Charter schools face many of the same problems as public schools, including insufficient funding and a lack of resources for serving needy students, a report released last week concludes. The report, “Charter Schools and Inequality: National Disparities in Funding, Teacher...

This report, produced by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd, provides the latest available data and analysis of California’s teaching workforce and examines the preparation, induction, and professional development of teachers. The report also examines...

A growing body of literature suggests that high school curriculum, especially during the senior year, is greatly lacking in academic intensity. A recent report from the National Commission on the High School Senior Year indicates that students find the last...

California has spent billions of dollars to reduce class sizes in elementary grades, but studies have yet to reveal evidence the effort is improving student achievement. The state commissioned a consortium of research groups to spend four years monitoring the...

An extensive study has found an urgent need for more licensed child care throughout Los Angeles County--and revealed that only a handful of in-home programs and day-care centers are accredited, suggesting some children may not be receiving the brain-stimulating experiences...

High school seniors have slacked off for as long as anyone can remember. "Senior slump" isn't news, but education Professor Michael W. Kirst's explanation and proposed solutions for it are. It's where he lays the blame for students who goof...

Authored by Stanford education professor Michael W. Kirst, this 24-page report is the latest in the "Perspectives in Public Policy: Connecting High Education and the Public School" series, published by The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) and The National Center...

Halfway through the school year, money from California's new $66 7 million test-based awards program hasn't yet made it into either school budgets or educators' bank accounts. The effort to implement the high-profile rewards program-believed to be the largest of...

A state lawmaker said Tuesday that she will ask for an investigation into a statistical anomaly that allows school scores on the Academic Performance Index to go down even if all the groups of students within the school improved their...

For years, the College of Education has made outreach to lawmakers and educational leaders a priority. But earlier this year, the college took an important step forward in its outreach efforts when it established the Education Policy Center at Michigan...

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 the debate on improving California's educational system needs to include the issue of students who transfer schools, say University of California, Santa Barbara researchers in a just-completed study published by California Analysis for California Education (PACE).  It backs this...

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...