The pandemic has been devastating for students and families on so many levels. It also produced insights that constitute urgent news for schools, both as they contend with the next wave of coronavirus and in the longer-term future. Today, a quarter of elementary school students in the U.S. use the Zearn platform and they have...

Speaking and listening account for the overwhelming majority of how we receive information in our daily communications. Yet, average listeners may understand and recall as little as 10 percent of what they hear, as people are often distracted, preoccupied, or forgetful. As vital as listening is in our education, jobs, families and virtually every aspect...

The KIPP charter school network’s announcement of another scholarship program designed to launch their alumni into successful careers — and avoid the underemployment problems of years past — represents the latest mile marker along a steep learning curve. The nation’s largest group of K-12 charter schools said last week that the Ruth and Norman Rales...

Authentic connections among educators, students, parents and their community are critical for the success of a school. These connections are essential in pursuing equity, addressing opportunity gaps and supporting Black and brown students. Unfortunately, between the underrepresentation of Black teachers and school leaders and the utter failure of teacher training programs to adequately prepare educators...

As children make their way back into physical classrooms after an unprecedented year of virtual education, parents and educators must ask a crucial question: What can be done to help returning students cope with feelings of anxiety, depression and powerlessness? One avenue for encouraging children’s personal wellness is a return to arts education, whose far-ranging...

It felt like this fall would — at long last — be different. Last March according to the National Center for Education Statistics, just short of 40 percent of U.S. students were still learning entirely remotely. Roughly the same percentage were back attending full-time in-person learning (another 23 percent of students were enrolled in hybrid learning)....

Over the past school year, the the Center on Reinventing Public Education has tracked how pandemic learning pods evolved from emergency responses to, in some cases, small, innovative, and personalized learning communities. This summer, as COVID-19 vaccinations increased, it seemed like the major impetus for these efforts was fading from view. We turned to our existing...

As students return to colleges and universities this fall, the highly communicable Delta variant of COVID-19 creates unexpected challenges to keep campuses safe and open. Higher education leaders now need to respond rapidly to protect their students, staff, faculty, and people with whom they come in contact. Everyone recognizes the benefits of in-person learning, but...

Thanks to a surprisingly strong state budget and a $15 billion infusion courtesy of the federal government, school districts across California are now flush with cash. But if district leaders aren’t careful now, they could trigger a round of painful cuts in the very near future. Consider the case of San Diego Unified (SDU). Student...

After seven months serving as the newest member of the LA Unified Board of Education, I see an incredibly simple but difficult opportunity before the second-largest school district in the country: defining one word — “equity.” It’s a word we see everywhere in education these days — in news articles discussing the academic and social-emotional...