Fewer than 4 in 10 LAUSD students meet math standards. This is an all-time high.
LAUSD students are not failing because of COVID. They are failing because their schools are underfunded, their classes are too large, and the district has spent billions on technology that independent research shows delivers no measurable benefit over a good teacher in a smaller classroom.
The consequences fall on students — and when the harm is severe enough, families go to court. LAUSD has spent decades and hundreds of millions fighting those families instead of funding the services their children were legally owed.
In September 2020, a group of parents sued LAUSD. Their children had fallen behind during the pandemic. The district’s remote learning policies, they alleged, had discriminated against Black, Latino, disabled, and low-income students — some of whom received no live instruction whatsoever.
LAUSD fought the lawsuit for five years. It won an initial dismissal. Parents appealed. They won. The district kept fighting.
In September 2025, LAUSD finally settled. The agreement — described as one of the largest education class action settlements in US history — requires high-dose tutoring for over 100,000 students and 24 remedial measures over three school years.
The tutoring the settlement requires is exactly what the district could have provided in 2020 instead of spending five years in court.
“It comes down to cost saving — because they know only a certain number of parents will go to due process.”
— Special education advocate, The 74, 2024