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Project 2025 would cut ed department, fulfill conservative K-12 wish list under Trump
An ambitious Republican agenda to transform the federal bureaucracy under a second Trump presidency would have considerable fallout in the world of education, reimagining the U.S. government as a guardian of parents’ rights and reconstituting decades-old programs to serve as vehicles for school choice. The full program, entitled Mandate for Leadership, is a roadmap for...
By Kevin Mahnken | July 16, 2024
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Studies: Pandemic aid lifted scores, but not enough to make up for lost learning
Nearly $200 billion in emergency school funding spent during and after the pandemic succeeded in lifting students’ achievement in math and reading, according to two papers released Wednesday. Test score increases in both studies, which were conducted independently of one another, indicate that states and school districts used the money to effectively support children, even...
By Kevin Mahnken | June 27, 2024
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Polling data: Presidents split the public on schools
With the presidential election less than six months away, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will soon unveil their platforms and begin rallying voters around their agendas for 2025 and beyond. And while K–12 education typically spends little time in the national spotlight, the campaign will bring far greater clarity to the candidates’ positions on contentious...
By Kevin Mahnken | June 13, 2024
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Schools are more segregated than 30 years ago. But how much?
Racial segregation in classrooms edged upward over the past three decades, according to the work of two prominent sociologists. Across America’s largest school districts, the expansion of school choice and the winding down of court-mandated desegregation decrees have resulted in white students being more racially isolated from their non-white peers, the authors find. Timed to...
By Kevin Mahnken | May 13, 2024
Studies: Pandemic Aid Lifted Scores, But Not Enough To Make Up for Lost Learning
‘Astonishing’ Absenteeism, Trauma Rates Root of Academic Crisis
Reinventing Report Cards: Reading, Writing, Collaboration and Other Work Skills
Older Immigrant Students Say High School Admission Bettered Their Lives in U.S.
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Lost Learning = Lost earning, an equation that could cost the U.S. $31 trillion
American students are lagging behind their international peers in the aftermath of the pandemic, according to a new analysis unveiled by Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek. The ultimate costs of the last few years of incomplete learning will total $31 trillion over the course of the 21st century, the scholar finds — greater than the...
By Kevin Mahnken | March 4, 2024
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Settling lawsuit, California agrees to channel $2 billion to struggling learners
California will specially designate at least $2 billion to spend on learning recovery for disadvantaged students who fell behind during the pandemic, according to a legal settlement reached last week. The agreement — which will not require the state to raise or spend new revenues — serves as a partial validation of complaints from thousands...
By Kevin Mahnken | February 6, 2024
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Amid literacy push, many states still don’t prepare teachers for success, report finds
Most states have revised their strategies for teaching children to read over the last half-decade, a reflection of both long-held frustration with slow academic progress and newer concerns around COVID-related learning loss. An attempt to incorporate evidence-based insights into everyday school practice, the nationwide campaign has been touted as a promising development for student achievement....
By Kevin Mahnken | January 24, 2024
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14 charts that changed the way we looked at America’s schools in 2023
For K–12 education, 2023 was a year spent over a threshold. Schools had one foot in the shutdown era, still struggling to restore a sense of normalcy that disappeared in 2020. A steep rise in behavioral and disciplinary issues, which many teachers hoped would be only the temporary product of COVID’s generational disruption to routines,...
By Kevin Mahnken | January 3, 2024
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American math scores fall on international test — but many other countries suffered more
Math achievement tumbled for American 15-year-olds between 2018 and 2022, according to the latest results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an exam comparing academic performance in the U.S. against that of dozens of other countries. In a pleasant surprise, however, their reading and science skills appear to be undiminished over the last...
By Kevin Mahnken | December 5, 2023
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Q&A: Stanford economist Eric Hanushek on COVID’s trillion-dollar impact on students
Experts have spent years trying to quantify the pandemic’s toll on a generation of K–12 students. Some have focused on the months of incomplete or nonexistent learning opportunities while instruction was being delivered remotely in 2020 and 2021. Others were most disturbed by the deferred development of social-emotional skills for the youngest students, or the...
By Kevin Mahnken | October 12, 2023