As most students in California return to the classroom, many educators and parents are concerned that a year or more of Zoom school means students may be lagging behind where they would have been if there had been no pandemic. Learning loss...

Strict school discipline increases the chances of adult arrests. The research confirms the school-to-prison pipeline, a term used to highlight the link between exclusionary school discipline and incarceration. Black and Hispanic individuals, who are more likely to be suspended or...

Distance learning and the coronavirus have taken an undeniable toll on students who have suffered from isolation, learning loss and trauma during the past year and a half. West Contra Costa Unified and many districts across California are planning a...

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s been clear that not all students have been impacted by the switch to online learning in the same ways. The greatest impacts have fallen on young children, as well as English language learners and low-income...

As we reopen schools and return to classrooms with a new infusion of desperately needed funding, I hope we all realize that “back to normal” won’t work for all students. Let’s take advantage of this exciting opportunity to reimagine and...

Just who is Daisy Gonzales, California’s new acting community colleges chancellor? Her journey, which she describes as an “incredible story,” may resonate with many of the system’s 2 million students.

California will require that all teachers and school staff be vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19, becoming the first state to impose such measures ahead of the new school year. The move comes as students return to classrooms around the...

All throughout the previous year, we held our collective breaths in hope for a “return to normal,” while recognizing that whatever we returned to would look very different. As school starts this fall, after a year of interrupted learning imposed...

At the start of a school year, kids usually show up with oversized backpacks stocked with fresh pencils, crisp notebooks and snacks. This back-to-school season, many children will carry extra baggage. Eighteen months of an unprecedented pandemic turned routines—including going...

While the teaching workforce continues to be heavily dominated by white teachers, in particular white women, the academic and social-emotional benefits for students of color of having a teacher who is their same race have been widely documented. Less studied...

America’s future is figuratively on the line. After a year and a half of remote and hybrid learning, children across the United States have fallen desperately behind, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which estimates that the average American...

Advancing equity continues to be a major focus for California public education at all levels of the system. Yet, as education leaders and school business officials, it’s not always easy to press your way forward into the noisy, bustling, sometimes...

The pandemic altered our understanding of how schools could and should operate as well. Now, as we return for a new school year and districts are poised to receive a major infusion of federal and state funding, we have an...

The Education Department projects that homelessness within the public school system has increased by an astounding 70% in the past ten years. This poses problems when the school bell rings, but those issues don’t dissipate when class is not in...

Newark students suffered extensive learning loss last school year, according to spring 2021 test scores that show for the first time how profoundly the pandemic disrupted students’ academic progress. The grim results are only estimates of how students would have...

Getting the kids ready to go back to school each fall is stressful enough in a normal year, never mind in the midst of a pandemic. Between the more transmissible Delta coronavirus variant, rising cases across the country and new...

Articles in the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed cited Associate Professor of Public Policy Sarah Reber’s efforts to clarify misleading statements about the University of California’s admissions policies. Both articles were written in rebuttal to an Atlantic story arguing...

Thanks to unprecedented funding from the American Rescue Plan and other federal, state, and local resources, school districts across the country are leveraging several evidence-informed strategies to accelerate learning and provide students with needed supports and services. Local initiatives include...

With the sweeping passage of bills aiming to ban truthful teaching of America’s history and legacy of racism, educators across the USA are grappling with the spectre of being fired over something as simple as assigning a children’s book about...

In the past year, students, families, and educators have experienced trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has further exposed and exacerbated educational inequity, from unequal access to tech for distance learning to structural barriers to basic resources—like nutrition, housing, and...

To improve accountability and transparency in California’s special education system, funding should bypass local cost-sharing consortiums and go directly to school districts, according to a new report. Compiled by researchers at the nonpartisan consulting firm West Ed, is the second of a two-part study of ways to improve funding for California’s 725,000 students with disabilities in K-12 public schools. The report will be presented to the Governor, Legislature, and other State officials.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools, the grades and mental health of millions of students declined. Several of the leading Republican challengers in the upcoming recall election of Govenor Gavin Newsom see this crisis as an opportunity. Their solution: more...

Schools are shaping up as a key battleground in the upcoming California recall election, and the coterie of Republicans running to replace Governor Gavin Newsom is offering voters an alternative vision of public education: school choice.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools, the grades and mental health of millions of students declined. Several of the leading Republican challengers in the upcoming California recall election of Governor Gavin Newsom see this crisis as an opportunity. Turning parents...

As school districts around the country begin to announce a wide range of plans for the fall, COVID-19 infection rates are on the rise and the economy remains in recession.Senate Republicans and the White House are considering conditioning at least...