Prior to accepting my first teaching assignment at North Hollywood's Grant High School back in 2001, I'd been oblivious to the legions of teenagers who were unable to read L.A. Times blurbs or write complete, coherent sentences. As a rookie English teacher, it would have been challenging enough to turn...

Despite incremental gains in health coverage among the ranks of previously uninsured Americans, some of the biggest concerns regarding the much-maligned Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (A.C.A.) have come to fruition. Nearly two years since its signing into law, obesity and diabetes are...

Speaking to a packed auditorium of L.A. public high school students on Thursday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry stunned educators and enthralled teens by vowing to eliminate all scientific theory, thought, and inquiry from classrooms across the nation, if elected president in 2012.

Perry, an evangelical Christian and vocal skeptic...

Back in the autumn of 2003, when the Rush Limbaugh experiment was hitting its vapid apex at ESPN, the king of the right-wing ad-hominem attack suggested, on air, that black quarterbacks were the beneficiaries of a clandestine, league-wide affirmative action gambit. This empty claim ultimately lead...

Hundreds of private schools throughout the Los Angeles region suspended their normal schedule of activities on Tuesday in observance of what has rapidly become one of the most significant -- and controversial -- dates on their respective calendars: LAUSD For An Hour Day.

"I just got chewed out for...

I stood in front of my packed first-period class yesterday, surveying a sea of sleepy teenage faces. While my electronic roster counted 44 total students, on this day it somehow seemed like more. Most were crammed into rickety desks, but some of the latecomers propped themselves atop a large counter...

Recently, KPCC's Patt Morrison was gracious enough to have me on her radio show her show alongside one of the giants of the current education reform movement, former Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Throughout her segment, Rhee, the sunny-dispositioned former D.C. schools chancellor and current...

8 a.m.: Room 321

Inside a raucous L.A. public high school classroom that will soon be brimming with a cultural, racial, and ethnic amalgam of 11th graders. The handful of bright, talented kids sprinkled throughout the class is greatly overshadowed by the majority of their academically troubled peers.

The underachievers...

In an unlikely chain of events Tuesday, the New York Yankees finally secured a contract with 32-year-old pitching ace Cliff Lee that exceeded the team's previous offer, made five minutes earlier, by twelve years and $320 million.

At the outset of the MLB Winter Meetings in Orlando, FL on...

Recently, I attempted to unpack the media-augmented narrative -- and national hot button issue du jour -- of public education reform within the context of a fairy tale. I chose the fairy tale as my medium because I couldn't think of any other storytelling device that was simultaneously...

Struggling to drum up dissipating ad revenue and to stay afloat in the sea of cable news slime, most media organizations have resorted to sloshing around in the infotainment gutter for shock and schlock. No surprise then that the issue of school reform has played out with all the depth...

It's the first day of the new school year. We started a week late this year because of furloughs. All this talk lately about lackluster teaching, insufficient test scores, and struggling kids slipping through the cracks of failing schools; yet the district goes and lops off a week's worth of...

If implemented, the Value-Added system will revolutionize the oft-maligned teacher assessment process by quantifying performance; establishing clear expectations; and streamlining the dissemination of data to teachers, administrators, and parents. At least, that's what we've been told. In the span of time it's taken the L.A. Times to publish...

KinderKords. Toddler tracking systems. Mall trick-or-treating. Mouth guard party favors. Playground helmets.

Welcome to Bubble Boy Nation, a place inhabited by overprotective parents; delicate, overindulged children; and two major political parties that routinely capitulate to legions of lobbyists and special interest groups, whose main objectives are to a.)...

On Thursday, Apple president and CEO Steve Jobs announced that the Cuppertino, CA computer giant will be issuing modified versions of its wildly popular iPad, the company's latest multimedia sensation, to as many as 5,000 Los Angeles middle and high school students currently languishing in what many educators...

Growing up, we all had a buddy whose dad's personal zeitgeist was hatched and incubated in a Country Time Lemonade commercial.

Theirs was ostensibly an era in which freshly painted, three-bedroom ranch homes, with their lawns and shrubs groomed to meticulous splendor, lined the flanks of unblemished...

Even California.

As the vociferous L.A. backlash against Arizona's growing assemblage of anti-immigration laws reaches its full and self-righteous climax, let's not forget our beloved state's own occasional dalliances with nativism, bigotry, and arch-conservatism.

First off, a good portion of your Golden State trends as politically...

I should've known something was up when I walked into the main office, first thing in the morning, on Day 1 of Teacher Appreciation Week. The usual roiling scrum of teachers, normally reserved for the area surrounding the schools' lone copy machine, had expanded by approximately 20 additional...

It's first period, 8:05 A.M., and I'm taking attendance. The late bell rang five minutes ago. Twelve students are present and seated, though my class roster indicates that 38 should be here by now, in their seats and ready to learn. Most will show up eventually, with or without basic...

Conservatives railed against the Obama administration this week in response to a key provision buried within the nation's landmark health care reform law that would make nonsensical epithets directed at the President and his policy proposals a federal offense punishable by a rudimentary education in history and civics.

Initially...