Authentic connections among educators, students, parents and their community are critical for the success of a school. These connections are essential in pursuing equity, addressing opportunity gaps and supporting Black and brown students. Unfortunately, between the underrepresentation of Black teachers and school leaders and the utter failure of teacher training programs to adequately prepare educators...

As children make their way back into physical classrooms after an unprecedented year of virtual education, parents and educators must ask a crucial question: What can be done to help returning students cope with feelings of anxiety, depression and powerlessness? One avenue for encouraging children’s personal wellness is a return to arts education, whose far-ranging...

It felt like this fall would — at long last — be different. Last March according to the National Center for Education Statistics, just short of 40 percent of U.S. students were still learning entirely remotely. Roughly the same percentage were back attending full-time in-person learning (another 23 percent of students were enrolled in hybrid learning)....

Over the past school year, the the Center on Reinventing Public Education has tracked how pandemic learning pods evolved from emergency responses to, in some cases, small, innovative, and personalized learning communities. This summer, as COVID-19 vaccinations increased, it seemed like the major impetus for these efforts was fading from view. We turned to our existing...

As students return to colleges and universities this fall, the highly communicable Delta variant of COVID-19 creates unexpected challenges to keep campuses safe and open. Higher education leaders now need to respond rapidly to protect their students, staff, faculty, and people with whom they come in contact. Everyone recognizes the benefits of in-person learning, but...

Thanks to a surprisingly strong state budget and a $15 billion infusion courtesy of the federal government, school districts across California are now flush with cash. But if district leaders aren’t careful now, they could trigger a round of painful cuts in the very near future. Consider the case of San Diego Unified (SDU). Student...

After seven months serving as the newest member of the LA Unified Board of Education, I see an incredibly simple but difficult opportunity before the second-largest school district in the country: defining one word — “equity.” It’s a word we see everywhere in education these days — in news articles discussing the academic and social-emotional...

It’s no secret that homelessness has reached devastating levels in Los Angeles. The L.A. Times editorial board called the situation “a national disgrace” — and that was three years before COVID  and the economic downturn exacerbated the emergency even further. But what some people don’t know or forget is that the crisis goes beyond public health,...

“Never in my lifetime have so many parents been so eager for so much education change.” So said longtime pollster Frank Luntz after surveying 1,000 public and private school parents on how the pandemic affected their view of schools. COVID-19 forced schools to change from being buildings where teaching, learning and programs were bundled together...

Every year, as much as one-third of college-bound high school graduates never show up to their first day of class. It’s all too easy for students to miss important deadlines, forget about necessary paperwork or get lost in the byzantine financial aid process. Known as summer melt, this phenomenon has long plagued high schools and...