San Francisco must do everything it can to avert a state takeover of its schools. That’s the stark message brought by Carl A. Cohn, the only outside educator to be brought in to help the team of city administrators set...
As the San Francisco Unified School District deliberates over a tentative list of school closures, it will have to account for the fact that the district’s enrollment has declined for several years—and could fall much further. But San Francisco’s public...
A recent report from Policy Analysis for California Education aims to provide education leaders with a better understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can be used in education by exploring its potential strengths and limitations. Generative AI in...
Falling enrollments and gloomy economics point to the inevitable: Many school districts in California will close schools over the next decade. So far, they have been mainly elementary and middle schools, but high schools, spared until now, won’t escape, a...
When a new intervention or program is introduced, the conventional wisdom among many seasoned educators is, “This too shall pass.” This attitude doesn’t mean an intervention is not promising or educators are not flexible and innovative. Rather, it emerges from...
With all the hubris of a startup founder, Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, took to the stage in March to launch Ed the chatbot. He told parents and students it had “the potential to personalize the...
This commentary from LEARN Network provides practical guidance on how to pilot new evidence-based interventions to build support for and eventually scale new programs that measurably improve student outcomes. Key steps include: bringing together the right people in the form of a cross-functional leadership team; gathering the necessary information for decision-making (including how educators use the program, what supports and resources are necessary for its effective implementation, and whether students actually benefit); and spreading the intervention to a larger group. Unless new programs become "institutionalised" by educators with ownership over their implementation, they will be incapable of surviving leadership turnover, and the cycle of moving to the next new thing will continue unbroken.
Despite post-COVID challenges and economic uncertainties, education leaders and state lawmakers have made enduring commitments to building educational equity and improving academic outcomes for all students. Nonetheless, for many school districts even with new policies and initiatives, and dedicated funding...
There was a lot of conversation during the pandemic about how school districts’ scramble to deliver content fully virtually could fundamentally change K-12 learning. But did that become a reality? While most public school educators were eager to return to...
Shrinking enrollment and vanishing pandemic aid have delivered a financial gut punch to many school districts across the country. The looming reality of comprehensive school reorganization efforts, notably through closures and consolidations, has ignited passionate debates about fairness, equity, and...
Your children could be some of a growing number of California kids having their writing graded by software instead of a teacher. California school districts are signing more contracts for artificial intelligence tools, from automated grading in San Diego to...
State educational agencies are increasingly focused on how to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of AI in their state education settings. To inform state—and district—leaders of key things to consider as they make decisions around AI, OET invited...
No one wants to close schools. Not the communities that cherish their local school. Not the school boards that want to serve the needs of all their students. Not administrators and school district personnel who have to wade through the...
California is synonymous with innovation. Over decades and across sectors, California has been a leader—from tech start-ups to agricultural advances and environmental solutions. In the private sector, companies race to market with their ideas in order to capitalize on ingenuity.California...
Across the country, states are moving to education systems that are more student centered, equitable, and competency based. They are doing so because they understand that the legacy model for educating our young people is not working. Although graduation rates have increased, other markers of progress have not. Standardized test scores remain relatively flat. Achievement and opportunity gaps persist despite decades of increased funding and abundant strategies to reduce them. Chronic absenteeism is near an all-time high. The reality is that too many students do not find school to be interesting, engaging, or relevant for their futures. This is particularly true for youth of color and other marginalized student populations. Rather than continuing to tinker around the edges, we can advance real change! Here’s how.
Closing or consolidating neighborhood schools is a painful decision that no school district or community ever wishes to face, but increasingly it may be on the table due to declining enrollment trends and budgetary pressures. In this episode, host Jason...
Between 2007 and 2022, California saw its K–12 public school enrollment decrease by more than 390,000 students, or more than 6 percent statewide, according to data from the state’s Department of Education. The baby bust is a large contributor to...
As districts consider closures to cope with budgetary declines, new research adds to concerns that schools with higher enrollments of Black students are more likely than other schools to be shut down. “The big picture is that race plays a...
Roughly four dozen Fort Worth ISD campuses are less than 70% occupied, making them likely targets for future closings.Fort Worth ISD officials have discussed the need to make some hard decisions due to challenges driven by dwindling enrollments and underutilized...
Closing schools is, of course, often a turbulent experience for communities, families and students. But leaders can take some steps to reduce distress with an eye toward equity, says Carrie Hahnel, a senior associate partner for policy and evaluation at...
Each year about 2% of U.S. public schools permanently close their doors, a trend that has translated in recent years to roughly 1,000 school closures annually. Budgetary constraints or low academic performance are typically cited as justification, but advocates have...
Each year about 2 percent of U.S. public schools permanently close their doors, a trend that has translated in recent years to roughly 1,000 school closures annually. Budgetary constraints or low academic performance are typically cited as justification, but advocates...
Public school enrollment is declining across the country, and it won’t bounce back anytime soon. The steep drops in K-12 enrollment in the aftermath of COVID-19 exacerbated a much longer-term trend rooted in falling birth rates and slowing immigration. These...
Artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses a broad set of tools developed to perform tasks that have historically required human intelligence. The new generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are not programmed with a specific set of instructions; rather, they are trained on sets of data and algorithms that guide how they respond to prompts. We are increasingly using a range of AI tools—such as autopopulate suggestions, navigation systems, facial recognition on phones, and ChatGPT—in many aspects of our lives. Because of the prevalence and power of these tools, their rapid development, and their potential to be truly disruptive—in positive and negative ways—it is critical that school districts develop policies, guidelines, and supports for the productive use of AI in schools. Later in this commentary, we discuss many of the short-term positives and negatives of using AI in schools. The greatest impact of AI, however, is how it can transform teachers’ roles and student learning.
During the 2022–23 school year, artificial intelligence (AI) evolved from an experimental technology few had heard of into readily available technology that has become widely used by educators and students. There are many ways educators can use AI that may positively revolutionize education to benefit classroom instruction, to support data use and analysis, and to aid in decision-making. The biggest potential upsides of AI for education will be accompanied by major disruptions, however, and districts will need time for thoughtful consideration to avoid some of the worst possible pitfalls. This commentary focuses not on how best to harness the potential of AI in education over the long term but instead on the urgent need for districts to respond to student use of AI. We argue that during summer 2023, districts should adopt policies for the 2023–24 school year that help students to engage with AI in productive ways and decrease the risk of AI-related chaos due to society’s inability to detect inappropriate AI use.
