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How L.A. Unified’s headache was relieved is an eye-opening exercise in creative political accounting. . . The district simply recategorized a number of previous expenditures as qualifying for the LCFF grants, enabling it to declare it “will enable the district’s estimated ending balance to revert back to pre-CDE decision levels.” . . . Nothing changed, in other words, except some computer codes. And L.A. Unified still has an immense achievement gap.

The vote came after UC President Janet Napolitano called for the annual tuition increase of $282 and a bump in fees by $54 for the 2017-18 school year.

Public schools around California are bracing for a crisis driven by skyrocketing worker pension costs that are expected to force districts to divert billions of dollars from classrooms into retirement accounts, education officials said. The depth of the funding gap became clear to district leaders when they returned from the holiday break: What they contribute to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, will likely double within six years, according to state estimates.

Jed Kolko, chief economist at job site Indeed, used Census Bureau data to dissect the occupational, educational and geographical background of immigrants in the U.S. He shows the most recent arrivals—those who came to the U.S. in the past five years—gravitating to jobs as medical scientists, software developers, physical scientists and economists. By contrast, earlier immigrants were more likely to land in blue-collar jobs at beauty salons, on construction sites or operating sewing machines.

California trails much of the country when it comes to public education, according to Education Week’s new state rankings.

Education leaders in recent years have lauded achievement gains and progress of California’s K-12 students, but an annual national report card has rated the Golden State below mediocre — a solid C-minus, 10th from the bottom among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

The collaboration with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness—which describes itself as a nonprofit, bipartisan group of labor, corporate and university leaders—tracks health, education and housing costs and outcomes from 1980 to 2014. It finds combined spending in these three areas has ballooned from 25% to 40% as a share of GDP since 1980, without commensurate improvements in quality.

Voters in 184 K-12 and community college districts throughout California considered local school bonds worth more than $25 billion – and approved $23 billion of them.

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) projects that between now and 2030 California will fall 1.1 million bachelor’s degrees short of workforce demand. Closing this gap will require substantial improvements in access to four-year colleges, transfer rates from community colleges, and completion rates among college students.

The Los Angeles Unified school board on Tuesday refused to renew three Magnolia schools serving 1,400 sixth- through 12th-grade students, including Magnolia Science Academy campuses in Reseda and Van Nuys, as recommended by district staff. Hundreds of students, staff and other Magnolia supporters wore orange T-shirts at Tuesday’s meeting, with some holding signs that read “I stand for Magnolia” and “Stop School Closing.” . . . Both the Magnolia schools in the Valley were in the top 3 percent of all high schools in the nation, according to an April issue of U.S. News & World Report.

The world’s highly skilled immigrants are increasingly living in just four nations: the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, according to new World Bank research highlighting the challenges of brain drain for non-English-speaking and developing countries. . . Despite efforts of non-English-speaking nations to attract high quality workers, almost 75% of the total OECD highly skilled workforce in 2010 lived in the four main Anglo-Saxon countries—almost 40% in the U.S. alone. Around 70% of engineers in Silicon Valley and 60% of doctors in Perth, Australia, were foreign-born in 2010.

As factory floors become more automated and data-driven, companies such as Yaskawa America Inc. need computer engineers but often find themselves outgunned by Silicon Valley tech firms.

California’s Class of 2016 scored lower than the national average on SAT reading and math tests, although state students outperformed their national peers in writing, just-released scores show. . . Latinos scored nearly 100 points lower than whites in both reading and math. When gender is factored in, Asian boys scored the highest in math — 590 — and white boys scored highest in reading — 548. The highest scores in writing were posted by girls in the “other” ethnic category — representing those not clearly in major ethnic groups — followed by white girls and Asian girls, who were 1 and 2 points lower, respectively.

But by grading schools that serve California’s 6-plus million K-12 students on “10 areas critical to student performance,” the system – whose precise details are yet to emerge – moves away from traditional academic standards into fuzzier areas. And that will likely make it more difficult for parents and the larger public to determine what’s really happening, or not, in the classroom.

Facing strong resistance from teachers unions, she amended the measure again before its first hearing in the Senate Education Committee – and actually lost support. Unions objected to a change that would have simply extended the tenure evaluation period for all teachers to three years. With the expedited dismissal process now voluntary and the layoff provision removed entirely, education groups that previously supported the proposal rejected it as a “mere shell of its former self.”