Candidates bring a variety of strengths to America’s thousands of annual school board elections: generous donors, compelling personal stories, impressive CVs and even a few doses of charm. But according to research from political scientists at Ohio State University and Boston College, one of the most valuable assets of all is the endorsement of the...

The Child Tax Credit isn’t a subject you’d expect to receive much attention in the middle of a heated presidential campaign. Somewhat technocratic in nature, invisible to a large share of the electorate, the benefit was established in 1997 to provide relief to parents while their kids were young. Its reach is impressive, granting up...

Fortified by a stream of Democratic endorsements and high-dollar donations, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared every bit the presidential contender when she appeared before the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers last week.  Addressing thousands of her party’s most loyal supporters just days after being endorsed by President Joe Biden, the newly ascendant...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....