When Steve and Jenny Balbaugh’s daughter turned 5, they were hesitant to enroll her in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, schools. Ali was born with a rare brain defect that affects her learning and had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. “I didn’t want her to get lost,” Jenny said. But private options fell short. A...

At 5 feet tall, Uyen Tieu doesn’t tower over anyone, including many students. So when a superior said she was too petite to be anything but an elementary school principal, she figured he was probably right. “I accepted it, because I didn’t know any better,” said Tieu, who didn’t find encouragement from her own Vietnamese...

  The last time Congress increased the child tax credit — during the pandemic — Sarah Izabel used the extra cash to enroll her son in an afterschool program so she could apply to graduate school. “If my son was home, then I would be taking care of him,” said the Stanford University student, who’s...

For the past two months, home for Lori Menkedick and her family has been the Evergreen Inn, a Los-Angeles area motel just off Interstate-210. They’ve bounced between similar establishments east of downtown for almost three years. But room rates consume most of the $650 a week her husband earns from construction. The family depends on...

Harvard University researcher Tom Kane stood before a captive audience at Washington’s Omni Shoreham hotel last Wednesday, just hours after dropping the report everyone was talking about.  Offering the best look yet at students’ recovery from pandemic learning loss, the report showed that students actually made impressive academic gains last school year. But achievement gaps grew wider...

The rate of students chronically missing school got so bad during the pandemic that it will likely be 2030 before classrooms return to pre-COVID norms, a new report says. But even that prediction rests on optimistic assumptions about continued improvement in the coming years. For some states, it could take longer. In Louisiana, Oregon and...

Palm Desert, California Jon and Sam Bastianelli looked on patiently as their oldest son, the “history buff,” examined the axes, shovels and old farming tools displayed in a blacksmith shop at the Coachella Valley History Museum. His younger siblings crushed pumpkin seeds with a mortar and pestle in an exhibit honoring the Cahuilla tribe, the...

The Biden administration received high marks for elevating key strategies to help students rebound from pandemic learning loss — addressing chronic absenteeism, offering high-impact tutoring and extending learning afterschool and during the summer. “These three strategies have one central goal — giving students more time and more support to succeed,” U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona...

Last week, as leading education experts gathered — again —to ponder the nation’s sluggish recovery from pandemic learning loss, one speaker put the issue in stark relief.  “This is the biggest problem facing America,” Jens Ludwig, a University of Chicago professor, said flatly. Nonetheless, he told those assembled at the Washington, D.C., event sponsored by...

A new report finds that a parent-led tutoring effort in Oakland produced similar gains in reading for young students as instruction from classroom teachers — a nod that could fuel similar efforts in other districts.  “The more the children know you and trust you, the more they’re willing to engage in what you’re trying to teach them,”...