LA School Report

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Even as Omicron surged through Los Angeles early last month, Hilda Avila knew she would send her son back to his public middle school when classes resumed. “As a parent, it is my responsibility to teach my...

The U.S Constitution says nothing about education; none of the 25 amendments does either. In Minnesota, the home of former State Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, the state constitution — ratified in 1857 — only requires “a general and uniform system of public schools.” Page thinks the education provision is way overdue for an overhaul....

The SAT will be given to students virtually beginning next year, according to the College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns and administers the test. The change, revealed Tuesday morning, is designed to make the SAT easier to take during a period when hundreds of colleges and universities have dropped the test as an admissions...

The Omicron surge may be peaking in some regions across the U.S., but schools are still buckling under the weight of high student and staff caseloads — and as school leaders labor to keep their doors open, many districts have found themselves running short on a relied-upon resource: COVID tests. There is a “COVID test...

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of a Bremerton, Washington, high school football coach who was fired after he refused to stop holding post-game prayers on the field. Joseph Kennedy sued his school district in 2016, claiming officials denied him his constitutional right to religious freedom. The district said students felt pressured to...

Updated Jan. 26 This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Los Angeles families are divided along racial lines and income levels over how well the Los Angeles Unified School District handled remote learning and other issues during the pandemic, a new poll shows....

The former teacher gets high marks for building bridges to disenchanted educators and shepherding billions of dollars in federal relief funds to schools. But critics say his department has been slow to meet a fast-changing pandemic and reluctant to embrace a newly visible constituency: parents. When Education Secretary Miguel Cardona toured South Bend, Indiana’s Madison...

Researchers from Brown University, the University of Connecticut, the University of North Carolina and Michigan State recently released a very interesting study that examined the effects of teacher evaluation reforms on student outcomes across the country. While prior studies have looked at the effects of changes to evaluation in various individual districts, this new research is...

It’s a tricky moment in the pandemic for parents. Mere weeks ago — though it may feel like a lifetime — K-12 operations seemed to be moving toward something of a pandemic equilibrium. Studies had confirmed that COVID spread less in classrooms than the surrounding community, children as young as 5 had gained access to vaccinations and,...

What are the consequences of closing virtually every American school and shifting to online education for months at a time? It’s a question that education experts have been asking since the emergence of COVID-19, and one whose answers are gradually becoming clearer. With federal sources reporting that 99 percent of students have now returned to...