Education

In 1986, lawmakers decided the problem of illegal immigration had to be dealt with. More than 3 million people were living in the United States after crossing the border illegally or overstaying their visas. A new law signed by President Ronald Reagan gave legal status and a path to citizenship to most of those unauthorized residents - helping many secure a slice of the American dream but also giving fuel to critics who sought to turn "amnesty" into a pejorative. Less than 30 years later, the number of immigrants living in the country illegally is thought to have nearly quadrupled, and the freighted baggage of amnesty looms over new efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws.

The courtship that has riveted the neuroscience world blossomed at a Saturday night dinner in a tony Brentwood restaurant. USC provost Elizabeth Garrett and executive vice provost Michael Quick kept the conversation light. Over chicken with braised leeks, onions, mustard bread crumbs and white wine at Tavern, they talked to UCLA neuroscientist Arthur Toga about his life. Not the brain imaging research for which his lab is renowned but about "the things that get you excited in the morning," Toga recalled.

If you are a teacher in debt, there's good news and bad news. There are literally dozens of programs that could potentially help wipe out your student loans. But most of them have narrow requirements that may lock you out. Just ask Troy Dale, a high school counselor from Ellis, Kan. He and his wife have $23,000 in student loans that they've been paying down for nearly a decade. At their current rate, they'll still be paying off their student debts when their oldest child enrolls in college.

The race for a seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education pits the political savvy of Antonio Sanchez against the education skills of Monica Ratliff. And when it comes to campaign resources, politics trumps all. Sanchez, 31, has used his background in campaigns and ties to political figures to attract huge financial support from labor groups and a political-action committee headed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Ratliff, 43, has used her background as a legal-aid attorney and respected teacher in a high-performing school to impress editorial boards and educators.

I'm an 84-year-old man on Social Security with original Medicare and Mutual of Omaha gap insurance. My insurance premium was raised from $262 to $363 a month, a 39% jump. After all my monthly expenses, I have just $240 left. What can I do in the event of another increase in my premiums? If you've had your current Medicare supplement plan for years, it's not surprising that you've seen your costs steadily rise, says Steve Zaleznick, senior Medicare advisor at PlanPrescriber, a Maynard, Mass.-based online provider of Medicare education and plan comparison tools.

Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.

In a major case of academic poaching involving crosstown rivals, USC has lured away two prominent neuroscientists from UCLA with a promise to expand their internationally renowned lab that uses brain imaging techniques to study Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, autism and other disorders. Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson will move to the USC Keck School of Medicine campus next fall, along with scores of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staffers who now work at UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, known as LONI.

More than 1 million low-income California children who receive free or reduced-price school lunches don't get breakfast at school even though they would qualify, and about a fifth of the schools in the state don't even offer breakfast, according to two reports from the Food Research and Action Center. California ranked 33rd in low-income student participation in the School Breakfast Program for 2008-09, the same ranking it received a year earlier. In terms of the number of schools that offer breakfast, California's ranking fell from 35th to 40th, the Washington, D.C.-based group said.

The new industry of large-scale online education will garner an important measure of academic respectability Thursday when the American Council on Education announces that four courses of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera organization are worthy of college credit - if anti-cheating measures are enforced. It is now up to colleges and universities to decide whether to allow their students to replace traditional courses taught in classrooms with low-cost online courses that enroll many thousands of students worldwide and involve little direct interaction with instructors.

Michelle Rhee, head of an influential education advocacy group that backs using student test scores to evaluate teachers, this week fended off accusations that she failed to pursue evidence of cheating when she ran the District of Columbia school system. In an internal memo, a district consultant warned that about 190 teachers at 70 schools - more than half the system's campuses - may have cheated in 2008 by erasing wrong answers on student testing sheets and filling in correct ones.

SACRAMENTO - Facing a possible two-day strike next week by patient care and technical workers, the five large University of California medical centers are starting to cancel elective surgeries that had been scheduled as soon as Monday, officials said. Emergency care will not be shut and patients already in the five hospitals across the state will continue to receive care. But many elective procedures will delayed until after the potential strike, set for Tuesday and Wednesday, according to John Stobo, UC's senior vice president for health sciences and services.

As Gov. Jerry Brown announced more funding for public schools Tuesday, the Los Angeles Board of Education agreed to pay for more school police, maintain a classroom breakfast program and keep supplemental staff at schools. The board also heard projections of next school year's budget, which - for the first time in six years - wasn't expected to require any new cuts. L.A. Unified schools Supt. John Deasy had asked the seven-member board to approve the so-called discretionary programs, although it was unclear whether they would all be funded directly from the district's general fund.

SACRAMENTO - The graduation rates of UC students came under more scrutiny Wednesday as Gov. Jerry Brown urged administrators and faculty to prod more undergraduates to earn a degree in four years, not six. Brown recently proposed giving UC and Cal State more funds if they increase their graduation rates by 10% by 2017. UC leaders have said that is an admirable but unreasonable goal and that such issues as students' outside employment and their desire to take double majors slow them down.

Online college course provider Coursera announced Wednesday that Yale University has joined the growing network of campuses that offer free classes through the organization. Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera said that Yale will offer four courses initially -- Roman architecture, financial markets, moralities of everyday life and constitutional law -- bringing the total number of universities that offer courses through the group to 70. Millions worldwide take these kinds of free online courses through several organizations, most of which offer the courses without college credit.

Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti ventured into school district politics Tuesday, lending support to non-controversial actions and mostly taking a respite from their recent sniping in the Los Angeles mayoral contest. A week before voters go to the polls, Greuel addressed the Los Angeles Unified School District board, coming out in favor of a program that provides students breakfast in classrooms and for discontinuing a policy of suspending students for "willful defiance. " The school board, as expected, approved both items.

Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange, announced $37 million in grants Tuesday to begin the massive task of educating millions of Californians about the new healthcare law. The grants will go to 48 organizations, including universities, nonprofit groups, health foundations and unions. They will help state officials explain the new benefits, show people how to access insurance, and encourage small businesses to enroll. Covered California's executive director, Peter Lee, said Tuesday that getting the word out will require collaboration and partnership across the state.

SACRAMENTO - California has been flooded with revenue this tax season and is on track to finish the fiscal year with a surplus of billions of dollars, according to officials. State coffers contain about $4.5 billion more than expected in personal income tax payments. Nearly $2.8 billion of it arrived April 17, the third-highest single-day collection in California history, according to government figures. Business taxes have also rebounded and are likely to be $200 million ahead of projections.

Here's a familiar fact: Economic inequality is rising in the United States. The rich have gotten richer, the poor have stayed poor, and families in the middle have seen their incomes stagnate. Here's a less-familiar fact: Opportunity in America isn't what it used to be either. Among children born into low-income households, more than two-thirds grow up to earn a below-average income, and only 6% make it all the way up the ladder into the affluent top one-fifth of income earners, according to a study by economists at Washington's Brookings Institution.

California has proved to be a land of opportunity where hard work delivers prosperity and nurtures innovation. Its human capital has helped the state develop into the world's ninth-largest economy, which attracts nearly half of the venture capital in the nation. But this opportunity and success have not reached everyone, and the California dream is in danger of slipping away. Today, California ranks first in the country in the number of working low-income families. "Working Hard, Left Behind," a new study conducted by the Campaign for College Opportunity, found that millions in the state are working hard but are increasingly left behind.

A group of parents and students have filed a federal lawsuit against the Compton school district alleging a pattern of abuse and racial profiling of Latinos by school police. One family alleged that school police targeted a student's father for arrest and deliberately got him deported to Mexico after he filed a complaint against an officer. In another incident, school officers allegedly beat, pepper sprayed and used a chokehold on a bystander who was taking video of an arrest on his iPod, and erased cellphone videos taken by students.