Education

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With student debt soaring, consumer champion Seth Frotman has taken his federal fight against predatory lending to the state level in California.

From later school start times to lower thresholds for parcel taxes, California lawmakers see a second chance with Gov. Gavin Newsom to pass education bills quashed by former Gov. Jerry Brown.

As charter school advocates rallied en masse and California’s teachers’ unions flexed their political muscle, a cluster of bills that would dramatically curb the growth of charters in the state cleared the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday. The votes were the first in what figures to be a lengthy, high-stakes battle this session between two […]

Jeanny Morris had a 1-year-old baby and a resume of dead-end retail jobs when she enrolled in the Marinello Schools of Beauty cosmetology program in 2012. She used her welfare benefits to pay for transportation to and from school where, she says, staff pressured her to take out student loans to pay for supplies they […]

The win-win partnership between a struggling charter school network and a rural school district in Los Angeles County touched off a call for legislative reform.

A bill by Assemblyman Phil Ting would bar colleges and universities from receiving state financial aid dollars if they give preference to applicants with ties to alumni or donors. Proposed just last week, it’s already raising alarm among the state’s private colleges.

If the plight of hungry and homeless college students has lately caught the national media’s attention, it’s in no small part due to the efforts of Temple University professor Sara Goldrick-Rab.  Goldrick-Rab, who describes herself as a “scholar activist,” has been trying to get policymakers to address the cost of college for years, advocating policy […]

Two months into the new job, Tony Thurmond seems to be exactly the man that his most loyal backers hoped (and his opponents feared) he would be. In a Commonwealth Club discussion with CALmatters' education reporter Ricardo Cano, the state’s public schools superintendent didn’t hold back in a wide-ranging discussion Thursday night: He raised doubts about the value of charter schools, criticized school districts for the state’s wave of teacher strikes, questioned the severity of public pension debt and insisted the state must spend more to educate its students.

As UC reacts to the college cheating scandal, some urge them to lock the side door, reconsider the SAT and ACT for admissions and scrutinize athletic recruiting.