Tutoring

Los Angeles school officials on Monday urged parents whose children attend chronically underperforming schools to apply for free tutoring in math and English, which begins in November. The Los Angeles Unified School District mailed applications earlier this month to 186,000 students, from 104 schools, who are eligible for the extra assistance.

The state bullet train agency is pushing full throttle to start construction of the important first phase of the California high-speed rail system in as little as six weeks, prompting scrutiny of the state's selection of a construction company with the worst technical scores among bidders. Tutor Perini Corp. won the competition to build the first 29 miles of the high-speed rail route on a low bid of $985 million, even though its design quality, safety plan and engineering, among other factors, ranked at the bottom of five teams seeking the work.

Re "A Tutor Tries to Make a Difference," June 30: Times staff writer Duke Helfand is to be commended for offering his valuable time tutoring second-grader Jossue, who is a student at Rosemont Avenue Elementary School in Echo Park. Helfand's frustration, along with that of classroom teacher Arleen Irvin and the generous volunteers of Wonder of Reading, is understandable. It is quite likely that Jossue has a learning disability that exhibits itself academically and now behaviorally in the classroom.

Forget your third grader's IQ, or working memory, or even previous mathematical abilities. When it comes to improving in math, it's the brain's hard wiring that counts. Researchers found that the volume of the hippocampus, a region associated with memory formation and recall of stimuli, trumped every other factor they measured when it comes to predicting how a child will respond to an eight-week program of math tutoring. Their results were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

The Older Adult Services and Information Center (OASIS) and the Los Angeles Unified School District kicked off an intergenerational tutoring project last week in 11 elementary schools in Southwest Los Angeles. The OASIS Center, based in the May Co.

Kricia Machada, a junior at Cleveland High School in Reseda, knows the value of one-on-one tutoring. And so does her student, Lorena Reynoso, who will start third grade in the fall at Napa Elementary School in Northridge. "I've seen a big improvement in her reading," said Kricia, a Northridge resident.

Two more tutors said to have knowledge of improprieties within USC's Student Athletic Academic Services department are being interviewed this week. One appeared before the investigating committee on Monday at the behest of tutor Noel M. Looney, who previously has made allegations. "I'm just trying to be helpful," Looney said. "I think they [the committee] want to control possible NCAA impact by me coming forward with what I know. I gave them the names of two more tutors who will be helpful."

Brandy Rice eyed the test question. She thought of what her tutor directed her to do: Read the entire sentence. Read all the answers. Instead of playing multiple-choice roulette with the answers as she had so many times before, she followed the directions. Rice, 26, was one of 20 Compton Adult School students in a tutoring program for the California High School Exit Examination. The tutors weren't teachers, but teenagers from Palos Verdes High School. The tutors carpooled from the green, laid-back beach community on a hill to Compton every Saturday for five weeks.

A pilot program that will recruit volunteers to tutor Orange Unified School District students will be considered for adoption by the Board of Trustees this week. The program will match skilled, retired professionals with two or three students for tutoring sessions in a range of academic subjects. "The idea is to immediately improve the quality of education we're giving our children," said Trustee Robert Viviano, who proposed the program.

Costco Wholesale of Inglewood has formed a partnership with Bennett-Kew Elementary School to set up a tutoring program and provide every student with a backpack full of supplies, school officials announced. About 800 backpacks filled with school supplies and snacks were distributed at the school on the first day of classes, said Nancy Ichinaga, the school's principal. On Sept.

State high-speed rail officials acknowledged Thursday that they changed their rules for selecting a builder for the bullet train's first phase in the Central Valley, a shift that subsequently made it possible for a consortium led by Sylmar-based Tutor Perini to be ranked as the top candidate despite receiving the lowest technical rating. The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced last week that the Tutor Perini-Zachry-Parsons joint venture was the top-rated contender among five bidders seeking to build the initial 29 miles of track between Madera and Fresno.

The top candidate to build the first 29 miles of California's bullet train in the Central Valley bid just under $1 billion, below the state estimate of the cost, project officials announced Friday. The California High-Speed Rail Authority said Tutor Perini/Zachry/Parsons, a joint venture of U.S. firms, submitted a bid of about $985 million and was ranked first out of five competitors. The team offered the "apparent best value" based on price and technical proposals, evaluators said.

TEMPE, Ariz. - Bill Lachemann was on the same Dorsey High baseball team as legendary manager Sparky Anderson. He played his first professional game five years before Angels rising star Mike Trout's father was born and caught former Angels pitcher Jim Abbott's first bullpen session four years after qualifying for an AARP card. He turns 79 next month, and he is 27 years older than the team that employs him, the Angels. And what he does now is what he's been doing for decades: produce major league ballplayers.

After the coffee. Before seeing the ratings for 'The Following.' The Skinny: The game is still almost two weeks away and I'm already tired of Super Bowl hype. I'll never make it to February 3. Tuesday's headlines include a recap of the holiday box office, Blockbuster is closing more stores, and a wild party at Sundance. Daily Dose: Sunday's AFC and NFC championship games drew big audiences, but numbers were off from 2012. Fox's coverage of the Falcons-49ers game averaged 42 million viewers, a drop of more than 15 million compared with last year's Giants-Packers game.

In a move that gives more control of the independent film studio to investment firm Colony Capital and its chief Tom Barack, construction magnate Ron Tutor has sold his stake in Miramax. The buyer is the Qatari Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the Middle Eastern nation and a partner of Colony's, said a knowledgeable person who was not authorized to discuss the topic publicly. The Qatari fund was already the largest stakeholder in Miramax when a consortium of buyers acquired the pioneering independent film company from Walt Disney Co. in 2010 for $663 million.

A year and a half ago, Laryssa Almazan wanted to build volcanoes, not write about them. But last month, the fourth-grader at Panorama Elementary in Santa Ana stood up before an audience of adults to read aloud from a 26-page book on volcanoes that she'd written herself. It was a shining moment for a young girl who had always been a decent reader but struggled with comprehension. Laryssa had never voluntarily opened a book. That began to change, her father, Juan Almazan, said, after he saw an ad for the Kathleen Muth Reading and Learning Center in the Orange Unified School District newsletter.

Tearful mothers and daughters implored the San Fernando City Council to provide more federal grant funds to El Centro de Amistad, a tutoring, counseling and gang prevention agency that provides services free of charge. The federal government awarded the city of San Fernando a total of $543,424 in Community Development Block Grant funds to disburse this year to public agencies and social service organizations. Since 1989, the city has used block grant money to fund El Centro.

California Literacy Inc. has named city Planning Commission Chairman Frank Guerrero its 1993 Outstanding Tutor of the Year. Guerrero, 64, a five-year volunteer in the Commerce Public Library literacy program, was selected from more than 30 tutors nominated statewide. He has taught seven students and logged more than 600 hours tutoring in basic reading, writing and mathematics.

Charlene Chhom, 14, has never had her own room. She, five siblings, her mother and grandmother share a cramped four-bedroom house in the heart of the Cambodia Town neighborhood in Long Beach. It can be hard for her to focus sometimes in the full house, so she studies at a Starbucks or locks herself in the room she shares with her sister. "When we talk, it's like everybody talking," she says, her blue-shellacked fingernails tapping on the family's small kitchen table. "When I'm with my mentor, it's just me and her. " Charlene and her two younger brothers are among the 113 Long Beach students who participate in programs at Operation Jump Start, a local nonprofit that helps disadvantaged and low-income youths aim for college.

There's no sign of Caine Monroy's game arcade when I pull up to his father's Boyle Heights auto parts shop. The 9-year-old is taking his show on the road, enjoying the perks of becoming a viral video star. He and his dad will be at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco this weekend, so Caine can explain to geeked-up science fans how he turned a bunch of cardboard boxes into an elaborate arcade and social network phenomenon. "They sent a 17-foot semi truck and loaded everything up," Caine's father, George Monroy told me. Next, Caine's headed to New York City, for a meeting with an arcade company.