Recruiting a diverse staff and building a “family-like” school culture are among the key action steps more than 100 Black educators recommend school leaders follow in a recent report released by Teach Plus and the Center for Black Educator Development. The paper presented the findings of focus groups conducted during the spring and summer of...

The pandemic has been devastating for students and families on so many levels. It also produced insights that constitute urgent news for schools, both as they contend with the next wave of coronavirus and in the longer-term future. Today, a quarter of elementary school students in the U.S. use the Zearn platform and they have...

As schools work to mitigate COVID spread in classrooms and get a handle on how many teens have been immunized, they may not be able to rely on vaccination data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In many cases, CDC numbers clash with locally reported vaccination rates, an analysis from The 74...

Speaking and listening account for the overwhelming majority of how we receive information in our daily communications. Yet, average listeners may understand and recall as little as 10 percent of what they hear, as people are often distracted, preoccupied, or forgetful. As vital as listening is in our education, jobs, families and virtually every aspect...

The KIPP charter school network’s announcement of another scholarship program designed to launch their alumni into successful careers — and avoid the underemployment problems of years past — represents the latest mile marker along a steep learning curve. The nation’s largest group of K-12 charter schools said last week that the Ruth and Norman Rales...

Authentic connections among educators, students, parents and their community are critical for the success of a school. These connections are essential in pursuing equity, addressing opportunity gaps and supporting Black and brown students. Unfortunately, between the underrepresentation of Black teachers and school leaders and the utter failure of teacher training programs to adequately prepare educators...

Thirteen-year-olds saw unprecedented declines in both reading and math between 2012 and 2020, according to scores released this morning from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Consistent with several years of previous data, the results point to a clear and widening cleavage between America’s highest- and lowest-performing students and raise urgent questions about how...

As children make their way back into physical classrooms after an unprecedented year of virtual education, parents and educators must ask a crucial question: What can be done to help returning students cope with feelings of anxiety, depression and powerlessness? One avenue for encouraging children’s personal wellness is a return to arts education, whose far-ranging...

Nearly half of American students with learning barriers cited increasing amounts of stress, depression and anxiety as the leading obstacle in the 2020-21 school year. At the same time, students say their access to a trusted adult to discuss that stress decreased, according to a new national survey. In the third and final survey of...

The most popular, award-winning children’s books tend to shade their Black, Asian and Hispanic characters with lighter skin tones than stories recognized for identity-based awards, new research finds. The discovery comes on the heels of a half decade of advocacy to diversify the historically white and male-centric kids’ literature genre, leading to modest gains in racial...