As researchers around the world attempt to quantify the effect of COVID-19 shutdowns on student learning, a report from England suggests the most important factor is one that usually isn’t measured — the support children receive from the adults and other kids in their lives. The study, drawn from more than 900 in-person visits to schools and...

Elizabeth Englander As schools continue to grapple with coronavirus outbreaks, displaced students and classroom reopening decisions, much of the focus has been on how educators can help students catch up academically after months of virtual learning and, in many cases, limited interactions with their teachers. But what about students’ social-emotional growth, which could be stunted...

Parents have worried all year that arts education will be among the casualties claimed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting pressures on local school budgets. Depending on how long districts are forced to cut programs, fire or reassign staff, and cope with remote learning, some advocates warn, little money or instructional time could be...

Los Angeles Pam Marton and Sharon Fabian — longtime educators in the Los Angeles schools and friends since kindergarten — were set to celebrate their retirement this year with a trip to Croatia when the pandemic cancelled their plans. It wasn’t long, however, before they “started getting emails and calls from … families, parents who...

Marissa McClellan, who leads child protective services in Pennsylvania’s capital city, has been struggling to fall asleep at night. But it’s not the pandemic’s growing death toll or the collapsing economy that’s keeping her up. She’s worried about the children who aren’t showing up for school. Ever since the pandemic pushed schools into disarray, education...

When voters selected Joe Biden as the next president, Juan Cisneros offered a lukewarm congratulations. Cisneros, a 19-year-old computer science student at Benedictine University in Mesa, Arizona, is still fuming about immigration policy under former President Barack Obama, who oversaw a surge in deportations and was famously dubbed the “Deporter in Chief” by leading immigrant-rights...

The closing months of 2020 have brought little certainty to the question of when the COVID-19 pandemic will end. Through the beginning of a new school year, the drawn-out climax of a disputed election, and even the development of three separate vaccines, coronavirus infections and deaths have surged in a frightening second wave that has...

Never before has the American education system been put under a microscope — sometimes literally — the way it was in 2020. That’s because COVID-19 illustrated just how much about schools we take for granted. Education research examines all kinds of things that take place inside the walls of schools, from science lessons and gym...

Landra Fair, a high school science teacher at Unified School District No. 232 in Kansas, was thrilled for the chance to participate in Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine trial this past summer, eager to further scientific research in this area. It’s not the first time a member of her family has done so: Her mother was part...

While many school leaders focus on bringing students back into in-person classrooms as they were, a majority of parents want them to develop new and better ways of teaching, prioritize high-quality distance learning now and continue to offer virtual instruction even after COVID-19 recedes, a new poll finds. The survey, commissioned by the National Parents...