Teacher shortages, waning enrollment and growing civil unrest: these are but a few of the challenges facing school districts today. A new study examining the first 14 months of the pandemic provides insights into the origins of these current challenges...

Strong relationships among leadership and stakeholders helped districts navigate challenges caused by COVID-19, the politicization of the pandemic and divided political beliefs, according to a new report from the Policy Analysis for California Education. Conducted during the first 14 months...

Under a third of schools are utilizing federal COVID relief funds to improve school facilities and air quality, says a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While some schools and districts prioritized investments in portable or...

Community Schools are a time whose idea has come, a solution that was waiting for the perfect storm–and the perfect storm is here. In this final installment, we’ll look at the lessons learned from the community schools movement. What can...

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the reading skills of Ohio's youngest students, according to state data. The third-grade reading proficiency decreased statewide from 67% in the 2018-19 school year to 51.9% in 2020-21, said LM Clinton...

A recent review of school guidance and communications from the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention argues that the federal agency failed often in its goal of providing timely, actionable information to states and districts around COVID-19 safety protocols. As...

In March 2020, school districts across California closed their doors, rapidly adjusting to remote instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges associated with the adjustment are unprecedented and their impacts continue to be felt, even as students have mostly...

In San Ysidro School District, more than a quarter of the district’s nearly 4,400 students are unhoused, according to Superintendent Gina Potter. It highlights the question of how school funding should be determined, she said, while weighing the pros and...

For most schools, the catch up strategy is asking teachers to run a few review sessions and to generally pick up the pace of instruction. Researchers say that is not going to work well and they found kids who were...

Young students are having difficulty learning to read as schools have returned to in-person learning after two years of pandemic disruptions. Studies of literacy in young children have shown that some young students are still suffering from learning loss, even...

Since COVID-19 shut down classrooms in March 2020, education advocates, teachers and parents have repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying extended closures and distance learning would stymie students’ achievements. During the pandemic, students across ethnic groups saw an increase in Ds and...

The pandemic has given us all a taste of forced isolation. We’ve seen how it can leave individuals feeling lonely, scared and depressed. Imagine if that was your permanent experience. For many students with disabilities, isolation is the standard practice...

The Sacramento City Unified School District has received nearly 150,000 N95 masks for its teachers, staff and volunteers amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in Northern California. The shipment of masks from the state arrived Friday, according to a release...

Covid, wildfires, economic uncertainty and persistent racial injustices have upended nearly every aspect of children’s lives in California, according to one of the first comprehensive surveys of young people’s overall well-being since the pandemic began. The 2022 Children Now Report Card...

California’s K–12 students experienced significant academic setbacks during the 2020-21 school year of mainly remote learning, showing growing achievement gaps, lagging progress in math and English, increased chronic absenteeism and a slight decline in the statewide graduation rate, according to...

As communities continue dealing with the fallout of the pandemic and districts grapple with how best to spend an influx of one-time funding to support students, experts say there is no better time to begin looking into community school models. The...

After five straight years of gradual improvement, standardized test scores declined significantly last year for many California students, most of whom spent 2020-21 in distance learning. Gaps in achievement between Blacks and Hispanics and their white and Asian peers, already...

Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jorge Aguilar provides an update on school reopening amid Omicron and updates on the district’s vaccine mandate ahead of its January 31st deadline.

The California Department of Education (CDE) today released student performance data that provide baseline indicators of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted schools and students. The 2020–21 data affirm both the challenges created by the pandemic and California’s commitment to...

The 2021-22 school year was supposed to have been a rebound to normalcy, with Covid in the rear-view mirror. Instead, midway through, the year has been “shock and overload,” with teachers and administrators “working harder and losing ground,” as Mike...

California high school seniors were in 10th grade when the Covid-19 pandemic closed schools and sent them home to learn. This year, many seniors are either struggling to earn enough credits to graduate or, because of a new state law...

Enrollment at Coachella Valley K-12 public schools has declined by approximately 1,000 students since this time last year and much more than that since before the pandemic began. Declining enrollment since 2019-20 could result in Desert Sands Unified losing approximately $13.8 million, Coachella Valley Unified losing $9...

It didn’t take long before the consequences of the pandemic shone a spotlight on the growing inequities within our communities and systems. Existing disparities in housing and food security, education, and health care, for example, grew wider between socioeconomic and...

Many California voters consider college affordability to be a top priority and also support increasing resources for California’s community college students,  according to “Californians’ Attitudes About College Access, Affordability, and Equity in the Time of COVID-19,”a new research brief published...