Scott Schmerelson, who has worked in the LA Unified School District for nearly four decades and has served on the board since 2015, was  by his board colleagues on Dec. 10.  

As board president, he succeeded , who is retiring.

A former LAUSD teacher, principal and administrator, Schmerelson assumed leadership of the board just before he begins his third and final term representing District 3, which covers parts of LA鈥檚 San Fernando Valley region.

In a phone interview, Schmerelson said he鈥檇 focus the board鈥檚 attention on fighting falling student enrollment in the remainder of the academic year, as pre-pandemic declines accelerated into long-term losses that may eventually force school closures.

鈥淚鈥檓 going to constantly, constantly talk about enrollment,鈥� Schmerelson said. 鈥淔or the school district to remain viable, we have to have students.鈥�

Schmerelson said he hoped LAUSD鈥檚 improving test scores would help attract students who may have left the district for private schools or home instruction.

He said as board president he鈥檒l also focus on issues including LAUSD鈥檚  and rising .  

It鈥檚 a tall order. But with nearly 40 years working in the district and close to a decade on the school board, Schmerelson believes he has the backing of his community.

As president, Schmerelson will help set the direction of the board鈥檚 policymaking and manage its operations. The LAUSD鈥檚 seven-member board sets the district鈥檚 policy, controls its budget and hires the superintendent.

This fall Schmerelson overcame an aggressive campaign from opponent Dan Chang, a math teacher at James Madison Middle School in North Hollywood, who focused much of his election messaging on the need to tame waste and corruption in the school district.

Chang and his backers, including the state charter school association鈥檚 political arm, spent more than $5.6 million promoting his campaign. 厂肠丑尘别谤别濒蝉辞苍鈥檚 backers, including the local teacher union, spent about $2.5 million, .

In the end, Chang landed behind Schmerelson with 48% of the vote, while Schmerelson got 52%.

Schmerelson brought up the cost of the race in remarks he made after he was sworn in as president at LAUSD headquarters last month.  

鈥淩eally, it is our whole community that won,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ecause we learned to work together against the power of money. And when I say money, I mean $5 million.鈥�  

The contest between the two men had the potential to tilt the district鈥檚 school board away from a majority of union-backed members, and impact its handling of several   facing LAUSD, including restrictions on charter schools鈥� use of buildings, which Chang said he鈥檇 move to reverse if elected. 

 victory is part of a successful election season for many teachers  in Los Angeles 鈥� and Schmerelson has aligned himself with local unions on policies limiting space and resources for charter schools.

But in an interview Schmerelson said he supports the continued operation of high-quality charter schools in the district.

鈥淚 am going to support those charter schools that are doing an excellent job of educating the kids,鈥� said Schmerelson.

鈥淚 want to make sure that the charter schools that we have, are viable and working well,鈥� he added.

Charter-backed upstart failed in the Nov. 5 elections to unseat , the longtime LAUSD educator and policymaker who won the election and will begin his third and final term on the LA Unified board in January. 

Chang conceded in a message to supporters that he wasn鈥檛 going to be able to overcome 厂肠丑尘别谤别濒蝉辞苍鈥檚 4 percentage point lead. 

Chang, a math teacher at James Madison Middle School in North Hollywood, who previously helped found charter schools in LA, trailed behind Schmerelson with 48% of the vote, while Schmerelson garnered  52%.

The contest between the two men had the potential to tip the district鈥檚 school board away from a 4-3 majority of union-backed members, and impact the board鈥檚 handling of several facing LAUSD, including restrictions on charter schools鈥� use of buildings, which Chang said he鈥檇 move to reverse if elected. 

victory is part of a successful election season for many teachers . 

The outspoken former teacher and principal has sided closely with local unions on issues of space and resources for charter schools. His win could mean more headwinds for the nation鈥檚 largest charter school sector here moving forward. 

厂肠丑尘别谤别濒蝉辞苍鈥檚 campaign didn鈥檛 respond to requests for comment.

Two other LA Unified school board races being decided by voters this year were not as close.

For District 1 in South LA, board admin defeated with 71% of the vote, versus 29% for Al-Alim, whom the in the primary over anti-semitic social media. 

For LAUSD Board District 5, which covers parts of Northeast and Southeast LA, union-backed led with 61% of the vote, versus 39% held by Ortiz.

Meanwhile, a majority of LA voters voiced their approval of a to repair and upgrade aging school buildings. 

As of Friday, voters cast 68% of ballots in favor of , which was backed by members of the LAUSD board, district superintendent Alberto Carvalho, the teachers union and local construction groups.  

Measure US would be LAUSD鈥檚 largest ever school facilities bond, and would be paid for with property tax increases. It requires a 55% majority in order to pass. 

The Los Angeles County Clerk is still counting votes and is providing daily. 

As of Friday the clerk had recorded more than 3.7 million votes in all the elections held November 5, with roughly 35% of eligible voters still uncounted.

The upward trend was even more pronounced in several major cities whose NAEP results are tracked separately. In Chicago, now home to the country鈥檚 , the score for English learners on the eighth-grade reading test shot up a jaw-dropping 17 points to 234, the highest level since reading data was first reported on this group in 2002 and 10 points more than the next-highest score of 224 in 2017.聽

The same held true in Los Angeles, the district with in the country, where their eighth-grade reading scores leapt from 202 to 210. That eight-point gain essentially mirrors a all L.A. 8th graders made in reading on the 2022 exam. 

The 8th-grade reading scores for English learners in Albuquerque climbed from 211 to 223. Fort Worth, Texas also showed remarkable gains, with scores jumping from 219 to 231. Nationally, English learners鈥� scores on the eighth-grade reading test went from 221 to 225. 

The scores for English learners are still far below NAEP鈥檚 grade-level proficiency for math and reading and sizably lower than the scores for students overall, but remain noteworthy in a closely watched test where changes of even a few points are considered significant. They also are emerging after a pandemic that harmed all student learning, but was seen as particularly detrimental to English language learners. 

While some educators, including Los Angeles Unified schools chief Alberto Carvalho, point to concentrated remediation 鈥� the superintendent cited tutoring and summer programs targeting these children 鈥� others are less sure why these gains were made. 

鈥淚 don’t know that I have a good explanation for why that would be,鈥� said Tim Boals, founder and director of , an organization that provides resources to those who teach multilingual learners. 鈥淚’d like to think that maybe we’ve been doing a better job of supporting ELs over the last few years, but I don’t have evidence to support that conclusion. It also flies in the face of the COVID panic about our kids losing even more ground.鈥�

Grady Wilburn, a statistician and research scientist for the National Center for Education Statistics which administers NAEP, also could not explain these students鈥� success, especially considering the obstacles they faced throughout the pandemic.

Multilingual learners were, in some cases, more transient because of their parents鈥� job loss and unstable housing, and, as a result, often more difficult to find. They were also less likely to have reliable internet access and devices through which to learn remotely.

鈥淎nything we saw that showed improvement we saw as a surprise,鈥� Wilburn said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a good explanation as to why.鈥�

Carol Salva, a Houston-based educational consultant who has worked with multilingual learners for 15 years and is recognized as a leader in the field, is unsure what to make of the results. While she hopes they reflect a substantive improvement 鈥� she observed that multilingual learners benefited from having additional time to complete assignments and were more likely to talk during online lessons when they could type rather than speak their comments 鈥� she鈥檚 concerned about their meaning. 

鈥淲hile I’m grateful for any positive news when it comes to our multilingual students, this data gives me pause and I feel that it needs to be studied further,鈥� she said. 

Chicago focuses on its English learners

Jorge Macias, chief of language and cultural education at Chicago Public Schools, said the improvement among English learners in his district was no shock: CPS, which currently serves 73,000 such children, has been focusing on this group for years, increasing the number of bilingual and English-as-a-second-language teachers from under 5,000 in 2014 to well more than 6,000 now.

The 325,000-student district also has invested in rigorous training for staff who then share their knowledge with teachers at hundreds of schools. Their tactics are constantly evaluated for their effectiveness and measured against student achievement, Macias said. 

The University of Chicago, in published in 2019, found that CPS students who started out as English learners and who demonstrated English proficiency by eighth grade had higher attendance, math test scores, and core course grades than their peers. So, even a force as strong as the pandemic couldn鈥檛 derail them, Macias said. 

鈥淲e had a four- or five-year runway of getting all of these structures in place to achieve that outcome,鈥� he said. 

Los Angeles in the NAEP spotlight

Carvalho, the longtime Miami-Dade superintendent who took over in L.A. March 1, also cited an easier transition to online learning than some other major cities, although there have been multiple reports of L.A. Unified students struggling with remote instruction. And while Los Angeles was among the last in the country to return to in-person schooling, the district saw improvements for all of its students in 4th-grade reading and in both 8th-grade reading and math.

Carvalho has been on the receiving end of both and since the NAEP scores were released last week, especially because his students in both math and reading on the 2021-22 California state tests. The veteran superintendent noted that NAEP advises school leaders 鈥渢o be careful about drawing conclusions based on NAEP data.鈥� 

Longtime education researcher Tom Loveless put an even finer point on it, telling 蜜桃影视, 鈥渢ests are fluky, and they go up and down. L.A. may give up all those points in the next administration of the test. A lot of people who cheer the NAEP one year are downtrodden the next.鈥� 

English learners narrow the gap 

Jennifer Lumb, who teaches multilingual learners at Oakbrook middle and elementary schools in Ladson, South Carolina, said her students’ attendance was solid throughout the pandemic for classes involving English language instruction. 

“The majority of my students missed the in-person peer/teacher interactions, so they looked forward to that connection with our daily virtual (English language) instruction,” she said. 

But they didn鈥檛 always log-on for their core subject matter courses, she said. 

Nationally, scores dropped in eighth-grade math across the board, but less so for English learners. They slipped just two points 鈥� from 243 in 2019 to 241 in 2022 鈥� while they nosedived from 285 to 277 for all non-English learners in that grade and subject.

Fourth-grade reading scores also decreased, but the shift was closer between the two groups and not as stark. They went from 224 in 2019 to 222 in 2022 for those students who were not identified as English learners 鈥� and from 191 to 190 for those who were.

In fourth-grade math, both groups saw their scores sink by four points 鈥� from 220 in 2019 to 2016 in 2022 for English language learners and from 243 to 239 for those students who were not.

But the gap between English learners and all other students 鈥� long thought to have widened during the pandemic 鈥� didn鈥檛 grow: It stayed the same for fourth-grade math, decreased a point for fourth-grade reading and decreased by six points each for eighth-grade math and reading.

And not all cities reported gains: Eighth-grade English learners鈥� reading scores held steady in Washington, D.C., at 224, and fell by a point in New York City to 208. Miami also suffered a loss, with scores dipping from 225 to 222. Boston dropped four points to 2016. 

More than 115,000 students took the eighth-grade reading test in 2022, down from roughly 146,000 in 2019, Wilburn said. The percentage of English learners who took the NAEP tests remained almost unchanged between 2019 and 2022. In 2019, 13% of all students who took the 4th-grade math test were identified as English learners, in 2022, 14% were. In 4th-grade reading, 13% of all students who took the 2019 test were English learners as were 15% of students who took the 2022 test. 

No matter the scores, Boals said, educators must advance these children.  

鈥淎t the end of the day, the issue is supporting the kid who’s in front of you and moving him/her forward,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat, for me, is always the main thing.鈥� 

蜜桃影视鈥檚 senior writer Kevin Mahnken contributed to this report.