For decades, a coalition of educators, politicians and activists have fixed one goal above all others in their mission to promote equity in education: closing the racial achievement gap. Its very existence — the stubborn divergence in standardized test scores between white students and students of color — belies the progressive dream of a color-blind...

Every four years, education reformers dare to dream that a presidential election will finally hinge on the issue of school choice. And each time, their hopes are crushed as wars, recessions, and scandals bump their top priority out of the spotlight. The unique conditions of the 2020 election, in which a deadly pandemic and a...

Their heated exchange over school busing during a Democratic presidential debate last year was one of the more dramatic moments of the primary season. But now former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris share the ticket and could make education a more defining issue in their effort to unseat President Donald Trump....

Education data guru Chris Minnich has some advice for school leaders: You may have spent the spring struggling to get food, hotspots and human connection to students, but right now is the time to plan for how school must be different next year if you’re going to address learning gaps widened by the pandemic. Minnich...

Tyneisha Gibbs and a few friends in East Orange, New Jersey, were in the midst of organizing a child care co-op called Umi-verse when the coronavirus hit the U.S. But this summer, when it became clear that families were facing the prospect of another three months or more of school closures, they saw an opportunity....

When Melissa Brennan begins school this fall at Mattie Lou Maxwell Elementary School in Anaheim, Calif., she’ll sit one-on-one with each of her special-needs kindergartners and first-graders and take the time to assess their basic skills. Brennan expects that the process will take place not in person, but over a video conferencing platform. “I’ll Zoom...

Updated August 6 Los Angeles Unified will reopen for the fall semester in less than two weeks, with campuses closed and students learning from home. The district and United Teachers Los Angeles struck a tentative agreement Sunday night over what distance learning will look like, but parents were excluded from the negotiations and largely kept...

Despite a boost from federal stimulus funds, drops in state funding for education during the Great Recession effectively ended a 50-year upward trend in national reading and math scores, according to a paper appearing Tuesday in the journal Education Next. A $1,000 cut in per-pupil spending also led to a decline in the college enrollment...

Timari Ray, who recently finished her first year at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee, says she probably wouldn’t be able to afford higher education without the Tennessee Promise, which in 2014 made community college free for most students in the state. Thanks to the Promise, she’s planning to transfer to the University of...

Preschool participation has fallen by half during the pandemic, according to new data from the National Institute for Early Education Research. And even with early educators’ efforts to connect with students remotely, few families have remained consistently involved. This “massive reduction in preschool attendance,” the report shows, affected all families regardless of race or ethnicity, parents’ educational...