Parents, LAUSD settle suit; 100,000 students get 45 tutoring hours for three years

A group of families reached a settlement with the Los Angeles Unified School District as part of a class action lawsuit that claims the district’s distance learning practices during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic were inadequate and discriminated against Black and Latino students, as well as those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds. 

The settlement, which still needs court approval, is one of the largest ever to come from an education class action lawsuit and will grant more than 100,000 students access to 45 hours of high-dose tutoring each year, amounting to more than 10 million hours in the next three academic years. 

“It’s a lot further from the study halls we all knew and grew up with,” said Ned Hillenbrand, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, which represented the parents pro bono. “It’s 30 minutes at a time, small group, tied directly to curriculum, tied directly to what’s covered in assessment. … We’re hoping for great results from that.” 

LAUSD declined to comment on the settlement or to answer questions about specific plans for implementation. While the district has not disclosed how it will fund the tutors, Gov. Gavin Newsom added $378 million in each of the three years, starting 2025-26, to the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant program, in addition to the $1 billion yet to be spent; tutoring is one of the recommended uses.

The lawsuit

The lawsuit, Shaw et al. v. LAUSD et al.,  initially filed in 2020, claimed that during the pandemic, the district denied students “basic educational equality guaranteed to them by the California Constitution.” 

According to the lawsuit, only 60% of the district’s students participated in virtual learning during the 2020 spring semester. 

“Rather than implementing a distance learning plan sufficient to ensure that these students do not fall further behind, however, LAUSD did the opposite,” the lawsuit reads. 

The district “significantly reduced teacher work time, instructional time, training and professional development; eliminated student assessments; failed to ensure access to technology; and did nothing to attempt to reengage the 40% of students that — according to LAUSD’s own data — did not participate in online learning and live video conferencing at all during remote learning in the spring semester.” 

The suit also claims that LAUSD failed to respond to requests from the plaintiffs and 26 community organizations to remedy the harms and hold public hearings.

The district’s distance learning plan unveiled in August 2020 also “failed to address or remedy the key failures of its spring plan,” the lawsuit added. 

“Live instruction is the best way for students to learn, and an increase in this time is the only realistic way that students who experienced learning loss from the disastrous spring semester can make up for that loss,” the lawsuit states. “Before the pandemic, high school students would receive 31.5 hours of live instructional time a week, but now [during the pandemic], they receive at most 13 hours.” 

The settlement 

The high-dosage tutoring mandated through the settlement will have to be implemented beginning this academic year — and involve 30-minute sessions offered three times each week for the next three years. 

On top of incorporating high-dosage tutoring, the settlement demands the district provide:

• Small group interventions that take place after school and incorporate literacy and numeracy 
• Assessments in math and English Language Arts three times a year to determine the need for any additional academic support 
• Training for teachers in math, English Language Arts and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, an approach that brings academics, behavioral support and social-emotional support together 
• Additional outreach to students and families to help with reenrollment and reengagement of those who have been chronically absent
• Summer school until 2028
• Public reports on grades, tutoring, assessments and absenteeism
• Yearly evaluations on the effectiveness of tutoring programs and reporting on the findings  

“COVID-19 disproportionately impacted vulnerable communities and communities of color, and educators were at the very forefront of navigating unchartered territory to ensure ongoing learning and supporting all students through those unimaginably difficult times. Students have made a profound recovery since students and staff returned to school in 2021,” according to a statement from LAUSD’s teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which was listed as a relief defendant in the suit. 

The union said that while a lawsuit could have changed the district in ways that would be counterproductive for everyone, “the settlement that was reached protects educators’ hard-won contractual rights, aligns with a commitment to supporting our students and vulnerable student populations, and ensures against unwarranted judicial interference in creating education policy in Los Angeles.”

The road ahead 

While various stakeholders are celebrating the settlement’s outcome, there is still work to be done to ensure students receive adequate academic support. 

When done properly, high-impact tutoring is one of the most researched and effective learning interventions, according to Kathy Bendheim, the strategic advising director for the Stanford Graduate School of Education’s National Student Support Accelerator. And there is research indicating that it can help boost attendance. 

“It will go a really long way to helping those students who fell behind during Covid,” Bendheim said. “But even before Covid, not all students were on grade level, far from it. And so, we believe that this type of tutoring should be incorporated into schools for the long run … for the students who need it.”

She also recommended LAUSD — and other districts pursuing similar programs — keep a close eye on the amount of tutoring students are receiving, as opposed to the amount of tutoring being scheduled.

Scheduling more than the minimum amount of dosage required, she said, can be helpful. 

“Oftentimes, districts will schedule the minimum amount of dosage that they believe will be effective. But as we all know, in school schedules, there are field trips and students are sick or something takes priority in that moment,” Bendheim said. 

“If you don’t have the dosage, it really does not have a chance to become as effective as it could be.” 

Michelle Vilchez, the CEO of Innovate Public Schools, which supported the parents involved in the suit along with Parent Revolution, also expressed her excitement about the outcome. 

Now, she said, they will have to focus on ensuring the students who are eligible for the support receive it. 

“There are so many districts that are paying attention and looking,” Vilchez said, “and there are also parents that are paying attention and saying, ‘Well, if we can hold the second-largest school district in the United States accountable for the learning of our children to ensure that it’s high quality,’ then we can hold our district accountable as well.”