Last week, Democrats made history as 12 candidates crowded the debate stage, the most ever to participate in a single debate. With so many candidates and topics to cover, it’s hard to have a substantive conversation on any of the issues — especially education, which received only a scant mention last Tuesday (and was raised...

For parents of children with disabilities, finding a school where the adults not only care about what your child needs but are capable of providing it can be life-changing. Over the last 12 months, researchers at the Center on Reinventing Public Education and the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools fanned out across...

National data indicate that approximately three of every five students begin the school year below grade level, with those numbers even higher for low-income students and students of color. Educators know this is a problem, with one survey showing 39 percent of teachers agreeing that most of their students start the school year academically prepared...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report The School and Communities First ballot initiative might be the biggest and most expensive school funding campaign battle in California history. Or, it might peter out as so many other similar attempts have in the past. There is evidence to support either view. The proposed...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report As difficult as it may be to believe nowadays, when teacher unions deem charter schools their mortal enemies, there was a brief period of time when they took a different approach. Affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers once created their...

Walk into almost any classroom in America, and you’ll find at least some students who’ve fallen behind the academic standards for their grade — meaning they’re at risk of not learning everything they’ll need to be ready for college and the lives they want to lead. Helping these students get back on the path to...

For many families, searching for a high-quality early education program can be a challenge. Aside from very real issues of cost and convenience, parents must consider a wide range of factors that will impact their children’s learning and development. And there is a catch — many of the key factors are not ones that families...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report There isn’t much to occupy California’s teachers unions politically for the rest of 2019, but that only allows them to accumulate more funds for what promises to be a very busy 2020 on the campaign trail. Choosing a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President,...

Competency-based education has seen its fair share of champions over the past decade, offering the promise of a new architecture of learning. As the competency bandwagon continues to get more crowded, however, there is a critical — and too often ignored — through line between competencies and connections. My recent book, Who You Know, focused...

It was a busy, if often frustrating, summer for the Trump administration’s many efforts to destabilize U.S. immigration policies. Federal judges ruled in August that, under a longstanding legal agreement, the administration was required to provide detained children at the border with “edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste.” So the administration announced that it...