In joyful preschool classrooms, three- and four-year-olds play and pretend together. They sing and dance, listen eagerly at story time, and ask endless questions. Nearly everything is new, which fuels an intense enthusiasm for learning. High-quality preschool supports social skills, fosters friendships, and builds a sturdy foundation for kindergarten and beyond. As researchers specializing in...

Question: How does a school district go broke with $1.1 billion in revenues?  Answer: When it spends $1.3 billion. This macabre joke is all-too real for San Francisco Unified, where this spring a state oversight panel took control of all budget decisions until the district balances its spending. After reviewing the district’s budget, the oversight...

A few weeks ago, many were pointing out the four-year anniversary of the last “normal” week of our lives. Some pandemic-era reflections acknowledged the “silver linings” like more time with family, flexible work arrangements, gratitude for one’s health. With respect to education, however, it’s harder to find such perspectives, as stunted K-12 academic achievement poses...

To gauge the magnitude of global learning loss during the pandemic, a team at the World Bank examined data from the Program for International Student Assessment, which tests 15-year-olds in math, reading and science, from 2018-22. Among the report’s many notable insights is a counterintuitive finding about outcomes: In countries with the longest closures, high-achieving...

A common set of problems are keeping education leaders up at night: Will there be enough teachers to staff America’s schools? Can artificial intelligence enhance learning without deepening inequality? How can educators address the mental health crisis among young people? None of these have easy answers. New data confirm that these issues are top of...

Four years after the global COVID shutdowns, the pandemic’s effects are still being felt. Within education, a variety of data sources — including NWEA’s MAP Growth and state, national,and international tests — all show that students today are well behind their peers from four years ago. However, focusing on that type of COVID recovery framework...

It’s a challenge to capture the excitement surrounding this year’s NCAA Division 1 women’s basketball tournament. In the first round, Iowa’s future WNBA star, Caitlin Clark, scored 27 points and had 10 assists to lead the Hawkeyes to victory over the Crusaders of Holy Cross. Not to be outdone, Kiki Iriafen led the Stanford Cardinals...

With all that’s going wrong around the world, and given the nation’s increasing disillusionment with higher education, it is a special treat for basketball fans to be able to turn their attention to March Madness. For us, it’s time to celebrate athletes and their schools by turning our attention to our alternative bracket to the...

Teachers generally like teaching. They stay in their chosen profession about as long as accountants or social workers stay in theirs.  Teachers may not get rich, but they live comfortably middle-class lives. Plus, teachers get to retire a couple of years earlier than other workers.  Those are some of the positive narratives that policymakers need...

Anyone who sells products to public schools can tell you education is a huge market. Schools spend billions of dollars annually on contracts for everything from HVAC maintenance to technology services and tutoring. Almost all agree to pay vendors for goods or services rendered, not for the student outcomes they produce. But, as I wrote...