K-12 Education

California just became the first state in the nation to push back the start of the school day, the better to let adolescents get the sleep they need at that age. But just how that new law will work is open to question. For one thing, it won’t start right away in most schools. It doesn’t appear to ban early morning ‘zero periods’ when many schools schedule important electives. It exempts rural schools without defining the term ‘rural.’ And it doesn’t necessarily mean school will end later, which means those extra minutes of snoozing will have to come out of some other part of the school day, such as lunch.

Five years into the state's new, more rigorous standardized testing system, scores are moving in the right direction. The bad news? Progress remains glacially slow.

A student population roughly the size of Santa Clara was kept home by the PG&E blackout. Then the Saddleridge Fire hit at the other end of California.

It’s 7:30 in the morning of any given school day. Jonathan Rodríguez and Yvette Fuentes, both 12, arrive at the Luther Burbank Middle School cafeteria to pick up breakfasts in closed containers and take them in carts to the classrooms of teachers Emily Feinberg and Gisele Hoffer.  The food is placed on a counter in […]

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a father of four, promised he'd put kids front and center in his first- year agenda — and the legislative year was good to K-12 Californians.