They’ve been talking about these new statewide tests in terms of setting a baseline for the years ahead. That’s fine as far it it goes. But here in LA Unified, we should think of the results in another way: As a redline. Statewide, more than half of students taking the test (56 percent) failed to meet...

Another charter war is brewing in LA Unified. But the early warning shots are taking aim at ambiguity, not facts. The flashpoint was two sentences in an Aug. 7 story in the LA Times that described a meeting at which three major foundations discussed plans to expand the number of charter schools in the district. The...

It was a bombshell of a story on Saturday, the LA Times reporting that a group of foundations is exploring plans to expand the number of charter schools within LA Unified to serve many beyond the 100,000 students who now attend charters in the district. What would that mean exactly? Unclear for the time being....

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, used his state of the union speech Friday night to call for a raise in union dues of $19 a month, an increase he said would enable the union to prepare for future challenges “greater and more dangerous” than those of recent years. Reminding members that UTLA has not...

For more than a year, students, parents, community groups and even LA Unified members, themselves, have demanded greater transparency in how the board conducts the business of the nation’s second-largest school district. Too often, critics say, the board moves with no apparent effort to broaden the conversation or even allow the public to watch the...

This is a bittersweet day for LA School Report. After two years as our lead reporter, Vanessa Romo is leaving us to pursue a fellowship at Columbia University in New York. She is among three journalists who were selected as the school’s Spencer Fellows in Education Reporting, for a program that provides participants the time...

OK, so let’s play this out. One of the Mónicas — Ratliff or García, or maybe both — offers a resolution next week waiving the rule that sets term limits at two, enabling Richard Vladovic to serve a third one-year term as the LA Unified board president. The effort needs four votes to pass. How do...

That was quite a board meeting yesterday, with more emotion on display than Nixon or LBJ ever showed in announcing their decisions to leave the White House. The first wave came in The Long Goodbye to Bennett Kayser, whose bid for a second term was thwarted by a member of the group he most detests,...

Tamar Galatzan, now an out-going LA Unified board member for District 3,  congratulated the career school administrator who defeated her yesterday, Scott Schmerelson, issuing a statement in which she expressed “great respect for my colleagues on the school board and what we have been able to accomplish during difficult financial times. “I’m grateful to them...

* UPDATED Voters wanted change, but the changes came from opposite directions. For the first time since 2009, two seats on the LA Unified school board turned over at the same time in elections yesterday that proved once again how little Angelinos care about the people setting policy for the 643,000 kids attending city public...