It turns out that educational disruptions are bad for kids. Perhaps you already knew that? In a series of posts in 2020 and 2021, I wrote about the research on past educational disruptions and predicted what they might mean for children going through COVID-19. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the pandemic. What have...

If asked to name the school districts that do the best job of teaching math, people might think of wealthy enclaves like Scarsdale, New York; tech hubs in California’s Silicon Valley; or college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan. Few of them would think of Neshoba County in Mississippi. But Neshoba County schools are doing something...

Hey, young people: Want a good job? You might consider becoming a teacher. You won’t get rich, but teachers earn more money than you might think. Plus, you’ll have a much easier time landing (and keeping) a job than many of your peers. This might sound like counterintuitive career advice given the current state of...

California public school enrollment passed the 5 million mark in 1991. That number quickly grew to 6 million by 1999 and then reached 6.4 million students in 2004.  Then, the growth machine stalled. California has long seen a large percentage of its residents move to other states, but international immigration and high birth rates more than...

Question: How does a school district go broke with $1.1 billion in revenues?  Answer: When it spends $1.3 billion. This macabre joke is all-too real for San Francisco Unified, where this spring a state oversight panel took control of all budget decisions until the district balances its spending. After reviewing the district’s budget, the oversight...

Thirteen years ago this month, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. In theory, the ACA shouldn’t have affected public school districts all that much. Most already offered health care plans that met the ACA’s requirements to at least cover 10 “essential benefits,” and a “Cadillac Tax” on high-cost plans that...

Teachers generally like teaching. They stay in their chosen profession about as long as accountants or social workers stay in theirs.  Teachers may not get rich, but they live comfortably middle-class lives. Plus, teachers get to retire a couple of years earlier than other workers.  Those are some of the positive narratives that policymakers need...

When K-12 schools closed their doors for in-person instruction in spring 2020, it had a variety of negative effects on students and teachers. It also shut off the training opportunities for future educators.  In response, states instituted a variety of short-term waivers allowing candidates to teach without fulfilling their normal requirements. Those policies helped candidates...

There is not one American public education system; the U.S. is a collection of 50 states, and those states have chosen to deliver public education using very different approaches. These choices manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including how much money states provide for their public schools, how many people work in those schools...

Objectively speaking, it’s a weird time to be talking about layoffs in schools. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021 had the fewest layoffs in public education in the last two decades. Last year was just a bit higher, and so far 2023 is tracking about the same. There are still pockets of layoffs due to...