By Kelly Gonez When you are a teacher with a student who is engaging and clearly capable of big things, it breaks your heart to see an obvious barrier to success. One of my students, I’ll call him Julian, faced this kind of challenge. He was the kind of student who makes you really appreciate...

The majority of  Vista Del Valle Dual Language Academy students in San Fernando don’t have just one teacher, they have two. And they don’t have just one classroom, they have two, where they spend half their day learning in English and the other half learning in Spanish. It’s all part of the school’s dual language immersion program,...

By Kathleen O’Connor When Jumoke Hinton-Hodge was elected to the board of the Oakland Unified School District eight years ago, the district was emerging from state receivership after a $100 million bailout, the largest in California’s history. At the same time, enrollment in city schools was declining, the Great Recession was in full effect, and...

October was National Bullying Prevention Month, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for LA Unified. Anecdotal evidence and interviews with dozens of teachers, administrators, parents and students over the past three months point to an increase in school bullying, inappropriate language and public humiliation that many believe can be specifically attributed to...

Proposition 58 certainly isn’t the highest-profile among the 17 ballot questions facing California voters this fall — those would probably be the proposals to repeal the death penalty or legalize marijuana. It isn’t even the newsiest among the education propositions. That’s probably Prop. 55, which would extend a special tax on individual incomes over $250,000,...

By Christina Kim More than twenty years ago I was classified as an English learner. I spent my first few elementary school years in a classroom not learning much or improving my ability to communicate in English. Then, Californians voted in favor of an array of anti-immigrant propositions, including Proposition 227, which eliminated most bilingual...

One hundred and thirty Francis Polytechnic High School students enjoyed free raspados at lunchtime Wednesday as a reward for encouraging their peers to register to vote in the primary election. During the month of May, 20 government students at the Sun Valley high school registered 150 Poly high school seniors and juniors to vote. The...

*Updated Education reformers spent big ahead of California’s primary, and preliminary results Wednesday show the millions paid off with all of the candidates they supported advancing to November’s general election. Carlos Marquez, California Charter Schools Association Advocates’ director of political affairs, said he was excited by the primary results. “There were a lot of races that...

UPDATED * It’s official. Monica Garcia announced Tuesday to her supporters that she will be running to retain her seat on LA Unified’s school board. Meanwhile, fellow board member Monica Ratliff surprised many education and City Hall watchers last week when she quietly took out papers with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission to allow her to run for the...