Thousands of people marched through the streets of San Fernando and Pacoima on Saturday, calling on their leaders at LA Unified and Sacramento to support the charter school movement. The “Rally in the Valley” began at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando, which was the first charter school to be started at LA...

This is part of a series looking at the various types of schools in LA Unified. This week the focus is on independent charters. Follow the series with magnet schools and affiliated charters. They don’t take special education students. They screen during enrollment for students with high academics. They are funded by billionaires out to bankrupt the unions...

Over 2,000 parents, students and supporters of charter schools are expected to attend a “Rally in the Valley” on Saturday to advocate for pro-charter policies, as well as to celebrate the 25th anniversary of charter schools coming to LA Unified. The first several charter schools to open in the district were in the San Fernando Valley,...

This is part of a series looking at the various types of schools in LA Unified. Read more on charters, magnet schools and affiliated charters.  Question: What is an independent charter school? Answer: Independent charter schools at LA Unified are publicly financed but independently run educational institutions. Charters are authorized and overseen by a local school district, county...

For the second year in a row, LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed the district’s traditional schools on California’s standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests, according to data released Monday by the California Charter Schools Association. The district’s magnets topped both.  The district’s independent charters saw 46 percent of its students meet or...

* UPDATED May 13 As district officials and other analysts pick apart the UTLA-funded study released Tuesday that claims that independent charter schools drain half a billion dollars from LA Unified, the district’s own numbers show LA Unified actually makes money from charters. The first finding of the 42-page union-funded Cost of Charter Schools report states that the revenue collected from...

About 200 parents, students and teachers rallied Wednesday morning outside Castelar Street Elementary School in Chinatown as part of a “walk-in” calling for lower class sizes at LA Unified, increased staffing and more accountability for Prop. 39, the law that gives charter schools the right to use empty class space at district schools through a process called...

A recent report issued by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) found that charter schools in the state are excelling at getting historically disadvantaged students into college over traditional schools. According to the report, “African-American and Latino charter students almost twice as likely (19 percent) to apply to [the University of California system] as their...

LA School Report on Monday published a comprehensive top-to-bottom list of all 714 schools that were evaluated by a new accountability system LA Unified developed along with five other California districts, but missing from the data were independent charter schools. With over 210 of these kinds of schools and 101,000 students enrolled in them at...

LA Unified and its 221 independent charter schools have reached an agreement on the court-ordered requirement that charters sync their student data information systems with the district’s massive MiSiS system. The agreement calls on the district to develop an interface solution that will allow data systems at charter schools to communicate with MiSiS but allow...