On a bright and brisk Monday morning, thousands of young Angelenos donned hats, jackets and backpacks and returned to the Los Angeles Unified School District after a three-week-long winter break.
The new year presents a new chance for America’s second-largest school district to boost post-pandemic academic achievement and attendance rates. At the same time, it provides a fresh slew of financial challenges thanks to the upcoming expiration of federal COVID-era relief funds. And it offers the potential for new leaders to emerge in the upcoming LAUSD School Board election.
Here are the top five things to watch for at LAUSD this semester:
1. A continuing push to reverse learning loss
While the memories of remote learning recede further into the past, student learning loss remains very present. Standardized test scores continue to lag behind pre-pandemic levels, a challenge the district is confronting with a focus on academic interventions.
They include individual and small group tutoring before, during and after school. Literacy is getting a strong emphasis, after scores released in October 2023 showed that only 42.2% of LAUSD students are meeting or exceeding English standards set by the state.
The district is scaling up its literacy intervention programs to reach more students at the secondary level and training more teachers in strategies to help students who are struggling with basic reading and writing skills.
“We believe with the new systems in place,” said Carvalho in a Monday press conference, “including universal across-all-grades intervention and support in reading and mathematics, that our student achievement data will demonstrate that our efforts are paying off.”
During winter break the district offered students additional academic support through its Winter Learning Academy. About 43,000 students attended in person, while another 130,000 took advantage of online learning during the break, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Karla…
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