I want to thank Stephanie Stassel for her story on the Los Angeles County Child Care Needs Assessment report. I am one of the family child-care providers serving on the Los Angeles County Child Care Planning Committee that prepared this...

California lawmakers should give teachers and schools a chance to make sense of recent changes to the state education system rather than piling on new initiatives, argues a report released last week by a respected think tank. The legislature has...

Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature should take a breather from ordering up sweeping education reforms and give school administrators a chance to make the existing jumble of mandates work, according to a new assessment released today by a think...

A scathing critique of the state's strategy for improving schools—the strategy Governor Gray Davis hopes will "restore the greatness of California education"—says the plan resembles a jumbled jigsaw puzzle and is unlikely to succeed. The damning conclusions are found in...

By linking schooling with a specific field or occupation, the thinking goes, students will be able to see more direct connections between education and their own futures. The idea differs from traditional vocational schools in that the schools remain essentially...

Student mobility is the practice of students changing schools other than when they are promoted from one school level to the other, such as when students are promoted from elementary school to middle school or middle school to high school...

Development of the State's plan for the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 (Perkins III) got underway in August when members of the Field Review Committee met in Sacramento for an orientation to key issues. The...

Nearly a fourth of K-12 students nationwide are not attending their neighborhood public schools, opting instead for an array of public and private school options, according to a recent report. In 1993, the proportion of students eschewing their neighborhood public...

One in four children across the nation has left the neighborhood school in favor of a magnet or charter school, voucher program or private school, despite lax oversight and scant evidence of academic success, according to a two-year study released...

Ask instructor Donald Misumi what challenges will confront the new chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, and his response is typical: He laughs. “Got an hour?” he asks. The district’s reputation for excessive bureaucracy and under-funding has achieved...

In 1985 the Board of Governors of California Community Colleges, in honor of the former state Chancellor, Gerald C. Hayward, created awards for outstanding community college faculty. The Gerald C. Hayward Award for "Excellence in Education" has been awarded since...

Nearly a year after convening a panel of experts on accountability, Los Angeles school officials have distilled their recommendations into a set of principles to guide a new system that would make every district employee, from custodian to superintendent, responsible...

Governor-elect Gray Davis of California appears poised to reshape what many see as the state's piecemeal and inefficient system of developing policies to govern its 8,000 K–12 public schools. His new education secretary, a prominent former state senator, is expected...

The notion that schools should be held directly responsible for improving student achievement—and should be rewarded or sanctioned for their ability or lack of ability to do so—is taking both California and the nation by storm. Much of the recent statewide...

School districts are not responding to charter schools with swift, dramatic changes, according to a study released by Policy Analysis for California Education, a university-based research consortium. A majority of districts in which the independent public schools have been established...

Thousands of Bay Area children who used to play after school are spending their afternoons at pricey tutoring centers that are springing up like fast-food franchises. Parents are spending $2,000 to $4,000 a year to buy their children extra academic...

Asian immigrant students, representing a striking range of languages, cultures and socioeconomic levels, are streaming into schools in the San Gabriel Valley, forcing districts that were largely Anglo or Latino to grapple with profound ethnic changes that seemed to develop...

The state's schools need about 8,000 new classrooms just for first grade. Portable classrooms seem an obvious solution, but manufacturers normally make 2,500 a year, and orders are expected to exceed 15,000. Another issue is affordability: The state initially provided...

Those were among the findings of a new poll of California voters conducted last month for Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a 13-year-old research center focusing on issues of state education policy and practice. Michael Kirst, Stanford professor of...

How Refreshing to read a report on improving California schools that is comprehensive, practical, specific and demonstrates that its writers have actually set foot in a classroom. The report, "Rebuilding Education in the Golden State: A Plan for California's Schools"...

Local school district surtaxes might be the best way out of the state's current education funding crisis, education Professor Michael Kirst told the annual California Education Summit in San Francisco Wednesday, Feb. 16. Without it or a similar measure, Kirst...

Desperate about a decline in the quality of public education, California voters on Tuesday will be faced with a proposal for a dramatic change that would plunge them into the unknown and offer them little chance of retreat. The proposal...

The financial impact of Proposition 174 has been debated by both sides in the contest, each trumpeting multimillion-dollar figures. Two independent think tanks -- the Rand Corp. is one -- have disputed those predictions, saying the price tag is unknown...

Californians like the idea of school vouchers - but not if they mean less money for public schools, and only if the government has a greater say on how private schools are run. The issue is important to Californians, who...