03/28/2024

News

Entry-level jobs at stores aren’t as easy to get

Getting a job at a store or fast-food restaurant — often a way into the economy for an unskilled worker — used to be as simple as walking up and down the mall and applying. Now, with store chains closing and laying off thousands of workers, that path is more complicated. The stores that remain […]

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LA Unified not directing enough money to help low-income students, report charges

Despite some incremental progress, Los Angeles Unified officials continue to “evade” the requirement of the state’s education funding formula to spend substantially more on schools serving low-income children and other students who generate additional revenue for the district, authors of a study released on Tuesday wrote. In their fourth annual analysis of spending in the […]

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L.A. Unified’s spending out of step with similar school systems, task force says

The Los Angeles school district is out of step with similar school systems, spending more on teachers’ pay and health benefits and less on activities that could enhance student learning, according to a new report by an outside task force. The L.A. Unified School District Advisory Task Force did not make specific recommendations, but instead […]

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Economist: Bay Area, Silicon Valley boom will continue, but housing woes will worsen

In a candid interview with the Union-Tribune, Adam Day, the new board chairman of California State University, said that the system needs to improve its graduation rate, more efficiently manage enrollment, find effective ways to use online courses, and carefully weed out academic majors that are no longer drawing significant numbers of students.

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Push underway to increase California school funding by billions

But rather than hang a banner and declare victory, legislators and education advocates who support Brown’s funding formula are ready to set the next target: an aspirational goal of committing more than $35 billion in new K-12 dollars to the funding formula — enough to raise California’s current per-student spending of $11,149 by about $6,500. […]

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Barriers to Higher Education Attainment: Students’ Unmet Basic Needs

Many college students across the state experience food and housing insecurity. State and federal public supports have not kept pace with rising costs of living, leaving many students unable to meet their basic needs such as food and housing. Students facing housing and food insecurity are more likely to experience poor academic, health, and mental […]

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Businesses Can Help California Schools Train Students for ‘New Collar’ Jobs

Job growth in California has been robust since the last recession. But recently that growth has slowed because of the lack of employable workers. The projected shortage of skilled workers in the state through 2030 is more than a million graduates with bachelor’s degrees as well as hundreds of thousands of workers with two-year associate’s […]

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Retraining and reskilling to ease the strain of automation

Automation will continue to have an impact on jobs across all industries, and the best way for companies, governments, and individuals to address the challenge, says economist Michael Spence, is for them to work together. In this interview, Spence explains that to reduce the fear and anxiety associated with the specter of jobs going away, […]

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A study finds nearly half of jobs are vulnerable to automation

Job-grabbing robots are no longer science fiction. In 2013 Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University used—what else?—a machine-learning algorithm to assess how easily 702 different kinds of job in America could be automated. They concluded that fully 47% could be done by machines “over the next decade or two”. A new working […]

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Cal State leader shelves proposed tuition hike: ‘It’s the right thing to do, but it’s not without risk’

Cal State, the nation’s largest public university system, will no longer consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year, Chancellor Timothy P. White announced Friday. The decision is a bet that Sacramento will come through in the end. If Cal State loses that bet, it could mean cuts to campus programs. White […]

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Los Angeles Unified School District Unfunded Retiree Health Benefit Liability Nears $15 Billion

Los Angeles Unified School District has $15 billion in unfunded retiree health care obligations, amounting to over $30,000 per student, according to a new actuarial report commissioned by the district and obtained by Reason. The cost of servicing this large “Other Post-Employment Benefit’ or OPEB liability significantly reduces funds available for instruction in the nation’s […]

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Six years after the state came in to save Inglewood Unified, the district faces a budget crisis, buildings in disrepair and lack of steady leadership

When the California Department of Education stepped in to save Inglewood’s schools after decades of mismanagement, it had a mandate to bring financial stability. Instead, the district has cycled through three leaders — not including interim appointees — chosen by Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. None has stayed long. The chaos of constant turnover […]

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Sacramento school superintendent salaries soar, some higher than university leaders

Sacramento school superintendent salaries have exploded in recent years, growing to challenge the paychecks of university presidents. Locally, superintendent salaries range from $240,000 for Sarah Koligian in the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, which has 20,353 students, to $330,951 for Christopher Hoffman, who leads the region’s largest school district, Elk Grove Unified, with 63,297 students, […]

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School Is Expensive. Is It Worth It?

Thus Mr. Caplan’s case against education begins by acknowledging the case in favor of getting one. “It is individually very fruitful, and individually lucrative,” he says. Full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree, on average, “are making 73% more than high-school graduates.” Workers who finished high school but not college earn 30% more than high-school dropouts. […]

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Undisrupted education

The Golden State was one of seven with a 4-point increase in 8th grade reading, which enabled it to come within 3 points of the national average. But this joyful moment is dampened by the reality that even with the improved scores, 69 percent of California 4th graders are not proficient in English, compared to […]

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