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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
Schools After COVID: 6 Ways For Districts to Better Engage Parents Amid Concerns About COVID Learning Loss
74 Interview: Why Social Media is Being Blamed for the Youth Suicide Crisis
Thousands of Schools at Risk of Closing Due to Enrollment Loss
Free New AI Tool to Help Americans Search and Compare Student Test Scores Across All 50 States
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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
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Q&A: Richard Kahlenberg says liberal ‘elitism’ is hurting school equity
When the Supreme Court delivered its landmark ruling prohibiting the consideration of race in college admissions, Richard Kahlenberg was the rare liberal intellectual who celebrated. A prolific researcher at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, Kahlenberg didn’t just welcome the end of affirmative action as we knew it — he served as an...
By Kevin Mahnken | October 9, 2023
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Four top takeaways from the school research of new Biden adviser Kirabo Jackson
Largely constrained from enacting its national K–12 agenda, the Biden administration nevertheless made waves in the education world earlier this month by appointing economist Kirabo Jackson to a seat on its Council of Economic Advisers. Jackson, a labor economist and professor at Northwestern University, is far from a household name, but his work has made a significant impact...
By Kevin Mahnken | August 21, 2023
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Q&A: Harvard ruling will put spotlight on college elitism, Georgetown economist says
What now? That’s the question confronting university administrators, faculty, applicants and their families in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The 6-3 ruling by the Court’s conservative majority struck down race-conscious admissions policies at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina, overturning the decades-old...
By Kevin Mahnken | July 13, 2023
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NAEP scores ‘flashing red’ after a lost generation of learning for 13-year-olds
COVID-19’s cataclysmic impact on K–12 education, coming on the heels of a decade of stagnation in schools, has yielded a lost generation of growth for adolescents, new federal data reveal. Wednesday’s publication of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — America’s most prominent benchmark of learning, typically referred to as the Nation’s...
By Kevin Mahnken | June 27, 2023