When I was a school superintendent in New York City, I would often run into my students outside of class. One particular eighth grader had a daily ritual of buying food from the local corner store following a long day of lessons and after-school sports. Looking at his crumbled bag of hot-flavored chips, fruit snacks...

Today’s political debate about the fundamental value of public education is unlike anything our country has seen. Across party lines, schools and school boards have become political front-page news. The culture wars have infiltrated America’s classrooms. There is no doubt that the politics being forced into our public education system will be front and center...

Of the nearly 1 million child care workers in the United States, in a recent white paper, my colleagues and I found that 31.2% – basically 1 out of every 3 – experienced food insecurity in 2020, the latest year for which we analyzed data. Food insecurity means there is a lack of consistent access...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter Across the country, communities are sounding the alarm: When it comes to mental wellness, the kids are not okay. A declaration of emergency for children’s mental health came from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association. The U.S....

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter For the past two years, schools, families and students have grappled with a COVID-induced crisis. Not just of health, but of continuous disruptions, school closures, remote schooling and extraordinary stresses, interruptions and obstacles to children’s education and well-being. Relationships fractured as students were torn from the normalcy...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter. It’s no secret that college enrollment in the U.S. has dropped, and these declines aren’t slowing down: This fall, college enrollment nationally decreased by nearly another half-million students. These drops are unevenly distributed across race, socioeconomic class and even gender, with recent reports showing that young men are...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter. For years, schools have drilled into parents that attendance is an important factor in student achievement. But amid the 2021-22 school year’s rocky trajectory, marked by staff shortages, quarantines, and political battles over health measures, the focus on rewarding attendance has resulted in confused, exasperated families. Chronic...

Leaders and advocates alike had high hopes for the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) introduced in California in 2013. Both of us certainly did. Eight years later we see clearly that the implementation of a system that promised equity and accountability has fallen short in two key areas: equity and accountability. A fundamental cause of...

To succeed in the classroom, children must be able to cooperate with other students and their teachers, focus their attention, control impulsive behaviors and manage their emotions so they can concentrate on the tasks at hand. They need to have a sense of belonging and purpose, be able to plan and set goals, and persevere through challenges....

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter. A generation ago, leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall advocated for quality education as a civil right for all children. A decade ago, President Barack Obama declared education “the civil rights issue of our time.” And yet, the tragic reality today for millions of...