"California education is in tough shape, and its going to get tougher," says Stanford University Education Professor Michael Kirst, who says the main reasons are a flat economy and a state financing system that hasn't accommodated booming population. Kirst suggests...

Teachers might be willing to have more say in how the schools are run in exchange for little or no salary increase. The Los Angeles district tried such a technique soon after Anton and Bernstein took over their respective organizations...

It has become a political football in recent years, used alternately by union leaders to bolster claims of hidden district assets and school officials pleading poverty in Sacramento. State guidelines require that 55% of a district’s budget be spent in...

Parents are gaining influence in the schools not only through the movement to give them a role in school decisionmaking, but also as a result of the ongoing drive to allow them to choose among schools. Both strategies are predicated...

Much has been written about America's failing schools and how free-market "choice plans" can save them. One school district in California, however, has moved beyond rhetoric and is implementing a reasoned and restructured choice plan that warrants careful scrutiny. 

None of the three major candidates has come up so far with a detailed, comprehensive approach to fixing the state’s struggling system of public schools. Nor has any of them added much to their initial offerings. Yet just their interest...

In the aftermath of a particularly rancorous Los Angeles school-board session last week, a fair number of parents expressed anger at the decision to put city schools on a year-round calendar starting in July, 1991. But while some may find...

An experiment in six California school districts aimed at finding common ground between teachers’ unions and administrators achieved moderate success last year and will be expanded to at least five more districts, project participants reported last week. Under the “Trust...

But most people who work with problem kids say there are more relevant statistics. According to the child advocacy group Children Now, more kids than ever are growing up in poverty in California—1 in 5; 1 out of 3 kids...

California policymakers have not responded to the changing needs of the state’s children, leaving many at risk of slipping through gaps in a fragmented social-services system, according to a new report by a group of independent researchers.

Although most California...

What is it like to be a child in California? Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an independent, university-based research center, has undertaken the first comprehensive overview of that question in “The Conditions of Children in California,” to be released...

San Francisco may bill itself as “Everybody’s Favorite City,” but city school officials say they’re having trouble finding minority teachers who want to work here. The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most ethnically diverse spots in the...

California schools are suffering from a severe shortage of bilingual teachers, leaving many districts unable to find enough qualified teachers to keep up with the sharply rising number of pupils who know little or no English. Educators and state officials...

Countering a blistering study last fall that attacked the performance of minority high schools in four Southern California counties, including Los Angeles, a group of California education professors said Wednesday that minority pupils have made academic gains, particularly since a...

Countering a blistering study last fall that attacked the performance of minority high schools in four Southern California counties, including Orange County, a group of California education professors said Wednesday that minority pupils have made academic gains, particularly since a...

schools will do little more than ensure continued educational mediocrity, according to an analysis released Tuesday by an independent group of education professors from the state’s top universities. With enrollment statewide growing 42% above what had been projected for this year...

A recent report by USC education professors Allan Odden and David D. Marsh for Policy Analysis for California Education indicates that when schools put together all the critical reforms, they show improvement. All our estimates indicate that about 30% of...

Tougher school standards enacted by the state four years ago appear to be contributing to better learning conditions and academic gains, according to a study of 17 California junior and senior high schools released Thursday. The report, authored by two USC...

The majority of inner-city high schools in Los Angeles are doing a worse job of educating low-income black and Latino youths than they were 10 years ago, according to a study of standardized test scores released today by the University...

Four years after a torrent of school ''reforms'' began to sweep across the country amid fears that American public education was lagging, schoolchildren in almost every state are facing tougher academic standards and billions of dollars have been pumped into...

This year, Policy Analysis for California Education—PACE—has undertaken two of its most ambitious projects to date: a study of the impact of education reform at the local level, and an assessment of the condition of children in the state. Known...

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Monday that current high school seniors, the first crop of students to go all the way through high school under the tougher state academic standards imposed in 1983, recorded “the highest scores...

Financing California’s public education system is complex, difficult and expensive. This school year the system—which includes 1,000 districts, nearly 4.5 million students and 200,000 teachers—will receive $15.3 billion in general fund revenues, including $395 million from the state lottery. The...

A recent report by the Policy Analysis for California Education, an education think tank, predicts that an increase of students and retirements in an aging teaching force will create a need for between 85,000 and 135,000 new teachers in California...

Two privately funded studies, issued this fall, highlight the progress and problems of California’s schools and make numerous and expensive suggestions for improvement. Those studies and their recommendations: Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a research group based at Stanford...