California’s Idea of a Full School Day Doesn’t Make the Grade

By Skimping on Class Time We’re Failing Our Kids

On many mornings, I think my state senator has the best policy idea in California.

The rest of the time, I think he’s missing the point.

The idea involves the sleep of schoolkids, and the state senator is Anthony Portantino, who represents me and nearly one million other residents of one of California’s nerdiest regions, the San Gabriel Valley.

Portantino has won plaudits for a bill that would require middle and high schools to start the school day later—no earlier than 8:30 a.m. The bill is grounded in research showing that additional …

By Joe Mathews | April 24, 2017

Using Art to Help Undocumented Students Become More Visible, On Their Own Terms

A Poet’s Powerful Example Inspired Immigrant Students in South L.A. to Dream Bigger

By Ky-Phong Tran | July 7, 2016

For three years, I was a high school English teacher at 103rd Street and Broadway, the southernmost tip of South Los Angeles, a stone’s throw west of Watts. Many Californians …

Teaching South L.A.’s Kids to Believe That They Are Scholars, Leaders, and Good Citizens

The Principal of Dolores Huerta Elementary Uses Her Own Struggles With Adversity to Inspire Her Students

By Susana Ansley-Gutierrez | July 7, 2016

Four years ago, when I was asked to be the summer principal at Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary in Watts, I was nervous about working in South Los Angeles.

I grew …

Prayer

By Heather Treseler | November 28, 2015

November and the metallic whine of schoolyard
swings trawls me back to the confused daze
of childhood in which the only rules stricter

than my mother’s nuns were my own bylaws:

Going to School in Finland in 1972

By Johanna Evenson | November 14, 2015

When the child turned seven
the mother said:
“Child, go to school”
and the child did.
And at one in the afternoon
the mother said to the child:
“Child, welcome …