LA School Report

Growing up in Charlestown, Rhode Island, Chrystal Baker remembers reading a textbook in history class that said the Narragansett Indigenous people, who have lived in southern New England for tens of thousands of years, were extinct. “We’re not extinct,” the young student ventured, nervous about contradicting the lesson, but feeling she had to speak up....

Charlotte Collins was a kindergartner in name only last year — enrolled in a San Antonio charter school, but not “super participating” in remote learning, her mother said. “Having a kindergartner sit at a computer to do online school was not a thing I was willing to make her do,” said Alison Collins. But she...

In 1971, a trio of Minneapolis educators, using a hulking teletype machine connected to a mainframe miles away, designed the legendary game of westward expansion (and dysentery) that would help revolutionize personal computing. Despite more than 65 million copies sold, they never saw a dime. Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or...

Even before the World Health Organization labeled the Omicron coronavirus strain a new “variant of concern” Friday, school closures were continuing to increase across the country. Last week, 621 schools across 58 districts announced new closures for a variety of reasons including teacher burnout, staffing shortages and virus outbreaks, according to counts from Burbio, a...

As with all aspects of our education system, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and widened inequities in postsecondary pathways, especially for the most underserved students. According to recent data, undergraduate college enrollment rates declined by nearly 5 percent since last year across all types of postsecondary institutions. Community colleges took the brunt of this decline, with a...

Californians could vote next year on whether students should have a constitutional right to a high-quality education, potentially opening the door to litigation from parents dissatisfied with their children’s schools. The effort to get the measure on the November 2022 ballot is just getting started, but such a statute would give parents “legal standing” before...

After the worst enrollment drop in a decade, colleges hoped COVID-19 vaccinations and in-person offerings would reel students back in. But early fall undergraduate enrollment data suggest “no signs of recovery,” with the nation’s public universities historically serving low-income students of color hit hardest, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Across 2- and 4-year public and private...

Early on, it seemed mentoring could be another casualty of the pandemic, the developmental relationships so many young people depended on for guidance and stability dissipating right when they were needed most. The COVID-19 crisis not only had the potential to disrupt learning, it threatened the ability to develop, maintain and grow networks of support...

Despite promises to focus on the growing racial and income divide among the nation’s students, new fall testing data show academic gaps have worsened, falling heaviest on some of the most vulnerable children. While education researchers have sounded the alarm for more than a year — that pandemic learning hurts low-income students and students of color most...

A story is told about a flood that rose so quickly, a man had to go to the second floor of his home, where he prayed for God to save him. Before long, a neighbor came by in a canoe and yelled to the homeowner, “Come on in. I’ll get you out of here.” The...