a resolution tomorrow from Mónica García and Steve Zimmer to enhance support for improving the district’s college-ready graduation rate.  Dear Board Members: On behalf of the thousands of students in South Los Angeles, we...