P.S. I Love You Foundation attended the United Way of Greater Los Angeles 2011 Education Summit on March 22, 2011.  It was the first and largest of its kind -- focused on education reform in Los Angeles County.  The summit, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, was attended by over 1,200 national and local education leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

The goal of the summit was to find solutions to the challenges facing schools in Los Angeles County, determine which strategies are working, and how they can be implemented.  During the summit, the United Way also released results of the Creating Pathways to Graduation, What's Working; Examining high-performing middle grades schools in Los Angeles County report, a qualitative look at six high-perfomring schools from over 303 middle schools assessed across California as part of EdSource's earlier Gaining Ground in Middle Grades study. These studies were designed to identify school and district practices that set apart high-performing schools from lower-performing schools, yielding a wealth of actionable practices associated with improved student outcomes in middle school.

Los Angeles County has seen modest gains in educational achievement over the past ten years, but further action is needed:

• 40% of L.A. County students are dropping out of school; this rate has not changed in ten years!!!
• Only one-third of schools in L.A. County have Academic Performance (API) scores of over 800; in LAUSD the figure drops to 24%
• English and Algebra proficiency is improving, but modest gains and solutions are not scaling fast enough to improve education for all students