Best Educator Schools Los Angeles Near Me

4worldlovers: Our mission to develop joyful, resilient, lifelong learners inspires everything we do. CEE’s founders created one of the first preschool programs in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Today, 540 students (Toddler through Sixth Grade) and their families make up our vibrant, diverse community. The Center’s focus on developmental, play-based early education guides how our students learn and our community thrives.

There's a lot going on at The Center throughout the year!

The original founders of this group, most of whom were professional psychoanalysts, were passionate about respecting the inner world of the child. They started in a single-family home in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles in 1939.


Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of The Center, serving as a driving force in the school’s history. From anti-bias education integrated into all classrooms to the practice of RULER social-emotional learning, CEE students and families celebrate differences and strive for inclusivity on all levels.


CEE's Core Values of Honesty, Caring, Inclusion, and Responsibility are living, breathing tenets of our community and each child experiences in-depth service-learning each year.

4worldlovers: At Ánimo South Los Angeles Charter High School, we are committed to providing a high-quality, rigorous, and relevant education. Our teachers cultivate lifelong learners through engaging lessons and recognition of potential. Through daily innovation, we have created a safe and supportive environment where all learners can pursue their academic and social goals.


We prepare our students with skills they need to be successful in college, leadership, and life. We work with parents to build strategies around student success. And we prioritize the social, emotional and academic well-being of each child at Ánimo South Los Angeles. This collaboration has resulted in progress for all students.

Ánimo South Los Angeles Charter is not just a school, it’s a learning community. We value and celebrate diversity, as well as the unique talents of each and every student. And we believe that a bond between the school, student, and families will maximize the educational experience for all students.

4worldlovers: At ESLA, we abide one simple truth: The best educational tool for any young person is the collaboration and camaraderie of peers from different backgrounds—peers who have stories and perspectives to share, the stuff of life that simply cannot be gleaned from a textbook. A truly exceptional, transformative education requires a diverse and equitable learning environment. It gives students access to entire worlds and worldviews they might never otherwise encounter. It opens their hearts and minds to the concerns, struggles, and joys of others—knowledge that will forever shape their convictions and actions in life.

Study after study shows that students from diverse classrooms have greater cultural competencies and are better prepared for higher education and life beyond. But this is about far more than college prep. Breaking down the barriers in our society goes hand in hand with breaking down the barriers in our schools, and preparing tomorrow’s ethical leaders requires ethical educational practices—right now, today.

By almost every measure, income inequality and economic stratification have steadily intensified in Los Angeles over the past several decades, and according to recent wide-ranging studies by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, racial and economic segregation in Los Angeles schools is now starker than it has been in half a century.

The price of an independent education has also been on the rise, and it presents a barrier to entry that is insurmountable for the vast majority of families. This barrier often stymies efforts to cultivate meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusivity at independent schools. In various way, schools of all kinds—public, charter, and independent—contend with geographic segregation and with having their resources tied to real estate prices or families’ income levels.

All of this boils down to one simple fact: there are very few institutions in our city that encourage a truly diverse group of young people to interact with one another. Ages eleven through eighteen are profoundly formative years in a young person’s life. These are the years when a student comes to understand herself as a citizen, a member of society, a political and ethical being. What happens when young people from different backgrounds spend these formative years largely isolated from one another? What is the true cost of a stratified education system?

The fact that our schools continue to reflect and cement the fissures in our society should present an urgent call to action. At the Episcopal School of Los Angeles, we have posed a new question: What happens when the brightest, most dedicated students from all walks of life spend every day in the classroom together—growing, learning, and forming lifelong bonds? What happens when they are given the tools to understand their own histories, the history of the city, and the possibilities of social transformation?

At ESLA, over 40% of our overall tuition revenue is funded by need-based scholarships—an enormous, nearly unparalleled commitment to aid and access in the independent school world. We cannot overstate what an incredible difference this makes.

Every year we enroll just as many students who know what it means to live in the most trying financial circumstances—students whose convictions are forged with a visceral understanding of economic disparity in our nation, and whose perspectives are therefore vital—as we do students who come from significant affluence.

Over the past several years, half of our newly enrolled students have identified as people of color, and our families reflect the vibrancy of our neighborhood and our city—small business owners, studio executives, wage workers, Latinx, Korean-American, Black, and white. In a seminar of fifteen—our average class size—it is often the case that no two students will approach the issue at hand from the same socioeconomic and cultural background.

It’s also telling that several of our most popular, student-founded and student-led organizations are the Feminist Club, the Gender and Sexual Diversity Association, and Bridging the Gap—a club that facilitates conversations on issues pertaining to marginalized groups. Our students contend with the complexities of intersectional identities—what it means to experience privilege in certain ways but marginalization in others.

Our students lead the way in bringing our mission to life. They prove again and again, through their curiosity and their courage, innumerable versions of that simple truth we abide: A transformative conversation about immigration policy in the US has to include the voices of DREAMers or the children of immigrants. A transformative conversation about gender and sexual diversity has to include the voices of the LGBTQ+ community. The absolute best resource our students have is one another. Everyone has much to give, and much to learn.

This is lofty rhetoric, we know. We are just one small school, growing every day, doing our best. The path ahead of us is long, but we walk it with determination, and we hope our story resonates with yours.