From a January 25, 2022 College Board release:

"College Board announced today that the SAT Suite of Assessments will be delivered digitally...The SAT will still be scored on a 1600 scale...The digital SAT will be shorter—about two hours instead of three for the current SAT, with more time per question. The digital test will feature shorter reading passages with one question tied to each, and passages will reflect a wider range of topics that represent the works students read in college. Calculators will be allowed on the entire Math section. Students and educators will get scores back in days, instead of weeks."

For more information, see here.

Outlook readers will remember that last summer, the California Department of Education ruled that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) violated federal law in ways that significantly reduced assistance for academically struggling students in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Now, the Archdiocese is taking LAUSD to court.

As reported in EdSource:

"The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has sued Los Angeles Unified, charging it has withheld millions of dollars in federal funding from dozens of Catholic schools, denying thousands of low-income students counseling and academic services they’re entitled to.

"The archdiocese said it filed the Dec. 16 lawsuit after repeatedly trying to get the district to reverse its decision to slice Title I funding for nearly all of its 100-plus schools over three years by more than 90%.

"In late June, following an investigation, the California Department of Education unequivocally sided with the archdiocese, calling its funding cuts 'totally unreasonable.' Its report concluded that the district failed to provide equitable services to archdiocese schools and 'engaged in a pattern of arbitrary unilateral decisions.' The district ignored the archdiocese’s Public Records Act requests to provide documentation justifying the cuts. Instead, the report said, it took a 'hide-the-ball approach (that) breached both the spirit and the letter' of the law.

"The department gave the district 60 days to 'meaningfully' consult with the archdiocese, as federal law requires, and recalculate the funding eligibility. In a statement, the diocese said the district ignored the order and failed to respond to a settlement offer that the schools offered nearly a year ago.

"The lawsuit asks the Los Angeles County Superior Court to immediately order the district to properly determine the schools’ eligibility for federal funding and to award the schools the money they’ve been denied."

From the Los Angeles Times:

"Senate Bill 871, by state Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), would add COVID-19 vaccines to California’s list of required inoculations for attending K-12 schools, which can be skipped only if a student receives a rare medical exemption. If passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, the measure would supplant a more limited COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schools that was created by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year.

"Under the bill, the California Department of Public Health could mandate vaccines in the future without requiring the state to offer personal belief exemptions...

"California already has plans to require students at all public and private schools to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. However, that mandate, which was announced by Newsom in October, does not take effect until after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approves the shot for children ages 12 and older. Currently, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is fully approved for ages 16 and older, and there is only an emergency authorization in place for ages 5 to 15, which is a lesser standard than full approval.

"Newsom’s mandate is limited to grades seven through 12 and has a key caveat: Once the vaccine is fully approved, parents could still cite personal beliefs to opt their children out of being inoculated. The state must offer broader personal belief exemptions for any newly required vaccine unless it is added through a new law to the list of shots students must receive to attend school in California. State law requires a medical exemption to skip some or all of those vaccines for in-person attendance at K-12 schools.

"Pan’s bill would go much further than Newsom’s mandate, starting with requiring all students from kindergarten through 12th grade to be vaccinated against COVID-19 beginning Jan. 1. That requirement would be in place even if Pfizer-BioNTech remains available through emergency authorization for ages 5 to 15...

"By adding COVID-19 shots to the state’s list of required vaccines for students, parents would need a medical exemption in order to skip those doses."