*UPDATED While LA Unified is firmly committed to online credit recovery classes as a means to the district’s newly stated top goal — 100 percent graduation — Los Angeles charter school operators use these classes much more sparingly, as their graduation rates tend to be far ahead of the district’s. At three of the city’s...

Members of the LA teachers union, UTLA, will be out in the streets Thursday as part of a “Day of Action” that is planned in conjunction with 200 other cities. Union members will be visiting homes in the areas near LA Unified schools for planned “neighborhood walks” where they will ask residents what they want...

KIPP Los Angeles College Preparatory School in Boyle Heights has been named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. The designation was given Wednesday to 279 public schools across the country and is considered the highest honor the federal government can bestow on a school. KIPP LA Prep is an independent public...

Millions of high school graduates are showing up to college unprepared and in need of remedial courses that are costing them an estimated $1.3 billion annually, and Californians pay the most, according to a report released today from the Center for American Progress. Remedial courses do not count toward college degrees because they are designed to...

For the first time, there will be more students from an LA Unified high school in USC’s freshman class than from any other, the university announced Wednesday. Thanks to a long-running special program, the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI), 19 of the university’s incoming class this year are from the Foshay Learning Center, which is near USC....

Ever since LA Unified vaulted from a looming graduation crisis to potentially breaking its graduation record last school year after implementing a wide-scale online credit recovery program, questions have been raised about how much students are actually learning. The apparent ease with which the district was able to substantially boost the number of diplomas it handed out...

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...

Citing financial woes due to low enrollment and problems with its private facility, the governing board of City High School voted Monday to close the charter school immediately, leaving 116 students scrambling to find new schools. The school, located in Pico-Robertson on Los Angeles’ Westside, had been offered a location at Dorsey High School through...

Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is the largest independent charter network in LA Unified, with 28 middle and high schools serving over 12,500 students. Ninety-four percent of Alliance’s students come from poverty, yet the charter management organization has a proven track record of outperforming the district and state schools when it comes to key factors like...