Education

Setting up a showdown with California, the U.S. Veteran Affairs Dept. canceled its contract with a state agency that approves colleges to receive GI Bill funds.

Democratic lawmakers sought to tighten oversight of the troubled industry. Then the lobbying began.

A bill that would have allowed homeless students to park overnight on campus is dead for the year, after amendments that its author said stigmatized the students it was meant to help.

A long, deep-pocketed fight over California's public school system appears to have reached a detente, with stricter credentialing for charter school teachers, rules that make it easier for districts to reject new charter campuses and a 2-year moratorium on new online charter schools.

As universities struggle to diversify their faculties, the youngest UC campus is preparing many low-income, first-generation students of color for academic careers.

Education officials hit pause on a high school ethnic studies plan after receiving thousands of suggestions and complaints. 

The Varsity Blues college scandal has drawn attention to UC "admissions by exception." Some are athletes, some homeschoolers, some out-of-staters — and at most campuses, they're cloaked in secrecy. 

California has released a draft of the new ethnic studies curriculum for high schools, and critics are asking: Does it lean too far left?

Financially, at least, California's 5-year-old school finance overhaul is working for disadvantaged students. But a PPIC study still finds that high-need schools are still too reliant on novice teachers. And in better-off districts, not enough is being done for poorer kids.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has ambitious plans to improve California's early childhood education, but experts say he's forgetting a key: preschool teacher salaries.