This article is published in partnership with WIRED. It was in physical education class when Laila Gutierrez swapped out self-harm for a new vice.  The freshman from Phoenix had long struggled with depression and would cut her arms to feel something. Anything. The first drag from a friend’s vape several years ago offered the shy teenager a new...

America’s public education system is well overdue for a strategic shift in how we help students discover their talents and navigate toward their futures. While most high school career pathways and vocational programs are well-intentioned, research consistently shows that the majority of young people start solidifying their essential identity, their interests and their sense of their...

Daily student absences rose 22% among more than 100,000 children living in California’s rural Central Valley in the weeks following January 2025 immigration raids, according to a newly peer reviewed Stanford University study. The findings span the early weeks of the second Trump administration. Since that time, immigration enforcement has escalated dramatically, particularly in Democratic...

Los Angeles schools have lost thousands of immigrant students for years because of the city’s rising prices and falling birth rates — and now that trend has intensified after the “chilling effect” of this year’s federal immigration raids, district officials said. This school year, the Los Angeles school district has lost more than 13,000 immigrant...

When I first arrived at Monte Vista Elementary over 20 years ago, it was evident that the school was full of dedicated students and teachers. But the numbers told a different story. Many children entered with limited early literacy and numeracy skills, and as a result, overall performance ranked near the bottom of the district...

When The 74 started looking for schools that were doing a good job teaching kids to read, we began with the data. We crunched the numbers for nearly 42,000 schools across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and identified 2,158 that were beating the odds by significantly outperforming what would be expected given their student...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. A few months ago, a high school English teacher in Los Angeles Unified noticed something different about his students’ tests. Students who had struggled all semester were suddenly getting A’s. He suspected some were cheating, but he couldn’t figure out how. Until a...

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter Only a few months into Rosie Leyva’s job as a literacy specialist at Butler Academic Center, Alameda County’s juvenile hall school, she learned that success looks different for each student. One student could not write his name. Over three sessions, which turned out to...

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. At CART High near Fresno, there is no gum stuck to the floor. The saffron-yellow walls are unmarred by graffiti. Toting laptops, students file calmly down spacious, light-filled hallways to classes like biotechnology and digital marketing. There’s no fighting, no shouting, no bells....

This story was originally published from EdSource Four Head Start programs serving nearly 1,000 of California’s most vulnerable children will not receive their annual federal funding on Saturday because of the U.S. government shutdown. One of the programs has already closed temporarily. Losing Head Start programs could be a one-two punch for low-income families who...