With the State Board of Education set to vote on new teaching guidelines, groups have launched an aggressive effort to remove recommendations focused on LGBTQ inclusiveness and others they deem too explicit for young students.
The trainings teach preschool teachers how to help children learn English and keep their home languages, so they can be more successful in kindergarten and beyond.
A 2010 video clip of California senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris advocating the prosecution of parents for their children's truancy has re-ignited controversy as schools statewide face greater scrutiny for their rates of chronic absenteeism.
More than 1 in 10 students statewide were chronically absent from school in 2017-18. Rates for students in marginalized groups much higher than the state average.
As students and educators in and around the town of Paradise begin a new semester, just two months since the deadliest wildfire in California history, they are carrying with them levels of trauma that will certainly impact their ability to learn and teach, experts say.
At least 40 percent of California school districts and charter schools have rates of chronic absence in grades K-8 that are high or very high based on new performance measures that will be unveiled next month.
Officials have identified three elementary schools that will take Paradise Unified students displaced by the deadly Camp Fire and are close to securing a site for middle and high schoolers.
Lupita Cortez Alcalá, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, will return to the state's department of education where she held key positions for a dozen years.
School officials throughout Butte County are working furiously to find classrooms for children who lost their schools in the Camp Fire, while also worrying about the emotional impact of the losses on students and teachers.
The vast majority of large urban districts statewide have implemented the 2015 California Healthy Youth Act. Yet uproar over the landmark law has garnered headlines in a few places, most notably Orange County.
While most states have some system that links their high school and college data to track what happens to students once they exit high school, California does not.
