The hypocrisy in education policy can be astounding. Legislators in Sacramento are pushing legislation that supposedly “benefits all of California’s public school children” — AB 1316, a whopping 88-page bill that covers 45 sections of law, is packaged as a charter school reform bill. But what it really does is discriminate against more than 200,000...

We often want to see schools as a warm and welcoming place. And they are for some families. For others, however, schools are a major contributor to the over-punishment of children because of decades of zero-tolerance policies, harsh punishments, and policing in schools, and evidence tells us that these practices have actually made the problem worse....

Teaching to the middle has historically been the approach taken by many schools nationwide, where a one-size-fits-all model is the norm and students must figure out how to fit in or fail. When COVID-19 hit and schools quickly pivoted to distance learning, challenges and disparities — many already present but ignored — were revealed for...

As a Black educator and the mother of Black children, I can tell you that the last year of disrupted schooling has had a profound effect on all of the country’s children, and Black children in particular. It has disrupted the learning of my students, my daughters and my son — children who don’t have access...

Tackling learning loss that has resulted from the pandemic is today’s most pressing education policy concern. Critical remedies like intensive tutoring, added instructional time and early warning indicators have gotten a lot of attention. But there is another solution that is ripe for action, one that undergirds all other efforts to address learning loss: upgrading school buildings....

Compared to a normal year, students learned less in 2020, were more likely to fail their classes and were less likely to be in school at all. Is this all just temporary? As we move further into 2021, will everything start returning back to normal? Based on the research on past educational disruptions, the answers...

We read daily about students’ missed classroom learning time due to COVID-19, but that is not the only thing students lost over the last year. A well-rounded education involves enriching experiences that happen outside of the classroom walls — be it sports, music and arts, travel, debate, or other extracurricular programs that build student engagement,...

As the pandemic began last March, Reyna Frias of East Los Angeles didn’t have a laptop or internet connection for her middle and high school sons to participate in distance learning. Before long, both Reyna and her husband lost their jobs. Eventually, late last year, the whole family contracted COVID-19. It’s no surprise that Reyna’s...

Last fall, Governor Gavin Newsom approved a new state law, Assembly Bill No. 1505, which gave local districts more control over the opening of new charter schools and the renewal of existing schools’ charters. In addition the new law revises the process for appealing rejected charter school applications. Although it remains to be seen whether...

For the last 45 years, teachers unions have been the predominant political force in California, using their clout from the governor’s office down to the state’s 1,037 school districts. Except for one: the Clovis Unified School District, just north of Fresno. While there are a number of tiny districts in California without a teachers union,...