Children whose caretakers are detained or deported face not only the loss of their loved ones, but, oftentimes, removal from their homes and schools — abrupt upheavals that can land them in one of many places. Some, freshly pressed passports in hand, end up in their parents’ country of origin — even when it’s not...

All 8th graders in the San Francisco Unified School District will soon be able to enroll in Algebra I now that board members voted earlier this week to fully restore the course at the middle school level. The 50,000-student system made headlines in 2014 when it eliminated the curriculum for eighth graders in an effort to...

Daily student absences rose 22% among more than 100,000 children living in California’s rural Central Valley in the weeks following January 2025 immigration raids, according to a newly peer reviewed Stanford University study. The findings span the early weeks of the second Trump administration. Since that time, immigration enforcement has escalated dramatically, particularly in Democratic...

Brian knew when he graduated from high school in 2013 that he couldn’t afford a bachelor’s on his own. Undocumented and unable to qualify for federal financial aid, he decided to enroll at community college and chip away at his associate degree a couple of classes at a time, using the money he earned as...

While politicians continue to cast immigrants as a threat to local communities with rhetoric so hateful it’s shut down schools, RAND researchers note a positive development following the arrival of young newcomers: They boost other students’ academic performance. A Delaware-based study found that a substantive increase in young immigrants leads to sizable academic gains for...

Whether a prospective student speaks Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic or Mam — a Mayan language used in parts of Guatemala and Mexico — Oakland Unified School District’s enrollment office has a staffer who can help. If a newcomer communicates using a less common tongue like Dari and Pashto — spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran...

Oakland, California They come to the enrollment office at 18, 19, or 20, often without transcripts, identification or immunizations. Some have massive gaps in their education and many speak little English. Any one of these would be reason enough for districts across the country to deny admission, but not here. With ample enrollment staff speaking...

More than 40 education advocacy organizations have teamed up to fight longstanding residency requirements that tie children to their local public schools — rather than letting them transfer to places that might serve them better.  The No More Lines Coalition aims to end what it calls “discriminatory public school district boundary lines” in all 50 states by...

When the prestigious California Institute of Technology announced in August it would drop calculus as an admissions requirement — students must prove mastery of the subject but don’t have to take it in high school — observers of an ongoing education equity debate might have thought it was the last holdout. According to a recent...

High-achieving Black, Hispanic and low-income students who pass algebra in the 8th grade — a feat that can set children up for success in college and beyond — still end up taking far fewer advanced high school math courses than their white, Asian and more affluent peers, new research shows. Outcomes are starkly different for those who...